The guardswoman in the castle tower put a gloved hand in front of her mouth and let out a mighty yawn to let the universe know she was tired; it was the wee hours of the morning, after all. Wait, that sounded misleading— you see, she had woken up scarcely a half-hour ago, so it was that kind (the bedheadded kind) of tired.

The door behind Frida had blocked out any of the usual sounds one might expect a sleeping person to make, but earlier in the evening and morning, ambassador Magnus had asked her a couple of small questions. Nothing too interesting, but it was fun for her to see how excitable a scary, uptight dignitary like himself could be.

A little grin perked the sides of her mouth skyward mid-yawn, knowing she would be riding the high of those complements he'd given her for a few days.

Frida was settling in for a long, boring night watch, and stretched to rattle the sleep out of her bones; knowing that conking out on the job would be unforgivable based on her charge. She adjusted her dummy-thick glasses, and brought a small book out of her pocket to peruse when there came a knocking on the door behind her.

Quite nearly yelping in surprise, Frida put a hand on her grimoire as she turned to face the offending doors. Creaking open like a rusted gate, the wooden barrier soon revealed the handsome, broad shouldered figure of the Clover ambassador; blood was pouring from a fresh wound on his arm, and Magnus had one more question for the young witch.

"Hey," he said with his perfect teeth gritted in pain, "do you know how to hide a body?"

————————————————

Fifteen hours earlier.

Magna despised the feeling of being coddled deep in his guts— not like when Deandra helped him get dressed, because she was hilarious to talk to, and it wasn't like he could lace a corset by himself. No, what he hated was happening right now; engirded on all sides by witches despite that this was just supposed to be a 'lighthearted excursion into town'.

The excessive guard detail was intended to protect him from hecklers, spies, fights, poisoned food, gropers, pickpockets, assassins, muggers, and merchants who overcharged for cabbage, but it seemed more to Magna like they were shielding him from any semblance of fun. The yankee-in-noble's clothing could smell all kinds of wonderful scents wafting up from carts and stalls in the marketplace, but the Witch Queen had insisted on all her largest guards accompanying him outside, so he couldn't seeany of the desserts that surrounded them.

But by God were those aromas tempting.

It wrenched at his poor heart to hear about the very first pudding batch of the day being set out for sale, but not be allowed to approach the counter upon which they lay. Magna's guard detail denied him any of the desserts on the grounds of 'potential poisoning' and ushered—or rather, dragged—him deeper into the marketplace, nearly reducing the boy to tears.

Maintaining his princely composure was getting harder with every step, so the anguished boy just grit his teeth and tried to shut down all his senses. It didn't work. Every single time they got near something cool and/or dangerous-looking the guards would try to ensure Magna got nowhere closer to it. That also didn't work; the young man was a magnitude stronger than his wiry frame, and ascot suggested.

At the ambassador's incessant attempts to break from their formation, the elderly, stern-faced leader of his detail—and a woman far too important to be on babysitting duty—General Weatherwax ordered someone closer to his age to keep him more… orderly. So the senior witch shoved a meek girl with coke-bottle glasses into the center of their phalanx with a simple, "Introduce yourself." as instruction.

That olive skinned girl blushed as her boss's wrinkly hand pushed her in front of the scar-faced man, but quickly snapped her own hand up in a salute and said, "Hello, ambassador Wing! I am Lieutenant Frida Mondragon Posada-Sanchez! Pleased to meet you!"

"I love that enthusiasm! You probably already know me, but my name's Magnus!"

Though Magna didn't quite recognize the pair, Boo would know them as the early birds who tried to interfere with her beatdown of the fire mage. This wasn't a problem seeing as how the very previous thing Frida said was her rank and name…

Wait, rank?

"Hold up, you're a lieutenant?" Asked the young man as he was physically compelled further along the market path; Magna had been briefed on the forest's defenses, and nothing was mentioned about a proper standing force. "But I've never heard of the Witch's Forest having a military."

"That's cause it's brand new." Frida explained, one finger aimed skyward, another adjusting her preposterously thick glasses, "We had a small militia before, but the Queen just recently made us into the 'Witch guard'. She said it was to keep the forest safer without as many golems, so her majesty held tryouts for new recruits— and she was so impressed with my magic that I skipped the trial."

She hummed, lost in thought for a second before adding, "Or I skipped the trial because I was already in the militia… either way, she was dazzled!"

Magna was curious a second ago, and riveted now, "Huh? What kinda magic dazzles the Witch Queen?"

"Observe."

The girl's grimoire glowed for a second, and bones started sprouting all around her body like a calcarious suit of armor; within seconds, the bespectacled witch was entombed fully in weaponized bone. To put it in clear, concise vernacular: It looked totally sick.

