Blood splashes on my face. The pair of magenta eyes that were just fixed on me look down in shock and horror as the arm that enterered through her stomach withdraws, and a darker shade of red comes out of her thin pursed lips.
Her surprise mirrors what I imagine mine must have looked like earlier.
The crystal blue on her chest beckons to me yet again, and I reach up and yank it from her neck.
“This was never yours,” I growl, suddenly relieved though still thoroughly confused.
Terrified, Catrain drops to her knees and stares up, silently pleading for the pendant on my hand.
“You look quite good down there,” I whisper, staring into her fading eyes.
Catrain reaches for the crystal with weak shaking hands, and the light leaves her. I watch as she desperately tries to hang on to me, and I lower my hand, bringing the crystal within range of her, and she smiles before I crush it in my hand and she wails.
The forlorn witch desperately grasps for the remains that fall and fade. And after a few seconds, she herself drops to the ground, and a single tear falls from her vacant eyes.
I shift my attention to the man standing before me. His white sleeve soaked in crimson.
“Seeing that look in your eyes really unnerves me,” he whispers, staring down at me.
“What is the meaning of this Faust?” My voice is shaking as my heart clings to the hope that I was not wrong.
“I did what I had to.”
“Just like everyone else... he will do his own part”
I hear my own voice from long ago ringing in my ears.
‘Be deceived in order to deceive’ is something he taught me a long time ago.
Of course, what do I expect? I should have seen this coming.
He reaches for me with her blood still dripping from his hand and pulls me into an embrace.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers, planting a soft kiss on the top of my head.
My heart swells as I rest my forehead against him, and close my eyes frustrated at my inability to read him and relieved that he is still the demon I love.
“You should probably tell that to those two.” I motion to our allies laying on the ground.
“They’ll be fine, arent they always?”
***
“You have quite a questionable taste in men, Meg. This one’s a major asshole.” Bran wipes the blood from his lips and stares at the back of his hand only to frown at it.
“Master, Ms. Alwyn,” my heart jumps at the mention of my name, and I turn to find the straight-faced Zoren slowly approaching, bowing just beside Faust.
“Word from Sir Ulric,” he says, “The Silver Dragons lost. Garth is wounded. Dain is missing.”
This is exactly what I wanted to prevent. I run my hand over my face, trying to figure out how we’ll proceed when Zoren speaks again…..
“There’s another message, from Lady Adara,” this time, his expression seems apologetic which does not bode well with me. So very few emotions ever cross his face.
“The Guardian Witch is nowhere to be found.”
No, no, no! Nothing is going according to plan here.
“Is that all?” Unfazed as he always is, Faust inquires as to if everything his butler said was perfectly fine.
“Yes. That is all,” the grey-haired butler gives another curt bow.
“It’s done,” Dimia announces, “So, can we kill her now?”
“No,” I hiss, “let the coven collect her or leave her to die.”
Faust walks over to me and tilts my head up to stare at him.
“I will take Zoren with me to see Ulric and Garth. We’ll gather the remaining forces. We’re officially at war.” His lips feel strangely soft as he kisses me before turning to leave.
Chapter 4
An Overdue Apology
“Hey, demon. Before you leave, you need to hear this,” Dimia calls out for the master and servant as they turn on their heels.
“The reversal ritual needs the participation of the same people who participated in the first part of the ritual. No replacements allowed.”
Killing the ‘Witch of Wishes’ will really put a huge dent in that plan.
I look over to the pitiful figure sprawled on the ground, in the pool of her blood.
Oops.
The woman who was once was my Mother’s apprentice. She was treated like her own sister, but I guess not all can appreciate affection and care, especially a bitch like her.
My thought is pulled by the faux memories that still lingered with the genuine one. I, myself treated a certain woman like my sister. And like Catrain, her gentle emerald eyes and sweet sisterly voice-only turns out to be the very symbols of betrayal.
Perhaps trying to pull me back from my train of thought, Dimia speaks in a steely voice, “You’ll have to recite a whole different incantation for this, Meghan.”
“What’s the incantation?”
She lets out a heavy sigh, “I don’t have a perfect memory like you do, and there’s no way to transfer the information to you unless we use the guardian wench’s ritual.”
“The same thing she uses on my birthday.”
“That would take two hours to complete.” Protests Dimia.
“Yeah. That and we don’t have the materials to perform it now.”
We don’t have much time now. Dawn is coming. Just as the coven is racing against time to put us in place for the second half of the ritual, we also have to get the exact timing for the reversal ritual. Dain is guarding Ryia so not close enough to take part. Even with who is present, without knowing the right incantation, it’ll all be useless.
“Then, why don’t you just dictate, Dimia?” Faust asks, visibly irritated.
“It could be that easy except that you’re forgetting the Paradise ritual requires a tongue that can speak all the languages. Remember? The Catalyst Witch needs to speak a part of the incantation in the language of each representative. The same goes for the reversal. I could tell you Adara’s part, but it’s just all a bloody mess for the rest.”
