Four Sisters (creatures)

The Four Sisters were four evil creatures created by the Shadow Lord. They are based on the Tenna Birdsong Tale "The Four Sisters".

History
After its defeat during the Battle for Deltora, the Shadow Lord began planning a number of long-term plans to weaken Deltora for a future invasion. Among these plans were the Four Sisters; poisonous creations that would sing songs of decay and slowly poison the land and reduce its food. It based the sisters off of four ordinary human sisters that the Shadow Lord had encountered when it was still a human sorcerer. The Shadow Lord had killed the human sisters to silence their sweet singing, and unknowingly awoken a ferocious beast that destroyed their island.

Pre planning
Before the Shadow Lord could place the Sisters, it needed all threats to them removed. It sent its servants into the city of Hira, located in the center of Deltora, to start a horrible rat plague and drive the people away. Once they were gone, it placed the grey tide — inspired by the beast that had dwelled on the isle with the human sisters — inside the city as a contingency plan in case the Sisters failed. Its Ak-Baba also cleared the skies of Deltora's dragons, the only creatures that could destroy the Sisters and the grey tide.

In response to the attacks on the dragons, Deltora's chief explorer, Doran the Dragonlover, convinced the last dragon of each tribe to go to sleep until the skies were clear of Ak-Baba. Unfortunately, his efforts removed the last obstacle in the Shadow Lord's path.

Placing the Sisters
During the time of King Lucan, the Shadow Lord ordered Drumm, Lucan's chief advisor, to place the Four Sisters in Deltora's most eastern, northern, western, and southern corners. These were located at Dragon's Nest, Shadowgate, the Isle of the Dead, and Del. Each Sister was accompanied by a tombstone-like warning stone with a rhyming verse.

Doran became aware of the Sisters' existence during another expedition and wrote about them in his final entry in the Deltora Annals, along with a map that showed their hiding places. He then departed immediately to try and destroy the Sisters, but was captured by the Shadow Lord and turned into the immortal guardian of the Sister of the West. His map was torn into fragments and marked with a twisted rhyme that foreshadowed what would happen to the land upon the destruction of the Four Sisters.

Living under their song
In the years that followed, the land slowly began to wither and die. Food became harder to acquire and less crops would grow each year. This was made worse by the chief advisors blinding the royal family to the woes of their people, which eventually culminated in the powers of the Belt of Deltora breaking, allowing the Shadow Lord to invade again. It kept the Four Sisters active during its reign, keeping the population in a state of poverty while its servants lived in luxury, until king Lief restored the belt and banished the Shadow Lord sixteen years later.

Destroying the sisters
It seemed the Shadow Lord amplified the power of the Sisters in the years following its banishment. On the night of the Full Moon Meeting in Del, people all over Deltora were writing to king Lief about their failed harvest and poor hunting and fishing.

That night, Lief and his companions, Barda, Jasmine, and Doom, destroyed the Crystal, a magic artifact that allowed the Shadow Lord to spy on Deltora. Doing so released past conversation between it and its servants, including talks of the Four Sisters. They found the first fragment of Doran's map inside the framework of the Crystal, and so decided to set off and destroy the Sisters if they could.

Lief, Barda and Jasmine traveled Deltora and awoke the last dragons. With the help of the last Topaz, Ruby, Emerald, and Amethyst dragons, each Sister was destroyed, and their guardians killed. Every time a Sister was killed, the land seemed to heal instantaneously. However, Lief realized too late about the grey tide, forcing the seven dragons to unite and battle the seven Ak-Baba to protect the land. In the ensuing battle, four Ak-Baba were killed, and the grey tide was destroyed.

Sister of the East
The Sister of the East was the first Sister encountered, and was hidden in Dragon's Nest. This Sister is a yellow, pulsating egg. It was destroyed by the combined efforts of Lief and Joyeu after Joyeu uncovered it from the Nest.

Sister of the North
The second of the Four Sisters the companions encountered, the Sister of the North, was a pale, bloated serpent which was veined in yellow and grey. It had no eyes, fangs, or tongue, though it retained a mouth through which it sang its song. The Sister was hidden at the bottom of a pit of snakes in Kirsten's castle at Shadowgate. During Lief's battle with Kirsten, the Sister was uncovered when the other snakes fled from the power of the Ruby. Honora then destroyed it after she destroyed the roof to rescue Lief.

Sister of the West
The third Sister the companions encountered, the Sister of the West, was a shapeless, jelly-like creature, creamy in colour and veined with pink and grey. It was placed inside Doran the Dragonlover in the lair of the Kobb on the Isle of the Dead. At Doran's request, Veritas took his breath, causing him to crumble and reveal the Sister of the West, which Veritas promptly destroyed.

Sister of the South
The Sister of the South was the fourth and final Sister the companions encountered. It was a grey gem, veined in red, deliberately made as a mockery of the gems in the Belt of Deltora. The Sister was hidden beneath the platform in the chapel of the palace of Del, an addition made without the knowledge of its Ralad builders. After Manus' angered outburst regarding the platform and the realisation that Drumm had arranged for it to be constructed, Lief realised that this was where the Sister had been hidden. Together with Barda he destroyed the platform, to find the warning stone. The Sister of the South was beneath its warning stone, forcing Barda to break the stone. Light erupted from beneath and temporarily blinded Barda. The fourth Sister was quickly revealed to be the most powerful of them all, successfully tempting Lief with promises of power for a brief time. Fidelis dug into the palace foundations to uncover the Sister, which began to affect the entire city. The Shadow Lord, impatient to spring its trap, withdrew the power of the Sister of the South and the Phantom that guarded it, allowing Fidelis to destroy it.