There where sparkles in the ambassador's eyes while he ogled the armor, and as he was shoved forward by Weatherwax herself, he shouted, "Whoa!! That's so manly! Er, uh, I mean, amazing! How hard was this to learn? I've only seen like, two people use magic armor! This is so cool!"

Magna leaned in closer to inspect the boney, spiked gauntlets on the witch's arm, and under her calavera mask, Frida felt her face heat up; the ambassador, who seemed so aloof and uptight a scant second ago was simply gushing over her magic, and it was more than enough to make the girl blush.

A bell pealed twice in the middle distance, and an announcer's voice rang out with an excited cry; the perfect recipe to snap Magna's attention away from the bone armor, giving Frida a rest from his awestruck scrutiny. "Is that the sound of—!?"

"Welcome, witches of the Forest to Bruja Lucha!!!" The announcer called out, "In this corner we have the dashing Hermione Wurlitzer, and in the red corner it's her dastardly nemesis!"

"There's pro wrestling in the market!?" Magna hollered as he tried jumping high enough to see above his torturers' pointed hats. He caught a glimpse of the following…

"Folks, it's a flying power bomb! Ooh, that looks like it hurt!"

"Raaaahh!!!!"

"Raaahhh!!"

Just before the Heel of this event caught Hermione in a headlock, a fist stole Magna's collar and forced him back earthward. The boy deflated as the guards dragged him bodily away from the wrestling ring; at least half of his detail seemed genuinely sad about leaving the market's screaming crowd, and one of the rowdier witches said, "Sorry, ambassador, we have strict orders to avoid any and all fights."

"Even this one?"

Frida wiped a tear from her cheek, confirming that, "Yeah, you're not even allowed near fighting."

It's like the Queen knows exactly how to torture me. I can't even WATCH people hurt each other?

"You don't have time for such base spectacles anyway, the Witch Queen already has a destination in mind for you." Weatherwax snoot-ed.

"Umm… what do you mean, Granny Weatherwax?"

The second witch general pinched the bridge of her nose, already sickened of Magnus' addition of 'Granny' to her name and said, "This isn't some pointless trip to the market you daft pup, you're here to draw attention, and have a quill pen custom made."

"Aww, come on, can't I at least get some of that 'death curry' over by the knife shop and firework stand?"

"Every word of that sentence was worse than the last." The wizened old woman deadpanned as her charge made puppy dog eyes. The supplicating gesture looked frankly disturbing coming from a lad with a sizable scar on his face. "Now you've kept us long enough already Magnus, so hurry the Hell up. A quill fitting isn't a short process, especially not for people with small amounts of magic."

"Umm… How long will that take?"

"At minimum, two hours. For you, closer to three an' a half. And your hands will cramp, so you'd best start stretching now." Came her unsympathetic response.

As the boy was ushered into a lavishly expensive looking boutique—suspecting this process would again be paid by his own empty pockets—an old thought recurred in his head.

Why me?

————————————

Misty sunlight poured in from an open window in a quaint, yet regal study. The Witch Queen sat behind a gorgeous mahogany desk and busied herself with scratching out a draft of her treaty with Clover. After a truly forceful scrape from her quill echoed across the room, she could hear a pair of footsteps enter her private library.

Miss Sangue didn't bother looking up at her guests, at least, not until after she had completely obliterated the parchment in her hand. Keeping her grumbles to herself, but not her soul-piercing death glare, the Queen peered up with a question that'd been ruining her life so far this morning.

"How has research into Magnus' background gone, science team? I need that data posthaste."

The sisters Phoebe and Hilda jumped back slightly at the sudden call, but the taller scientist cleared her throat fast enough to beat her elder in response time.

"D-difficult, miss Sangue. No matter how hard we search through the articles and papers Clover sent us, the ambassador doesn't seem to be reported on." Hilda's eyes went slightly crossed with nerve, but the spindly nerd powered on with a query for the Queen anyway. "Um, but, uh, just a quick question your Highness… why do you need to know about Magnus' background so bad?"

"Because, Hilda, it would prove far easier to judge a man's worth if one knew of his past." Sangue answered, "Even if he is dreamy, my intentions are to secure as much advantage in the Clover deal as I can. I can hardly draft my demands without knowing whether he'd get me a king's ransom or a pauper's salary. Okay, your report, Phoebe, now."

Did the Queen just say 'dreamy'? Phoebe wondered before prepping the papers of her own study. "Umm, ahem, My genealogical research corroborates your own, your Highness: Nothing can be found on the Wing family in Clover, and Magnus isn't a registered member of the Black Bulls. Looking further into the matter, it's, well… it's as if Magnus Wing doesn't exist."

