So, if you remember my "Serena" story, Serena is a teenage witch, featured in a prophecy. Her life should be pretty straight-forward: unite the covens of England, defeat some undefined evil, and become queen. And, unsurprisingly, along the way, Serena got to meet the fairies, or more specifically, one special fairy, Elida (who has had HER own story!)

This story will be a follow-on from those two stories, the story of how Serena, with help from a lot of others, will defeat the undefined evil threat.

I'm going to write this story a bit differently from other stories I've done: instead of being one long story, it will be slightly smaller bits of story, linked together with a much simpler descriptive narrative (which means the story might (a) actually get written; (b) and written before Easter!)

So, when we last saw Serena, she had met her final companion, Harper, and along with Sarah and Samantha, had managed to discover the huge set of weapons that had been made for them, and got them upgraded. And when we last saw Elida, she had managed to get herself and Sparkle out of their time-loop by inventing fairy teleportation, discovered that she was a very important fairy, discovered that she, Lilly and Tats were destined to take over running FI5, and she had managed to work out how to remove Sparkle's and Lilly's braces.

The new story will start several months on: Lilly, Tats and Elida have been running things at FI5 for about 6 months now.... and Sebby is doing part-time tooth fairy work, and she is thoroughly enjoying it, alongside her working on the history of the old fairy castle, as well as occasionally helping Elida, because she is a great researcher.

We'll catch up with Serena a bit later on.

Chapter 1

"Hi there, Michael!"

"Oh, hello, Elida! Nice to see you... not seen you much since... well, since Lilly and Tats moved out to their new offices." Michael knew Elida not as who she realy was - in other words, a powerful protector fairy, who helped to run FI5 - but more as a younger fairy who happened to be friends with Lilly and Tats, mainly as a result of her work on the 'Dark Fairy' case last year' He saw her as a cheerful fairy doing some sort of 'special training' with FI5.

"Yeah, actually, that raises a quick question: since Lilly and Tats have taken over from Sir Donald and Lady Charlotte, how's everyone feeling... how are you feeling about the way things are being run now?"

"I think most of us are fine with things. Yeah, there's been some changes, mostly for the good I think. One thing that helped was Lilly and Tats actually explaining what they were doing and why, made us feel we were still part of things."

"Oh, right, better than I had feared then. Hey, you in the middle of anything important right now?"

"No, nothing that won't take more than ten seconds to save...."

"Ok, in that case, can you do that, then I was hoping you would come with me, should only take ten minutes.

A minute later they had gone up a floor, and were walking along the corridor. "Umm, where we going, this is the managemant area..."

"That's right, we're popping in to see Lilly. Not a problem I hope?"

"No... just wondering what's going on, that's all."

"Don't worry, nothing bad. Here we are. Without knocking, Elida opened the door, and took Michael inside.

"Hey, Michael, nice to see you. Here, take a seat, Elida needs to have a word with you."

"Oh? I thought it would be you wanting a word. Go on then, Elida." said Michael as he sat down.

"Ok, so the reason for bringing you here to say what I'm about to say, is that if I had taken you somewhere else, you'd probably not have believed me. Having Lilly here should add some credibility. First of all, what you are about to hear is NOT for general consumption, please keep it confidential. And especially NOT for outside ears. When you hear what I'm about to say, I think you'll understand. You ok with that?"

"Yeah sure, pretty much SOP.."

"Ok, then let me dive in at the deep end. As far as you're concerned, FI5 is run by Lilly and Tats, yeah?"

"Well, yeah, everyone knows that..."

"Except it's not actually true, there's three of us, Lilly, Tats and me." Michael looked at Lilly.

"Oh, you can believe everything that Elida is telling you," confirmed Lilly

"Maybe I should have started by explaining exactly who - or what - I am. I am a 'Protector Fairy', which means two basic things: first of all, my job is to protect humans and fairies from any fairy who 'crosses the line between good and bad'. To do that, my magic abilities exceed those of every other fairy I know... well except for Zia that is, she's a 'protector' as well. The second thing is that it means I can't do any 'bad magic' myself. I've tried, and it just doesn't work."

"So, when you say 'bad, you mean fairies like Sebby. When she was 'the dark fairy' I mean."

"Yeah, that's right. Whilst it was Lilly and Tats who actually 'took down' Sebby, Zia was waiting outside, along with an FAS team, to take over if things hadn't gone right."

"You mean you're more powerful than Lilly?". Lilly was quite ok with Michael's familiarity, as they actually used to work together.

"Well, apart from the incident down the 'Golden Cup', we've never actually tested it, but as long as Lilly believes I am, then things will be ok!". Lilly and Elida both smiled. This was a conversation the two of them had had over drinks several times, but neither of them actually wanted to put things to the test, so Lilly agreed to accept that Elida was probably quite able to put her in her place, if need be.

"Ok, I can see why you need to keep this quiet, by why ARE you telling me?"

"I have a new job for you."

"A new job? You mean instead of what I'm doing?"

"No, it's going to be more an 'as and when' sort of job, so you'll keep doing some of what you're doing now - which will be good cover for you too. I need someone to do some digging for me, as well as act as my 'handler'." Michael had a confused look on his face. "First of all, I need to do my job as a Protector, so I'd like you to try and be aware as possible of any fairies 'overstepping the line', and let me know instantly. Then I can get there and sort things out."

"How you planning on doing that? I mean, by the time you've flown there, things will probably be all over. Unless you've somehow worked out how to teleport, that is..." Michael thought he was being clever, because - as far as he knew - noone could actually teleport. Of course we know different.

"I CAN actually teleport!" replied Elida.

Michael's jaw dropped. He looked over at Lilly. "She's kidding, right?"

"Nope. I told you, you can believe everything that Elida tells you. Takes 15 concurrent spells to teleport, so she tells me."

"So you can.... and do 15.... wow!" said Michael, very impressed.

"I'll give you a demo sometime. The only limitation, which I'm still working on, is I can't yet teleport within our magic-proteced buildings. So, yeah, once you tell me there's an issue, I can potentially be on site within seconds. And while I'm doing it, I'll need you as my 'voice in my ear', feeding me relevant information. Interested?"

"Yeah, sounds like it could be... I was about to say 'fun', but you know what I mean."

"Ok. So the other part of the job would be similar. I'm on the lookout for fairies - boys or girls - who are.... hmm, how do I describe this to you? Fairies who are very capable, but not in the traditional sense. So, I'm not looking simply for high achievers, who do well at school. No, they will go on and do well at university. I'm looking for the fairy that's maybe bored at school and disrupts classes, simply because they are bored: they are good at magic, and they already know what the teachers are trying to teach them. Fairies that maybe go out and annoy people and fairies, again because they're bored. Making sense?"

"Yeah, I think so. But how do I find them?"

"I hear you're pretty good at digging out information, so just get digging. Still interested in helping me?"

"Yeah, I think so! Sounds like it will be a bit of a challenge..."

"And do you like challenges?"

"Yes, I do..."

"Great. Ok, so I guess you'll need to work out any extra kit that you'll need. Maybe need to give you a 'quiet place' you can go to when you're 'on active duty'... actually, no reason you couldn't just use my office when you need to.."

"You have an office here?"

"Yeh, of course. I'll show you. I could do with a better earpiece, I'll have a word with Puck. Not sure if we should just use the phone, or use a dedicated radio system... leave that one with me, I know the dev team has some nice stuff, we used some of it when we were chasing the Dark Fairy.... "

"When do I start?"

"Is now soon enough? Come on, I'll show you my office."

Chapter 3

Over the next few weeks, Michael alerted Elida to another couple of incidents. One of them was quite minor, so Elida just looked on with a smile, although she did have a quiet word with the fairy afterwards, just to remind her that she shouldn't REALLY be doing stuff like that. But that she probably only did what a load of other fairies really wanted to do!


The second incident was a bit nastier, which led Elida to having stern words with the male fairy concerned. Unlike Annabelle, this boy's background was quite different, so he was not 'made an offer'.


As far as Annabelle goes, Elida had already had several 'training sessions' with her, and both of them had enjoyed their sessions: Elida had a chance to try out some of the new magic she had learnt, and Annabelle had really enjoyed the physical workout, plus picked up some new magic from Elida. At the third session, she brought Sebby along too.


"So, you asked me to look for 'strange things'.. I think I might have one for you." Michael had actually managed to catch Elida on an occasion when she was in her office at FI5.

"Go on..."

"Her name is Poppy, she's in the last year of school. From all reports, she's a pretty bright student, but she often has anger issues, and is prone to throwing tantrums in the class room. There's also some hints here of her being the target of some minor bullying. Think she fits your criteria?"

"Interesting! Maybe, maybe not, and I guess there's only one way to find out for sure. Do me a favour will you? Give the school a call, let the headmistress know I'm coming, and that I'll be wanting to see this Poppy. If they ask, give no details or hints, keep us sounding like the mysterious organisation that we're not!". Her last comment made Michael smile.


"Good afternoon, I'm Elida, I have an appointment with Mrs Lambchops, your headmistress" said Elida. She had just arrived at the school, and was talking to the receptionist.

"Of course. May I see your ID please?" Elida passed over her 'FI5 operative' ID, which suitably impressed the receptionist. After having it passed back to her, she clipped it to herself so everyone could see who she was - schools do like that sort of thing. "Let me just check she's free - I believe she is". She made a quick call. "Mrs Lambchops is expecting you, and can see you now... so down this corridor to the left, third door. It says 'Headmistress' on the door!"

"Thank you!" said Elida pleasantly.

Elida politely knocked on the door.... no need to needlessly wind up this Mrs Lampchops.

"Come in". Elida opened the door and went in... the room looked like a couple of other headmaster's / headmistress' offices Elida had seen: relatively bland, a couple of 'important pictures on the wall, that sort of thing. As she saw Elida, the headmistress was a bit surprised, she assumed that Elida would be not only older, but dressed more like an adult fairy, rather than one of her students.

"Good afternoon, Mrs Lambchops, I'm Elida, I work with FI5...".

"Yes, I was told to expect you, do take a seat. What can I do for you?"

"It's about one of your final year students, Poppy."

"Ah, yes, Poppy. A strange one is our Poppy... amazingly bright, annoyingly disruptive, and prone to emotional outbursts. Also seems to get picked on by some of the girls."

"Has she always been like that?"

"No, up till a couple of years ago, she was a model student, top of the class in both theoretical and practical magic. I get a bit of a feeling that part of her problem is that she's a bit TOO bright, and school is maybe 'holding her back'. That could explain the disruption, but we haven't really worked out what causes her upsets. So why is FI5 interested in her?"

Elida liked what she heard... this was indeed the sort of fairy she was looking for. Plus, the headmistress believed it was an FI5 thing, rather than Elida's own search.

"We've been keeping an eye open for non-conventionally bright fairies, fairies that are not the sort to want to go on to university. In fact, left alone, many of them could end up doing not so good things. We have certain 'openings' available for fairies like Poppy, assuming she is actually suitable."

"Really? I mean, that would be really good for her, I'm sure she can do better than she is now!"

"I was hoping I might be able to have a word with her," suggested Elida.

"Of course." The headmistress' eyes looked up at the clock. "If you can wait 5 minutes, it will be break time. While you wait, would you like to see her school record?"

"Oh, yes please, that would be very helpful. If you can bring it up on your screen, I'll take a copy. By 'take a copy' the headmistress assumed she'd take some pictures, but she inderestimated the tech that FI5 was working on. Puck had recently given her a tablet with an early copy of FairOS 57 (*see note below), and it had some very neat new features, one of which allowed Elida to cast a simple spell to copy the actual file from the headmistress' computer to her own tablet. Mere moments later, Elida was looking at Poppy's school record on her tablet... it was interesting reading, and Elida was getting good feelings about her.

"It's almost time, if we go now, we should catch them as they leave their classroom. I just checked, Poppy should be in room 7." The headmistress led them out of her room, and along the corridor. "You're welcome to use this room here on the left, to have a word with Poppy" she commented on the way.

The bell rang just as they got to room 7, so the headmistress opened the door, and went inside with Elida. The class teacher dismissed the girls, and Mrs Lambchops took that as a prompt to call out "Poppy, can we have a word, please?". Many heads turned, and assumed that, yet again, Poppy was in trouble!

As Poppy came over, she had a look of fear on her face, clearly wondering what she was in trouble for THIS time.

"Yes, Mrs Lambchops?" said a slightly dejected sounding girl. As Elida looked at her, she could see a lot of herself in her. She was a similar height, and had a similarly shaped body. She also had similar clothes to Elida, but that was more that Elida was dressed a bit like a student, meaning Poppy's attire was actually more 'normal' for her!

"Poppy, this is Elida, she's asked to have a word with you: I'll leave her to fill in all the details. Elida, you know where I am if you need me again, nice to meet you!"

Poppy's face brightened up when she realised that she wasn't actually being 'summoned' by Mrs Lambchops at all, but instead this 'Elida' wanted to talk to her. I mean, someone dressed like THAT can't be that bad, can they?

"Hello Poppy, I'm Elida, nice to meet you! Let's go have a chat, shall we?". Mrs Lambchops had already gone, so Elida led Poppy back to the room that Mrs Lambchops had pointed out. They both went inside, and before they even closed the door, Elida had looked around the bare and uninviting room, and said "Hmm, maybe not! Let's go and find somewhere nicer, away from the school, shall we? I assume you have a locker, so why don't you dump your school books off, grab your coat and phone and other bits..." Elida followed Poppy to where her locker was: as they walked, Elida was strongly reminded about HER days at school. Her main thought was along the lines of 'I'm glad I'm not at school any more!'

"So, where do you fancy going for a chat. I'd like us to be alone, so maybe on top of one of the tall buildings in town? Or out in a field in the country?" Elida wanted Poppy to be relaxed: she wasn't there to tell Poppy off in any way, she wanted to find out more about Poppy, see if she could be useful to the team back at FI5, whilst making life more interesting for Poppy at the same time.

"I wonder if anyone is playing tennis at the tennis courts at the sports centre? That's always a nice place to sit and relax!" suggested Poppy.

"Sounds good to me, lead the way!" On the way there, Elida spoke to Michael. "Hey, I think I'll be ok now, thanks for your help. I'll call if I need anything!". It didn't take long for the two of them to reach the tennis courts. The day was quite nice, so they went onto the roof of the adjacent pavilion. With a wave of her wand, Elida magicked up a pair of deckchairs and a table. With another wave there were a couple of long soft drinks on the table. "Take a seat!"

Having got away from school, and now seeing what Elida had just magicked up, Poppy was feeling pretty relaxed.

"So, what's this all about then? I mean, if it's a telling-off, then it looks like it could be the nicest telling off I've ever had!"

"Nothing like that at all. I guess I should tell you who I am: you know I'm Elida, but I work part-time for FI5. We've been keeping an eye out for fairies like you, that are apparently good at magic, but are having some sort of 'issue' with school. So I was sent here to talk to you. So, I'd just like to find out more about you. How good you REALLY are at magic. Why you play up in class, and why you seem to occasionally get bullied. Maybe I can start by letting you take a look at this...". Elida magicked up her tablet once more, and passed it to Poppy.

"My school record? Am I even supposed to be reading this?"

"Why not, it's all about you. Take your time, see what the teachers say about you...". Her school report was, well historically anyway, very complimentary about Poppy. In the last couple of years, it had become clear that, whilst her schoolwork remained good, her behaviour had gone downhill.

As Poppy read her school record, she sipped on her drink. "Ok," said Elida about 10 minutes later, when Poppy had finished reading: "The way I see it is that things were fine with you at school till what? 3 years ago? You were top of the class in theoretical magic, practical magic, innovative magic, and a few other subjects. Then things went downhill for some reason... and I'm guessing that's when the bullying started too? Clearly something happened, and I have a feeling much of it wasn't really your fault."

Poppy was silent.

"Look, Poppy, I'm not here to judge, I'm here to understand, and maybe even help you, make your life a bit more pleasant and interesting. So tell me your story..."

"Ok... so I'm Poppy, I turned 18 a couple of weeks ago. Mum's a general fairy, dad's a tech fairy. I have a younger brother and sister, they are both at school too. I seem to be the 'bright one' of us three. Even as a young fairy, I enjoyed doing magic, mum used to show me all sort of silly things, encouraged me, help me understand what magic I was allowed to do, and how to be careful not to do any stupid or bad magic, that might hurt someone. At school, I used to LOVE doing magic, I was really good at it, it kinda made sense to me, in the way that it didn't to most of the fairies. They needed to do loads of practice to get their magic right, I just seemed to be able to do it without even trying. That was until..."

"Until?"

"Until...." Poppy paused, clearly think how to explain it. "Until I discovered I sometimes just couldn't do magic."

"Ok, I can imagine that must have been quite frustrating. When did that start?"

"I'd started to get friendly with a different group of fairies at school. And of course, you know what teen fairies are like, we got up to silly things. And that's when I found that THEY could do certain magic, but I couldn't. I mean, I could do the magic normally, just not when we were messing around."

"Would 'messing around' maybe include doing magic for slightly.... 'naughty' reasons?".
Poppy went a bit pink: clearly she was embarrassed. "Look, I know it's very hard to admit that you've been using magic for things that aren't 100% good. It's like human kids, going off together and hiding behind their school bike shed, to share a cigarette at lunchtime. But I need to know, if I'm to help you."

"Yes... we were..."

"What sort of things?"

"Oh, burning the grass. Setting fire to daddy long legs. Tripping up human kids." Elida smiled. "What's so funny?"

"I remember fairies at my school doing that sort of thing too! Ok, let's try something... just do as I ask, and don't worry if you can't do it...". Elida magicked up a bit of paper, and made it flutter down in front of them. "Set fire to the paper for me" asked Elida.

"Easy peasy!" said Poppy, throwing a very simply fire spell at it, turning into ash.

"Ok, now set fire to this...". Elida magicked up a rather pretty butterfly. Poppy tried doing the same spell, and it didn't work. She tried it again, and again it didn't work.

"I told you, I cant! I can't do it!" shouted Poppy angrily.

"It's ok, calm down. I did say you might not be able to do it, I just wanted to see. Ok, let's park that for the moment, let's get a bit more positive for a moment: I'd like to see how good you are at more normal magic. Take some deep breaths, and relax!"

"Ok, so what do you want me to do?" asked Poppy after taking several deep breaths, and feeling better for it.

"Well, let's make it simple, but a bit of fun. Magic me up a paper sparrow, and make it fly..."

"Oh, that's easy!". Poppy thought a few seconds, working out what she would need to do, then created the paper bird. Another spell made it fly.

"Nicely done! Ok, keep it flying, and at the same time make another one -  make it out of red paper this time - and make it fly too. Mind you, I want it to fly separately from the first one."

Once again, Poppy magicked up a second bird, made of red paper, and made it fly too.

"How about a third one - and how about this one is made out of some sort of golden foil?"

It was clear to Elida that Poppy was really needing to concentrate, to keep the two existing paper birds flying, whilst making the third, then getting it to fly too.

"I'm impressed! Think you can do a fourth? Go on, give it a go!". Elida was wanting to see how much simultaneous magic Poppy could manage. Most young fairies could managed maybe 3 or 4 spells at most. Elida used to manage about 6 or 7, but of course, as a result of the 'Time Loop incident', could now manage well over the 15 she needed to teleport.

Poppy started to magic up the fourth bird, but lost concentration for a moment, and the 3 flying birds started to fall. "Ooops!" she shouted, and quickly took control of them again. It took her longer to make the 4th paper bird, as she was needing to also used magic to keep the other 3 birds flying. It would have been easy if she could make them all fly the same, but she realised what Elida was wanting. Without being asked, she started to make a 5th bird, but it needed more concentration and magic than she could manage, and the 4 birds fell down.