“Look, we can’t stay here waiting for you to solve this problem. We need to get to Garth and find Dain,” there’s a tinge of impatience in Zoren’s tone, and we’re all surprised by his outburst.
“Got it,” I nod.
And with that, the two proceed to leave vanishing into thin air.
“I really don’t get the two of you,” Dimia rolls her eyes at me.
“Faust knows what the priority is. It’s best to let him handle the reigns as he sees fit.”
“Yeah, like the way he almost killed the two of us?” Bran cocks a brow at me.
“Yes,” I smirk, and he frowns.
***
“Look,” Bran tries to speak in a strained voice as I close the wound in his stomach with a first aid street spell, “I’m not going to apologise for smacking your boyfriend in his perfect face.”
“Who asked you to apologise?” I partially lift my gaze to him with a raised brow.
“You might be angry at me,” he said in an embarrassed mumble.
“I’m not angry at you, silly. I’m just surprised an assistant would punch his superior like that.” I chuckle at the memory when he introduced himself proudly back at the grand ball.
He unconsciously scratches the back of his head and turns his gaze away from me, a gesture that widens my grin.
“Are you sure we’re going to simply leave this useless filth rotting here?” Dimia stares at Catrain’s corpse.
A buzzing of an opening portal catches our attention. After a few seconds, a spinning void appears with two figures emerging.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” the dark elf growls.
The familiar bespectacled male turns his head to the lifeless figure just on their right, then shifts to us with an unreadable expression. Ryia snarls at me.
Her emerald eyes give me just a glimpse into the past. They were the same eyes that looked at me with eagerness and excitement as we both ran through the fields be
yond our home town as little girls. They were the same eyes that gazed at me in the hope that we could get out of the miserable life we both had.
But now, they speak nothing of that. They only look back at me with a promise of harm and hostility. Just with that, even the shadow of the loving girl in my memories vanishes to the void.
Bran uses the blood in his shirt to make dual guns since he can’t get any more from his. He’ll faint even before he has a chance to fight. My vampire friend’s ability still has a limitation, after all.
I pull out the dagger and reach over to pass it to him. He looks at me with confusion.
“You need this more than I do.”
The Flourite Crystal Dagger will be able to magnify any weapon he makes. I don’t have much use of this as I can’t materialise as well as he can. Besides... I don’t want to repeat the same mistake again.
Without a word, he takes the dagger after he holsters one gun into his pants. I smile at the thought that no words are needed between us as we tell each other...
“Don’t die.”
***
Artair, the male Guardian Witch relentlessly attacks the other two while his female counterpart faces me.
She sprints to me with electric bolts forming in her hand.
Well, well. You’ve dropped your Arcane Witch facade, huh?
At close proximity, she hurls the bolts to me in a swift motion. I roll to my side to avoid any damage. But there’s another attack coming at me with a crimson whip.
Getting to my feet fast, I run before it gets the chance to hit me. The ground that took the hit cracks open.
I quick-chant a street spell that creates a straight line of burning flames. With a wall of blazing red, yellow, and an orange dividing us and smoke scattering to the air, I can barely see her irritated face. She must not have expected a high-level spell from me.
Thanks to a few forbidden street spells I learned in Dimia’s castle, I’m able to up my own arsenal.
Who’s the talentless witch now, Ryia?
The witch raises her right hand and summons rain over our heads. She follows with a bolt of electricity travelling through the air via the drops until it reaches me and explodes. The barrier spell I learned shields me from the impact and pisses her off.
Suddenly the ground below me starts to shake. Before it opens to devour me, I pull the ribbon from my blouse to harden it with another spell. When the long thick black cotton solidifies, I hurl it in her direction like a javelin. She sidesteps, thinking the purpose is to pierce. But it catches on fire while in the air and explodes right by her face as I finish the chant. The tremor stops though it leaves me unsteady. I’m about to move forward when the sight of a body flying across the room catches my attention. It’s Dimia. My urge to cross to the other side of the room is halted by a large ball of flame, making a beeline for me. I drop to the floor with a piece of my sleeve disintegrating as the ball hits the wall.
Suddenly, a Peregrine Falcon breaks the glass windows and flies above us until it transitions into a man dropping onto his feet.
His soft short hair flows through the air as his feet land on the ground with finesse. Artair hurls a boulder of crystal shards at him as a greeting, but the graceful man charges through it head-on. With a hit of his staff, the boulder effortlessly crumbles.
He doesn’t stop charging, catching the wizard entirely off guard. With a wave of his wooden staff, he summons large thick vines from the ground, wrapping around Artair’s slender figure. He can only grunt in response when he realises the vines have anti-magic properties.
I allow myself to be distracted by Ulric’s arrival and carelessly walk into Ryia’s blizzard spell. The cold crystal spreads from my feet, crawling up to my lower body until it encases my chest.
Ryia approaches my frozen figure with a triumphant mocking grin, but she remains visibly cautious as though expecting Ulric to attack at any minute.
I just hope he’s tending to the two before he worries about me.
Bran will lose if he keeps losing blood. He’s already worn out from his fight with Faust, and I can say the same for Dimia.
