She began to recognize what she was seeing. Her fingers caressed the silky, delicate neck of the unicorn as the magic joined them.
A voice cried out.
Fairy-kind! Set me free!
The voice belonged to the unicorn and to nothing. Something of the unicorn was real; something else was not. The images appeared and faded in Willow’s mind. and she watched them pass. The black unicorn sought freedom. It had come in search of that freedom. It believed it would find it through… why?… through Ben! The High Lord could set it free because the High Lord commanded the magic of the Paladin, and only the Paladin was strong enough to counteract the magic that bound it, the magic that Meeks wielded — but then there was no High Lord to be found and the unicorn had been left alone in this land, searching, and Willow had come instead, searching too, bearing the golden bridle the wizards had made to snare it when it first broke free long ago. The unicorn was frightened of Willow and the bridle, uncertain of her purpose, and it fled from her until it realized that she was good, that she could help, and that she could take it to the High Lord and set it free. Willow would know the High Lord even in his disguise, when the High Lord himself did not know…
The images came quicker now, and Willow fought again to slow them so their meaning would not be lost. Her breath came quickly, as if she had run a great distance, and there was a bright sheen of sweat on her face.
The voice cried out in her mind again.
The High Lord’s power was lost to him and therefore lost to me! I could not be set free!
The voice was almost frantic. The images whispered urgently. The dreams that had brought Willow in search of it were a mix of truth and lies, dreams from both wizard and fairies… Fairies! Her dreams were sent by the fairies?… All must come together so that truths could be revealed and the power needed could be summoned — so that Paladin and wizard could meet and the stronger prevail, the stronger that was also the good, and then the books of magic could be, finally and forever, could be and must be…
Something intruded, other images, other thoughts imprisoned within the black unicorn for countless centuries. Willow stiffened and her arms locked about the sleek neck. She felt the scream rising within her once more, uncontrollable this time, madness! She saw something new in the images. The black unicorn was not a single life, but many! Oh, Ben! she cried soundlessly. There were lives in the images that struggled and could not break free, that yearned for things she could not understand in worlds she could not imagine. She shook with the emotions that ripped through her. Souls imprisoned, lives held fast, magics torn away and used wrongly — Ben!
Then there was a sudden image of the missing books of magic, locked within a dark, secret place, a place filled with the smell of something evil. There was an image of fire burning outward from one of those books, burning with the intensity of life being born anew, and from out of that fire and that book leaped the black unicorn, free once more, racing from the dark into the light. searching…
The voice cried out one final time.
Destroy the books!
The cry was one of desperation. The cry was almost a shriek. It blocked away the images; it consumed everything with its urgency: The pain it released was intolerable.
Willow’s scream finally broke free, rising up against the sounds of battle. The sylph tore away from the black unicorn and stumbled back, almost blacking out with the intensity of what she had experienced. She dropped to her knees, head bent against a wave of nausea and cold. She thought she must die and knew in the same instant she would not. She could sense the black unicorn shuddering uncontrollably beside her.
The words of that final cry were a whisper on her lips.
Destroy the books!
She rose to a half-crouch and screamed them out across the battleground of the little clearing.