"Sorry..."

"No, don't be sorry, that was quite impressive. Most fairies would max out at 2 birds.. so how many spells were you using there? I'm guessing about 8 or 9..."

"Yeah, I think it was 8."

"That's well above average!"

"So, how many can you do?"

"Oh, 17 or so..."
 
"No way! Wow, that's cool!".

Elida was silent for a moment, thinking to herself. Poppy's abilities, and lack of abilities were worryingly familiar. Very familiar. But she couldn't be, could she? I mean, it's a 'once in a generation thing', isn't it? That's what Zia had said.

Poppy noticed that Elida was deep in thought. "What is it?" she asked.

"I actually have an idea what your 'problem' might be. I mean, I can't really believe it's possible, but..... well, there's only one way to find out..."

"What you on about?" asked Poppy.

"Poppy, I need you to stay here and wait for me, please. I just need to go and get something, I'll be maybe five minutes, ten at most. In the meantime, just relax, and watch the tennis, and have another drink...."

"Is everything ok?"

"Don't worry. This may seem a bit strange, but it's probably very ok! I'll be back shortly!". Elida flew up in the air, then ran her teleportation spell, suddenly disappearing from Poppy's view. Back at FI5 HQ, Elida dashed into the building, using her card to get through the security barrier. Up to her office. Then down into the Dark Archive. Where she had left her 'Protector's Book'.

It was a VERY special book. First of all, it could only be opened by a Protector Fairy - so Zia and Elida. Second, once opened, unless the Protector allowed it, the pages looked like they were covered in kiddies scribblings. But to a protector, it contained the shared knowledge of a very large number of Protector Fairies, written over quite a long period. Elida remembered the first time she saw it: Zia had made her search for the book, then open it. She also remembered how the book added her name to the list of Protectors as she watched.

So, if Poppy was indeed another Protector Fairy, then this book would prove it. But if she was, then why?

She took the book with her, left the FI5 building, then teleported back to where Poppy was waiting.

"Erm, what just happened? I mean one moment you were here, then you disappeared. Then now you're back again..."

"Yeah... teleportation spell, that's what I use the 17 spells to do!"

"Oh, wow! I never heard of anyone teleporting before."

"That's because I'm the only fairy that can do it. I'll explain later, first there's something much more important we need to do." Elida sat down, and pulled out the 'Protector's Book', and passed it to Poppy.

"What's this?"

"Open it and find out.".

Poppy opened the book without any special effort, revealing a very simple, yet also very ornate, front page to the right, but to the left was a long list of names. At the top, it simply said 'This book belongs to...'. At the bottom of the long list of names, it had Elida's name.

Elida put her hand onto the book. "Put your hand onto the book too....". As Poppy also touched the book, she saw new writing appear underneath Elida's name: 'it also belongs to Poppy'.

"What's going on?" asked Poppy. "Why did my name get added to the bottom of the list?"

"Because, as well as having belonged to Zia, and me, it now also belongs to you. It seems that you, like me, are a 'Protector Fairy'. Go on, have a look at the book..." Poppy turned the page, and was amazed at how beautiful it was.

"It contains things that a Protector needs to know about... see the different handwriting, that's because it has been added to by the different Protectors, over many hundreds of years." Poppy continued to turn the pages of the book, enthralled by it, but at the same time starting to wonder exactly what a 'Protector Fairy' is.

"So, you're probably wondering, the same as I was the first time I saw this book, what a 'Protector Fairy' is..." Elida slowly told Poppy all about why Protector Fairies existed. "You'll be very happy to hear that you're not the only one that can't do bad magic, I can't either. And as you've worked out, like you, I'm pretty good at doing magic. Hang on a moment, I just need to call Michael."

"Who's Michael?"

"Oh, he's my 'handler' back at FI5." Elida pulled out her phone, and called Michael.

"Hey, you still with Poppy?"

"Yes, that's actually why I'm calling. Can you call Poppy's school, tell them she won't be back till tomorrow at the earliest. I'm sure you can come up with something, maybe we've asked her back for an interview or something, which won't be far from the truth."

"Oh, what's going on then?"

"Need-to-know for the moment I'm afraid, but I suspect I'll need to explain it to you soon!"

"Ok, I'll call the school for you then!"

"Thanks Michael!". She turned back to Poppy, who was looking at the Protector's Book.

"Hey, I just found the teleporting spell, but it looks like it's not complete."

"That's because it's still a 'work in progress'."

"What? You mean YOU are writing it? So... you invented the magic to teleport?"

"Yup. Took about 3weeks of almost non-stop work. I'll tell you about THAT sometime too."

"Hey, shouldn't I be going back to school at some point?"

"Do you want to? What you got?"

"Umm, I think it's maths. We're looking at equations for motion and friction."

"Sounds absolutely riveting!" said Elida, very sarcastically. "To be honest, I think that sort of stuff is well beneath your abilities. No, I think you deserve to take the rest of today off school, we have far more important things to do. Hey, do you even want to go back to school?"

"Ummm..." said Poppy, rather shocked.

"Just think about it. In the meantime, I wonder if Zia is free."

"Who's Zia?"

"Another protector fairy. My predecessor, but she's retired now. Let me call her." Elida called Zia. "Zia, hi, Elida here <pause> Hey, are you free? <pause> Yeah, now. <pause> Well, there's someone I think you need to meet. <pause> Her name is Poppy, and I'll explain all when I get there. <pause> Oh, just give us a couple of minutes...<pause> Ok, see you soon!"

"Right, let's tidy up, and get going." Elida waved her hand, and the chairs, table, drinks and paper birds all disappeared. "Ok, hold on to the book, and take my hand. Oh, I suggest you take a deep breath and hold it for a few seconds, the first time can be a disorientating."

"Uh?"

"Just take the deep breath!". As Poppy took her deep breath, Elida ran up the 18 spells: the normal 17 for teleporting, and the extra one to take a 'passenger'.

(in the original story, I said it took 15 spells to teleport: that was correct. But back then Elida was teleporting 'blind', so the extra 2 spells are for Elida to check where she's about to land.)


(* FairOS, the phone / tablet operating system developed by the fairies, is the basis of what we mere humans now know of as Android and Linux. This explains one of the reasons that fairies can hack into phones so easily... there's still a couple of back doors in there that the fairies included in the kernel, before making it available to Linus Torvalds and Andy Rubin)

Good story I wish something like that could of happened to me when I was at school would of been the perfect excuse to not go back

Hehe! Shame it's 100% just a story :-( And by the way, Kellie-Marie, fairies don't ACTUALLY exist, sorry..... 

I forgot to say earlier live the name  you gave the teacher Mrs Lambchops reminds me we used to call my boss something chops but it wasn't lamb  definatley ruder than that if you get my drift

Chapter 6


About three or four months have passed since our two Protectors were first in the Dark Archive together. Poppy has spent quite a bit of time down in the archive, talking to the books, as well as learning a whole load of new magic. Last week, after a LOT of practicing, she finally managed to put the requisite 17 spells together, and was able to teleport, which thrilled both her and Elida. So now, Poppy is finishing off the description of what to do to teleport in the 'Protectors Book', that Elida started, but hadn't quite got around to finishing.

Elida has also introduced her to Annabelle, and they've done a few 'sparring sessions' now with all three of them. She has also introduced Poppy to Sebby, and they too have got on well, helped by the fact that they are of similar age (give or take a century!) In fact, Poppy has been fitting in really well. Her next big step is in a couple of weeks, when she finally leaves school, and joins FI5 full-time.

"I think it's time you met Princess Rosemary!" said Elida. "Besides, I need to show you, and Sebby, the 'Royal Archive'. Hey, why don't I just ask the Queen if we can go have tea with her, so I can introduce you to them all?

"You can just call the Queen and ask to have tea with her?"

"Not quite. Officially I would need to go through channels, and it might take weeks. Unofficially, I can speak to Princess Rosemary, and I'm sure she can fix it. So, want to meet the Queen?"

"OMG! Yes, of course I do! So what's she like?"

"The Queen? Queen Tinkerbell is a lovely old lady, and whilst quite a traditionalist in many ways, she's not scared to use technology. Let me call Rosemary..."

Elida picked up her phone, and made the call... "Hello? Rosemary?"

"Elida? Lovely to hear from you! What can I do for you?"

"A couple of things actually. First of all, there's someone I need to introduce to you and the Queen, she's a new 'Protector Fairy', like me. And I would also like to show her, and Sebby, the Royal Archive. Any chance you can twist your mothers arm, get an invite for us all for afternoon tea, then we could pop down to the Archive afterwards."

"I'm sure she'd love to meet her - what's her name?"

"She's Poppy, and she's a little younger than me. Hey, why don't you ask your mum to invite Celeste along too?"

"Excellent idea! I'll let you know when it's arranged.

"Thanks, Rosemary!" and she ended the call.

"You just called Princess Rosemary, 'Rosemary'?"

"Yeah. She actually appreciates it, she said that she gets so fed up with being called 'your royal highness' and 'Princess Rosemary' all the time. I guess it's like Tats..."

"Yeah, but Tats ain't the next queen..."

"Fair comment."

"So, what do I need to know when meeting royalty then?" asked Poppy.

"Well, given who we are, I think it's a lot easier for us. I just try and be generally nice. We call the Queen 'Your Majesty', and Rosemary is 'Your Royal Highness', but I suspect she'll quickly tell you to just call her 'Rosemary'. Rosemary is the same sort of age as your mum and dad, and the Queen is getting her to take on various tasks, so she'll be coming down to the Royal Archive with us."

"And Celeste - I assume that's Princess Celeste?"

"Yup, next in line after her mum. She's our sort of age, I think you'll like her!"

----

Elida and Poppy had teleported to the front door of the palace. They had arranged that Sebby would meet them there.

"Hiya!" said Sebby. "So, we're off to have tea with my many times over great grand-niece?" she added with a bit of a smile. Poppy looked a bit confused, then worked it out.

"Ah, yes, of course! I keep forgetting that you were actually born so long ago!"

So let's remind ourselves: Princess Sebille - training as a tooth fairy about 100 years ago - was caught in the old, mostly destroyed, palace, presumed dead. However, other fairies had put her into a long sleep. When she woke up, she felt very angry with the world, which had destroyed the Palace, and thus became 'the Dark Fairy', doing nasty things to many human's teeth. It was all caused by being in the destroyed Palace: he (the palace, that is) was rather upset too. After removing Princess Sebille from the Palace (who subsequently had the truth explained, and also calmed down) she lost her darkness, and is now pretty much a normal fairy.

So yes, Sebby is theoretically about a hundred and twenty years old, but is actually only a little older than Poppy. Probably because of her age, she has managed to 'fit it' amazingly well with modern fairy society. as well as picking up modern technology really quickly.... and whilst she probably could have 'pulled rank' and just been a 'lazy royal' and done very little, she actually enjoyed working. She was a Tooth Fairy much of the time, but she did get one perk, and that was being allowed to have a bit of time to do research work. Partly that was to understand the history surrounding the old - and now destroyed - Palace, where she was found. But also, it let her help Elida and others, as it turns out she's a bit of a dab hand at finding stuff down in the Archive. Sebby now had her own small apartment in the Palace, and got on well with the staff too.

"Come on, Rosemary should be expecting us!" said Sebby. She took them up to the rather bigger apartment that Princess Rosemary and her family lived in, and rang the bell. The door opened moments later. "You guys ready for tea with Tinkers?" asked Sebby.

Poppy looked at Elida, and whispered "Tinkers?".

"Yes, Tinkers and I seem to have a bit of a strange relationship: theoretically I'm loads older than she is, but at the same time I'm not. When we first met, and bearing in mind that I was a Queen's daughter, we just agreed to just be totally informal with each other." explained Sebby.

The five of them walked to the Queen's apartment, where a PA was waiting for them. "You can go straight in, she's expecting you!"

"Good afternoon, grandma!" said Celeste, running over and hugging the Queen.

"Oh, hello dear, nice to see you. And you too, Sebby and Elida. And I'm guessing this must be Poppy... do come over and let me see you..."

"Your majesty!" said Poppy, making a simple curtsey.

"Good afternoon, your majesty!" said Elida. "I thought that, with Poppy also being a 'Protector', like me, you really ought to meet her."

"Oh, yes, indeed! Well, take a seat everyone, I'm sure the tea and cakes will be here soon." She turned to Poppy: "So, Poppy, how are you enjoying being a 'Protector'?". Elida had told her that, whilst she was actually talking to the Queen, to be her normal self, just be respectful like you would with any older fairy.

"It's definitely interesting! I'm still at school, so only really doing my Protector stuff a couple of days a week, but Elida had been helping me."

"Are you planning on leaving school soon?"

"Yes, the year ends in a few weeks time, then I'll be a full-time Protector!"

"What's been the best bit so far then?" asked the Queen.

"Oh, the books, they are amazing, and they seem to enjoy talking to me too.."

With the ice most definitely broken, and the tea and cakes arriving soon afterwards, they all had a great time talking with the Queen - and the Queen enjoyed having a nice group of people to spend some time with.

"So, Rosemary tells me you're going down to the Royal Archive again..." said the Queen.

"Yes, there's some interesting books there that I think Sebby will enjoy reading, plus I'd like Poppy to have a chat with the books: I'm still a bit stuck on understanding the magic dampening used in the official buildings."

"Ah, yes, I remember you explaining that last time. ..."

Chapter 8


Elida was in her FI5 office, reading a few official documents, Poppy was 'downstairs' in the Dark Archive.

"Ahem!" said a voice that Elida recognised as being Poppy. She looked up from what she was doing, and looked at Poppy, who had a MASSIVE smile on her face.

"Poppy, I thought you were down in the Archive?"

"I was..."

"But I didn't hear you come back up the stairs..."

"That's because I didn't use them..." replied Poppy, still with that massive smile on her face.

"What, you mean you just teleported up here?"

"Yup. I finally worked out the extra spells to get around the magic dampening spells in the building!"

"Poppy, that is amazing! Abso-bloomin-lutey amazing! You have just earned a bonus amount of extra respect from me! I will admit that I had been struggling with those books."

"It's not that hard, once you make sense of everything. It's actually only another three spells, one to let you do the 'probe ahead', the other two to get the magic dampening spells to 'back off' at each end."

"Oh, nice... tell you what, these documents can wait, I think you need to teach me what I need to do!"

For Poppy, this was a watershed day: it was the first time that she had worked out some fairy magic that Elida hadn't, and it massively boosted her confidence that she was indeed quite worthy of being a Protector. In fact, the effect for Elida was similar: this was the day she started to think more of Poppy as being her equal, rather than being 'the trainee'.

-----

"Hi Lilly!". Lilly looked up from what she was reading.

"Oh, hi Elida... Poppy..." replied Lilly. "When did you come in? Never heard you..."

"That's because we didn't!" replied Elida.

"Uh?"

"We teleported here from our office." Lilly stopped an thought for a few seconds. "Umm, I thought you couldn't teleport in the official buildings?"

"Well, we can now!"

"You finally worked it out?"

"No, I've been struggling for a while to work it out. Poppy worked it out!"

"Well, what can I say? Well done, Poppy! Nice one!"

"Yes, I was rather impressed myself! Which leads me on to something else..."

"Which is?"

"I'd like Poppy to officially be recognised as my deputy here at FI5. Several times now she's shown she's pretty much as able as me."

"I'm very happy with that. You told Tats yet?"

"No... half a moment...". Elida did a new style of probe, the sort than now let her see inside the magic-restricted building. "She's in her office, let's go see her now!"

Lilly started to walk to the door.

"No, not like that. Hold Poppy's hand...". Elida and Poppy both said the spell to probe then teleport to Tats' office. Tats was standing up, a cup of coffee on her hand, when the three of them arrived in her office, a matter of about 3 feet from her. Luckily she didn't have any coffee in her mouth, but she DID managed to drop her cup, which still had a bit of coffee in it!

"What the f***??!!" said Tats, who was very surprised. "Sh*t, you guys have worked out how to do it indoors, haven't you?"

Poppy smiled very proudly. "Poppy did!" said Elida.

"Well, well done Poppy! I know Elida's been struggling with it for a while!".

"Absolutely!" echoed Lilly. "So, Elida has suggested that Poppy should officially be her deputy... I think she's probably ready to do that, what do you think?"

"Yeah, I'm ok with that... Sounds like Poppy is fast becoming an important member of FI5!"

The next bit of the story is about Serena...


So, Serena has met her companions, and has got all her weapons etc, plus 4 extra members of the team she wasn't expecting.

And she's now discovered that it seems that the "Dark Threat" as defined by the prophecy will happen in 2 years time. From a magical 8th realm.

In the meantime, she needs to continue reuniting the covens, but beyond that, she now needs to prepare herself and her team to be able to fight the 'Dark Threat'... and I think they could do with some serious military-style training.

So, how would she go about doing that? I'm thinking in this story that witches are probably about 0.1% of the population (the city where I live is about 50,000, so a coven of around 50 would seem reasonable), so that would give about 200 witches in the British military. Would they actually USE their witching skills: knowing the military, if they had wind of witches (and they've had plenty of time to find out about them!) then I would almost ASSUME that there is a team of witches, like the SAS / Seals / Paratroop regiment in the military. Of course, their mere existence would be kept highly secret.

But THEY are the people that Serena would need to find, both to GET trained, but maybe to also get THEM better trained in magic to help 'fight the dark threat'. There is no doubt that traditional weapons would be of no use, magic MUST be used.

So how WOULD Serena find this team? She knows noone within the military. Should she start at the top? That could be quite difficult. So how?

That's what the next bit of the story is about.....

That last chapter should be 9.

Chapter 10


Hereford was a long way away from home, but Serena needed to be there, because THAT is where the Special Air Services seem to be based.

Serena, Harper, Sarah and Samantha had spent some time talking about how they could find someone who could give them some 'suitable' training in fighting. They worked out that, if witches made up even 0.1% of the population, then there must be quite a few witches in the armed forces. They guessed that most of them would simply 'fit in', carrying out minimal magic, just like parents would when looking after their kids.

But there must also be a small number who take a normal skill set, and develop it: let's think gymnastics for example: we all do a little bit of it at school, but there are a few who compete at the local level. Then there are people like Harper, the elite, who show off their skills at the national and international level. The numbers of people can be counted on a few hands. But that's the sort of numbers they were thinking of in the forces. In the SAS (according to Wikipedia) a troop is 16 members: having a troop of all witches would make a LOT of sense, they would have some amazingly special skills, but skills which both they, and the military system would keep very quiet about. And even if they had it wrong, and there was no specific witch troop, there would definitely be witches somewhere within the SAS. And if not the SAS, then the Para's.

And the military must have known about witches for quite some time, so we're not talking about something recent. You might ask 'why would the military know about witches?'. Well, if Serena's headmistress was aware, then there's no question that the military would be aware.

So, they needed to somehow make contact with this team of elite witches. The question was how.

One thought was to try and find such people when they were not on base... so maybe down the local pub... bit let's be honest, that's not going to be THAT easy.

The other thought was to 'start at the top'. Harper did some deep searching online, and discovered that Brigadier General Smith had take over as Director of Special Forces in 2021. The question was where he was based, and lived. The SAS has their RHQ in Hereford, but they also have a presence in the Regent's Park Barracks, in London.

Sarah had booked them all an AirBnB in Hereford, which was only a couple of miles from the base in Credenhill. The plan was that Serena, and others as needed, would get closer to the site, to let Serena probe around, and find out where Brigadier General Smith had his office, and where he lived.

