Alaric didn’t know what to expect from a world called the In-Between. There just wasn’t much to go on other than where it was—between something, or at least that’s what he thought of it as.

  He wasn’t entirely sure why it was even called the In-Between. He’d rather have called it the Guardian Realm… but even as he thought of that, he felt as though there was something wrong with simply calling it that.

  To some degree, it was fine to call it that the guardian realm, but that would remove the reasons behind why the In-Between was so aptly named that way.

  “In Between what?” he asked his guardian as they drew close to the translucent barrier. On the other side, Alaric could barely make out a single shape.

  Right before they crossed it, she answered, “In between the Human World and the Spirit World.”

  With that, they crossed into what Alaric could call the most messed-up piece of reality he’d ever come across—not that he was in the habit of checking out warped realities.

  First of all, his imagination was shattered.

  Black covered everything. There was no ground to step on… and yet, when his guardian took a step forward, a white crystalline substance coalesced and created a platform onto which she could step.

  Although it would be wrong to say black covered everything. In this space of nothingness—yes, nothingness was a better word for all the black Alaric saw—, there were glowing motes of light all around them, like stars dotting the sky. Only this sky was all around them and not just up.

  Alaric turned back where they’d come and saw that their piece of the In-Between was nothing but a floating orb the size of a very large building.

  Could they even fit in there? His meadow was supposed to be boundless… and yet this orb made it seem insignificant in the grand scheme of things.

  “Those stars…”

  “They belong to everyone in Melbourne. There is a limit to how far we can travel here because of your body’s location. Our piece of the In-Between moves as your body moves in the human world.

  Also, travelling here is not the same as travelling in the Human world. Distances are warped by one’s will, and moving undetected is next to impossible. But that is what we shall do. It’s too early for you to be seen here, so we’ll head straight for the realm Lucy’s guardian resides in.”

  Alaric nodded in response to the guardian’s words. He didn’t completely know what she was saying, but he stored the information and remained patient. He had suspicions of what her words meant and those are what he relied on to forge an understanding of her words.

  In truth, this world was all too weird for him to even fathom. For instance, where was the ground,d and why was everything so weird? Was he even breathing?

  ‘Oh dear!’

  Alia took one step and everything changed. Suddenly, a giant orb was in front of them, and the one they’d come from was nowhere to be seen, a part of the great tapestry of stars that surrounded this orb.

  ‘One step… That’s all it took,’ the boy mentally screamed before composing himself, ‘Will… right. She willed herself here.’

  At least, that’s how he wanted to believe it worked. Something told him he was close to the answer.

  “How do you know this is the right one?” the boy asked, gripping his guardian’s armour tighter.

  “Like I said, it’s all about your will. You’ll need more training on that, but for now, understand that because I will it, I can make it so,” his guardian answered before stepping through the edge of the barrier.

  Alaric wanted to ask another question when his breath got caught in his throat. He could feel his mind struggling to come to terms with what Alia was saying.

  Deep down, a small part of him wished the Orb they were travelling to was just another peaceful meadow with mind-muddling capabilities… but since when does the world bend to a single person’s wish?

  This orb was nothing like the cozy meadow Alaric was used to.

  This was a shattered lake with its surface frozen in time like a torn picture. Everywhere Alaric looked, he saw the same thing—shattered water.

  The shattered pieces were mostly still, only drifting every once in a while. The water, however, was more or less swirling sapphire, solid yet retaining the confusing appearance of a liquid.

  At the center of the shattered lake stood a broken castle, one spire of what used to be three was completely ripped out, while the gates and walls stood in ruins.

  Deep chasms ran across the shattered lake, revealing dark pits he didn’t want to know about.

  The boy’s stomach turned, ‘This is wrong.’

  His guardian stared at him for a bit but didn’t say a word, “This is where her guardian lives.”

  The pair travelled, crossing over large fissures with a single step. Alaric wondered whether his guardian had assumed this large form because of the nature of this Orb.

  They reached the castle in no time. Inside the courtyard, a hooded wraith Alaric recognized floated in silence. The gates meant to keep intruders from entering were torn, one side nowhere to be seen while the other hung on its top hinge—a rusted remnant of its former glory.

  The moment they walked through the torn gates, blue embers ignited within the wraith’s hood, and it turned to them.

  “You dare to enter my realm of peace?” The wraith’s rusty voice shook with the broken world. Alaric’s grip on his guardian’s armour loosened as he stared at the guardian, ‘Why is my chest getting tighter?’

  This guardian wasn’t in pain. No, not like Saber was… but there was something else happening here, and Alaric could feel it rolling off the guardian.

  Alia stared at the guardian with a neutral expression, unshaken by the guardian’s attempt at looking ferocious. This wasn’t her home territory, and yet she almost looked like she was challenging the wraith.