“Struggling will only make it spread faster until it reaches your brain.”
The cold has already crept into my lungs, squeezing the air out of me and making it harder to breathe.
You won’t kill me. It’ll be your loss. I smirk at Ryia, and she frowns.
I try to stretch my lips into a grin as I start whispering a chant. She watches me intently.
My body starts to heat up, effectively melting the layers of the ice crystal. When she realises what I’m doing, it’s already too late. The crystal bursts into flames and explodes into droplets of water. Ryia steps back, surprised at my new found skills.
Ulric is smart to quickly take advantage of her vulnerable moment and wrap her with anti-magic vines, holding her in a place like her companion.
As I try to catch my breath, a loud shot rings out in the room. I find Bran pointing a gun at Artair’s head. Blood trickles down from the hole in the wizard’s forehead, passing his lifeless eyes.
The witch beside me scoffs.
“So, are you going to kill me too?”
I shift my gaze to her. Her biggest mistake is overestimating her value. I won’t do it now, but I swear on my Mother’s life that Ryia has to die.
“You do know that with the Witch of Wishes gone, killing me would put a stop to the ritual easily?” her provoking lips forms a thin line.
She’s right. Killing one of the circle members would be the easy way to win this.
But no, we won’t take that as an option. We’ve discussed this together, and we all agreed to never resort to killing anyone within the circle, though special exceptions will have to be made for her, I won’t go down that route just yet.
“You can’t because you just can’t do it, huh, Meghan? Well, I guess you and Liliwen never had a difference. You’re one of the same people, after all,” her deadly smile grows wider.
As I feel pain shoot through me from my tightly curled fist, a limping man steps forward to the witch and lifts his gun to her head at point-blank range.
A derisive laugh echoes the enormous torn down hollow hall.
“See? The bloodsucker has even more guts than you!”
“Shut up,” Bran growls in a dangerously low tone.
The veins in his temples pop out, and his jaw sets in a hard line. Even with a tight grip at the handle, his hand is trembling in what seems to be the rage.
I can see through his golden eyes the mixture of anger, frustration, and sadness.
I don’t know why Ryia is dead set on dying. She might just be provoking us, but she knows that we can easily do that if we’re pushed to the edge, which is exactly what she’s doing.
If anything, she should be stopping us.
The desperation in her eyes gives me a hint.
“Are you still trying to get out of their grasp? All those years, they’ve turned you into someone who you never were. And maybe all those years, the 10-year-old child in you is still trying to escape.”
She hisses, but her eyes always betray her.
Bran screams in frustration as he pulls the gun away and drops it. His head hangs down as he mutters, “I’m sorry, Meg.”
I take his free hand in mine and gently squeeze it, “It’s fine, Bran.”
Another mocking giggle comes from the bound witch who had every intention to push us over the edge, “I guess birds of the same feather flocks together. Pathetic,” she spits out.
I walk up to her, our faces just inches apart and she flinches as I stare deep into her eyes.
“Why can’t you kill me, huh?! Why don’t you just kill me? You have every right to,” she yells, “I’ve replaced your memories! I made you into an insecure being with so much envy and jealousy inside you. I blew up your precious friend’s head right in your face and tore your dog into pieces! Heck, I even included that stubborn idiot of a butler! So, why? Why can’t you just kill me?” She
screams, and I remember us as children. She had asked me something similar once.
“Because you’re my friend, or at least we were friends once.”
It was all I can say. Her eyes grow large, and her lips part.
“Why won’t you come with me, Meg?”
“I’m sorry,” I mutter. I could’ve taken her hand back then. Maybe now everything would be different.
***
After tending to Dimia and Bran’s wounds with herbs and spells, Ulric approaches me to offer the same.
“Tell me what happened.”
“One of my familiars was able to track Dain. He somehow managed to sneak into the coven’s castle. I think it’s in the hope of finding his sister. However, he was caught. They have him in a cell in the dungeon. I was able to bring Garth to safety when Master Faust arrived with the healing mage in tow. Together with Lady Adara’s, they were able to restore his health while the master gathered the rest of our forces.”
There’s no time to rally the circle for the ritual, but maybe we can make time for the memory ritual. Besides, Dimia also needs to get her strength back. Charging through with her current state will be a significant disadvantage to us.
“Ulric.”
“Yes,” his forest eyes wait eagerly.
“Tell Faust we’ll meet them in the coven’s castle. It’s almost time.”
Chapter 5
The Gate
Ulric’s animal companions serve as mounts and guides for us as we cross the vast forest, racing to the castle.
As expected, when we enter through the back door, there are hoards of Guardian Witches on patrol. Bran carries the unconscious Ryia while Dimia goes hand-in-hand with Ulric as they clear the way of anyone trying to block us. They sweep the floors and halls as quickly and quietly as they can. We can’t have the whole fortress alerted with our presence.
We carefully tread through the basement and the tunnels to get to dungeon cells.
However, when we reach a circular room walled by an old and mossed stone wall, a small figure stands in the middle.
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