Luckily, around where the base was located, there was plenty of countryside, where they could legitimately be: that might let them do some training, but it was a place where Serena could sit, and probe into the base. She would need to be careful, because if there were, as they thought, highly skilled witches on the site, it's quite possible that some of them could be on some form of 'advanced guard duty', scanning for other witches. Serena's hope was that they would be scanning for ACTUAL witches, and not be able to detect a witch scanning into the base.

Google maps showed a lot of identical small buildings, which they assumed would be the actual barracks, the living quarters for the men, so the 'offices' would likely be in one of the larger buildings.

So, their cover story was that they were simply 4 friends who had decided to have a short break, and take the opportunity to visit some local countryside. The first place they visited was the SAS Cemetery, a rather nice place where it would not seem unreasonable for people to want to visit, and sit and contemplate. It was also conveniently close to the main entrance to the base.

So they all wandered around the cemetery, then went and sat on the grass, and drank the drinks they had brought with them. Serena was able to 'wander over' to the gatehouse, where luck was on her side: there were very simplified base maps there for visitors, to help them find where they needed to go, and the main office building were shown.

So Serena wandered over to the first one. Yes, it was indeed offices, but more for support staff, not for the higher ranking members of staff. Finally she found a building that fitted the bill a lot better. As she started to 'wander around' the building, she probed the people she passed, to see if any of them were witches. The problem was, of course, that a witch with any reasonable level of skill would detect a probe, so Serena had to make them incredibly fast and light. Yes, she found one witch in a small office, and having scanned her and realised that she was a witch, she decided to stay there a bit, and watch how she reacted - luckily there was no apparent reaction, which pleased Serena. As she continued to wander around the building, she noticed that there were a few armed personnel around, clearly guarding the place.... all of which made Serena believe she was vaguely in the right place.

"Serena, I think we need to get going soon" suggested Sarah.

"Can we manage another five minutes? I'm making some good progress.."

"I think five minutes will be ok...."

She went up a floor, where she found a couple of small meeting rooms, and then a much larger 'briefing' room: she felt that she was maybe in the right place. There were a few rather nice but small offices along the corridor, with people in them. A minute later she hit gold: a much larger office, with a fairly fancy desk on one side, plus a meeting table to the other... but noone there. She worked back, to find a small outside office, with a couple of clerical staff of some sort. She scanned them, in case they were witches, but they weren't. Then she had a quick look around at various bits of paperwork on the desk: one had Brigadier General Smith's name on it.

"Ok, I think I found his office, but he's not there at the moment. So, let's move on...."


"How you feeling there, Serena?" asked Samantha, as they got up to go back to the car.

"If you're asking if I could do with some of your magic, then yes please...". As they walked back to the car, Samantha took Serena's hand, and cast some recuperative magic on her.

"Find any witches?" asked Sarah.

"Just the one, a lady in an office. She didn't seem to be worried by my quick probe though. So, let's go to that Sugwas Pools park place, its not far from here: it has some nice paths and trees to the south, how about you take us there? Once we're there, I think I'll teleport over onto that small island and check it out, might be a bit quieter for us....."

"Good idea. So what your plan?"

"I'd like to probe around a bit more, see how many more witches I can find..."

Being semi-retired gives me quite a bit of time. Before the words are written, I think the story concept through in spare minutes of the day... plenty of those. Plus, the story development has been happening over a period of several months.... Carol was started probably almost a year ago...big chunks got written there, then deleted, as the story was getting silly and the direction difficult.

The amount of braces in Carol will reduce massively now she has her new retainer...

When I used to write stories I had to write it as I thought of it then post it straight onto this site especially as I can't write by hand  I only have a tablet computer and have no idea how to do it any other way. Also I never had any training on how to use this or any other computer I'm not making excuses just stating fact. Sparky another way the fairy's could find the military people they are looking for is to take advantage of their Fi5 training and use it to gain access to the human Mi5/Ci5 organisations that could be helpful? Wish ide suggested it earlier but I've only just caught up with my reading

Chapter 11


When they got to the park, Serena 'popped over' to the island, then came back to the others. "I think it would be advantageous if we all went over there: there's plenty of space, also plenty of cover, so we should be able to remain undisturbed".

Over on the island, Serena sat down and continued her probing, while the others used the opportunity to do some exercises, led by Harper. Like she had done earlier, Serena started to probe around the army site, but this time she decided to try the smaller buildings, where she found quite a few army guys. Outside one of the huts, she discovered a guy, and a very light probe indicated that he was a witch. She started probing a group of others nearby, to discover that they too were all witches.

She moved her attention inside the block, and could see another group, actively practising some magic. Yes, she had just hit gold: a group of army witches whose use of magic was well above the 'calming an upset child' level.

Knowing that they were all witches, Serena decided to continue very carefully - she didn't really want to be discovered yet, she needed time to work out what to do.

Over the next hour, Serena saw various other people come and go, interacting with the others, but probing for such a long time was very tiring.

"You ok, Serena?" asked Sarah when Serena had opened her eyes.

"Yeah, a bit tired, but it was well worth it." She explained what she had found out. "I think I need to stop for today, but I'd like to come back, tomorrow morning, learn more about their abilities, and who's in charge of them. From what I read, there should be 16 of them in the troop, plus a captain in charge of them... I'm sure whoever he reports to must be onsite too, and maybe that's who I need to talk to...."

"Ok, well let's go back to the house, then you can tell us more about what you've found out, and we can think about what to do."

----

Back at the house, Serena tells everyone else what she's learned, and they do a bit more research online, but don't really find anything of use, so decide to return the following morning.

As for Sarah, Samantha and Harper, they had spent the time doing some simple physical stuff: after 'warming up', they did some jogging and running, then used the trees: climbing them, and using then for pull-ups and things.

So, next morning they are back on the island, and Serena starts to probe again. They guys aren't in or near the hut, but she eventually finds them, working out in what might be simplistically called a 'gym'. She recognised a couple of the guys, and wanted to confirm what she believed, that they were all witches, so she lightly probed a few of them, to discover that yes, they were.

As she continued to watch them, she could detect that they were using some simple bits of magic, to help them do what they were doing. Another guy came in, and one of the others - one of the guys she had probed, went over to him and whispered something to him - unfortunately, it was sufficiently quiet that her probe was unable to hear what was said.

"I'll go have a word with the boss" he says.

-----------

There was a knock on the door.

"Come" replied Major Tom. The door opened, and Captain Hughes walking in, and closed the door behind him.

"Permission to speak openly and freely, sir?" he said

"Take a seat, and go on...."

Serena was still on the island and was still remotely eavesdropping. She had followed the Captain as he had walked across the site: this was her chance to find out who was next in the chain of command - and probably the person she actually needed to speak with.

"Some of the men have reported a strange feeling... a feeling of maybe being probed by an experienced witch from outside".

'Oh crap' thought Serena, 'I could have done with a bit more time to prepare for this....' She had to think on her feet....

"My apologies Major Tom, Captain Hughes, that would have been me.....". Serena was using magic to talk directly to their minds. She had worked out the captain's name when he spoke to the major's secretary, who was in the next office. The major's name was on his door. "By the way, just talk to me, I can hear you ok..." The two of them were silent for a moment, clearly very surprised at hearing Serena's voice in their heads.

"And you are? And what do you want?" asked Major Tom.

"To answer your second question, I need your help, or more specifically, I guess it would be your troop's help. As for who I am, I hasten to say I am not a threat to any of you. Have you read the 'witches' prophecy', the one written about 500 years ago?"

"It sounds familiar....." said the Major.

"Just a moment, let me send you a copy.....". Serena summoned a copy of two versions of the prophecy, and used more magic to send copies of them to the Major's desk. "Take a look on your desk, Major....".

The Major turned and looked at his desk, where he was slightly surprised to see two new pieces of paper. He spent a moment reading them, then passed them to Captain Hughes. "Yes, now I see it again, it does seem familiar..."

"I'm that young witch, named in the prophecy. I'm sure you appreciate that what I'm doing right now is probably classified as 'great skills and abilities'. And as you'll see, the prophecy says that I have to 'defeat the attacks of the darkness'... and that's where I need your help!"

The two army men looked at each other: this wasn't the way they had been trained to do things, but it was clear that this witch who had intruded was quite capable, but so far, was not posing any sort of threat.

"What sort of help do you mean?"

"Well, for a start, I'm actually quite young, so - not too surprisingly - I don't have any military training. Plus, whilst we have some rather amazing magical weapons available to us, we could really do with some training on how to use them. And I'm also hoping your troop of witches might be able to help in the fight... "

"Our troop of witches?" said Major Tom.

"Yeah, the group of guys that Captain Hughes leads. Come on, I've been watching them yesterday and today, I know they are all witches!"

"Shit, she's good!" said the captain to the major.

"Thanks for the complement!" said Serena. "So, yes, I could really do with your help to help defeat this 'dark threat'".

"So, you really want us to believe that this - 500 year old, you said, didn't you? - this prophecy is actually true?"

"Well, if you think about it, all the things up until the 'uniting the covens' bit have actually already come true... I mean, 'plague of the mask' is pretty clear!"

"Ok... and uniting the covens?"

"It's happening! Hundreds of witches from across the country are once again talking to each other, in a friendly way. So yes, still a long way to go, but it's happening..."

"So this supposed 'attack of the darkness'. You really believe that it is true?"

"Various covens have been able to provide 'resources', resources which specifically respond to me and my small team - and only to us. All apparently linking into bits of the prophecy. I'm talking not only information, but a substantial cache of advanced weapons."

"And I don't suppose you happen to know WHEN and WHERE this confrontation will take place?"

"Well, 'from unattributable intelligence obtained', it's definitely going to happen: we believe we know the place and the date... in just under 2 years time we believe."

"And you know this how?"

"I'm sorry Major, I can't give any further details right now, 'need to know' and all that." Serena was secretly amused that she was able to turn the tables on 'the authority figures' for a change! "Look, I'm rather nervous about what I'm doing at the moment. I'm probably breaking so many laws right now just talking to you, and I have no desires to get myself arrested...."

The Captain chuckled quite briefly. "Yes, I can understand you're probably a bit nervous. Can you at least tell us your name?"

"My name is Serena..."

"Hello Serena!" said Major Tom. "From what you have told me, I think we ought to meet with you, and talk a bit more...."

"I'd like that, I'm just a bit apprehensive. I mean, there's a soldier stationed outside your group of offices with what appears to be some sort of machine gun, and I can see that Captain Hughes also has a gun on him.... If you could promise me that I'd be safe, I could come there right now..."

"Yeah, might be a problem getting you through security at such short notice...."

"Sorry, I didn't explain myself too well there, did I? When I said 'come there', I was meaning I could teleport into your office."

"You must be very close to be able to do that...".

"Not at all, but my advanced magic skills let me teleport quite long distances."

"Ok, Serena, just give me a moment...". Serena heard him pick up the phone, and spoke to some sort of secretary: "I'm in an important meeting with Captain Hughes, no interruptions of ANY sort for the next 30 minutes, please!"

"Thank you Major, give me a moment..." said Serena. Serena was actually with her 'team' over on the island of the country park / lake: she told them what she was about to do.

"If I'm not back in 30 minutes... then.... to be honest, I have no idea who would be able to help!"

"Ghostbusters?" suggested Harper, smiling.

"Yeah, probably your best bet! Actually, get in touch with Elida if there's a problem."

"Good luck, Serena!"

You finally managed to get a mention of braces into your story.

I trust you all had a pleasant Christmas! I had family visiting, which is why I've not been writing or posting for the last week.

I'll apologise now for this next chapter, it's a bit of a filler...

====================
Chapter 14


The afternoon session with the four SAS guys turned out to be a success at so many levels: they quickly realised that Serena's magic abilities were at a level far higher than theirs. In fact, she took the opportunity to teach them some new magic too. Plus they now believed what she had said about the magical weapons: in the SAS guys more experienced hands, they were pretty spectacular.

Serena left Captain Hughes with one of the laser rifles, with all four of them being 'registered' to use if for the next few weeks. It was hard for Serena to 'give away' even one of the weapons, but she realised that the goodwill it generated was well worth it.

The most important thing to come out of the afternoon was the credibility they now had with Major Tom and Captain Hughes.

Over the next few weeks, there were various meetings, at various levels, many of which Serena and the others were invited to.

And as a result of all that, they were invited to join some training sessions 'in certain out-of-the-way places': they were finally receiving the practical training that they desperately needed.

------

Serena was meeting with Sarah, Harper and Samantha.

"I've been thinking..." said Serena, "so far, our contacts with the other realms have been brief and informal, and things have worked fine with me going with Elida or Poppy. But things are starting to get 'real', and I think that we need someone, an 'ambassador' so to speak, to take on the job of meeting with the 'ambassadors' of the other six realms. They need to be someone who is good with people, especially people who are not actual people, if you see what I mean. Someone who is completely 'on side' with what we're trying to do. Someone who doesn't have their own 'power agenda'. Someone who is non-aggressive...."

"And why are you looking at me?" asked Samantha.

"Because I think you would do a great job! Sarah, Harper, what do you guys think?"

"You know, I think Samantha would do a great job! Whilst I can think of a few other people who might be able to do the job, they all fail on one criteria or another," said Sarah. "Besides, it would send quite a positive message to the other realms if one of us does it, that these meeting are likely to be very important."

"Yes, and Serena is so right about needing someone who is non-aggressive. I could see all sorts of issues arising if one of us three were to go," added Harper, "plus anyone else really not appreaciate what's happening, we'd be spending so much time explaining stuff."

"But I've never done anything like that before..." said Samantha.

"I understand. But Sarah has never done any fighting before, like we're doing now. And Harper never had the need to learn magic like she's been doing. And I've never lead an army to protect us from an invasion. But we've all been learning, and I think you'll quickly learn what needs to be done. Yes, I'm sure you'll struggle a bit to start with, but the simple fact that you are 'one of the four defined by prophecy' will give you a huge amount of credibility, and I have no doubt that the others from the other realms will completely accept you. Please, have a think about it. A very serious think...."

"You REALLY think I could do it?" asked Samantha.

"I have no doubts at all." said Serena.

-----

A couple of weeks later, Samantha had her first meeting with creatures from the other realms. She wasn't alone, Serena went with her, plus Poppy went along with the fairy's new ambassador. Initially rather nervous, she settled in well: it was clear that what they were doing, and what they were wanting to achieve, was new to all of them.

The strangest thing was seeing Poppy at 'human size', a quirk of the way they had to travel between the realms... of course, in human terms, Poppy, like Elida, was normally a matter of about 6 inches tall.

Chapter 16


Two minutes later, and Poppy joined them. Serena and captain Hughes explained the situation. "Ok, give me a few minutes to go and sort the FAS team out. Probably best we all go straight to Reading. You guys heading there too?"

"I guess so... John?".

"Yeah, I'm kinda hoping that Serena can give us a lift there, that going to be ok with you, Serena?"

"Sure, but I'm going to need Samantha. Ok, Poppy, why don't we meet you there. I don't suppose you can give us some fairy comms, can you?"

"Sure, hang on..." Poppy waved her - ok, rather smaller than Wanda - wand, and a set of earpieces appeared on the table, one for Serena, and another 1 for ech of the rest of the SAS troop, plus a couple of spares. Serena and John each grabbed one. "Can you hear me ok?" said John.

"Loud and clear" said Poppy. "See you on site shortly....".

Now, you're possibly wondering where Elida is in all this? Well, Poppy happened to know that Elida was having a rare romantic evening with Puck, her boyfriend, so had decided that she wouldn't disturb her unless it became essential. If she needed her, she knew that Elida could join her at almost a moments notice... such are the joys of being a fairy that can teleport!

"Ok, let me call Samantha.... and Wanda, can you prepare to do a long-distance summons?"

"Sure can, boss!"

"Hi, Samantha..." said Serena when Samantha answered the call. "Look, this is best described as a 'code red'... I'm with John, and we need your help like now. I'll explain more when you get here. Let your mum know, suit up, and I'll summon you here.... Oh, and bring a couple of the pills with you, will you?". Captain Hughes knew that Serena could use ecstacy to boost her dark magic abilities, he had seen her demonstrate it on one of their training missions.

"Ok, I'll leave the call open....". Serena could hear as Samantha spoke with her mum, then ran the magic needed to put her 'work clothes' on. "Ok, I'm ready!".

So, long distance summoning: it's dark magic, and if it's just one person then Serena can cope ok, but a 'boost' from Samantha helps a lot. But she knew that she was going to need to get her and Samantha both over to Reading, then summon the rest of the SAS troop - so 17 of them - over there, which would definitely need Samantha's skills to keep Serena going. While Serena was doing all this, captain Hughes explained to the others who Samantha was, and why Serena needed her help. He had seen the pair of them 'working together' on their training many times, and understood how important her abilities were to Serena.

When Samantha 'landed', she put her hand on Serena and instantly applied a simple 'recuperation' spell. Then Serena explained to Samantha what was going on. "Tell you what, can you give me a quarter of a pill now, I think it will make my work a bit easier tonight.". These were the same ecstasy tablets that they had managed to 'steal' from a drug dealer a while ago, in the previous story.

"So, I'm thinking that I'll start by taking John over to Reading: I'll need him to explain who I am to anyone who sees us. Then I'll summon you, Samantha, and you can 'recharge' me. After that, we can find a suitable 'landing pad', and I'll get the rest of John's team over". This was something they had done before when training up in the Welsh mountains, although the distances involved had been a lot shorter. "Then we can have a word with the FAS guys, and decide the details of what we're going to do."

"Sounds like a plan," said captain Hughes. He turned to his team: "Ok, everyone, grab a fairy earpiece. Jock, once we're there, can you liaise with the other team there, and get your group close enough to be able to teleport in: by the time we do that, we should know exactly what you'll expect, so landing accuracy won't be as important. The rest of you, stay with us."

"Hi Serena, it's Poppy!" said a voice in Serena's ear.

"Oh, hi, can hear you loud and clear!". It goes without saying that these earpieces were using magic to communicate: they were more advanced versions of the ones that Puck had designed for Elida and Lilly and the rest of the team when they were working on the 'Dark Fairy' case.

"So, we're onsite in Reading, found the site. We have a suitable location for you to land... want a beacon?"

"Please.... Ok, John, get yourself ready, transport is nearly ready to go.... Wanda, I'll need to do a long-distance teleport with a passenger, followed shortly after by a long distance summons for Samantha. Once Samantha does her stuff, I'll need to summons the other 16 guys.... We've done it before, just not such a long distance!"

"Understood!".

"Braces, you ok with this?"

"We'll do our best!"

"Can't ask you to do more than that...."

Serena was still wearing her dark jewellery: she took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and concentrated. She had a map in her mind: she knew where they were, and she knew roughly where Reading was. (Ok, yes, it was quite a distance. But that's why she used the dark magic teleporting spells!) As she zoomed in, she could work out where in Reading she needed to be, and started to do a wide probe. Yup, there was the 'beacon' shining brightly. She homed in on it, and could see the fairies: they were in a suitably discrete courtyard... a good landing place. "Ok, Poppy, I can sense your beacon, with you in a moment!" Serena stood up, and held out her hand. "John, ready to go?".

While Serena had been preparing herself, he had grabbed everything he would need. Unlike his men, who would be carrying several weapons each, he just had a small pistol, a radio, and a few other small bits.

Serena felt a tiny bit dizzy when she landed: a long distance teleport with a passenger did that to her. She looked around to see the fairies waiting for them. Poppy explained to them both where they were.

"Ok, let me check in, then we can find out where we really need to be." He pulled out his small radio. "Captain Hughes, comms check?"

"Good evening sir, we were told to expect you. What can I do for you sir?"

