Things were quickly spinning in to chaos, which really shouldn’t have been a surprise to me, since I knew all that was going to happen. Just as Han keeled over from the mere spell of the Sleeping Curse so thickly permeating the room everything stepped into motion.
The ground ripped up around us and grabbed everyone. I instantly jumped on to the piece of the floor wrapped around Ashe and ripped and tore at it with my paws and teeth, Reynard had jumped down to it as well, helping me.
It wasn’t until Ashe had pulled the hatchet I had given her through the earthen grasp that she finally broke free from it. Both Reynard and I jumped on to her. Reynard took my pocket while I sat on her shoulders.
I wanted to say so desperately right in that moment that Ashe shouldn’t mention what she knew about Bluebeard’s secret, but I knew even if I did she still would have done it. She’s just that kind of girl. So instead I said, You have to buy me time. To unlock my magic.
She registered everything so quickly and chose the best route was to be ‘caught’ by Bluebeard. So she screamed out his secret to the other me, holding her hatchet tightly and I wrapped my tail around her neck. I’m with you. I’m always right beside you.
She nodded right before a hand yanked around her waist and she was dragged behind the wall of fire the blue-bearded wizard made.
Maybe my comment had somehow helped her to be so content, thinking about the image of her face when I had seen her dragged behind the fire while in my normal form. As soon as the fire was surrounding us, I jumped out and bit down on the arm that had been wrapped around Ashe to let her get free.
The price of doing that was obvious. I went hurling through the fire wall and slammed into a normal wall with my tiny fox body. It felt like a combination of when I had been thoroughly burned by the Salamanders and then tossed through the wall by Nera.
I couldn’t even move until a wet nose came sniffing over my body and nudged me. I smiled. Of course with Han’s nose he would have recognized my magic immediately. At least he was smart enough to have not given me away.
I pushed my tiny body up, with the support of Han nudging me against the wall I had slammed in to. But I couldn’t change yet, for some reason the other me still hadn’t even decided to go through with getting my magic back.
Why?
Then I remembered it…
Of course. This was the moment I had been contemplating the risk of releasing my magic. My voice had pressed through me and I had accepted it as simply my thoughts.
Technically it was my thoughts, simply coming from a future me!
I stumbled forward as Han barked something at me that I couldn’t understand. I shook my head and scratched my paw in the ground summoning up a wisp of energy as I thought what I wanted to be carried to the other me.
Your magic is always worth it. Don’t forget that… Hue didn’t.
It must have reached the other Gnidori’s ears because she was looking around at everyone she knew before finally telling Ettie what they had to do.
Watching the scene unfold between Ettie and the other me was… strange at the very least. It was one thing to see yourself walking about, it was a completely different thing to see yourself be embraced by a woman you cared about and then see that kiss from an outsider’s point of view.
Was that how it had looked if I had seen from a distance when Ashe and I had kissed the first time? It was tender and emotional but I had been wrong. Seeing from this angle, Ettie hadn’t kissed me passionately. She kissed me because she had loved me so much that she wanted to give me something I had wanted for so long just in case I was going to die.
I have the most amazing friends possible.
I watched intently as they said their magic words and then the other me shattered into millions of tiny wisps of light that gathered and swirled around Ettie before fading away, leaving only my clothes and weapons behind.
The face she made nearly broke my heart as she stood up and gripped her guns tightly. How much pain had I just put her through, even for that single moment?
I couldn’t let her live with that any longer. I took two fox strides before the magic swirled around me and my paws slowly formed hands and feet. I started to stand as the rest of my body grew and shifted. I didn’t care about the pain I just ran straight to Ettie and seized her in to a hug.
“I’m sorry to make you worry too. Everyone is always worrying about me.” I whispered near her ear as she stood completely stunned to the point that her pistols nearly slipped from her hands.
“It’s because we love you, Gnidori.” She managed to finally say as her hands wrapped around me to return the hug.
I pulled free from it and she stepped to my side as I leaned down and scooped the long-handled axe up.
“I told you I would be fine.” I smiled back to her before stepping forward and slamming the double head of the axe into the ground. I pushed a burst of energy out which traveled down the stone ground and ripped a hole in the fire wall by erected stone walls to block it.
Ashe was in clear sight of me.
I stepped in front of the fire wall door, throwing the axe over my shoulder as I smiled toward the wide-eyed Fioravante.
“Now, where were we?”
Thirty
Dual Magic Duel
“H-how?” Fioravante nervously asked while Ashe backed up toward me.
“How did you put it…” I looked to the corners of my eyes in thought before continuing, “That part wouldn’t interest you, what would interest you is that in the past five minutes a week has passed by for me. A week of time I’ve had to plot how to kill you.”
He laughed awkwardly while I could feel the energy building in his hand, it was oozing with malice. “You can’t kill me. There was a reason I was hired. You can’t beat me.”
My grin grew and Ashe nodded to me. I pulled my axe down from my shoulder and stepped next to her. Fioravante hissed at me and thrust his hand forward while muttering under his breath. A massive ball of fire gushed forth from his fingers, growing as it traveled.