Her boss's face fell in an instant. The Queen of witches knew that despite the chasm between their dispositions, the science sisters were equally erudite; when they agreed on something, it was best to believe them… even if Hilda was a walking bisexual disaster.

"Nothing? You found nothing?" Rubbing around her temples, Sangue stood up and groaned, "Good lord… I should never have skipped that boy's interrogation. Pretending to be nice is awful— I hate men so much."

Phoebe hopped out of the path her Queen was carving straight out the room, and said, "Well, you do catch more flies with vinegar than honey."

"I think you have that saying backwards…" Hilda piped up from a few steps back, fiddling with her wedding band out of nerve.

"As a scientist, I can confirm that the common insect prefers vinegar." Phoebe asserted to her younger sibling before turning to face her Queen once more, "Following that allegory, I believe your most appropriate action here is to cow the ambassador into obedience. Threats of grievous violence should work fine."

"Phoebe, have you actually met Magnus? That boy knows absolutely no fear, so I'm starting with honey. I expect it will do better than vinegar has for me in the past…" The Witch Queen steepled her fingers in that way she often did, changing the subject back to her current methods, "Why, even now the ambassador should be having a fabulous time, seeing as how I've bestowed him one of the Forest's highest honors. He shall return from his lovely little excursion, and be perfectly willing to cooperate on my terms."

"Are you sure you want to play the long game? You've got a tight deadline here…" Phoebe challenged, leaning closer to the clawed woman in a way that only a single-minded scientist could.

"Enough with your worrying already— I'll give the ambassador exactly two days to become pliant to me. If he refuses to cooperate after such time, I'll put the screws to his thumbs, and Make. Him. Obey."

As the conversation wound down, a senior member of the Witch Guard floated into the hall through a stone aperture, and gave an unsteady salute to the trio below her. Once the new arrival to the meeting got close enough for shouts to be unnecessary, the Queen asked her, "What have you to report of my hostage's morning trip? Only good things, I expect."

The witch, who was already shaking when she got off her broom, coughed into a hand before saying, "To directly quote Magnus…" and clicking the side of a magical noise box on.

From the speaker came the ambassador's voice, however grainy the recording was, he said, "If the Queen wants to torture me so bad, she can get her hands dirty like a real man. I hate this, I hate her, I hate everything! Get away from me, can't you see I'm trying to cry!?"

Various vials and sconces decorating the cloister shook, creaked like an old galleon, and then burst; the stones around the quartet shifted and ground supernaturally, but when they looked at the Witch Queen, her face was serene. Leaning in foolishly close to the pink-haired matriarch, Hilda could hear the grinding of teeth.

"If you want to live. Leave now." The Queen said, dismissing all her attendants as blood boiled under her skin. She stood there placidly for ten minutes, until the entire pathway was reduced to rubble.

When Magna returned from his trip, he refused any audience with her Majesty, skulking past everyone in the castle while he nursed his hand; hoping he could at least get some work done in his soured mood.

——————————————

The sun had gone down long ago, allowing instead for moonbeams to filter through the cage bars; dancing and mixing with candlelight to illuminate the parchment on Magna's nightstand. It'd only hit the boy on his fifth hour of drafting a negotiation that Sangue likely hadn't meant for him to begin work on it without her input.

That helped to explain the sheer volume of scrapped drafts he had gone through with no clue as to what a treaty was even supposed to look like. He at least knew who won that wrestling match, after asking Frida about it earlier in the evening.

He cursed under his breath out of frustration, and the stubborn bastard finally gave in to the bags gathering under his eyes; rubbing at his sleepy face as a bullet careened past his head. Magna had just leaned sideways to set down his glasses, and if he'd done so a split-second later, he would be missing a chunk of his scalp.

Turning his head around to face the source of that quiet gunshot, Magna saw a hooded, rifle-toting silhouette on the stone windowsill. The newcomer cursed under their breath while loading another round, seemingly because they were stupid enough to not recognize they'd been spotted. Though to be fair, the rudimentary firearm was equipped with a silencer.

Bewildered by such a sudden attempt on his life, but too tired to be bothered about it, Magna walked to the edge of his cage and said to the assassin, "Hey, uh, bitch. You know I can see you, right?"

Startled by their target's question, the shadowed figure slipped and fell ten feet to the floor, cursing again as they impacted uneven marble butt-first. Magna could tell it was a man's voice hurling those muffled imprecations, and sauntered out of his combination cage/guest-room to go greet him.

Just seeing a man that wanted him dead brought some violent tendencies into to Magna's mind; it also returned memories of his torturous morning trip, and now the boy really wanted to get yankee on someone's ass. Fitting the quill pen left his hand cramped for hours, and it all came out of pocket, so he was flat broke now.