"Need a small space for 2 of us to land indoors, without too many people around. Describe me a suitable place...".

"We're in the big red building, almost opposite the primary. Give me a moment, sir, I'll find a room....". Serena was listening in, and whilst she realised that they were at the back of the big red building, she needed to work out where he was.

"I think I have him, get him to lift his left hand and wave, will you?" asked Serena. This is a trick they had used before, and John relayed the message. "Got him...".

"Ready when you are, sir!". Serena teleported them both the short distance, and the fairies followed. John recognised who he had been talking to. "Follow me sir!". They were lead to a room where a small group of senior officers were talking: John recognised most of them.

"Good evening everyone, this is Serena. She's civvy, but treat her as one of us for the moment. She'll bring the others here in a moment. And THESE guys are fairies, of the military type, I think they will be able to give us some very useful information in a bit". It was clear from the way they were talking that they were fully aware of the 'special abilities' that captain Hughes' men had, and had heard about fairies, even if they had never seen them before.

"John, I need to bring Samantha here..."

"Sure. Guys, Serena's going to call her number 2 in.... go ahead, Serena!".

"Ready Wanda?". Serena said the words to summon Samantha, and as before, she cast some recuperation spells on Serena after she landed.

"Ok, where do we stand? How much time do we have?" asked captain Hughes.

"Things seem to be relatively stable for the moment, I'd say we have maybe 15 minutes before we need to worry. What we do need is some good intel on what's going on over there." On the table there was a map and a floorplan of the building, and one of the guys gave them as much detail as they knew."

Captain Hughes addressed the FAS guys: "Guys, want to get over there and take a look around?". He turned to the others in the room "don't worry, noone over there will see them, the only reason we can see them is because Poppy cast a special bit of magic."

"Sure can.... Poppy, you stay here for the moment...". The FAS team flew off.

"John, want me to do a probe, or get the men over here first?" asked Serena.

"I think knowing what's going on over there is probably more important, I can't imagine it's going to take you that long... I'll let them know that there will be a short delay."

"Ok....." Serena sat down and concentrated, sending her probing mind over the road, and into the building. All she knew was that there would be a whole load of people. Some of them would hopefully be easily identifiable as terrorists: they would be the ones with the guns she guessed. It was scary, given that this was a real live situation, but she felt safe, knowing that there were several solid walls between them and her.

"There's a lot of people over there..." said Serena. She knew she needed to try and describe who was where. "Ok, they seem to be in THAT room..." she said, pointing at the plans of the building. "Group of 'normies' over towards there...." she said, pointing  again. "Two guys with some sort of rifles looking out the windows at the front.... sorry, one each side....". She 'wandered' around the room, knowing that the FAS guys would be there in a moment too.

"Ok, we're in.." said a voice in her ear.

"Guys" said captain Hughes, "Serena's doing a sweep of the main room where most people seem to be, can you do a careful sweep of the rest of the building, we don't need any surprises...."

"Roger that..."

"One here, another here, they seem to be watching the hostages.... so that's four of them...." said Serena, once again pointing at the plans. As she spoke, someone else scribbled notes on the plan.

"We have another two in a room adjacent" said one of the FAS guys in their ears. "They're watching the back of the building..."

"Thanks for that! Serena, can you carefully check all the hostages, they could easily have a 'stooge' planted there, seen that sort of trick before....".

Serena started homing in on the group of hostages. "What am I looking for?"

"Hidden gun, ear comms, anything that doesn't seem quite right...."

"Hmm, one guy with a Bluetooth headset... why would he still have THAT in I wonder. Hmm, interesting, he has two phones. Shit, I think he's got a gun under his arm too!". She tried to describe where he was, and his clothes.

"Well spotted... keep going.."

"Want us to check him out" said one of the FAS team in their ears.

"Good idea, do it!" said captain Hughes.

Serena continued 'walking around' the room, but didn't see anything else that seemed out of place. "Not seeing anything else..."

"Serena" asked a voice in her ear, "THIS the guy you meant?".

Serena 'went over' to the guy she'd found with the gun, and could just about make out the fairy hovering in front of him, and waving. "If that's you waving then, yes, that's him...."

"Can you scan all the terrorists, see if any are witches? Go lightly, and stop immediately if you find one...". This was, of course, what Serena had done to captain Hughes' team, several months before. "No, they all seem normal. Let me scan the hostages..."

Serena started to scan the hostages. "John, I think we have a witch in the hostages, want me to make contact?"

"Not yet, I think we have enough intel from you for the moment - well done by the way! - I think we need to get the other guys here now.....". He lead her and Samantha out, and into the room where they were before. Serena sat down with a large space in front of her, then Samantha stood behind her, hands on her shoulders.

"Ok, Wanda, braces, let's get this done... I'll do a few summons in a row, then take a short break! Ready there, Samantha?"

"Yes... go on...".

"Oh, I'd better tell them what I'm about to do!" Serena reached out to one of the team over the fairy comms, asked him to warn everyone what was about to happen. Then she issued the first summoning spell, and the first member of the team arrived in front of her. The captain got him out of the way. She managed to summon five of them before needing a short break (and some healing / recuperation spells from Samantha), during which time captain Hughes gave them a brief update. Then another five, another short break, then four, then the final two.

"Serena, take as long as you need to recover, I'll sort these guys out!". Serena thought back to the first time she'd ever teleported over to Samantha's place, using light magic, and how exhausted she had felt. And how Samantha had helped her recover. Well, she felt a bit like that, but she was aware that the 'Ecstasy boost' had made her job a lot easier.

Chapter 18


"Ok,so I'm thinking we ought to have TWO people running a timer, just in case something goes wrong with one: I don't want to be doing stuff by guesswork. Samantha, you could do one..."

"I'll get one of my guys to do the other. Ok, let's go and explain what's about to happen to everyone, see if they are happy."

They went back to the main room, and explained what they would be doing: everyone seemed to be very happy with the plan. Then they went back to the room they were in before: they needed the space to retrieve the weapons. A couple of the senior guys came through with them, to watch.

"Hey, Lizzy, you still there?" said Serena silently.

"Yeah... what's happening? The guys with the guns seem to be getting a bit impatient."

"Ok, first of all, stay relaxed. In the next few minutes, strange things are going to happen, things that you will probably understand, but noone else there will. I need a big favour from you: if anyone looks like they want to do something, get involved, even just standing up, I need you to TELL them to just 'sit down, keep out of it, let the soldiers do their job!' or something like that. Use an 'angry teacher' voice! Is that something you think you can do?"

"I can try!"

"Thanks, that's great! But no hints to anyone about what's about to happen, that's important! Ok, so watch and enjoy the show!" "Claude, how's Lizzy reacting?"

"She's looking amazingly calm, considering what you just told her."

"That's good." said captain Hughes. "Ok, Serena, are we ready to do this?".

"Give me a few moments, will you? Samantha, could do with one of your 'calm' spells, please!" As Samantha cast her calmness onto Serena, she could sense that Serena was feeling calm yet also very tense: she understood that she needed to be tense and alert to be able to do what she needed to do.

"Ok, Wanda? Braces?"

"We're ready!"

"John, is Jock's team ready?"

"Yes, they are!"

"You guys ready to disarm these weapons I'm about to bring in? I have no desire to be hit by a stray bullet!"

"Ready, Serena!"

"Poppy? Ready to do your FairyTime magic?"

"I'm ready!"

"Ok, start the timers...let's do this!" said Serena.

Serena loaded up multiple copies of the 'summon objects' spell, then reached her mind out to the small room at the back of the other building where the two targets were still keeping an eye out the back. Serena nodded.

"FAS team: stun the seven targets and confirm..." added captain Hughes.

"Two stunned at the back". "Two at the front...". "Three and four at the front". "Mr blue stripy shirt too... we are done, over to you, Serena!" said the various FAS guys.

"Ok, six rifles incoming.... one... two... three... four... five... six!". As they appeared in Serena's hands, Poppy 'did her thing' to check they weren't about to go off - not that anyone noticed, as the Fairytime spell made it happen in an instant! Serena quickly passed them over to the three SAS guys on the other side of the table, who took them to the side to ensure they were unloaded and made safe. They were quickly replaced by four other guys.

"Eight grenades incoming in pairs .... two... four... six... eight!" Again, as they arrived, she quickly passed them over, and Poppy checked them. Again, they moved out of the way, and another four guys moved in.

"You're doing well, Serena..." encouraged captain Hughes.

"Right, seven handguns incoming... one... two... three... four... five... six...". There was a pause. "Oh, SHIT!""

"What's wrong?"

"I think Mr blue stripy shirt has more than just a handgun!"

"What do you mean?"

"He's got something down his pants, and I don't mean his dangly bits - that's quite small by comparison! There's a wire going from it to one of the two phones in his pocket. Shit, why didn't I see that before!!"

"Take a breath, Serena!" said captain Hughes. "Ok, maybe you can bring just him over here? We'll deal with it here..". The idea of summoning a guy over who had both a gun and a lump of explosive down his pants was a very scary one, but she was definitely pumped up, and realised that, if they wanted it to all work, she would need to just do it.

"Yes, give me a few seconds to load up the summoning spell."

"Ok, wait till I say so. Mike, Hussein - sounds like we have a phone controlled explosive coming in, get ready!". Mike and Hussein were two of the SAS team in the room with them.

"I have an idea, just give me three seconds...." said Poppy very assertively. She disappeared, and re-appeared two seconds later, with Claude. "Ok, when stripy shirt gets here, I'll knock him out really hard, then run a 'Fairytime' - that will pause time as far as you're concerned. I can then put a sort of force-field around his dangly bits and the phone, which will contain any potential explosion, and Claude can carefully remove the explosives, wire and phone as-is, then I'll teleport us out of here, and find somewhere safe to put the bits."

"You sure that will work?"

"The 'Fairytime' most definitely will, and it will give us PLENTY of time to work out what to do! I can't think of anything better in the few seconds we have."

"Ok, let's do it. Jock, get your team ready to go in... Serena, do it..." said the captain.

Serena ran the summoning spell, and dropped Mr blue stripy shirt in the clear area in the middle of the room. When I say 'dropped', I mean he dropped maybe three inches onto the floor with quite a bump - I'm sure Serena did that on purpose! He started to 'wake up', so Poppy hit him with the strong spell to 'disable' him.

"All done!" said Poppy moments later.

"What do you mean?"

"I left Claude with the explosive out the back and well away from anyone: he's made the explosive safe. And Mr blue stripy shirt's gun is on the table. We're done!" Several of them looked over at My blue stripy shirt: his trousers were down around his knees, his underpants just above that, with his 'dangly bits' very visible! There was no sign of wires or explosives, nor of the gun under his armpit.

"Ok, Jock, you are a go! I repeat, GO!" called out captain Hughes.

The six terrorists in the building opposite had no idea what just hit them: each had a burly SAS man next to them, with a gun at their heads. "On the floor, legs and arms spread! Do it!!!!" shouted Jock. The terrorists, who by now were coming out of their 'stun', suddenly realised their guns were gone, and discovered themselves being hurled down onto the floor! "Spread I said!!". While six of the team stood over each of the terrorists, another three went around, and secured their arms and legs with zip ties.

One of the hostages started to get up for some unknown reason. "Stay down!" shouted Lizzy. "Let the soldiers do what they need to do! Wait for them to tell us what to do!" Serena was both listening on the comms and was probing, so knew what was happening. 'Well done, Lizzy!' thought Serena.


"Hey, Samantha, what's the timer showing?"

"Coming up to a minute and a half.."

"Oh, that's not bad at all!" Serena could hear the SAS team checking that everything was ok.

"Ok, we are clear over here!" said Jock over the fairy comms.

"Right, Serena, Samantha, shall we go over, sort out the mind-wipes?" said captain Hughes.

"Why don't I wipe Mr stripy blue shirt before we go?"

"Good idea...."

"Coming up to two minutes" said Samantha.

"Sod it, he can lose the last 5 minutes!". There was another word at the end of the sentence - it started with a 'B' and ended with a 'd', but Serena said that silently under her breath. She went over to him, and did the mind-wipe: a big smile came to her face. "That's what you get for screwing with me! Just be grateful I didn't chop off your tiny d***!!" she commented to the still unconscious body. She turned to John. "Ready to go? Want a lift?".

John and Samantha held onto Serena, and she took them over into an empty space. She took a look around: the six terrorists were being held over to one side (with guns still pointed at them, of course!), the hostages were on the other side of the room, well separated. Serena decided that she needed to have a few quick words to the hostages. "Hey, everyone, I'm Serena. Just want to let you know that you are all safe now. But please stay where you are for a few minutes, I'm sure someone will be wanting to take you all somewhere to have a few words with you about what happened here today." As she spoke, she made eye contact with Lizzy, and smiled.

"Nicely said, Serena. Ok, ready to 'process' the six targets?" asked John. Serena definitely like the word 'targets', it was so much less worrying than 'terrorists'! They walked over to the first target: like the others, he was sat against the wall, hands and legs tied together, a gag in his mouth, and a blindfold over his eyes: to Serena, he looked to no longer be any sort of threat to her, which made her feel so much better. Captain Hughes had already told Jock's team what Serena was about to do, so they were ready to move out of the way as needed (guns still pointed, of course!)

"How's the time, Samantha?"

"Just under 4 minutes..."

"Ok, I'll cook him them 5 minutes!". She walked along the row of targets, and wiped them all. "Ok, they are all done..."

"Thanks Serena. Jock, you can start moving them out.... Ok, hostages next..."

"Does anyone need to debrief them about the last few minutes first?"

"Probably not.... maybe you can have a quick word with your witch though, before you wipe her?". Serena went over to Lizzy, and took her a bit away from the other hostages.

"Hi Lizzy! Thanks for what you did. You managed to stay remarkably calm the whole time - yes, I was keeping an eye on you, mainly for your own safety. Quick question: what did you see after we last 'talked'?"

"Umm... well, they all seemed to stop moving... then their guns started disappearing. Ah, yes, then Mr stripy shirt completely disappeared. Then the big guys suddenly appeared.... Then you got here..."

"That sounds about right. Anything else?"

"Can't think of anything."

"That's fine, I wasn't expecting anything else. Ok, now I'll be honest with you, what you just saw me do to the targets over there was to wipe their minds of the last few minutes, we don't want them remembering what we just did. And I'm afraid I'm going to have to do the same on all of you guys too..."

"Oh?"

"Yeah, I mean, what we just did isn't the sort of thing we'd like the general population to know about."

"Yeah, I can see that, makes sense. So who ARE these guys? SAS or something? And are you one of them?".

Serena was actually able to be quite honest with Lizzy, as she knew she'd be forgetting it all in a minute! "Yes, they are SAS, great bunch of guys, but no, I'm not actually with them, just helping out... tell you what, I'll explain a bit after I wipe your mind...."

While she was talking to Lizzy, a couple of the other SAS guys had lined up all the hostages, ready for Serena to 'do the wipe', then take them out for their debrief.

"6 minutes, 25 seconds..." confirmed Samantha. Serena wiped the hostages for 8 minutes, just to be safe. "Ok, everyone, don't worry, you are all absolutely safe now. The guys with the guns have been taken away. Please, can you go with these handsome gentlemen, they need to talk to you all, to understand what went on here today." John smiled at the concept that the SAS team were 'handsome gentlemen'!

I thought I'd do something a little different for today's episode, I hope you enjoy it!

----------------------------------


Chapter 20


Several weeks after the excitement of helping out at 'the Reading Incident', Samantha had had another meeting, as the ambassador for the witches and humans, with the other ambassadors from the other realms: this time she went by herself, along with the fairy ambassador. Whilst a little unsure of herself, she soon realised they were all feeling the same way. The fact that she was a member of 'Serena's team' had definitely been noticed by the other realms, and the meeting was very positive, with agreement to provide relevant assistance.

There was also reports of progress made of the previously requested research, with meetings planned so that the researchers could pass on the details.

But for the last couple of weeks, Samantha's life had been surprisingly quiet. Yes, she had some college work to do, but that was all now done, and she was alone in her room. She was currently in her bedroom, sat at her dressing table, and looking into the mirror. More specifically, she was looking at her teeth. Whilst Samantha's actual teeth were really good (she had no fillings) her teeth weren't perfectly straight. Don't get me wrong, they were not badly out of line... they were sufficiently ok that, as a teen, there was no way she would have qualified for braces on the NHS. And there was no way her parents could have afforded for her to get private braces, especially for such a minor 'defect'.

----

Elida went over to the kitchen area to get herself a coffee, when Faylinn arrived there too. "Hey, Elida, not seen you for a few days, nice to see you! I guess you've been busy apprenticing over at FI5?" said Faylinn, with a bit of a smile. Whilst, as far as most fairies were concerned, Elida was mainly a tooth fairy but was doing an apprenticeship over at FI5, Faylinn was one of a very small number that knew the real truth: far from being just an apprentice, she was actually helping to run the place!

Now, if you're trying to remember who Faylinn is, then she was the fairy that Elida worked together with, when they were fixing the 'trail of braces' left by 'The Dark Fairy' (and who we now know as Sebby!).

"Hey, Faylinn, how's things? Keeping busy?"

"Yeah, had a young kid this morning, braces, expanders, elastics and a facemask, he was not a happy boy. Lots of calming and soothing spells got used to relax him. Need to check in with him later, see how he's coping."

"Oh, yes, it's sad when kids need such extreme braces... but so much pretty shiny metal!"

"Yes, plenty of that! So what have you been up to recently then? Were you involved with that thing with the FAS the other week?"

"No, that was Poppy. I was having a lovely evening at home with Puck, and the first I heard of it was the next day when Poppy filled me in. Tell you what, Poppy is starting to give me a run for my money, she's getting really good, and self confident too. Luckily we get on really well, and our skills seem to complement each other really well. Tell you what though, I'm so glad I still get to do some work here, it's almost 'relaxing' to just be dealing with teeth and braces! Especially shiny metal brackets... I do hate it when they get ceramic brackets, or those new plastic 'aligners'... I mean, how can you call those aligners 'braces'? They don't even shine or sparkle!"

"Oh, definitely with you there! I mean, when they first started doing aligners, it was relatively easy to use a few 'nudge' spells to persuade them to use metal brackets, but it's getting a lot more difficult now..."

"Hmm, maybe we should just burn down the places where they make those horrible aligners?" suggested Elida.

"Nah, they'd just build more! I think we're just going to have to get used to the fact that more people are going to get treated with aligners. At least, the good news is that the total mumber of people getting orthodontic treatment has been going steadily up. Plus, with the problems caused by a lack of NHS dentists, we have plenty of people with other, non-braces, teeth problems to keep us busy!" said Faylinn.

Just then, Elida's tablet beeped. "Oh, looks like I'm needed, better go, see you around!"

"Yeah, we must have lunch together some time, have a proper catch-up." Elida was very pleased that, after the 'time loop' events, she had become friends with Faylinn.

'So, what's this call then?". She opened up the tablet to see who and what was needing her attention: she got a bit of a surprise to discover that her 'customer' was one 'Samantha Parsons', a very familiar name.

----

As Samantha looked at her teeth, some words inadvertantly crept out of her mouth: "I wish I had nice straight teeth...".

Of course, the magic of the fairy's wish scheduling system had predicted Samantha's wish in advance, and Elida was there to hear her say it. Whilst she would normally have made herself visible to Samantha, this time she stayed invisible, so she could take a look at Samantha's teeth. Yes, her actually teeth looked really nice, lovely and white (but not TOO white!), and while their positioning wasn't actually all that bad, there was definitely room for improvement.