In that moment, at least thirty gnomes popped out of the ground and stone doorway in the fire, producing a wall, which I tapped with my axe and poured energy in to. They grew even harder than most metals just as the fireball collided with them.
The fire died out as all the gnomes guffawed and I drew the energy back out of them so they could move again without all the weight. They poured like a wave around me and left me to glance over the dumbfounded Bluebeard.
I shrugged and his face grew white. “Actually you are simple to figure out. You use basic elemental knowledge that is taught in the faerie academy, yet you definitely have never been there. Which means you didn’t have magic before the sleeping curse rested in you. And you were taught by a faerie based on what you know, but for what purpose?”
“That is none of your business!” He bellowed while gathering and muttering another fireball spell. That was when I gave up on walking forward, instead I darted and slid right under his ball of fire before dropping some energy in my legs to push in to the ground and leap over him.
He dodged the slice of my axe as I cleared and landed behind him to find his body twisting around as he incanted. A sword of hard stone rose out of the ground just in time for Fioravante to snatch it up and halt the wide arcing slash I made with my dual-head axe.
“So you fight like you’ve been in a lot of them.” I raised my eyebrows. “Military? Thief like the rest of your family?”
He pushed me back and I poured strength in my arms as he started slashing wildly yet in perfect strikes. I barely managed to block them all with my weapon.
“My family is not thieves!” He growled while he pushed me up near the fire wall with his continued assault.
“I see you avoided the question.” I laughed and he glared at me as he pulled his sword to the side and held up his other hand charged with just pure energy.
“The Lockes are not thieves!” He roared.
This was going to hurt…
Then th
e energy suddenly died away from his hand and blood trickled from his mouth which he licked at. I smiled as I looked at Goldie crouched behind him with a dagger thrust into the side of Bluebeard.
“Then how do you explain the dagger in your side.” I laughed before reaching out to grab the half-baked wizard by the collar of his expensive shirt and yank him to spin around so he was nearly pressed in to his wall of fire. His side wound bleeding terribly with the forceful removal of his body from the dagger.
I stared in to his eyes and pulled my axe head to press in his neck. “Nera hired you, didn’t she? It had nothing to do with Goldie. Actually I bet you even used Charming to turn in your own niece with telling him how perfect it would be here. Then selling her to the Blue Faerie for what? A bounty price?”
He stared back at me with wide eyes. “It isn’t what you think.”
I pressed the axe in to him tighter as Goldie slipped next to me, giving him a hurt expression. “What do I think, Fioravante?”
“She’d free me of my beard. And bring them back.” He tried explaining. My smile faded.
“Them?”
“Every soul dead in that chamber of filth. And every soul I killed without mercy as the Pirate King.” He continued as his eyes drifted away from looking at me. I glanced over my shoulder at Bonny. Did Bonny kill without mercy as well?
I pulled my axe and hand from him and stepped away with a sigh. “You poor idiot. No one has enough magical power to bring back that many people and even if they did, yanking that many souls back and giving them a body after death. You wouldn’t know what condition they would be in. No one has ever come back from death the same as before.”
I shook my head as Goldie tried to interrupt me. “And knowing Nera, even if she could do it, they would come back as zombies or monsters under her control. But you don’t care about that…”
His head fell in shame, but at the same time his wall of fire also dropped. His head lifted again but a smile was on his face. He pulled his arms up to shrug while saying, “I guess you caught me.”
I lunged forward and grabbed Goldie as a surge of energy rushed over Fioravante’s body. The entire room lit with brilliance and was drenched in raw energy as I ran Goldie back to everyone else, while averting my eyes.
The energy still tingled around us as the light died out and left two Bluebeards standing in the room.
“Your mind games won’t work, Miss Red.” Both of the Fioravantes began in unison. “I never said I cared about what state the souls would be in. I gave them to the Blue Faerie to use in return for all the magical power I have.”
It was hard to hide my disgust as I gripped my axe tighter. “You’re a sick and perverted man, Fioravante.”
“Because I love killing? How many have you killed? How many ‘perverted’ things have you done?”
“That’s not the point! Killing should never be fun or something you look forward to! Even if it is, to get your enjoyment out of other people’s suffering, that’s despicable.” I explained while swiping my axe through the air.
“And there lies the problem. I do like it, even if you don’t. Is it so wrong for me to do something I like?”
I couldn’t answer. Even if it was sick, and it hurt others, doing what you like is human nature. It was what everyone wanted, right? To do the things they enjoyed and loved without others trying to get in the way… even if sometimes it did hurt people.
“Nothing to say, Miss Red?” Both the Fioravantes laughed and it sounded creepy, like an echo in a haunted home.
My eyes fell to Ashe. Things like kissing girls…
My vision trailed to Ettie. Or things like performing magic…
My sight befell Goldie. Or things like thieving…
Then they lowered to Bonny and Roberts. Or even being a pirate…
Someone could get hurt with those things, but that didn’t stop them from being enjoyable or wanting to do it.
I sighed.
Why did that terrible man have to be right, in some way?
“Well if you are going to be like that…” The echoing voice of Fioravante finished before both of them drew in energy with their hands. The energy swirled while he incanted. Just as the sparkling missles of magical energy poured from his hands, Ettie stepped up to me and pushed a pistol in to my hand.