  Alaric wasn’t going to just stand around waiting for the wraith to get angry, though. So he spoke up, “We wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for a good reason.”

  The wraith stared at Alaric for a while longer… “That voice… Alistair. You look different.”

  Before Alaric could speak, Alia beat him to it, “His name is Alaric.”

  “Lies.”

  “I speak the Old Tongue, guardian. Do you not recognize it?”

  “The rules of the Constellations don’t always work in the In-Between,” the wraith answered in its rusty tone, filled with contempt.

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  “That is true… but the same can’t be said about the Protector’s Authority,” Alia answered, “Tell me, Guardian. What was your name again? And why is it that you cannot recognize the Protector in his true form?”

  The wraith shivered and floated away in fear, balls of flame filling the air in preparation for an attack. Alaric looked up at the sea of flame.

  There was nowhere to run, and yet, Alia looked perfectly relaxed. If anything, she just sighed.

  The flames burning under the wraith’s hood quivered.

  “Get away from here! Leave this place. I will wake the girl,” the wraith struggled, his voice turning smaller as he panicked.

  Alaric’s mouth moved before he had the chance to think his words through, “You’re not her guardian, are you?”

  The place went quiet all at once. The wraith went still, and the frozen world… stayed frozen. Whatever breeze or blowing tumbleweed that Alaric thought he saw in that moment of silence was just a part of his imagination.

  That said, it did feel like he’d just struck a nerve, [ Way to go for the jugular! His guardian whispered into his mind.

  The balls of flame vanished all at once, and the wraith lowered himself to the ground.

  “So what if I’m not her guardian?” the wraith whispered, “I’ve been with this girl most of her life. I’m the reason this wasteland hasn’t crumbled to dust just yet… and I will keep it that way for as long as I can.”

  “That’s not possible. Only masters hold these worlds together. We guardians simply live in them,” Alia responded.

  “And for as long as a Master can have a reason to keep this world intact, it shall be so,” the guardian lashed out.

  “But this world is broken… and there is no reason to keep it intact,” Alia argued, “She will wear herself out in a few years… and all this,” she gestured at the shattered realm, “This will kill her.”

  “Don’t you think I know that? I am looking for a way to make sure it never happens… and I won’t stop until I find one,” the wraith lashed out, looming over them with a determined fire burning within the flames under its hood.

  “Hope looks good on you,” Alaric complimented the wraith.

  The floating creature stared at Alaric for a while longer before calming down, “You do not fear me?”

  “Is there a reason to?”

  Alia spoke next, “Guardians come in many forms… but wraiths are rare. Wraiths… are lost guardians with nowhere to go.”

  “Yeah, go ahead and rub in my face, Little Miss Perfect… Wait, Alistair shouldn’t have a combat guardian. You lied to the guild,” the wraith lashed out.

  Alaric sighed, “Guardians should have good memory.”

  The wraith floated back, “You… merely refused to reveal your guardian.” The wraith shook his head, “Well-played. Now tell me, why did you come here? Surely you didn’t come to pick on a Lost One like me.”

  “Wouldn’t you want to be her guardian?” Alia spoke before Alaric could.

  Not only did her suggestion deviate from the reason they came here, but it also struck Alaric as odd. He got the same feeling from this as the time she made him pushed him to deal with Aiden’s Coming of Age Ceremony back in Jack’s Fall. Just like it had been back then, he had no idea what she wanted him to do. This was another one of his ‘Follow your gut’ moments.

  Actually, now that he thought about it, everything he’d said thus far was totally unregulated. Surely his guardian had come with a plan.

  She’d already been planning to come here with or without Alaric… which meant she was confident that anything that came out of his mouth would either work according to her plan… or would be something she could use to her advantage.

  [ Do you really think me that mischievous? The guardian asked.

  [ Yes. ] Alaric responded nonchalantly. Wasn’t it odd that she was able to make a plan out of things he hadn’t yet thought of?

  The two didn’t have time to bicker as the wraith before them lowered itself to the ground, “I’ve never trusted anyone. Why should I start now?”

  “We’re not asking you to trust us. Only if you help us and we help you in return. This is a trade,” Alia continued.

  “And what is it you want from us?”

  “Tomorrow we go out on a mission… but as fate would have it, that mission’s success depends on Lucy making it to the Guild Hall in the morning. Help us get Lucy’s support, and we’ll see what we can do about this situation,” Alia replied.

  There was silence as the wraith thought her offer through. Silence, which Alaric broke when he couldn’t hold back his suspicions, “Hey… I don’t understand something. How are you Lucy’s guardian… and yet not her guardian?

  The wraith looked at him and chuckled, “You’re starting to exhibit signs of being the Protector. Clueless… yet inherently complete.”