Now, normally when someone made a wish like Samantha had just made, it would be up to the fairies to work out a way to fulfil the wish, without the human customer actually realising what was being done. However, Samantha knew about fairies, so Elida decided to take a rather different route.

"Hey there, Samantha!" she said gently, making herself visible, and flying into her line of sight. "You made a wish...."

"Did I?"

"Yeah, you wished you had nice straight teeth."

"I guess I did, didn't I? And of all people, YOU got the call?"

"Well, it's the way the wish scheduling system works: it remembers which fairies have interacted with a customer before, and allocates them again if they are available. So, you don't like your teeth then?"

"Well, I like them, I just wish they lined up a bit better."

"Whoah, there you go, another wish!" said Elida, giggling. "So, straight teeth: normally I'd have to do something to get you in to see an orthodontist, work out how to pay for it, and all that. But we can simplify things for you. So, the big question is: do you just want them straightening up, or do you REALLY want to have braces, and do things the more traditional way? If you just want them straight, I can do that for you now."

"You know, that's a very good question!" replied Samantha, looking in the mirror at her teeth again.

"I think braces would actually look nice on you" commented Elida. "Hey, want to try some? I mean, they'll be kinda like 'fake braces', they won't DO anything, but you could see what you'd look like."

Samantha thought for a bit. "Ok, yeah...."

Elida called up her wand, and cast a spell on Samantha: it wasn't often she could be quite so overt with braces - a normal human getting braces all of a sudden would get quite a big surprise, so it wasn't something she got to do very often. She put a simple set of medium-sized metal braces onto Samantha's teeth, with a suitable archwire, and dark blue ligatures. She felt a cetain excitement at being able to blatently give a human lively shiny metal braces, and realised that maybe this was how Sebby (aka The Dark Fairy) had felt when giving her victims braces. "First impressions?" she asked.

"Yeah, I kinda like the look.... you're right, they do look good, don't they!"

"Ok, so you like the idea of actually having your teeth straightened with braces?"

The more Samantha looked at the braces that Elida had put on her teeth, the more she liked them. She was also starting to have some rather nice 'feelings'. The idea of being a 'metal mouth' for a while was becoming quite appealing.

"Yes, I think I'd like that."

"Right, so the next question is whether you are interested in the experience of going to an orthodontist to actually GET the braces, or whether just getting the braces is good enough. I mean, if you just want the braces, I could probably get Faylinn to treat you."

Samantha thought about if for a moment: what did she actually WANT? She wanted to have straight teeth, and wanted the experience of having to wear braces. The thought of all the faffing around if she had to go to an orthodontist wasn't that interesting to be honest. "I think I just want the braces. So what options do I have?"

"Ok, there's plenty of options for the actual braces. But whilst I can show you what they look like, I haven't learned the skills needed to give you a proper braces treatment. I think we need to ask Faylinn to join us, she knows all about what needs to be done." Elida pulled out her phone, and was about to call Faylin, when she changed her mind. "Nah, let's have a bit of fun: Samantha, could you say 'I wish Faylinn was here to give me braces'"

Samantha smiled, letting Elida see the braces that were still on her teeth. "I wish Faylinn was here to give me braces". Seconds later Faylinn appeared. "Oh, hello there, you must be Faylinn, that's a lovely name and I DO like your outfit - it's nice to meet you!"

"She can actually SEE us?" asked a rather surprised Faylinn.

"Yeah, I made you visible to her as soon as you arrived. She knows all about us, we've been training together, along with some of the FAS guys. And I've probably just said far more to you than I should have said!"

Faylinn smiled. "So why am I here?"

"I could do with your help: Samantha here would like some braces"

"You're kidding? She wants braces? Can't you handle that?"

"I asked Samantha if she wanted to actually go to an orthodontist to get braces, and she wasn't that keen: she just want to have braces, to get her teeth straight. Now, Samantha knows about us fairies, and I'm thinking that YOU could give her braces to straighten her teeth, kinda like an ortho would... I'll put it through the system, plus we have three wishes now!"

Faylinn took a breath, and turned to Samantha. "Well, hello there, Samantha." Samantha looked back at Faylinn and smiled.

"Oh, yes, they DO look good on you! I'm guessing Elida put those on you so you could see what they look like?"

"Yeah, I did." said Elida. "I thought I'd leave you to go through all the options she has. I'm just gonna sit here, and enjoy the show!"

"Fine with me! This is going to be such fun! So, Samantha, you want to go through a 'real treatment' with braces, letting them slowly move your teeth into a better position?"

"Yes, I think I do"

"That's VERY ok with me, I'm sure that you know by now how much we fairies LOVE shiny things. And braces ARE nice and shiny!" said Faylinn. "Ok, so let me talk to you about the options you have: let's start with the size of the brackets: what you have on right now are quite typical for modern treatment. If you were to get treated privately, at a more expensive orthodontist's, then you'd probably have much smaller brackets, like these." She waved her wand, and the brackets became a lot smaller. "Much more discrete, but not the sort of thing we fairies like to suggest, just not enough shininess!"

Samantha looked at herself in the mirror. Faylinn was right, they did look a bit TOO small. "Nah, you're right, too small!"

"Ok, well, if you were getting NHS treatment, they would possibly look like this...". Again, Faylinn waved her wand, giving Samantha MUCH larger brackets. "We fairies do everything we can to encourage the NHS orthos to use these, for rather obvious reasons!".

Again, Samantha looked at her metal smile in the mirror. She knew that Serena had MUCH larger braces, full metal 'bands' that actually went all over her teeth, and she now realised that, in a strange way, she was a bit jealous of Serena's braces. These large brackets were giving her some rather nice feelings! And the molar bands looked good too!

"I get a feeling you like those, don't you?" suggested Faylinn. Samantha nodded.

"Ok, so large brackets. Any idea what colour ligs you would like?"

"Ligs?"

"Sorry, ligatures. The small rubber bands that hold the wire to the brackets. I could use wire, if you'd prefer that! At the moment you have dark blue ligs, but you can go lighter, or go for pretty much any colour. There's also silver and clear to choose from. And you can always ask me to change them at any time."

"Let's stay with these blue ones for the moment, they look pretty nice."

"Ok. Now, having looked at your teeth, I can say that I could treat you with the braces you have on your teeth right now. However...."

"However?"

"However, if you're up for it, either now, or in the future, I could give you a few interesting 'additions'"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, one very obvious option would be either headgear or a facemask, you know what they are?"

"I remember a friend having a headgear at school, a few years ago."

"Like this?" asked Faylinn, waving her wand. Faylinn was rather ejoying this 'wish. it was so much more fun tha the majority of wishes that she handled.

Samantha looked into the mirror: she had a metal facebow between her lips, connected to a neck-strap. "Well, the bit at the front is the same, but she had straps over her head?"

"Ah, a high-pull.... like THIS?". Another wave of the wand.

"Yeah, that's the one!"

"Of course, if you had both at the same time, we'd call it a 'combi headgear'". Faylinn waved her wand again. As the extra strap appeared on Samantha's head, a slight tingle went down her spine... Samantha was rather enjoying the experience! "Maybe you'd like a second facebow?" Another wave of her wand, and things got reconfigured: the upper facebow was on the high-pull, the lower on the neck-strap. "Oh, yes!" exclaimed Faylinn, "those two shiny facebows look good, what do you think, Elida?"

"Oh, yes, very nice!" replied Elida "Lots of shiny metal!". Samantha was being strangely quiet. "You know, I reckon a facemask could suit her, I think she should try one...".

"Why not: Samantha, ready to see what a facemask is like?". Samantha nodded, at the same time holding her legs tightly together. Another wave of Faylinn's wand, and the headgear disappeared. She had added in a couple of thick extra metal wires onto her braces - onto the molar bands to be exact - with loops on the front, adjacent to her canines. From there elastics connected to the bar on the front of the facemask. The facemask she was wearing was the modern style with a thick bar down the middle, pads top & bottom for the forehead and chin, with the lateral bar in the middle for the elastics. "Of course, there's a couple of other types of facemasks you could have."

Once more, Samantha looked at herself in the mirror, and liked what she saw: the most confusing thing for her was trying to work out where the strange - yet very nice - feelings had come from.

"Tell you what, let's leave that facemask on you for the moment, as you DO seem to be enjoying it, and talk about other options. I guess we can start with expanders: you don't ACTUALLY need one, but you might want to experience an expander."

"I remember a boy at school had a lumpy removable one of those, he hated it!"

"Yeah, I've seen that they are hard to wear. But no, I'm thinking of one that made of metal, non-removable. Tell you what, let's give you both an upper and lower expander to try out! Ready?" Samantha took a big breath - she was just so glad all of this wasn't for real. Well, yes, it WAS for real, but if she asked Faylinn, she would take it all off her - well she hoped she would. Except...

She nodded her head: her tongue was moved out of the way, and she discovered that she now had metal wires just inside her lower teeth, with a big lump at the front, plus a big lump in the roof of her mouth, with wires from it going to her molar bands... oh, she now had two more molar bands.

"Oh, googneth, icth fiwwing my mowf!" said Samantha with a big lisp.

"Yes, it does, doesn't it. Here, use this small mirror to take a better look what I just put in your mouth. Samantha put the mirror into her mouth, then looked in the big mirror, all of which let her see what was in her mouth a lot better. She was getting those nice feelings again....

"Why don't you just go the whole way," suggested Elida, "and give her a tongue crib and a herbst too??!!"

Samantha wasn't quite sure what Elida was talking about, but she soon discovered a moment after Faylinn waved her wand again. Shit, her tongue was now caged in, and she couldn't waggle her jaw from side to side any more, something to do with the metal rods that had appeared at the sides of her braces. Not forgetting that she was still wearing the facemask! Samantha's breathing rate was becoming shallower and faster, and she held her legs even more toghtly together, trying to cover up the very nice feelings that she was having. She was really having trouble understanding WHY having these braces were making her feel the way she was, although she wasn't really complaining, they WERE rather nice feelings after all!

Finally, she managed to calm down, and her breathing returned to normal.

"You ok there, Samantha?" asked Faylinn.

"Yes, I think so" said Samantha. Well, that's what she TRIED to say: I'll leave you to imagine how it actually came out. But she DID have a big smile on her face!

"Ok, let's go back to the basics....". Once more, Faylin waved her wand, removing everything except for the 4 molar bands (2 on top, 2 on bottom) and the large metal brackets. "So, those are normal stainless steel brackets. I can think of two possible 'tweaks'. The first is what is called 'self-ligating brackets'. Some people think they are more comfortable, but it would mean that you wouldn't need the ligs... like this...". A wave of the wand later, and Samantha was sporting a set of very modern self-ligating brackets. Normally they would be a lot smaller, but Faylin had magicked up some special large versions.

Samantha looked in her mirror: for some reason they didn't 'look right'. Yes, they looked a bit odd without the small rubber ligatures on the brackets. "No, don't really fancy those..." she said.

"That's fine with us, we much prefer the normal ones, much more sparkly! Now, the OTHER possibility is to have the normal brackets, but gold plated. Want a look?"

"Oh, definitely!". Her brackets changed back to the more normal type, with the dark blue ligs on again, but this time they were golden. They DID look rather nice!

"Like the self-ligating ones, they WOULD normally be much smaller - after all, if you can afford gold plated braces, you'd not normally want them to be QUITE so obvious, would you? But I think they look so much nicer when they are bigger, don't you agree, Elida?"

"Oh yes, so much nicer and far more sparkly and shiny!"

"I think that's about it as far as fixed braces go - well ignoring lingual braces that is, but who wants to have braces that noone can see? How stupid! Of course, I could treat you with removable braces, with springs in them...."

"You know," said Samantha, admiring her smile in the mirror, "I do rather like these braces!"

"Actually, I just thought of something you've missed, Faylinn: a removable bite plate!" suggested Elida.

"Oh, yes, silly me! Although I have a feeling that Samantha won't like it. No reason we couldn't try it though....". Faylin waved her wand, and suddenly Samantha could feel a big lump of plastic appear at the front of her mouth, at the top. She ran her tongue over it: it felt strangely nice.

"You know, it thort feelths nithe" said Samantha. "Ith it re... we... wrrwwremovable?"

"That one is, although I could give you a fixed one?"

"How do I wrrwwremove it?"

"Clips that go just above your rear molars. Tell you what, look in the mirror, and I'll show you how to get it out." As Samantha looked in the mirror, Faylin used her magic to slowly pull out the clasps enough to go over Samantha's brackets, then pulled gently down: the bite plate fell into Samantha's mouth, and she was able to remove it.

"You know, I don't think I'd want to wear this all the time, but it could be fun to wear it, like when I'm in bed."

"Yes, that would be ok, if you'd like that."

"So, how long will it take for my teeth to move into place with these braces?"

"For you, any time between 1 day and 5 years! And you can change your treatment length any time you like. How long would you like to have them? I mean, normal treatment for your teeth would probably be something like 9 months, they really aren't all that bad. But don't forget, you'll have to wear retainers afterwards! Ok, only joking about that bit, you don't HAVE to have retainers, if you don't want them: the magic will hold your teeth perfectly in the right place."

"Nine months seems fine to me! And I guess we can talk about retainers nearer the time?".

Samantha sat looking at her teeth and lovely braces in the mirror. Next to her were two small fairies, also having a good look....

Chapter 22

Time skips forward a bit here, by several months.

It is clear that 'one of those doors' as mentioned a couple of chapters ago, has been opened for them. As a brief explanation, the "Chiefs of Staff Committee" is the small group of military big-wigs that basically run the military in the UK: everyone else reports to them.

Kinda Like Lilly, Tats and Elida over in the fairy realm, I guess!

--------


"Good morning, gentlemen, thank you all for your time." The audience was the Chief of the Defence Staff, and the other 5 members of the Chiefs of Staff Committee... in other words, the top 6 UK military guys. The man talking was Brigadier General Smith, head man of the SAS.

As well as the 7 men already mentioned, Major Tom and Captain Hughes were also present at the front of the room. In addition, there were 4 other chairs at the front, currently empty. In addition, a non-descript army member stood by the door, holding a loaded semi-automatic weapon.

"The briefing you are about to receive may seem rather 'far fetched', but I can assure you that it is 100% authentic, and something we need to take 100% seriously. I'm now going to hand over to Captain Hughes, 22 SAS."
 
"Thank you sir. We have recently become aware of a rather serious and major military event that will occur sometime in about 15 months time, in the south of the country. It will be in the form of a 'magical invasion', which we actually need to ask our traditional miltary forces to completely ignore." There were 6 very confused high-ranking officers listening to this.

"I need to invite 4 special visitors to join us: for the benefit of the lieutenant by the door, the four visitors HAVE been invited, so please do NOT shoot them! Serena, when you're ready..."

10 seconds later, Serena, Harper, Sarah and Samantha all suddenly appeared at the front of the room. Rather than being in their normal clothes, they had decided that the 4 outfits that had come with all their weaponry would probably make a much better impression.

"Sorry for the delay, I screwed up the teleportation spell first time around!". The 6 big-wigs were visibly shocked at what they had just seen.

"You'd better put these on...." said Captain Hughes, passing them all 'visitor' badges with photos on.

While the other three sat down, Serena remained standing and addressed the audience.

"Good morning sirs, my name is Serena, and I am a rather powerful witch. What you just saw there was a teleportation spell, a way to get from where we were, to here, a distance of about a mile: I felt that if I just walked in through the door, you might have problems appreciating that magic actually exists. And as you can see, it most definitely does! Although I'm sure you must have already been briefed about Captain Hughes' troop of witches.".

Five minutes ago, Serena had felt distinctly nervous: it not often that a 19 year old girl gets to address the top 6 military guys in the UK. But, of course, help was to hand: Samantha ran a couple of calming spells on Serena, so when she had started to speak, she had not felt at all nervous.

"Let me introduce my friends: Sarah is my mentor, Harper is now a very able fighter, and Samantha is an impressive healer. I am here today to deliver a very important message, but before we get there, I think I need to explain a bit about the history of witches in England, who I actually am, and why I am here today."

Major Tom had explained that she needed to be authoritive, and simply present facts. As long as she did so, she could expect to not be interrupted, until she asked for feedback.

Serena explained how, in the middle ages - so over 500 years ago - witches were actually quite common, providing back then the sort of services that doctors do now: helping with hurting arms and legs, reducing headaches, and that sort of thing. Some of the witches were more able - just like many trades today - and could carry out stronger magic. And whilst there were a few 'bad witches', the vast majority practiced good magic.

"Then, about 500 years ago, people started to get scared of witches, and that's when many witches got burned at the stake, or drowned. The number of witches was clearly reduced, and those left tended to keep quiet about their abilities, lest they were also killed by the mob. The many covens who had previously interacted with each other became isolated. And around this time, just before the 'troubles', a prophecy was made. Of course, back then, it was passed down verbally - few people could write - and that is why each coven appears to have a slightly different prophecy," explained Serena.

"Gentlemen" interrupted Captain Hughes, "If you take a look at your briefing packs, then items 3a through 3d are copies of four of those prophecies. I'll let Serena explain further."

"So, yes, whilst different, the message is very similar in all the prophecies I've seen. The first - so 3a - comes from my own coven. But if you look at 3b instead, you should be able to see that the first part pretty much describes things from our very recent history. You'll note there's a bit there about "the plague of the mask", which I think describes the recent Covid issues rather well. Before I go any further though, I think I need to tell you a bit about myself..." Serena paused for a moment.

"Up until I was 16, I was like you: I knew nothing of witches and magic: our coven was what we would call a 'closed coven', whereby under-16's were simply not told anything about witches or magic. On my 16th birthday, my parents told me that I was, like them, a witch, and that I would be able to learn to do magic. Good magic, of course. So what sort of thing do I mean? A child falls over in the playground, hurting themselves, so a good witch parent might cast a calming spell, or a simple healing spell. For most people, my parents included, that's about as far as it goes.". A short pause for breath.

"In fact, I picked up magic very quickly: to me it was really obvious and simple. Then, on my 18th birthday, I was expected to make a pledge in front of the members of my coven. A pledge to the light, of course. But for some unknown reason, I wasn't able to do that. There was no way I could pledge to the darkness, so I instead pledged to the 'light grey', which upset most of my coven! Luckily one of our elders had recently read the prophecy - specifically the one that's item 3a - which seemed to describe me rather well. If you've wanting to know about that 'mouth of metal', then you may have noticed that I have orthodontic braces: if you were to look closely, you would see that the braces are quite extreme, meaning that I do indeed have a 'mouth of metal'. You'll see that the prophecies all go on to say that I will re-unite the covens of the land, which is something that I am doing at the moment. It goes on to say that I will go on to 'defeat the attacks of the darkness', and if you turn to item 3c, and look at the same part in that version, you'll see that I will have 2 others by my side - Sarah and Harper here - and a third one who does not fight: that is Samantha, a powerful witch, with the skills of healing and calming."

Once again, Serena paused for a moment.

"So you are saying that you are the four named in this supposed prophecy?" asked one of the big-wigs.

"First of all, there's no 'supposed': these are examples of many very old documents which  seem to describe events of the last couple of decades very accurately, plus clearly describe the the four of us - if you'd like to waste time, I could describe many more things which back up our 'claim'".

Once again, Captain Hughes stepped up to the front. "Gentlemen, I can assure you that my troop have all seen evidence to back up Serena's claims. Plus, as you already know, we are all witches too".

While Captain Hughes was talking, for some reason Serena felt she should lightly scan the 6 military bigwigs: she got a bit of a shock to discover that one of them was actually a witch.

"Excuse me, the gentleman who is third from my left.." Serena pointed to who she meant. "Who are you, please sir?". The man introduced himself as Vice-Chief of the Defence Staff, Major General Disorder.

"Major General, let me put this simply: would you please like to tell the rest of us the 'special skills' that you have? Or maybe you would prefer me to tell everyone?".

The room went silent, with eyes looking first at Serena, then at the Major General.

"Major General?" prompted Serena silently, speaking directly into the Major General's mind.

"Um, yes... Ok, so I AM actually a witch myself, although I never use any magical powers... But how did you know?"

"Thank you, sir, for confirming that. How did I know? Did I mention that I am a witch who pledged to the 'light grey'? Which means that I am able to use certain dark magic spells,  including the ability to scan people to see if they are witches. By our reckoning, there's maybe several hundred witches within the armed forces, although the vast majority - like you - don't use their skills. Some, like the members of Captain Hughes' SAS troop, actually use the limited amount of magic they are able to do. But Major General, can you confirm what I've been saying?"

"Well, I'm not actually familiar with the prophecies that you mention, although I have heard of its existence. Your description of the history, what most witches do, and the pledging are all quite accurate."

"Thank you very much, sir, for your honesty: it will hopefully make the rest of my job here today a lot easier. So, on to the next bit of those prophecies. The bit about having to fight and defeat some sort of dark threat: that's the real reson for us being here today."

With the 'outing' of Major General Disorder, Serena's job had just become a lot simpler. The next bit should be interesting though...

"We recently received some very credible intelligence from one of the other six realms about that dark threat, and how it could affect all of the seven realms." Serena was looking at 7 very confused high-ranking military officers.

"Oh, sorry, I forgot to explain about the realms, didn't I? So, we humans are not alone, there are 6 other realms, invisible to most of you: the fairies, the Elves, the Cyclops, the Leprechauns, the Goblins, and finally the Centaurs." There were still 6 very confused faces looking at Serena.

"Well, assuming they found us all ok, there should be a couple of fairies here with us, in this room. In fact, I am hoping they've been here all the time. Wanda, visible to all please!". The seven faces were starting to expect strange things to happen, so Wanda's appearance wasn't so big a surprise. Serena cast the spell, and the two small fairies became visible: they were actually both sat cross-legged on the table in front of the 7 military big-wigs. Jaws dropped as they saw the small creatures.

"Let me introduce two very important fairies: Elida and Poppy. They are both very powerful fairies, in the same way that I am a very powerful witch. Elida helps to run FI5, the fairy equivalent of MI5. Elida, maybe you can explain a bit more about the realms?"

"I certainly can, Serena. Good morning everyone. So yes, you guys are all part of the human realm. We fairies have our own realm, although it is very close to the human realm. And as you may or may not know, we fairies exist to help humans, and grant their wishes, using magic: for example, by training, I'm a tooth fairy, and I help kids with anything to do with teeth, including braces. The other five realms are, as Serena said, the Elves, Cyclops, Leprechauns, Goblins, and Centaurs... We all live in our own magical realms, but there is an uneasy peace between us, so we all tend to stay in our own realms, although we have recently needed to visit all of the other realms. Does that make some sort of sense?" asked Elida. Several heads nodded.

Now, you may be thinking 'hey you just dropped a load of weird shit on these military guys, and you REALLY expect us to believe they are ok with it?'. The reallity is that, if anyone is going to give a briefing to these guys, then you can GUARANTEE that whatever is in that briefing will be 100% true and correct. You wouldn't have got anywhere near these guys if your information was dodgy!

"I got to know Serena a little while ago, almost by chance," continued Elida. "She told us about the prophecy, and I promised that we fairies would help, if we could. So, I'm a bit of a special fairy..." and she explained how she and Poppy were 'Protectors'. "Anyway, some time ago, Poppy and I were in our Royal Library, when Poppy found a book, hiding in a dusty corner. When we eventually persuaded the book to open, we found a message written to us, by name, from our future selves - yeah, don't ask, it's far too complicated! The message was written in such a way as to not directly give details - we think that the universe probably wouldn't like that, in case the timeline got screwed up, I'm sure you've all seen those time films. However, the message cryptically told us to expect an invasion from an eighth realm. It hinted at a location, and it hinted at a time: just under 2 years time from back then. It also hinted that the invasion would involve magic. And I think that's where I need to pass back to Serena...".

"Any questions so far?" asked Serena.

"Yes," said one of the 7 big-wigs. "How credible is that information really? I mean, messages from the future..."

"Major General Disorder, you are a witch, and aware of magical stuff, maybe you'd like to comment?" said Serena.

"Well, it may all sound far-fetched, but you might be surprised what can actually be done with magic. I mean, these 4 ladies all magically teleported in at the start of the meeting; and who thought that fairies actually existed? I think there must be a high level of credibility placed on any information we are presented with here today."

"Thank you, sir. We too believe it is highly credible: parts of the message specifically related to me. So this is where we get to the most important part of our presentation today. As Elida said, the invasion will be a magical one. And what really worries us is that when it happens, the army, the air force, and maybe even the navy, will want to get involved - would I be right in saying that?" asked Serena.

"I think that we would see any invasion, of any sort, to be a threat to the country, and we would therefore respond suitably." replied one of the big-wigs.

"And the problem is that anything conventional you guys could do would have absolutely no effect. Zero. Zilch. You could probably drop a tactical nuclear missile on the site, and all you'd do is contaminate half the country, but you'd have not killed off the invaders, and probably not injured them either. How do I put this gentlemen? When the invasion happens, as we are sure it will, you need to leave it to us. Us witches, and the fairies, and all the others from the other realms. We can do magic. And I have no doubt that we WILL defeat the invasion."

"Sirs, if I might interject for a moment." said Major Tom. "Captain Hughes' men have seen many of the weapons that have been 'made available' to Serena, and have used many of them: they are magical and they are very powerful. Serena, too, is highly skilled at magic, the men have seen her in action. These two fairies here can do some powerful magic as well... it's a different sort of magic from us witches, and I'm guessing that will apply to members of the other realms too. We have also seen the original 'message from the future', and can vouch for it's existence. Yes, it is written very carefully, but both Serena and Elida have explained the reasoning behind it. We believe that there will indeed be an invasion from another realm, in around 15 months time, and that it will be done with powerful magic, by magical creatures. Our 'normal' forces really need to stay out of things, and just leave it to us, otherwise there will be a huge number of needless casualties. In this case, we magic users are 'the professionals': leave it to us." 

"Also," added Elida, "the prophecies that you have seen copies of clearly indicate that Serena WILL succeed in defeating this dark threat. Serena.... not human armies! If you can believe the rest of the prophecies, then you must believe that bit as well. And yes, I am in no doubt that Serena will indeed become Queen of all the witches, thus completing the prophecy... although I know that the idea of her becoming queen is an incredibly scary one to her right now."

"Gentlemen, I believe that is the end of the formal presentation," said Major Tom, "but I'm sure you have questions..."

"Yes, I think we do. Why don't you all come and join us at the table here?" suggested Major General Disorder.

As they sat down, Serena asked "I don't suppose there's the possibility of a cup of coffee is there?"

"My pleasure!" said Elida, magicking up drinks, cakes and biscuits for all present.

Chapter 24

So, it's a couple of days before Serena's 21st birthday. If you remember, they interpreted the message from the future to mean that the invasion would happen on her birthday... give or take a couple of days. In the same way that they interpreted the location as being 'somewhere near' the old fairy castle (the place important to Sebby), which was at the back of a farm, not far from Runesdale.

So the reality was that a large area adjacent to Runesdale had been made 'off-limits' to the public, 'due to a large military training exercise' that was 'scheduled for a few weeks'. And as far as the more normal military forces were concerned, they had put out a story of a 'special, restricted, military exercise' happening, with certain new 'classified weapons', so all forces should simply keep well away!

All throughout the area was a mix of trained creatures - witches and fairies included - all watching and waiting for something to happen. And that included Serena, Harper and Sarah too: they took their turns in watching and waiting. Not only did Serena want to show that she was very willing to 'lead from the front', to be honest, her team's magic was probably much stronger than most others, so being 'out there' made a lot of sense.

So, they just sat and watched and waited. And chatted. Some of the fairies would come around every so often, providing drinks and treats for them. But it was boring. They were spread out quite thinly, to cover the large area of potential attack. Once they knew the actual 'where' then everyone would be able to come together into a smaller area, to do the actual fighting.

Of course, they knew absolutely NOTHING about what these invaders would look like, how many there would be, nor what magical abilities they would have. Which is why so many creatures from the many realms were involved: surely SOME of their magic would work against the invaders.

Puck and his tech team in the fairy realm had excelled themselves, managing to magic up a HUGE number of the highly clever comms devices, based on the ones that Serena and the SAS team used at the terrorist incident: everyone wore one, and they only needed to think about who they wanted to talk to, and it happened.

In a place they believed to be 'safer', they had set up tents for the 'soldiers' to sleep in, plus large mess tents where they could eat, and others could hold meetings. Needless to say, the catering was handled by an elite team of the highly-trained catering fairies, meaning that the food was second to none. It is often said that an army marches on it's stomach, and these fairies were going to make sure there would be nothing preventing that marching!

Serena and the other 3 witches in her team, along with representatives of the other 6 realms were in a tent, just waiting.... The four witches from Ireland, and several fairies like Annabelle, were still all out 'in the field' with the many others, watching and waiting.

"Ohhhh..." said Serena exhaling a large breath. "This waiting is horrible. I wish something would actually happen! At least then we'll know what we're up against!"

"Be careful what you wish for..." said Poppy. "Don't worry, I'll ignore that one for now!"

"So, any guesses what these eighth-realmers will look like?" asked Sarah.

"Well, if I think about the many mythical creatures...." said Elida.

"What, you mean like fairies and cyclops then?" said Harper with a big smile.

"Yeah, like us lot... so what we missing? Vampires? .... Dragons? .... Trolls? .... Mermaids? Although I guess mermaids would probably go for a sea invasion, wouldn't they?" continued Elida.

"What about six-feet-tall magical hedgehogs?" suggested one of the Goblins, letting his imagination go wild.

"Maybe they are some sort of giraffes?" added a Centaur. "Magical Killer Giraffes....".

"Dragons would be fun, as long as they didn't breath too much fire!" commented a Cyclop.

"What about giant killer wasps?" suggested a Leprechauns. "That would be really nasty!"

"Maybe it's a load of zombies... you know, the walking dead sort of thing..." suggested Captain Hughes.

"Would zombies actually be magical?" asked Poppy.

"I guess they could be..." replied Samantha, gently smiling, and showing off her silver smile.

Yes, they were getting pretty bored, waiting for something to happen.

----

It was the day before Serena's 21st birthday.

Today was even MORE boring....

Chapter 26


"Hey, Samantha, want to come with me?" suggested Serena. They were back out at the farm near Runesdale, and Serena was about to relieve one of the others who was watching for the signs of an invasion.

They found themselves somewhere to sit, where they could also keep an eye open. "Hey, I was just thinking about the silly present you gave me: how you getting on with your braces 'treatment'?"

"Yeah, I'm liking it! The brackets annoyed my cheeks to start with, but a couple of simple healing spells soon fixed that... I mean, no point in being abl to do magic if you can't use it on yourself! But it's kinda nice to be different from the majority of people, and have a bit of a silver smile. I still cant stop running my tongue over the brackets, it's a strangely nice feeling!"

"So, still just the metal brackets?"

"Yeah, thought it best to keep it simple. Once all 'this' is over, I might ask Faylinn to give me some expanders for a while: she briefly gave me some to try out the day she started my treatment, and they felt.... well, 'interesting'"

"I bet they gave you a lisp!"

"Oh, of course they did, but it felt strangely nice. But whatever I get, I can't imagine they'll ever be quite as extreme as yours! So, how you getting on with your braces then?"

"Oh, they are still very friendly, we sometimes talk when I'm going to sleep."

"No, silly, I mean how do they feel?"

"To be honest, I really don't notice them. The metal of the bands is continuing to merge into my teeth, the brackets feel lovely and smooth, and all the other bits... well, they just aren't an issue."

"You think you'll ever get rid of them?"

"Apart from the fact that I'm not sure if I COULD, it's a bit like asking me if I could get rid of my arm or my leg. They are PART of me now. Come on, let's have a quick look at your braces..."

Samantha smiled, letting Serena see the lovely silver brackets on her teeth. Suddenly her smile got wider. "Something tells me there's probably a fairy hovering just behind me... so who is it? I'll guess at Elida!"

"And in that case you'd be right!" said Elida. "I mean, Poppy's not a tooth fairy, is she? Although that doesn't stop her liking skiny things!"

"It could have been Faylinn...."

"Yes, but pretty unlikely. Anyway, hello again! I don't suppose there's any action is there?"

"No, of course not!"

"In that case, whilst we're talking about braces, it's probably time I gave yours a quick once-over, check they, and your teeth, are all ok!"

"You just want a look at my shiny metal mouth, don't you.... be honest..."

"Well..... yes, there IS that too..."

"Go on," said Serena, "take a look... and I bet Samantha would like a look too... hey, braces, you have a visitor!"

"Hello Elida!" said Serena's braces as Elida touched them.

"Hello gorgeous, how's things?"

"Well Therena DID forget to uthe the cleaning thpell earlier, after she had her birthday cake...". (if you remember, Serena doesn't have a lisp, but her braces do...)

"Oooh, you snitch!" replied Serena. Elida had a good looke around Serena's mouth: yes, the bands were merging with her teeth, and the brackets almost looked like they were slowly 'melting' too. The metal plate in the top of her mouth still looked to fit well, but she did spot something not quite right with the herbst, over to the left.

Elida reached in to touch it, where the problem seemed to be. "Ouch!" said Serena's braces.

"Sorry, did that hurt?"

"Not tho much hurt ath feelth a bit thore."

"Yeah, it's not quite looking right. You going to be able to cope with a bit of pain for a few seconds, while I have a go at fixing it?"

"Yeah, I'm sure we can... but do remember that we're all made of a rather thpecial magic."

"Oh, don't worry, I wouldn't forget that. Would you mind if I got Serena to remove her lip-bumpers, it might help, and may also reduce any pain for you guys."

"Go ahead, that'th fine with uth!"

"Hey, Serena! I need to sort out a small problem on your braces, can you take your lip-bumpers out for a minute or two?"

"Sure...". Serena invited her lip-bumpers to come out, and they gently 'ejected' themselves from the tubes, and into her hands.

"Thank you. Now, if you can give me a bit of space in your right cheek, I need to temporarily remove your right herbst." Elida used some special magic to undo the two screws holding the herbst in place, then took it out and had a careful look at it. "Ah, right, I can see the issue: I suspect you may have been hit on your cheek at some point..."

"Yeah, very possible, some of the training did get a bit rough at times. Is it going to be a problem?"

"No, not at all, just need the right combination of spells....". Elida waved her wand, and said the spells. "There, as good as new. Tell you what, the person who made these is quite a craftsman, they are really quite beautiful! Right, let's get it back into place." A bit more magic refitted the screws, and Serena refitted her lip-bumpers - which she did by simply throwing them towards her mouth - they actually fiteed themselves bac into the headgear holes on her molar bands.

"How does THAT feel?" Elida asked Serena's braces.

"Oh, thank you, that DOETH feel better!"

"It is my pleasure: now, next time, don't put up with it, just get Serena to get me to sort it out for you, that's one of the many things I'm here for! Anything else I can do for you while I'm here?"

"No, I think we're all ok now. Thankth again!"

Elida hovered there for a moment, with a smile on her face. "They're nice, your braces, aren't they? I'm thinking about their personality.... "

"Yes, it feels good to be surrounded by good friends. Apart from Samantha and you, there's my braces, Wanda and Glimmer, and a load of others too.... I think I'd struggle without any one of you guys!"


(2865)

The ghost in the machine is watching.

Chapter 29

It was mid afternoon when the next 'wave' of invaders came out of the rift throwing magic all around them: about 30 'people' in all. They had clearly realised that the traditional weapons were of little use, so they had probably got their better magic users together for this invasion attempt.

Of course, the teams from 'realms 1 to 7' were ready - not just the 'advance' team, but everyone - and threw back as much magic as they got. Unlike the previous day, the attacks lasted for maybe 30 minutes at a time, before they retreated back through the rift, then came back out again a couple of hours later. Strangely, apart from a couple of invaders briefly coming through after dusk, then returning less than a minute later, they hadn't tried anything during the night.

Serena had also tried some of her slightly darker magic, but that didn't seem to be particularly effective: clearly the invader's 'cloud armour' was quite effective.

The following morning saw a small group of invaders come through the rift: strangely they came out without using any offensive magic. They had brought some equipment with them, including some sorts of tents, which they set up right next to the rift. When the fairies went to look, they discovered that the invaders had put up an opaque 'force field', meaning they couldn't get very close, and couldn't see what they were up to.

"Hmm, let's have a word with Glimmer and Wanda, shall we?"

"Good morning, Serena!" said Glimmer as he came out of his scabbard, and floated in the air in front of Serena, Elida and Poppy.

"As gorgeous as ever...." said Wanda quietly.

Serena explained what the eighth-realmers had done, and asked Glimmer if he was aware of any magic - possibly eighth realm magic - they could use to penetrate the 'protective shield'. After a bit more discussion, he made a suggestion. "... but I don't think it would work for you, you're a bit big, but Elida or Poppy might be able to 'squeeze in'.

"Would the 'power of four' make it any easier?" asked Serena.

"Excellent suggestion," replied Glimmer, "and yes, it probably would..."

Serena called the other three members of the team to join them, and explained the issue. "So, I'm thinking we four get as close as we dare, using our own 'shields', then try the spell, and see if Elida and Poppy can get in."

"May I make an observation?" said Wanda. "It may be that you are only able to open their protection shield for a moment, meaning that whoever goes in is likely to be stuck inside until you can open it again... so maybe only ONE of you should try to go in..."

"Thank you, Wanda, very good observation." The four of them cast the spell, and Poppy was indeed able to get in. Even better news is that the fairy comms system seemed to be able to get through the magic eighth realm shielding. 

"To be honest, there's not much in here. A couple of bits of kit which I'll guess at being radios or similar, with wires that seem to be going back through the rift. There's a couple of 'clouds' in here... oh, hang on, I think I just saw an arm.... hairy fingers..... "

"Thanks Poppy, let us know anything else you think is relevant, and let us know if you need to get out quickly."

"Hey, Serena," said Elida, "it looks like their protection shield just got bigger...."

About an hour later, the small team of 'clouds' went back through the rift. It didn't stay quiet for long: a matter of minutes later a whole load of the 'clouds' started to come through the rift, between 50 and 100 of them. Some of them were in the tent, the others started to spread out..."

"And it's time for today's Red Alert!" said Serena. "I repeat, Red Alert! A large number of eighth-realm 'clouds' are coming through the rift: attack at will...." said Serena. For the next couple of hours, there was a lot of magic flying around, and the SAS guys even used many of the magical weapons. The attacking army mad a very small amount of progress: rather than being in the immediate vicinity of the rift, they had spread out, by maybe up to a hundred metres.

Whilst Poppy stayed in the opaque protection shield for about an hour, there was very little actually going on, so the 4 witches used their power-of-four to open a small hole again, to let Poppy out.

The 'fighting' went on and off over the next few hours.... the invaders might make some progress forwards, but then later had to pull back again, so overall their progress was small and slow. As dark approached, it pretty much stopped, apart from a few small skirmishes: with 'our' teams keeping a close watch through the night.

Over the following two or three days, there was again, periods of fighting, then periods of quiet. Given the small amount of actual progress, one did start to question why the invaders actually kept going: they were clearly very determined.

