Chapter 11682Please respect copyright.PENANAzJ6JZ5zDcR
Gale:
Fortunately, with so much magic being used in the room all at once, it took the witch a long moment of searching before she could pinpoint me as the warlock sucking her heavy magical borders around the cave. I knew the moment she saw me when her eyes glowed yellow and she started rolling her fingers on her left hand around very fast. She was forming a ball of magic and from the strength of the magical border she wove around the cave I knew the ball was going to be powerful and large. Too big, in fact for Monroe to dodge without magical help. I twisted my body and in a sort of tackle pose grab onto Monroe and very recklessly blast the stored up magic to my feet just barely missing the massive ball of magic that shook the room. Of course, we hit a wall and lost our breath for a moment, however, a quick glance around the room after detangling ourselves from each other showed that the witch wasn’t after us anymore. The other magical chants seemed to be doing a wonderful job distracting the witch from our presence off to the right side of the witch.
“Come on she’s close.” Monroe with one arm lifts me up and having difficulty standing I look down to realize that the fall had twisted my right leg the wrong way. The pain stung me to the point that I almost didn’t pick up on the witch’s whispering of a spell. Quickly I turned my head over to see the witch drop to the ground in the middle of the room and start thrashing around.
“Come forth my minions and wage war against those who wish to stop my work.” Immediately I recognized the spell and I forced myself to pulse a magical layer over both me and Monroe healing our bodies as it washes over us. I’ve heard that spell spoken only once before and it resulted in a massacre for a fifth of my country. Possibly the only person who can stop this spell from completion is Rachael who had her power sealed away at birth because she was so full of magic.682Please respect copyright.PENANA2e0ArXFKdP
I needed to get to Rachael to kiss wake her up with the cliched true love’s kiss.
Monroe:
I could feel my scratches and bruises healing themselves when Gale’s magic washed over me. Gale didn’t have to say a word for me to feel his urgency and slight despair when he let go of me and started sprinting over to Rachael. I followed after him running sideways to always have an eye on the witch who continued throwing fireballs, but this time aimed at Sleepy who must have shown up to cover for us. Looking back at Sleepy, I vaguely had a sense that Sleepy had training as a ninja as she swiftly and with much agility kept dodging the colossal balls of magic.
Slam! Thump! Thump!
I barely miss getting taken down by a bookshelf that suddenly appears and started dropping in my path. I glance behind at the fallen bookshelf to see a smirking female ghost hovering above the bookshelf.
“Monroe jump!” Automatically I leap about three feet in the air in time for Becka to slide under me with a large sword slicing the ghost in the leg. I glance back at the sound of the ghost screaming before it turns to ash.682Please respect copyright.PENANA1GG5YZcRE5
“I’ve got your back! Get Gale’s!” Becka yells swiftly standing up in a fighting stance with her sword ready for the army of ghost that appeared from a cloud of smoke running after me and Gale. I don’t waste time picking up my pace to catch up with Gale, who is closing into Rachael.
“Duck!” Ashley screams from my right side. Gale, too focused on getting to Rachael’s coffin, didn’t hear the warning and keeps running. “Gale duck!” As I dove to the ground I latch on to Gale’s feet tripping him. In a nick of time, Gale makes contact with the ground the same moment Ashley fires an arrow at a ghost and the ash falls on Gale’s hair.
“Thanks!” Gale hollers using his magic to shoot himself horizontal to the floor to Rachael’s coffin. I follow after him sticking close to the ground. The distance thankfully was only about five feet and when I arrived Gale was staring down at Rachael with a confused expression.
“Aren’t you supposed to kiss her awake?” I yell over Sneezy firing bazookas next to us.
“I did!” I turn to give him an equally confused look.
“Gale hurry up and kiss her!” Becka yells, running off to us covered in sweat with both hands holding her heavy sword up.
“I did! True love’s kiss is supposed to wake her, but she isn’t waking up!” I catch Ashley’s eye roll as she turns to look at us killing a ghost closing in on us.
“Nobody said anything about it being true love’s kiss.” Gale takes a step back surprised before looking at me. I clear all emotions from my face.
“It’s your call.” Gale takes a moment to think, glancing all around the room. After a few seconds, he looks up at me and sighs making the call.
“Okay do it.” I nod at him before turning to Rachel and lower my head to Rachael’s face and kiss her lips.
Snow:
A strong gust of wind and a blinding flash made me stop chanting mid-sentence. When the light dims to the point that I can see again, I see that Isabella is no longer chanting anymore. In fact, she is looking to the other side of the room in awe. I turn my head to follow her and gasp in shock. Rachael is floating in the air with a pillar of smoke coming out of her to form a female creature with the beauty of an angel yet with the aura of an evil spirit. Everything in the room including the ghost-like forms mid-flight, the sickly thin witch, and bookshelves mid-fall. The creature from Rachael smiles down at everything before stopping to smirk at the ancient witch and the ghost-like forms. The witch unfreezes to scream in horror as the beautiful creature plucks the witch to pop in it’s mouth of fire swallow whole. Likewise, the same plucking and eating the entire being happens to the ghosts too. Finally, when it seemed the creature had eaten it’s full and all of the ghosts gone, the creature smiles again satisfied before retreating back inside Rachael.
Gale:
Everything vanished. Once the creature retreated back inside Rachael, everything that used to be in the room disappeared. The only people left is me, Monroe, Snow, and Rachael. Speaking of Rachael, I turn to see Monroe slowly getting up holding Rachael gently in his arms bridal style. Monroe is the one to save us all. I really don’t mind that he saved us, in fact, I expected him to save us by bringing us out of the cave. The only thing troubling me now is that I could sense that Rachael’s seal to restrict her wild magic broke, yet her magic is eerily calm. I walk over to Monroe holding Rachael and reach out my magic to her. My magic visually disintegrates three inches away from her body.
“Woah, is that normal?” Snow says trudging over to me and Monroe.
“We need to get out of here before this place crumbles from excessive magic use. It’s never good when enclosed places absorb too much magic because it can cause an aftershock.” Snow nods while Monroe shifts Rachael in his arms to an obviously more comfortable and less awkward position. I almost smile because Rachael is now out of the witch’s grasps, but then remembered that Monroe had unleashed Rachael’s power. It took eight elders and two elders died midway through the ritual to seal up Rachael’s magic, yet human Monroe was able to break the seal with a single kiss and looks perfectly healthy afterward too.
“Okay, but how do we get out? The witch’s entrance disappears,” Snow points out. I look around to see that Snow is indeed right; the witch’s entrance did disappear and the hole to the other room was probably put back in place and morphed back into the wall as a safety precaution to keep humans from stumbling into this room.
“Let’s try that tunnel.” Snow and I turn toward where Monroe gestured.
“There’s no tunnel there,” Snow deadpanned. I walk over to the wall Monroe pointed at inspecting it. Being in a witch or warlock’s lair can be a tricky place, especially when the witch or warlock dies because their magic once placed into something such as the area around their lair will not die out with the person.
“Actually there is a tunnel here.” I poke a hand through the wall and half of it disappears. It is the same magical glamour as the front entrance except more woven together to prevent other witches and or warlocks from finding it. Normally only those with intense magical training would be able to see through the glamour of such this detailed magical weaving so quickly, but I suppose some of Rachael’s magic from the kiss could have affected him. I tighten up slightly reflecting back to Rachael and Monroe’s kiss as I pulsed my magic through the glamour, creating an opening for us to pass through the thick glamour.
Monroe:
I walk through the hole first only to see a fork in the tunnel with a dim light in the right tunnel. I wait for the others to arrive next to me and we follow the light to the opening of the tunnel that leads to a cliff on the side of the mountain.
“Wow this is beautiful,” whispers Snow breathlessly beside me looking out at the evening sunset filtering through the soaring trees. I nod in agreement before I start to feel Rachael begin to shift in my hands.
“We should spend the night here to reserve our strength. Tomorrow at sunrise we can start heading back to camp. There’s not enough sunlight for us to make it back to town anyway,” I speak walking away from the tunnel entrance to find a place to set Rachael down gently. Snow turns as if to say something to me before she freezes squinting in the escaping light at the wall of the tunnel for a quick moment.
“Hey, I found some blankets and food!” Snow exclaims reaching into a crevice in the wall she was just examining. Gale using his magic makes a modest fire and we ate a little bit of the food left in the crevice and curled up with some blankets around the fire to sleep.
Snow:
I woke up the next day to a bright light.
“Ugh, Gale turn off your magic light. I’m trying to sleep.”
“It’s not Gale’s magic Snow,” states Monroe. Like the morning person I am, I groan and get up to a sitting position prepared to give the guys my best glare only to pause at the brilliant light. As my eyes got used to the light, I realized that there was a third man sitting between an awake Monroe and Gale. The man appeared to be about 35 with the same dark walnut skin as Rachael. The strange man reached out his hand to me smiling and I realized that the strange man was the one emitting the bright light.
“Hello, you must be Snow. I’m Rachael’s birth father.”
Rachael:
I woke up midday to see Snow, Gale, and Monroe sitting in a daze around the long since extinguished bonfire.
“Hey! We shouldn’t we get back to camp,” I said pulling them out of their stupor before yawning.
“You’re right. We all need to go back to camp soon.” Monroe as always is the responsible one among our group. I look around confused and bewildered at Snow and Gale silently clean up camp in the tunnel in the mountain. Snow and Gale are never quiet. Even when Snow is sleeping, she is always mumbling in her sleep and Gale has always been the most talkative person in any group. In addition to this rare and unnatural silence from the two, I feel like I am missing something of paramount importance, but I shouldn’t because I don’t feel like I forgot anything. I remember the witch’s red apple with a spell in it that made me walk right into her lair and clutches; including my dwarfs appearing, Isabella, and Snow chants to save me; and unfortunately, Monroe’s kiss to break the witch’s spell on me. There are no blanks in my memory, yet the three are all ghastly colored as if I did miss something.
“Can you walk?” Monroe politely asks me, pulling me out of my own trance. I look up at him and nodded a bit too vigorously. After that kiss and even though the kiss wasn’t one of those stereotypical “true love’s kiss”, I still don’t like that he was the one to break my spell rather than Gale. I can’t wait to return back to camp and then quickly leave getting as far away from Monroe as possible.
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