  “He didn’t really know what he was saying when he did,” Alia supplemented the wraith’s observation, “A typical trait for the young Protector. He still has much to learn.”

  “Am I to assume he hasn’t learnt to create bonds between guardians and masters of his choosing?” the wraith asked.

  “He took a bond from an undeserving master a while back—a dark mage who tortured his guardian into submission with Dark Magic. It would help if Alaric knew more about you. That would make bending his will easier. Also, his real name is to remain hidden until he reveals it himself to the girl,” Alia responded.

  The wraith nodded in thought. Alaric was more concerned with how much information they were feeding the wraith.

  Were guardians all that trustworthy? Or were there rules that kept them from misbehaving? So far, Alaric was flying by the seat of his glorious gut, but was there something behind this?

  [ ‘A guardian will always act in the best interest of their master’s moral development—even if that means causing them a little physical pain’. Like with Darth. You forgot to ask, but there are ten rules that all guardians follow, and while some guardians loosely follow those rules, even they know when to draw the line. Another rule would be that ‘A guardian will be bound by an oath made until released from it by the one they made the oath to.’ ] Alia’s voice filtered into Alaric’s mind, silencing it for what would come next.

  With his biggest curiosities sated, he found himself more receptive to the words the wraith said next, “Fifteen years ago, the Matriarch got herself involved in some nasty business. One of the darkest industries currently in existence actually: ‘Child Trafficking.’”

  Alaric felt his blood run cold at the mention of the business, “Child Trafficking?”

  “I’m sure you’ve heard of the infamous Child Abductions that happen all over the continent. Toward the end of the Matriarch’s involvement with that shady business, she found a child who happened to possess a strange amount of Holy Magic.

  I don’t know if Lucy was special or if the Matriarch just found her especially amusing, but I can say one thing. She was the reason the woman stopped helping child traffickers and even banned them from ever coming to Melbourne. She took the child but soon found out that the child’s bond with her guardian had been shattered. So she tried to save her.

  That’s how I came in. To try and mend the child’s shattered bond with her guardian, I was the result. Her original guardian was lost… and in the rabble of this collapsing world, I was put there to take its place. Our bond is not complete, but we work with what we have. Fix it… and you’ll have our allegiance long after this quest.”

  “You’re not her original guardian?” Alaric asked as though he hadn’t just heard. He could feel his heart beat faster.

  The wraith shook his head, “That guardian is long gone by now. Taken… or lost during whatever event shattered the bond. This broken world is proof of that.”

  Alaric looked around and shuddered. Scenes of destruction covered the cold, desolate land, painting an eerie picture that broke all laws of the world. Deep down, he’d known there was a reason for the shattered world they were in but nothing could have prepared him for it.

  Was this what would have happened to him if he traded his guardian for all the money in the world?

  ‘To think this is what that Vermillion girl was ready to subject me to,’ Alaric mumbled to himself.

  “Alia… can I really fix this?” Alaric asked the guardian.

  “If you want to, you can. It’s as simple as willing it,” the guardian responded.

  There she went again, with a simple response. It’s almost like she made him out to be some kind of All-powerful Constellation with the power to simply will his ambitions into existence. That’s not how the world worked.

  Still, in this case, he knew there was some truth to her words. Alia wouldn’t lie to put him in such a situation. Turning to the guardian, he nodded, “Get Lucy to help us on this mission, and we’ll see what we can do about all this.”

  The wraith nodded, “Thank you. I’d like nothing more than to become her True Guardian.”

  Alia nodded and turned to leave. Her gargantuan form walked through the torn gates with her master on her shoulder, not looking back at the staring wraith.

  Alaric, standing on the knight’s shoulder, stared back and waved as they left, “Is it okay to do it this way? I feel like we’re manipulating the girl.”

  “Be that as it may, in the end, we are granting her a bond she’s not had since she was a child. I pray you never have to use such methods to get what you want, but when the time comes that you have to negotiate like this, keep your eyes on your goal and make sure you don’t hurt anyone on the way.”

  “That’s what you’re doing right now, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, Alaric, it is. I’m taking advantage of something that the guardian and the girl like so much to get what we want… and it’s despicable,” the guardian replied in a neutral tone.

  The journey back was just as instantaneous as the journey to the Realm of the shattered lake. As soon as Alaric and his guardian entered their realm, the boy’s form vanished in wisps of smoke. The knight made it to the small hill and shrank down, shedding her armour in the process.

  Perched underneath the tree, a white intricate copy of Alaric lay relaxing in the cool breeze of this tranquil world, “You coddle him too much.”

  The guardian sighed, “Mind your own troubles. Any luck with your assignment?”

  The white figure sat up and stared off into the distance, nervously rubbing a hand through his ashen white hair, “It’s still a work in progress. That old beast is the shiest thing I’ve ever seen.”