Chapter 31

Serena turned around, to find a short creature standing behind her: about 3 feet tall, green, and with a very 'punk' look, it was definitely a goblin! "Hello there! If you're looking for Serena, then that's me!". Serena had by now worked out that she was getting visits from creatures from the other realms... and in the back of her mind, she now had but one thought: where the HELL would a centaur manage to squeeze in?"

"Mighty Serena, it is an honour to actually meet you, I am Ponk!"

"Ponk, that is a lovely name, welcome to our rather packed gathering. I'm guessing that you have been searching your old libraries, and have come across a story that you felt compelled to come and share with me? Just like all these guys!"

"Yeah, sort of." Her attitude, and the way she spoke, made her sound very much like a teenager. "Me mam and dad forced me to go to the library with them tonight, as they couldn't get a baby sitter for me. So, while they searched the library, they said I should find a book, and sit and read it. I guessed I could probably manage one small book, and I found this....". She showed the book to Serena. "It's a teen adventure book, about a young and rather rough goblin who finds a pretty stone, and makes pretend that it's a magical stone, but not too surprisingly, nothing happens. When he gets home, he shows it to his sister: she's a much nicer goblin, a bit of a 'goody two shoes', wouldn't harm a flea. When she touches the stone, it glows, and a while later whilst playing with it finds that she is able to do simple magic. But only good magic. When she actually tries some bad magic, it backfires on her. To be honest, it's a bit boring, but I got this strange feeling that the story was very important. When I showed it to me mam and dad, they got exactly the same feelings: they suggested that, as I was the one who had found it, then I could be the one to bring it to you. To be honest, I think they were both a bit embarassed, I mean how can a kid's story be so important?"

Serena was smiling. "Well, you were absolutely right to come here, I think is it strangely VERY important..." Serena explained how the other creatures there had all come with similar stories. "What amazes me is how all of these stories have suddenly appeared at the same time: it's as if the universe set this all up for us. So far, we have representatives in here from six of the seven realms, we've had five stories so far, I'm just wondering where....".

There was a knock at the door, and then Mrs Simpkin came in. "Oh, where did you all come from? Anyway, pardon me for intruding, but there's someone at the front door asking for you. Well, when I say someone, he's more of a horse....". At that, Serena just burst out laughing!

"Nicely on time, our centaur has arrived! It's going to be a bit of a squeeze in here, I guess we'd better all go and meet him out the front."

"You're welcome to use the back garden!" suggested Mrs Simpkin, "probably a bit more private"

"Tell you what, Serena, you go out the front to meet him, I'll go set up a tent and chairs and lights around the back..." suggested Poppy.

Serena went to the front door, where she met the centaur: the hair on both his head and his body looked yellowish. "Hi there, I'm Serena, and you have an important urge to meet with me, and tell me about a story? Am I right?". The centaur had a book in his left hoof.

"Yes, how did you know?" replied the very handsome centaur.

"Come on round the back, and meet the others. So, what's your name?"

"I am Xanthippus, a scholar and librarian."

As they got around to the back garden, they could see the others waiting in a large tent, all brightly lit. In the middle was a table, and chairs around the side. Poppy had done well in the short time she had: everyone already had a drink in front of them. Poppy flew over to Serena and Xanthippos, taking a good look at Xanthippos.

"Hello there gorgeous! I'm Poppy... would you care for a drink? I'm guessing at wine?"

"That would be lovely, thank you, Poppy!".

Serena went and sat at the table. "Erm, I'd offer you a seat but....."

"Don't worry, I'm used to standing."

"So, this evening, while I was searching in the small library here, members of the other realms started to 'appear', each with news of a book they had found. let me introduce everyone." With the introductions done, she continued: "So, you are from the last realm to join us, and I would be very interested to hear your story. You say you are a scholar and a librarian?"

"Yes, and as requested, I was searching our library, to find something useful, when I found a book that seems to be both a history book and a story book, and when I started to read it, I felt an amazingly strong compulsion, that this was something strangely important, and something that was relevant to you. I mean, it makes little sense to me..."

"Go on, do give us a quick summary of the story."

"It is the story of a brave young girl centaur. She was an orphan, and was adopted by a centaur family. Whilst her step-parents loved her, the other children weren't so nice to her. She loved to pretend to be a brave centaur warrior, running around, wielding her toy sword, a sword that used to belong to one of the other children. It was an old toy sword, there used to be a toy jewel in the handle, but that had fallen off long ago. Then one day, she spotted something on the ground: it was the lost jewel from the toy sword. As she put the jewel back into the sword, it made the sword glow. In fact, whenever she then picked up the sword, it would glow for her, and her alone. It made her feel so powerful and able to face her problems in life..."

"Ok, that is DEFINITELY not random, there's something going on here. Wanda, I think I need your help! By the way, Xanthippos, thank you so much for coming to me with that story, I think it is much more important than you could ever have imagined... Oh, Elida, what you doing here?"

Elida had just appeared, and was on the table, along with Wee Willy (the leprechaun) and Poppy.

"Well, I went back to the dark archive, to take a look at a pile of books that Poppy had pulled out of the library..."

Serena smiled, showing off her lovely metal-covered teeth. "I think I know where this is going, mind if I have a guess?"

"Yeah, why not?"

"Ok, it's a story about a pretty fairy - or maybe it's a boy fairy? - who finds a stone. He discovers that it's a magic stone, and is able to do magic from all 7 realms? Am I I close? And whilst it seems a bit random, you just felt that you HAD to share the story with me?"

"You are SO close, how did you know?"

"Why do you think these guys are here?" And Serena retold the 6 other stories. "So, how does your story end?"

"So, it's a pretty girl fairy, and she finds that she can do any good magic, not any bad magic, and it helps her to defeat a bad fairy - which all sounds strangely close to home for me!" said Elida

"Yeah, except you didn't need a stone to help you. Mind you, we can only do fairy magic." added Poppy.

"Wanda?". Once more Wanda appeared, and showed herself to everyone.

"Yes, your majesty! Sorry, mistress Serena, I'm just getting excited...."

"I assume you've been listening to what all of our visitors from the other six realms have been telling us?"

"Yes I have. Would you like me to summarise what I think I learned?"

"Please do!"

"So, there seems to be a magic stone, which contains all of the magic of all the realms. It's a relatively plain stone, and was split into 4 pieces to protect it, then the 4 pieces were hidden in plain sight. The 4 stones need to be put together once more, then it can be put into a sword, and can be used to cast good magic from any of the seven realms, as long as a nice person does it, and it's for good...."

"I think we're all thinking the same here, aren't we?" said Poppy. "This is no coincidence. Serena, where's your sword?"

"Half a moment...." Serena summoned her sword.

"Put it down on the table, will you?" asked Poppy, who then flew around it. "Look at the guard - there's shapes engraved into it, and one seems to be slightly inset."

"Oh, yes, so it is, I'd never spotted that, I just thought it was some sort of decoration. Ok, I'll go with this for the moment.... so where's the 4 bits of the stone?"

"Well, 'hidden in plain sight' somewhere!" said Poppy. She looked around. "For example, it could be in the locket around your neck." Suddenly the penny dropped for Poppy. "Serena, where did you get that locket?"

"It was a present from my grandma..."

"Any idea where she got it from?"

"Probably her grandma. You got to admit, whilst it looks a bit plain, it is rather pretty, isn't it?". Suddenly Serena realised what it actually was. "Oh... My.... Gawd! This is one of the four pieces of that magic stone, isn't it? Wanda?"

"Erm, I guess it could be, let me have a closer look...". Like Serena, Wanda had seen that locket many times, and thought nothing of it. Serena placed Wanda's tip onto the stone. "Hmm, not 100% sure. But if it is, I know where the other bits will be..."

"Yeah? Where?" asked Serena.

"Oh come on Serena, 'power of four' and all that?" said Wanda. "Can you think of any old, plain yet pretty jewellery the others have?"

"Well, Harper wears an old ring...". Serena picked up her phone, and started by calling Harper. "Harper, get yourself ready to be summoned...". A few moments Serena summoned her.

"Erm, what's going on, Serena?" asked Harper.

"I'll explain in a moment, once I've summoned Sarah and Samantha," which is what she did.

"Ok, ladies, do take a seat. I need to tell you a story... well SEVEN stories to be precise".



(3193)

Chapter 33


They all met again at 09:00, except Elida and Poppy weren't there. Lilly called them, to see what they were doing.

"Seems like our protectors need another 10 to 15 minutes: they say that they have pretty much what they need, just need a couple more small bits of magic, which they are in the middle of finalising" explained Lilly. "And I have 3 fairies on standby for you, best girls we have for doing recouperation spells!"

"Thanks Lilly." Serena looked around the room, at the other 'creatures' from the other realms. "You guys really ok with what I'm planning?"

"Serena," said one of the Leprechauns, "you have led us well so far, I have no reason not to trust you and your instincts! And the prophecies for that matter! I'm sure I speak for us all here when I say that....". There were many calls of agreement.

"Thanks for your support, it means a lot! Ah, hi there, Poppy, you guys ready?"

"Sorry for the delay, but we now believe we will be able to do what's needed!"

"Excellent! Lilly, tell Tats and Sebby to leave the old Palace will you, I'm guessing they'll need to be well out the way when these two do what's needed. So, I went out with a couple of you, and I've worked out that I need to be about HERE..." - Serena pointed to a large-scale map of the area - "that way I'll have a good view of what's going on, and be close enough to do my magic, yet be slightly out of the action. As I said, I'm planning to give our invaders a chance to get themselves home before I close the rift, and the actual magic to close the rift will take about a minute to cast. We all ready?"

"YES!" was the unananimous response.

"Ok, let's go kick some 8th realm ass!".

---

Serena was positioned a distance from and to the side of the rift, on a slight mound, with her sword - Glimmer - in her hand. 'Our guys' were still fighting the invaders using magic to stop them, whilst the invaders were also using their magic to try to invade. Nearby - so close enough to get to her when needed - was her 'support team': Samantha and her mum, the three recouperation fairies, along with Elida, Poppy, Captain Hughes, Sarah and Harper. She had taken the two ecstasy tabs on the way there, and could feel them gently kicking in: she could feel her dark magic powers increasing inside her.

"Ok, braces, do the best you can, but I know once I start doing the really nasty stuff, you won't cope: that's fine, anything you can do for me will be appreciated!"

"Good luck, Serena, we'll do our best!" replied her braces.

"Glimmer? You ready to help when I need access your other-realm magic?"

"Sure am!"

"Wanda?"

"Go kick ass, Serena!" she replied.

Serena cast her first spell, a sort of 'public address' spell, so she could talk to everyone... by 'everyone' I mean not just everyone in the viscinity of the farm, I also mean EVERYONE in the 8th realm. Yes, powerful magic! "Ok everyone, listen up, and listen very carefully. This is a message to you dark smokey-cloudy guys trying to invade this realm: by now you should be very aware that you are not welcome here! I suggest you all stop fighting, and go back home, where you belong!" There were jeers from the invaders.

"I'm giving you all fair warning: in five minutes this rift, this portal, whatever you want to call it... in five minutes I'm going to close this rift for good. If you remain trapped here in our realm, then you will be surely killed! Don't say you haven't been warned! And don't think this is an idle threat, I've been doing a lot of magic homework last night!"

Serena could see that a lot of the fighting had actually stopped: whilst the invading creatures weren't yet actually retreating, they were clearly thinking over what she had said.

"Ok, so I'm guessing that you have a king who has organised this pointless invasion: he is clearly a fool, and should have known better. I'm going to summon him, and tell him so to his face, while the rest of you all watch and listen!" Serena cast a special combinesd human-realm and 8th-realm summoning spell, a much stronger one than what she normally used: this spell needed to work through the magic portal / rift, and it HAD to work. Moments later, a dark cloudy creature appeared before her, the cloud constantly shifting.

"Oh, stop moving all the time, will you!" and she cast another 8th realm spell: the moving slowed right down.

"Glimmer, need your help on this one: I'm guessing that there's actually some real creature in there, but using magic to make that strange cloud to make them seem a lot nastier than they are. Can you point me to a helpful spell so I can see the real king?"

Glimmer glowed brightly, making a shining aura appear around Serena. Yes, she saw the spell she needed, and cast it.

"Thank you, Glimmer!"

The dark cloud around the king dissipated, leaving a rather old and, to be brutally honest, scruffy werewolf creature standing in front of her: they were right in thinking that the cloud was just a form of magic armour.

"Identify yourself!" said Serena brusquely.

"I am King Conri, King of the Werewolf realm! Who are YOU?" he said proudly.

"I'm probably your worst nightmare right now! My name is Serena. So, why are you attacking MY realm? It's not because of THIS, is it?". She walked over to King Conri, and showed him Glimmer, more specifically she showed him the Stone of all Magic embedded in it. When he saw it, his eyes lit up!. "Yes, I thought as much... in that case, here, take it, do what you will....". Serena held Glimmer carefully by his blade, and offered the handle to King Conri, knowing full well what was about to happen.... also knowing that the king himself had no idea.

The werewolf king grabbed the handle of the sword, and Serena stood back... and THAT is where the fun started! First of all, a red glow started at the king's wrist, travelled down his arm, and started to enclose his whole body. A look of horror came on the kings face, as he realised that he had, somehow been tricked. He body started to convulse, and he screamed out in pain. "No! No!" he screamed as the glow started to get brighter.

"Come back to me, please, Glimmer, I think he understands that the stone is not meant for him!...". The king released his grip on the sword, and Glimmer flew gently back into Serena's hand, and the king returned to normal. "So close for you... yet... so far! You see, to be able to use this 'Stone of all Magic' in this sword, your intentions must be good, and your heart must be clear of any malice. Sorry, you just failed on both of those! So what a waste of effort, invading MY realm, to try and get something that you would NEVER, EVER have been able to use!"

Serena stood for a moment, looking at King Conri. It was clear the king was getting quite old, and had seen better days.

"You say you are a werewolf, yet you look like more a scruffy, flea-bitten, partly balding old DOG to me!" said Serena, who by now had cast a 'containment' spell, stopping him from doing anything untoward. "I've seen better looking toilet brushes! How is someone like you even WORTHY to lead these creatures? They deserve FAR better than you! To be honest, after what you have done here - or should I say 'what you have had your army TRY to do' - I'm not even sure you deserve to live!". And with that, started to swing Glimmer towards the king, ready to simply cut off his head. Yes, the dark magic was strong within Serena.

By now, out of the corner of her eye, Serena could see that she now had the attention of all the other invading creatures, and many of them had already turned, and were taking her advice, and running back towards the rift.

Serena swung Glimmer.... and stopped him just as he touched the hairs on the king's neck. Serena's goodness had just pushed through the darkness, and made her see sense.

"No.... death would be far too good for you! I think I'll just send you back, and let your 'loyal' subjects deal with you in whatever way they feel fit... enough of them have seen how weak you really are, especially compared to me!"

The king snarled at Serena, letting her see his teeth.

"Oh, for goodness sake! Those teeth are just disgusting! If only there were a tooth fairy around that could do something about them....".

"Oh yeah, they really look absolutely terrible, don't they? And LOOK at that over-jet!" replied Elida a few moments later, after she had flown over to join Serena. "May I?"

"Oh, by all means, be my guest!"

So, whilst the 'king' was from the 8th realm, he was currently in the human realm, meaning that any fairy magic would work on him just fine. Moments later, the king was sporting an extreme set of metal braces: full bands, a herbst, tongue crib, upper and lower expanders, and probably a few other bits too! With his teeth now covered in lovely shiny metal, and multi-coloured ligatures, they looked a LOT nicer!

By this time Poppy had joined them. "There's something missing...." said Poppy, scratching her head. "Ah, I know!". She waved her fairy wand, and gave him a facebow and pink headgear. "Still not enough!". Another wave gave the king a second facebow, as well as a very cute matching pink fluffy tutu. "Oh, yes, so much better!". The look on the king's face was just priceless, and Serena DID wonder whether he could use a diaper right now!

"Yeah, but you STILL missed something!" said Annabelle. She had been down fighting with the others, but had seen what they were doing, and had come up to join the others. "Would you mind, Serena?"

"The more we can humilate him, the happier I'll be!" replied Serena, smiling widely, and guessing what was about to happen. It was clear that her mood was still being affected by her use of dark magic.

To be honest, the sight of a shaggy old werewolf king wearing braces, pink headgear, a pink tutu, and bright yellow rollerskates was more than enough to start Serena's team laughing at him.

"You don't look so much like a powerful king now, do you? Now go, and don't you, or anyone else from your realm for that matter, EVER try to invade MY realm again - or any of the other realms for that matter - unless you want to deal with ME again!". Serena picked up the king using some very simple magic, threw him up in the air like a rag doll, and sent him back to where he had come from!

Serena was feeling GOOD. The drugs were not only making the dark magic so easy to do, they made her feel rather good. And the light magic from the eighth realm she had learned from Glimmer was coming in useful too.

"Right, you ugly lot, you have just under a minute left to get out of here: by now you should have no doubt that I will do what I say I can do.... so GO! And make sure you sort things out in your realm, I'll be visiting you all tomorrow to check up on you!!!". Just for good measure, she threw over a few bolts of lightning, to give the invaders a bit of extra incentive to want to leave as quickly as possible.

With her blood now pumping hard through her body, and the drugs now at their full effect, she started to cast the spell to close the rift: it was made of of several parts, a mix of dark and other-realm magic that was all needed to actually close the rift.

Everyone watched as Serena did her magic: not only was Serena a powerful (but good) witch, she made sure to put on a bit of a show. A strange shimmering started up around the rift, and as Serena continued casting the set of spells, the rift did indeed start closing. Finally, Serena cast the last part of the spell, and the rift finally closed. The effort caused Serena to feel very dizzy, and her legs felt very weak.

"Elida, Poppy, you know what you have to do!". The two fairies teleported off to do their magic. "Any of the invaders left? asked Serena weakly. "If so, DON'T kill them! And Samantha..." said Serena, sounding as if she were drunk, "... I think I need your hel.......".

Which is when Serena finally collapsed on the ground in a heap. Samantha, her mum and the three fairies, who had been discussing what they needed to do, all surrounded Serena, and did what they did best.



(3278)

Chapter 35

Serena walked into the tent where the centaurs were 'looking after' their 8th-realm werewolf captive: so, it seemed that the werewolves had simply used magic to create a form of magic 'armour', that made themselves appear 'dark and nebulous'. Not only would it help protect them, it would also intimidate their enemies. With her were representatives of the other 6 realms: it had been agreed that Serena would do all the talking.

The captive werewolf was much as you'd imagine a werewolf to be, and certainly far better looking than the old king. Unlike a normal wolf, but as you'd expect from an intelligent creature able to do magic, he stood on 2 legs and was still wearing the leather (well, it was leather LOOKING!) light armour, but he was currently in a set of shackles restraining his wrists and ankles, and which inevitably stopped him from doing any sort of magic.

"Good afternoon," she said, "I am Serena, apparently I'm the new Queen of the witches of this realm. Who are you?"

"I'm Eric.. it's nice to meet you.... your majesty!" said Eric, bowing. "You know, you should have just cut off the old guy's head, he deserved it! Mind you, I can't imagine he's still King, you completely humiliated him in front of a lot of wolves!"

"Sounds like you aren't a big supporter?"

"Hell no! We all told him he should come in peace, but oh no, he wouldn't listen! He wanted to prove that he was the 'biggest baddest king'. He wanted the mythical 'Stone of all Magic', which old stories said was hidden in plain sight in your realm. So he got an army together, and worked out how to open that rift..."

"Oh... so why were you fighting then?"

"Self preservation!"

"What do you mean?"