It was the perfect recipe for truculence.

"You know, I'm really not s'posed to be fighting anyone by myself, but…" his mouth curved up in a giant serial-killer smile, "I won't tell the guard outside if you fight me without yer' magic."

"The only reason I'm so deep in witch territory is because I haven't used a single spell so far." The hooded man said, visibly exasperated, "Do you have any idea how tough it was to climb this tower without an ounce of magic?"

"Eh, doesn't sound that hard. I mean, you had rope, right?"

"Such impudence! I have the Diamond Kingdom's finest sciences with me, and I've trained my body far past that of my fellow infiltrators!"

"Trained your body like this?" Magna asked as he lifted up his pajama shirt, showing the assassin the rock-hard abdominal muscles underneath.

"What the dink?!" The Diamond agent swore vulgarly, a blush of either bewilderment or titillation on his face. "But you're just a diplomat!"

"Ah, so you bozos haven't heard I'm a magic knight. Didn't ya' see my manly scars? I've been in a lotta fights."

"Our intel isn't that bad. You, Magna Swing are a bottom rank loser from the Black Bulls— the loser squad." The assassin said as he primed the rifle in his hands.

"Hey! Whatt'ya mean 'loser'!?"

"You know exactly what I mean. When we researched you, we couldn't find anything in the papers? It's almost like you don't even exist." The long/haired Diamond mage taunted, even as he grew angrier with his target, "I don't know how you got abs, but you're a loser even among losers! Killing you won't be a problem at all!"

The ambassador took the second bullet right in his left arm; stunned by his old insecurities, Magna hadn't even attempted to dodge. Instead, he just seethed and took it without a single twitch of his muscles.

The assassin grinned at a successful shot, but by the time he had blinked once, the rifle was missing from his hands. To make matters worse, Magna was not where he'd been standing second ago either.

The pretty boy murderer scanned frantically around himself for the missing ambassador, seeing his target nowhere, but hearing the words, "Over here, bitch." a moment too late.

With his opponent's own gun drawn back like a baseball bat, and a murderous smile on his face, Magna cracked the other mage into the next century; smacking him so hard he folded in half.

'Jack'* as Magna would now call the assassin slammed into the stone wall with a cracking sound, rebounded off of the masonry from the sheer force of the attack, then hit the cold marble prone. The ambassador beat him in one strike, and poor Jack barely even saw him move. *Short for Jackass

"Hahaha! Yeah, baby! It's just a shame no one saw how manly that was!" The yankee cheered, ignoring his fresh gunshot wound on a 'disobeying direct orders' high. God this felt good to Magna, awesome enough to ignore the immense pain of getting shot.

"Man, fightin' only feels better when yer' not supposed'ta! Wouldn't ya agree, Jackass who tried ta' kill me?"

The assassin he'd decked in one hit was lying perfectly motionless and prone on the marble, and was rude enough not to respond his target's rhetorical question. Gosh, that guy wasn't just impolite, he was even bleeding from the head.

Magna stared down at the gathering pool of blood on the ground with a vacant expression. When the ichor got within an inch of his shoes, the boy asked himself, "Did I just kill him? Oh… Holy crap, I just killed him."

"Oh yeah, this'll be real easy to explain to the Queen—" began his rant as Magna paced away from the crimson puddle. "Yes Miss Sangue, I just let myself get shot in the arm, and then murdered some guy in a fight. Oh yes, that's right, I did just disobey your direct orders by fightin' in the first place. Oh? You're not gonna kill me? I'm glad you're so understanding, your Majesty…"

"Aaaahh!!!! Like Hell it'd go down like that!!" He screamed, knowing how deep the shit in which stood was.

Good god, I don't think 'extreme action' means anything different in old-timey. Sangue's gonna be pissed, and then she's gonna call off the treaty, and then a giant war will break out leaving millions dead, and then she's gonna chop my head off!

"Relax… freaking out won't help you right now…" Magna spoke to himself, half-successfully quelling his overworked heart. "Wait, I've got it— Frida's on watch tonight, she could answer one more question no problem."

The man slicked back his two-tone hair and strutted up to the doors of his room, knocked to announce himself, and politely opened the door while clutching at his fresh, painful gunshot wound.

"Hey," he said, gritting his teeth and bleeding, "do you know how to hide a body?"

Frida was stunned into silence, aghast and going pale. Confused on at least some level by her quietness, Magna dragged his murder victim out to the tower hall to present to the bone witch. "Please, I really need to get rid of this guy!"

"Why the Hell would I know how to do that!?" