Connor's eyes grew despondent.
"We will cease to exist without some place to live where we do not fear persecution at every turn. No matter how strong we are individually, there are not enough mages to fight against a world of twelve billion humans."
He shrugged. "The Mage Elites feel that they need to leverage the powers of the Shadow Beings to aid their quest of regaining their land."
"Isn't that risky?" I asked.
"Extremely," Connor nodded. "That is why Blackstone and the Council of Mages did not want to be a part of the Elites, but over half of the mages that joined the side of the Mage Elites had migrated out of Topaz City."
"At first, it was just a trickle, but then more and more mages began leaving. With many of the strong mages gone, the bubble around Topaz began to destabilize."
"There weren't enough mages to maintain the sphere, and so drastic measures had to be taken. The mages had to put a patchwork of wave disruptors everywhere to maintain the bubble's structure."
"The purple lampshade that Simon found." I muttered. It finally made sense.
"Exactly." Connor responded. "We were barely briefed about it before being sent out of Topaz. The wave disruptors were just a stopgap measure to keep the frayed and weakened areas from tearing further, but once the Elites began their campaign, the Council couldn't keep it up."
"Shadow beings started pouring into Topaz City and summer classes had to be cancelled. All the students got released the same day that Simon was told to join our group. He didn't get off the hook for summer school as he thinks he did. He was being evacuated with us."
"But if the humans cannot enter through the bubble into Topaz, why is Topaz considered a war zone?"
"Because we are not only fighting the humans, we are also fighting the Shadow Beings." Corwin added.
He sighed. "The war being fought in Topaz is between mages and demons. However, the war being fought on the other side of The Wastes, where we are heading towards, is between mages and humans, using demon-assisted weapons."
"The demons are a large part of this, aren't they?" I buried my face in my hands and felt strong hands reaching out to comfort me.
"Yes. But we are fighting against this demonic invasion. Blackstone knows one thing. It is very difficult, but we can live among humans if need be. It is, however, impossible to live among the Shadow Beings. They do not belong in our world."
"Why are we fighting two wars at the same time?" I asked Connor.
"We have no choice. We are losing the war against the Shadow Beings and Topaz will be eventually destroyed. We have to return to the world of the humans."
His eyes were bleak pools of darkness. "To return, we have to fight for land to live on. We are squeezed in between two powerful forces, and we have run out of options."
"What do we do?" I looked at the twins looking for answers in their eyes.
"We don't know." They both looked away from me, into the night.
======
Daybreak found me standing on top of the rock outcropping, arms outstretched as I cast my mind's eye outward into the horizon, searching for any signs of my winged and webbed scouts.
I could see my own long grey shadow, made by the morning's soft pink light and I laughed at my bedraggled looking shadow head with its hopelessly tangled hair.
The gentle wind swirled around me, carrying with it the scent of the morning dew on the scrub brush. It was still early and the dessert air was a bit chilly but as cold as it was now, I knew that the heat would soon billow in with the southern winds once the sun poked its head over the horizon.
I scanned the skies around me. As far as my eyes could see, there was nothing but an expanse of uninterrupted silky, rippled ridge line of sand dunes.
Below me, there were tracks made by creatures during the night. The tiny shadows of the footprints of birds and rodents were still visible in the early morning glamour light.
All was desolate and still. All except for one small spark of life struggling to return to me.
It responded to my query in recognition of my unique magik energies. As it got closer, I could feel the shape of its mind.
It was my elf owl of the night before.
The elf owl came closer to me, circling around my rock cropping and hooted a series of high-pitched calls.
HOOT HOOT. HOOT HOOT. HOOT HOOT.
It had found the primate group, or at least something that looked like the image I had projected into its mind.
The group was located some distance away, to the northwest of where we were located, as the owl flies.
I mentally calculated that at the speed we were traveling, it would take about eight hours of driving to reach the outskirts of the city, taking into account the rough and winding nature of the road's condition.
I sent an outpouring of thanks to the owl and wished it well, waving my arms in farewell.
It cried out a final goodbye before flying off to do whatever it was that elf owls do when it was not running an errand for a disabled thaumaturge.
Then, I scootched off the rock in a rather un-ladylike and un-magelike, fashion, landing on the dusty flat plain with a thump. My feet hit the ground, raising a small dust cloud into the air around my bent knees.
"Elegant!" I heard a gentle mocking voice call out.
Shading my eyes against the bright sun, I saw the shadow of one of the twins outlined on the ground. The rest of him was hidden behind the jutting rock outcrop.
From where I was, and with the light in my eyes, I could not tell if it was Corwin or Connor. His shadow stood there, head cocked to one side with his arms folded across his chest, enjoying my discomfiture at my inability to recognize who he was.
"Who…" I muttered to myself.
"Who loves you, Baby?" He called out.
"Connor!" I shouted, and laughed when I saw his shoulders slump in feigned despair.
"How could you tell, when all I showed you was my shadow against the sun?" He asked as I ran up to him.
"You're the only one who calls me Baby!" I responded with a grin.
"Ah! Caught by my own foibles." He snapped a finger in mocked frustration.
I laughed at his antics and was about to retort with something equally disparaging when I caught sight of Corwin standing in the distance, gazing at both of us with an unfathomable look in his eyes.
I turned to him, intending to say something inclusive, but he chose that moment to turn away without saying a word.
Connor approached me, unaware of the slight tension between Corwin and myself. "So, what have you been able to learn from the hooter?"
"Hooter? Oh you mean the elf owl?" I laughed.
"He suggested we move towards that direction." I pointed towards the northwest area.
"I saw images of a fairly large city, and it is very near the ocean. He caught sightings of a group of primates doing something within a field, about a mile out of the inhabited zones."
"Solaro." I heard Abe's voice saying from behind me. "It is the only city that large, in that general direction."
"We need to get there."
"Then we're in luck. I have a friend who lives in that area. He might be able to accommodate us while you figure out what to do. We should make it there before dark if we start moving soon."
"Then let's get moving," I went off to wake up Simon and Tarzan.
Within the hour, we were back on the road again.
This time, the malamute sat up in front with Abe while Simon and Tarzan sat in the middle seat playing game after game of 13-card poker.
Since Abe was in the vehicle with us, they refrained from using stacks of real human currency and opted instead to using wrapped hard sour ball candies as currency.
As for me and the twins, we climbed into the back seat and sat together, not saying much, just enjoying each other's company. There seemed to be a truce between the two of them which I accepted with great relief.
At one point in the long drive, Connor took a small brush out of his pack and began to slowly untangle my very messy hair.
Since it was a long boring drive with nothing to do, I let him do with it as he pleased. I had been up most of the night, waiting for the elf owl, so within minutes of silent brushing, I leaned up against Corwin's shoulder and took a quick nap.
The further north we went, the better the landscape looked. By late afternoon, we had left The Wastes behind us and we were back in rolling green hills and cultivated farmland, unmarred by the scourge winds.
We passed by endless fields of waving green corn, followed by endless fields of short yellow mustard greens, alternating with rows and rows of peach and pear orchards, heavy with summer fruit.
Then we went through miles and miles of open pastures on rolling hills made golden by the dry, hot summer days. Numerous black-and-white patterned cattle wandered the pastures at will, grazing on the steep hillside with ease.
The white clapboard farm houses and the red barns with their white trims dotted the vast plains in well-kept, genteel fashion. Their occupants were nowhere in sight, but still maintained strict straight lines of rigid fencing over rolling hills and wide meadows.
As I predicted, it had taken eight hours of driving to get to the outskirts of Solaro, at which time, the sun was starting to wilt.
Of the primates, we did not see hide nor hair, but I was not expecting to get that lucky. I was only hoping to get closer and then to find a way to discover their whereabouts.
Abe drove us past the suburbs, straight through to the center of town.
As he passed all the tall glass and steel buildings, I began to realize how advanced human civilization really was.
It was not the backwards society that I had always imagined it to be. True, it did not have magik, but what humans lacked in magic, they more than made up in solid innovation. Unlike the rural counterparts, their urban landscape was extremely efficient.
All the windows, rooftops, and paved roadways were of an energy-absorbing material which, I assumed, was used to power their homes and work places. There was greenery everywhere, and flowering bushes and plants vied for space alongside tall stately trees.
I was expecting Abe's friend to be a tour guide or a driver, or at least in a similar line of work, but no.
As he pulled in through the driveway, I looked up at the tall glass and marble building and realized that the reason why Abe said his friend would be able to accommodate us was because his friend operated a high-class, luxury hotel.
The Montblanc Hotel was huge, rising up over 30 stories high and took up most of the entire block. Its entrance had bellmen and doormen who were busy meeting and greeting and hauling luggage of the traveling wealthy. This was, after all, a tourist town, located next to a warm sandy beach with plenty of things for the vacationing travelers to do.
We pulled up to the front of the hotel and passed on the bell service. There really wasn't much that we needed to bring into the hotel since we really didn't have much in the way of baggage.
I had pulled out my stash of human money and was ready to book a couple of rooms when Abe shook his head and waved us through to the lobby area.
"Wait here for me. I'll be right back."
I shrugged at the twins' questioning glances. Simon's mouth was open wide, staring at our surroundings. I didn't blame him.
I had to admit, humans really knew how to create a paradise on Earth.