Chapter 44
Human Again
- Enchanted cloak! -
Roxy's defense spell enveloped Cassandra moments before one of the two mages hit her. Darcy went back to them, without the seal.
- What happened? - she asked incredulous.
She left behind two fairies, not a fairy and a witch who, moreover, couldn't even stand on her feet.
- Nevermind. We need more hands. - she said.
The following second in the room there were a dozen of Darcies, most of them flew away looking for the seal while the real one and two clones stayed to face the thieves. They were good adversaries, they responded to every attack and when the witch came to her senses again the situation could only get worse.
Cassandra, basically powerless, could do nothing but try to understand what happened to her. She didn't try to use negative energy, not consciously. But she was a fairy, theoretically she shouldn't be able to do it unconsciously so easily and effectively to cause the transformation into a witch!
Finally, a clone came back to Darcy with the Amer's seal, a thick golden ring with a carving of a crown of palm leaves. Darcy took it and quickly examined it. It was rather disappointing, even more than in Tecna's holograms, but that was irrelevant.
- We can go. Roxy, help Cassandra. Eye darkness! -
The Rocs' eyes, only visible part of their faces, became completely black. Disorientated by the loss of sight, the three of them stopped attacking them and Roxy's scorpion's tail hit them one after the other.
- Let's go back to the others. - Darcy said, cancelling the clones.
- I hope they didn't find any surprise. - said Roxy, helping Cassandra rising up from the floor and following Darcy in the gallery.
Once out of the treasure room Darcy renewed the invisibility spell and sent a telepathic message to Icy, so that she and the others got as far as they could from the Shaab stones.
They say that the way back is always shorter, and it was that time too. Soon the three of them were again in the large entrance of the cave, with its four torches totally useless against the darkness of the night. They found the other group waiting for them a few meters inside the tunnel to the prison, and they were all together. Indeed, there was even one too many of them.
- Who's that? - asked Darcy abruptly, reappearing suddenly and causing Francesca, Sky and Takeshi's hearts to stop.
- Don't you ever do that again. - hissed Tecna, who didn't appreciate more than the others.
- He's my new goat keeper. We take him with us. - replied Selim, - More importantly, do you have the seal? -
Darcy threw it at him, and he caught it mid-air, putting it into an inner pocket on the tunic.
- Cass, what happened to you? - asked Bloom, noticing the girl's change.
She shook her head as to say, "I have no idea".
- We'll take care of that on the shuttle. Vanir must be going crazy. - whispered Takeshi, who personally couldn't wait to get out of there.
Said and done, Darcy teleported everyone back on the Owl, where they were welcomed by a half-asleep Yami, an anxious Vanir and an even more anxious Stella. Ioanna and Giunia seemed more tired of waiting than anything. Vanir hugged his teammates one after the other, and Sky too.
- Luckily, you're safe and sound. Takeshi, Walter, at your seats. Let's set the coordinates and get away from this hell. -
The two obeyed at once and in a few moments the Owl was on its way back. Once he set the autopilot, Walter turned the seat and said:
- Well, I can say it now: I didn't think that getting out would have been so much easier than getting in. -
Stormy smiled.
- It's always like that when they don't expect someone to get in. -
- Personal experience? -
The witch giggled.
- Obviously. -
Even while talking to her Walter was looking at Darcy as if he thought he would never see her again, and it was extremely funny in Stormy's eyes. It would have been much funnier if Darcy wasn't busy trying to understand the reason behind Cassandra's transformation together with Flora, Bloom and Francesca. Cassandra tried to hold back the tears, but she was this close to losing it. The attention and all those questions scared her more than the thing itself.
- Are you sure you didn't cast a negative spell? -
- It didn't hurt you, did it? -
- Do you want some water? -
- Maybe it's temporary, do you want to try to transform into Bloomix? -
- Give her the time to answer at least. - snapped Stormy.
Cassandra was very grateful for this.
- Maybe some water will help. It didn't hurt and I can't transform, I already tried. I didn't use negative energy, I just regained control of my spell after that tiny box got to me. -
- What box? - asked Flora.
- It was small, black, it had tiny wings and it took apart in a cloud of black feathers. Then I felt my powers vanishing for a second, then I transformed. -
- Black feathers? - repeated Bloom.
- Yes. -
Bloom turned to Icy, who was listening.
- Are you thinking what I'm thinking? -
Icy nodded and asked the newcomer:
- Do you also have crow dust in that rats' nest? -
He nodded.
- What is it? - asked Francesca.
- Crow dust is the opposite of fairy dust. - explained Bloom, - Icy used it on me once and I lost my powers for at least twenty minutes. But I didn't undergo any transformation. -
- Because you barely tried to use magic after. - Icy intervened, - I think Cassandra tried to maintain her attack using any form of energy, but the only kind she could use in that moment was negative. Thus, she transformed. -
- Can I go back to how I was before? -
- I don't know. -
Francesca put a hand on her friend's shoulder.
- Faragonda will help you, you'll see. - she said.
"I'd trust Griselda or Dafne more" thought Cassandra, finally going back to her civilian clothes. Seeing that the problem had been archived, Vanir asked the two groups to tell what happened. Tecna quickly resumed the failed attempt of the first group, then it was Sky's turn.
- Darcy made everyone invisible, then she hypnotized one of the guards at the entrance and we got in. Me, Takeshi, Bloom and Icy went to the prisons, but the invisibility spell was lifted and we found Firat, who was happy to quit his job. -
Firat nodded enthusiastically, smiling at Selim (he had put down the scarf that covered his face), who acted indifferent as usual. Sky continued.
- We opened the cell, deactivating the lasers like Darcy said, and we waited until Icy brought us closer to the exit. -
- We flew down to the treasure hall. The guards weren't vigilant, - continued Roxy, - so we thought we could get in and out and they wouldn't notice. Instead the spell wore off and me and Cass covered for Darcy while she looked for the seal. Then Cass had the accident and… why did you come back, Darcy? -
- Since it was a recent loot, I hoped the seal would have been easy to find. When I understood that it would take some time I came back. Cassandra was ko and Roxy was defending them both, so I multiplied myself. One of the clones found the seal, I used an old trick on the guards, and we went back to the others. -
- Which old trick? - asked Stormy.
- Blindness. -
- Very old. -
- Always effective. -
- You're somewhere between funny and creepy. - commented Misha.
- We better get some well-deserved sleep, we won't be there before dawn. - said Walter.
In fact, now that adrenaline was gone, they began to feel tired. While Vanir and Walter discussed shifts Icy thought of Lzzy. She missed her terribly, she wished she was with her to help her and protect her and feel safe, at her place, like Lzzy made her feel.
Kalid Amer seemed almost irritated when Selim handed him the seal. The feeling of being in debt must annoy him very much, except that he remembered that he could easily repay the debt and forget everything. He murmured something to a butler in their language, then he coldly congratulated for the feat while the butler silently walked out of the room.
- Now that we know where they hide, it will be our duty to drive out the Rocs. - he mumbled without any emotion.
The tent behind which the butler had disappeared moved again and a boy, maybe eight or nine years old, came in, dressed in blue and with black hair. Behind him the butler carried an amber chest. The boy stopped at a respectful distance from the old man and bowed courteously to the guests.
- My nephew, Kalid II. He's the youngest male in the family, and thus the owner of the Flute. -
After the brief presentation, the old man said something to the nephew, who stopped curiously observing the foreigners and opened the chest that the butler had laid in front of him. He took out a wooden double-barreled flute painted in green and decorated with golden motifs. Looking attentively the drawings formed tidy lines of musical notes. The boy kneeled down, took a deep breath and started playing. The melody spiraled down with a sweet slow pace in a first moment, speeding up progressively. Icy, Stella and the others were enveloped by a golden light that hid them to the sight and when the melody died down, they all had their bodies again. It took merely 30 seconds. Kalid II, who held his breath the entire time, hurried to fill his chest with air.
- He can't breathe before the enchantment is completed, or it won't be effective. - explained his grandfather.
While Selim thanked the old man with a calm tone that hid a certain anger, Icy was busy convincing herself that she had hands again, not paws, that her ears were of the right size again, that the tail was gone and so was the white fur. She was herself again, and she owed it to the boy that smiled shyly seeing the happiness of the girls he had set free and of their friends. She would have tested her powers (nothing big, a simple snowfall), but it really wasn't the case. It was better to wait. Everything was easy now.
Stormy looked around lazily. It felt like it had been a century since she saw Donnie, since that craziness started. Instead it had been a little more than thirty-six hours and Alfea was closer and closer.
They had just left Selim and his new assistant Firat at the wizard's laboratory, and she felt very relieved for sparing Firat who knows what tortures - curious how her perspective changed after the trial. Next to her, Icy was impatient, and Stormy understood her very well: in her place she would have teleported on Earth already.
In a corner, Bloom and Sky were discussing quietly, but the crisis seemed to be over. On the other hand, Sky apparently got over himself given how he behaved during the mission. He even said sorry to her, Darcy and Icy. It had been a rather weird moment and somehow satisfying, because nobody had seen it coming and because, well, they had given Sky a lot of trouble and to them he was perfectly justified in his diffidence.
Now there was another crisis in the air: Ioanna and Giunia didn't speak at all and sat aside from the others, avoiding even Francesca and Cassandra. Stormy wished she was wrong, but the tension was evident. Those two wouldn't stand it. They were too immature to face Valtor, they weren't ready to risk anything of their comfortable life. Ok, they were earthlings: yes, they suddenly changed life three years earlier, but they had never really put their noses out of the lair. They were like puppies born in summer: during fall they start being uncomfortable, but they adapt somehow. Instead, with winter they find out they can't stand cold, and they run as best as they can. She didn't know what the two fairies would have done, but she doubted it would be solved with a talk.
The others, someone more, someone less, were finally calm: Yami sat satisfied on her chair, looking forward to her triumphal return to Cloudtower; Vanir just wanted a pillow (he went on with a few hours of sleep, and Stormy wondered if it was actually a good idea to have him drive); Misha and Takeshi discussed on who would offer dinner; Flora, Tecna, Stella and Roxy kept an eye on Bloom and Sky and Giunia and the others alternatively; Walter intervened every now and then in Misha and Takeshi's discussion and looked at Darcy every time he thought nobody was looking at him, smiling to himself.
Darcy, instead, was restless. She sat in a way that Stormy recognized as her nervous reflection position, that is, leaning on the seatback with her legs and arms crossed and the eyes looking into the void. She dared a lot during the mission, she casted more spells than she did in the last six months and thinking about it with a cold mind she wasn't sure that Roccaluce would understand anymore. It's not like there was a reason to talk to Roccaluce, to tell the truth, everything went well, they got out of it with a few scratches and they didn't do anything wrong… but she hypnotized a person and she blinded three, and even though they were criminals it was still wrong according to common conscience, or maybe not, maybe it had been necessary and they wouldn't hold her accountable, or maybe they would have considered that she did it for a good reason and the goal justifies the means…