I yanked the pistol up in front of me with a straight arm at the same time Ettie aimed hers. The smile drained from my lips as magic drained from my hand and poured in the weapon before I pulled the trigger a few times while moving my hand barely.
Magical shots of energy erupted forward, at least ten blasts between Ettie and I, all colliding with the magic missiles before they had even reached their targets. Only two missiles remained that Ettie tried to catch, but before she could fire they both collided with Ashe and sent her reeling back in to Bonny, whom caught her.
I turned to face Fioravante with fury in my eyes. But Goldie tapped my shoulder and pointed to the piles of ash on the stone. My eyes shot to Ashe whom was standing and smiling toward me, with a pinch of sadness.
Some gnomes saved her…
I couldn’t help but smile back before I turned to Fioravante who was drawing in another spell. I glanced to Ettie and smiled. “You got the left one?”
She nodded as I slipped her gun back to her and we broke immediately. She ran to the side, firing and I shot forward in full sprint.
Fioravante gasped as both of them broke their concentration to either dodge magic bullets from Ettie or sidestep my Axe slice. The one I attacked retaliated with a firm punch into my chest to send me skidding across the ground before he pulled two hard stone swords from the earth, leaving indents there.
The one Ettie attacked was caught by one of the bullets on the shoulder and somewhere in the side, but quickly forced an explosion of fire next to Ettie that caught on her shorts and singed them before she patted it out.
“So both of you are real. That’s not taught in the faerie academy.” I said while jumping forward and swiping my axe. He blocked it with one sword and stabbed with the other. I stepped into it, taking the stab below my shoulder as I thrust my axe at him which pushed him back and kept the sword from sinking in too deep.
I could feel the blood drip down as I heard explosions somewhere behind me and shivered at the pure magic that vibrated through the air. My attention fell to Fioravante while I pumped extra energy in my arms and pushed some power in my axe before swiping again.
His swords met my axe but they were cleaved through, shattering them to dust before I spun around to keep the momentum and swirl the axe to slice across his stomach.
Deep blue magic leaked from the shallow wound as I grinned. “Got you.”
He roared and summoned up energy without an incantation, simply forcing the power out of him and blasting at me.
I was shot across the room while my axe dug a jagged line in the ground before I slowed enough to stop near a wall. My still-bandaged head rattled, causing me to shake my head before taking a deep breath through my nose.
I looked between the two Blue-bearded men. The one having a magical explosion duel with Ettie was actually bleeding at the shoulder and a couple other areas while mine was shedding magic like it was blood.
“Similar in every way except the blood running through your veins?” I asked as the Fioravante fighting Ettie paused and glanced to me with wide eyes. This caused him to take a barrage of magic shots from the gunslinging witch, which made him drop to his knees, smoking and bleeding.
He glanced up. “You think better, on your feet, than we had expected.”
“You have no idea, Fioravante.” I grinned and ripped my axe from the ground before running toward the magic-bleeding wizard. He dodged the swipe of my axe, but hadn’t expected the sudden bullet shot to his leg from the new pirate king. I forced the handle of my axe against his throat and pushed him in the nearest wall with all my strength.
He collided hard enough in the stone to leave an imprint as I pulled out two hatchets han
ging on my belt and stabbed them in the wall. I melded the hatchets in the wall with the force of a little magic then against the long-handled axe as well, to cut off his air supply with the handle against his throat.
“If you have no blood, you have no need to breathe, right?” I tipped my head to him before pulling my hands away and walking from that clone.
The Fioravante I had been fighting tried to grab at my clothing, but he couldn’t reach. I could feel him build up another shot of energy without using an incantation and spun around to face him. My free hands rose together in front of me and then I pulled them apart like I would rip a pomegranate. Fioravante’s arms tore from his body, causing blue magical energy to gush from the wounds and spew all around him while his appendages lying on the floor started to shed in to magical dust.
I turned on the other blue-bearded wizard, who was still smoking from the hits Ettie had laid in to him. Or maybe she had even shot some more I hadn’t heard over Bonny’s shot. He was pulling up to his feet though, with an arm hanging forward like he couldn’t use it.
I stood in front of him, blocking Ettie from firing further as I glared to him before he finally tossed his head up to look at me.
“You are right.” I stated.
He furrowed his brows in surprise and coughed a laugh.
I continued, “People should be free to do the things they enjoy. But they also have to understand the risks they take by enjoying anything. Maybe they aren’t always fair risks, or you don’t notice the risk, but they are still the bad parts you accept when you do something that feels good to you.”
I leaned in and grabbed the man by his beard, pulling his face toward me as I poured all my anger in my stare. “And now your risk-taking has caught up with you. You knew some day someone would come to kill you for having killed someone they knew.”
“Yes.” He replied before a smile twisted across his face and a surge of energy poured out of him and traveled along my hand setting my body on fire and spreading all across me as my hand tore away from him and I dropped to one knee in pure twisting agony. My fists crushed in the ground to grit against the pain but I couldn’t hold it.
The Real Folktale Blues (Beyond Ever After #1) Page 26