"I wasn't particularly in the King's good books, so I was given a simple choice: be killed, or fight for him - and probably get killed fighting. I decided to take my chance, and it looks like it paid off."

"So what now?" asked Serena. "I'm guessing that we'll probably want to keep you here. Well, when I say 'here' I mean one of our seven realms."

"Well, none of them can be any worse than our land has been recently. Although I think things are about to get a lot better over there, after what you did earlier on."

Serena talked with Eric for a while: she was very impressed with how pleasant Eric was, and what he was saying.

"Hang on a moment, I could do with a quick chat with Wanda..." She went into a corner, and spoke with her wand: in times like this, she knew she could count on Wanda to provide her with good counsel.

Back with Eric, Serena asked Glimmer to come from the scabbard on her back and in to her hand. "I think you'll be able to hold Glimmer, want to give it a go?" She held Glimmer out for Eric to take. Eric wasn't TOO sure if he should take the sword, but he did. Nothing happened to him, like it had to the king, and he started to understand what the Stone of all Magic was about.

"This is far too important for me to hold it, let alone use it... please, take it back!" the fact that Eric was unaffected by the stone, and also didn't want to use it, told Serena a lot about Eric's character.

"Yes, I actually agree with you on that, and I'm not planning on keeping it for too long myself. Anyway, I have an idea," said Serena, "although I'll need these guys to agree with it: how would you like to be the ambassador for the 8th realm, your realm?"

"Oh, I'd be honoured and delighted to, your majesty!" replied Eric without a moment's hesitation.

"In that case, I think you need to start talking to the other ambassadors from the other seven realms: I'm planning on visiting your realm tomorrow."

"Oh, I'd like to see THAT! I watched you today, and you ain't gonna let any of our guys get the better of you, are you?"

"No, I'm not. And I'm thinking that it might be helpful to have you on my team tomorrow. Eric, it's been very nice to meet you, I'm sure we will talk again soon!"

"Your majesty, that would be nice!"


Serena left with the others, and they had a quick meeting.

"I feel very good about Eric, so does Wanda, and clearly so does Glimmer," said Serena, "I feel we can trust him... what do the rest of you think?". The general consensus was good.

"Right, in that case, as long as you're all happy, I'm going to go visit the 8th realm tomorrow with my 'team', and take Eric with us: he will know 'the lie of the land' and who we need to talk to. I guess we should also be making contact with the other two realms too, at some point?"


-----------------


That evening there was a LOT of celebrating. Much ale - and other alcoholic drinks from the seven realms - was drunk. Many tales of adventure were exchanged. If nothing else, this 'invasion from the 8th realm' had massively helped to reunite the 7 realms: they were talking to each other, ambassadors were meeting, information being shared, and so on. Not only had Serena managed to reunite the many covens of the land, she had kick-started the improved inter-realm relationships. The biggest thing that had impressed them all was that Serena wasn't an arm-chair leader, she was involved, and as her last big act had shown, she was quite willing - and able - to 'do the dirty work' herself!

So, back to the drinking: one great thing about being able to do magic was that you never got a hangover. Drunk, yes! (to be honest, why drink if you don't get drunk?) But hangovers, no!

Serena and Harper grabbed several pitchers of Elven ale, and took them both to the centaurs guarding Eric, and Eric himself: they stayed for a while and drunk some with Eric. It turned out that Eric was a bastard son of the old king, which possibly explained some of his feelings towards the king. Eric explained that the king had 3 proper sons: the two eldest were the king's 'right hand men', supporting his invasion, whilst the third was a lot 'calmer', and had argued against the invasion. The king himself was a very old, and very proud man.

"I'm very much looking forward to tomorrow, to see what's happened there. I can see three possible outcomes: first, the king is still in charge - which I think is actually pretty unlikley. Second, the king is somehow dead, and his eldest son is in charge - probably the most likely. Then the third option - rather unlikely, but possible if enough people got together and have overthrown the king and his two eldest sons - is that his youngest son is in power. My question to you: what you gonna do if it's one of the first two?"

"Good question! Who am I to impose MY will and my feelings on another realm? So many empires have done that through history, and in pretty much all cases, it's come back to bite them. I guess I'm hoping you'll be able to help us, and advise us... and your own people? What's your take on the popular opinion?"

"Probably like people in your realm: a load 'for', a load 'against', and even more in the middle, either not caring, or persuaded by the sweetest talker...".

As they talked, Serena could see that Eric was looking at her mouth.

"Serena, can I ask you a question: your teeth, they look different from Harper's, and the other creatures from the other realms, they look like they are metal..."

Serena smiled: she'd had her braces so long now that they were very much 'part of her' (in more ways than one). "I guess to answer that, I need to tell you a bit of a story.... a story that started about 500 years ago...". Serena explained about the isolation of the many covens, about the prophecy, about her upbringing, and her pledging, and discovering that SHE was THE ONE as described in the prophecy.

"So, I had some braces - albeit made of a strange metal...."

"Braces? What are they?"

Again, Serena smiled: of course, there was no reason to think that ANY other realm used braces to straighten teeth. "When people's teeth are crooked, and either their teeth don't work together very well, or more likely just don't look quite 'perfect', then they get braces on their teeth: these use various methods to move their teeth into a better position. Works better on children, as their jaws are sill malleable and still growing."

"Ok, so your teeth were crooked?"

"Yes, they were. And I started off with very normal braces, just made from the strange metal. But a clever witch discovered that, if I had some rather extreme braces, with lots of metal, I would gain extra protection when I did dark magic - magic like I had to use today. The metal comes from a very special and very old chain, and I have enough metal in my mouth now that they are actually sentient. And it's not just what you see on my teeth, I have metal across the roof of my mouth, and on the sides between the top and bottom. When they were installed, they moulded themselves to my teeth, and I believe that, by now, they have started to 'merge' with my teeth and my body. So, yes, a bit of a long story, but yeah, for all intents and purposes, I now have metal teeth.

"I'm surprised they don't make you talk strangely. Do they hurt? Feel strange? I'll be honest, they actually look pretty good, plus they ARE a bit intimidating!"

"The braces themselves have 'absorbed' my speech difficulties. And no, they feel completely normal to me now." They continued chatting for a while. "Anyway, Eric, it's been great drinking with you, we should go back to the others: rest well, I'll see you in the morning!"

"Thank you, Serena and Harper: for a prisoner, you've made me feel very welcome! You rest too, and yes, I'm looking forward to tomorrow!"



(3410)

Chapter 37

Several days later......


"Hi guys, how are you two?" Serena asked Elida and Poppy.

"We're stuck, at a bit of a dead end!" said Poppy.

"What do you mean?"

"Oh, sorry, yeah, with finding the time magic, to send those two books back in time. We've been looking everywhere, and still can't find anything that even HINTS at time magic."

"Ok, not good. Hmm.. I wonder....."

"What?"

"Glimmer? Can you come here please?" requested Serena politely. Glimmer returned from where he was hiding (probably in the walls of Serena's house).

"Your majesty? How can I be of service to you?"

"Well, I'm actually hoping you can help Elida and Poppy."

"Are they both of a good heart and of good intentions?"

"I can't think of any other fairies that could better fit that description."

"In that case, they may safely use me...."

"Thank you Glimmer. Go on ladies, touch him, hold him..."

"You sure? Are we gonna be safe?"

"If Glimmer says so, then I think you'll be just fine." replied Serena with a smile.

Poppy and Elida both touched Glimmer, and both of them were encased in a soft pink glow. "Indeed, you two are very worthy, how can I help you?"

"We're looking for some magic... fairy magic... that relates to time travel"

"For you two?"

"No, for us to send two very brave books back in time...."

"Hmm, let's see... ok, have a look at this bit.....". In their minds, the two fairies could now see a whole load of magic, all relating to time travel.

"No way! It can't be THAT simple?"

"Seems like it is. I'd advise you both to be VERY careful how you use it, you don't want to be upsetting the time-line do you?"

"Oh, don't worry, we've seen plenty of episodes of 'The Flash' so we've seen what can happen! We just need to send the two books back in time, nothing more than that... Thank you, Glimmer!"

"My pleasure, ladies!".


(3480)

Chapter 39

Several weeks later....


Captain Hughes and his entire platoon of 16 SAS men arrived at a back entrance of the palace, and after showing ID, they were taken to the room where the King would be meeting with Serena, and members of the other realms. It had taken a lot of work to coordinate so many important people to come along today: Serena had personally visited them all, and persuaded them of the importance of such a visit. Not only would the kings / top representatives come along, each would be attended / protected by a small number of their own key trained men and women. Thus the room they were in was quite large.

Captain Hughes called the palace security team that were to be responsible for the event to a short meeting.

"You will see things today that you will not understand... don't worry about it. I can guarantee that there will NOT be any security issues here today: the person you will meet shortly will make sure of that."

Whilst Serena would be officially 'flying in' in a little while to formally meet the King, and then 'bring in' the other guests, she had suggested that should should 'put in an appearance' earlier, to make it clear to the palace staff that she, personally, would be guaranteeing the safety of all present there.

"Ok, first of all, I need to lock all the doors..." explained the Captain.

"You want us to lock the doors?" asked one of the palace security team.

"No, don't worry, I'll do it." He quietly uttered one of the many spells that Serena had taught him. Any doors that were open closed quietly, and were locked with a magic spell. "Now, remember that, like us, you guys are covered by so many regulations that mean you can not disclose anything that you see today, including the next few things that will happen. Besides, noone would ever believe you anyway! Do any of you carry concealed weapons?" asked the captain.

"You really think we're going to tell you that?" said one of them.

"Jock, would you care to do the honours?"

"Yes sir!" Jock cast another of the many spells that Serena had shown them, and a pile of guns appeared on the floor.

"As I said, security in here is guaranteed, we can't afford one of you to accidentally screw things up. Ok, Serena, ready when you are!". Serena had been waiting not that far from the palace, somewhere public but secluded, meaning that she could use normal, light, magic for her last 'jump'.

Moments later, and to the palace security staff's great surprise, Serena magically appeared in front of them. She was dressed in the new 'royal combat outfit' that Elida and Poppy had made for her, and that she had worn when first meeting the King. On her back was, of course, Glimmer, in his scabbard.

"I told you to expect strange things: this is Queen Serena of the Witches of Britain, as crowned by the King himself: she is probably the most powerful and capable witch alive in the country right now. Good afternoon Serena!"

"Good afternoon Captain. Hi there, Jock, nice to see you again! Hello everyone. Yes, I'm Serena, and I am personally guaranteeing the safety of the King and Queen today, as well as the many vistors that will be arriving later on."

"Other visitors?" asked one of the palace team "I don't remember seeing anyone else on the visitor list for today."

"Oh, yes, there will a be a load of those, a mix of royalty and their guards. I suggest that you guys need to get up to speed very quickly on what is about to happen. I hope you are all quick learners. Here goes.... We humans live on the planet in the 'human realm', but there's actually 9 other realms here too. Today we will be welcoming visitors from seven of those realms."

"Other realms? What do you mean?"

"The other seven realms are: the Fairies, the Elves, Cyclops, Leprechauns, Goblins, Centaurs and finaly the Werewolves" explained Serena.

A couple of the palace staff started giggling. "You're playing with us?"

"No, I'm deadly serious. I'm assuming none of you have ever had a wish fulfilled by a fairy, have you?"

"Fairies, oh come on!"

"Hey, Elida, you here?" asked Serena.

"Of course I am, Your Majesty!" she replied, casting a spell to make herself visible to the humans. "Good to see you again, Serena! You too, Captain!". The palace staff were clearly shocked and surprised.

"And you too, Elida. Elida is a very powerful and capable fairy, as I am a capable witch. Although, of course, you guys probably don't realise quite what I'm capable off. Hey, Elida, got any ideas what I can do to demonstrate my abilities?"

"Want it to be serious or fun? If you fancy some fun, you could turn them all into clowns."

"Hmm, interesting idea! Wanda, fancy a bit of fun? And be visible please."

"Did someone say 'fun'?" asked Wanda. Serena waved Wanda, and said the required words, and the place security staff instantly had silly makeup on and were wearing clown's clothes. "Just a simple demonstration of what I can do with almost no effort. I could have just as easily encased you in stone up to your necks... Do I have your attention now?". She waved Wanda again, giving them their old clothes back. "As Captain Hughes had said, I will personally guarantee the safety of all those who will be present in this room, their majesties the King and Queen included."

"I think they maybe need another demonstration of your abilities...." suggested Captain Hughes.

"Old truck engine again?" suggested Serena.

"Why not?".

"Ok, so this here is the metal bit of a big truck engine" said Serena, after quickly finding a scrap yard, and summoning it. "And THIS is my sword, Glimmer!" Glimmer rose gently and gracefully from his scabbard, and dropped into Serena's outstretched hand. "Sword... strong metal engine... which do you think will win?"

"Oh, definitely Glimmer!" said Elida excitedly.

"I think you might be right. Glimmer, if you would, please?" Serena lowered Glimmer gently onto the metal engine block, and effortlessly cut it into two. "Maybe one of you wants to inspect the engine, be sure it's real? Try picking it up perhaps?" One of the palace security team walked over quite cockily, and tried to lift the heavy engine block, and failed. Serena said a quick spell, then leaned over and picked it up with ease, then summoned the pieces away again.

"Ok, what you have just seen is several displays of my magic, and I can guarantee you that I was just playing there. So, when I say that I can provide protection, I really mean it. John, how are we for time?"

"Oh, plenty of time, about forty minutes."

Serena looked at the pile of guns on the floor, then waved her wand: the ammunition from the guns appeared in a separate pile. "Ok, gents, please take your guns back - but leave the ammo - I'm sure it will make you feel better having them, even though they would be useless to you - even loaded - if anything were to happen! Which door will his majesty come through? And which door do you need access to?"

"That one over there... and this one here."

"Ok, John, if you can unlock them both. I suggest you all take a comfort break if you need one: don't do anything stupid, and please do NOT tell anyone about anything that you have just seen: you will each be accompanied by one of these guys..." Serena waved her wand, to let the palace security guards see the FAS fairy squad, then made them invisible again. "Whilst not quite as able as Elida, I wouldn't try anything, they're just as capable as these guys are..." she said, pointing at the SAS team. "Then, when you're ready, maybe you can tell his majesty's team that we are on schedule for our meeting".

Before leaving, Serena cast a whole collection of protection spells on the room: there was no way that she would allow ANYTHING to happen that afternoon, there was just too much at stake.


==============

The King's trusted and close team were all aware that strange things would happen today: Serena and Elida had both previously met with them, and 'explained things', in a not dis-similar way to what she had done today, although it HAD included cups of tea and nice cakes rather than clown's clothing.

When the King and Queen entered the room some 40 minutes later with two other members of their staff, the palace security team were descretely spread around the room: the SAS team were neatly lined up at the front, with Captain Hughes at the front, waiting. Serena wasn't there yet, she was with Samantha, Sarah and Harper.

"Your Majesties!" said the captain, saluting, as were all the other men.

"Good afternoon, Captain Hughes, good to meet you again!"

"Yes sir! Are you ready to meet your guests, sir?" he asked the King.

"I am indeed. Do continue!". The King and Queen had been carefully briefed, and having previously seen what Serena was capable of, were both unlikely to be too confused about what would be going on today. The SAS team took a step back and to the side, while the captain cast a spell to lock the door they had come through

The various teams from the other realms had already been teleported to suitable 'safe places', and were waiting quietly nearby. Serena, Harper, Sarah and Samantha were also nearby, waiting. Like Serena, they too were dressed in outfits similar to, but far more graceful than, their lightweight magic armour: like Serena, they all wore their swords on their backs for today's important occasion.

Serena had been listening in on the comms, as well as probing the palace room. "On our way!" she said over the comms.

Serena and her team appeared in front of (but at a suitable distance from) the King and Queen, and all four of them went down on one knee and bowed. Serena alone then stood up, and smiled. "Good afternoon, your Majesties! As you know, I am Serena, Queen of all the Witches of Great Britain, it is my honour to meet you again! May I please introduce Sarah, my teacher and mentor, Harper, a strong and able fighter, and Samantha, a very capable healer. These are the three ladies described in the prophecy that I talked about last time." As she introduced each of them, they too stood up.

The King walked over to them. "It is good to meet you again, Queen Serena" he said, taking her hand and gently shaking it. "You seem to be far more confident in your new role today."

"Please, just 'Serena'. And yes, I am. Your majesty, whilst we all stand here with swords on our backs, I assure you that we are here in peace. Not only that, I personally guarantee your protection today."

"Thank you, I have full trust in you, Serena." Serena stood aside letting Sarah, Harper and Samantha meet and shake hands with the King and Queen.

"As you know know, we humans live in but one of the ten realms. We are currently unsure who or what is in two of the other realms, Glimmer only told me about them recently, but today I will introduce those who live in the other seven realms. First of all, let me re-introduce my wand, her name is Wanda." Wanda appeared in Serena's hand.

"You met Elida and Poppy, two very capable fairies, on my last visit: today they have escorted their Queen, her majesty Queen Tinkerbell." Serena used Wanda to cast a 'make the fairies visible' spell, making the three of them visible: they hovered in the air in front of the King and Queen. It was very obvious from the way she was dressed which of the three was Queen Tinkerbell.

The Fairy Queen curtsied. "Your Majesties, it is a pleasure to meet you!".

"No, Queen Tinkerbell, the pleasure is ours. Welcome to our palace." They all spoke briefly.

"If you are ready sir," said Serena, "I will invite the next guests.."

"Go ahead, please."

Captain Hughes said a few words into his fairy comms, then Serena Summoned the Elven team: the Elven King and Queen had 2 foot-soldiers with them, and all were dressed in the finest of Elven clothes.

"May I present the King and Queen of the Elven realm, his majesty King Ruven and Queen Pyria...". The foot solders stood aside, and the Eleven King and Queen approached their human counterparts, shaking hands.

Over the next 15 to 20 minutes, Serena summoned the Kings, Queens and equivalents from the other realms. Last to arrive was Eric, the werewolf, and his king.

"Finally, I would like to introduce King Richard, of the Werewolf realm. He has been a King for about as long as I have been a Queen: it was his late father who unsuccessfully attempted to invade our realm."

King Richard knelt solemnly in front of the King and Queen (the human ones, that is!). Your majesty, I humbly apologise for my father's actions, I hope you can forgive his stupidity."

"I understand what happened, and know that you are a far better man than your father: your apology is accepted. Please, stand up."

Everyone talked for a while, then Serena asked loudly: "Excuse me everyone, would you mind making a space in the middle for the tables?"

A large team of fairies (from the Fairy Catering Corp, of course) appeared, helped to guide everyone out of the way, then magicked up tables with the finest table cloths on them, beautiful plates and cutlery, and suitable chairs for everyone. A few more waves of their fairy wands, and the table was full of teapots, cups, plates and cutlery, and the most amazing range of scones, cakes, and other things suitable for afternoon tea. I'm sure there will have been some cucumber sandwiches in there somewhere...

The many Kings and Queens all sat down, to enjoy the meal -  the accompanying soldiers, guards etc sat at their own table, adjacent.

Serena stood and looked around: first of all she looked at the palace security team, all of whom were in awe of what was happening. They could see that each realm had brought it own - magically capable, of course - small security team, but they had not tried to interfere in any way. Then she admired the more amazing sight around her: not only had she managed to re-unite all the covens of the land, it looked like she was well on her way to uniting the eight known realms too.

So, only two more to go then!

I'll be posting the final part to this story tomorrow. Well, when I say 'final', I mean final chapter in THIS story. Whilst I have no ideas lined up yet, I'm sure the witches and fairies will want another story at some point!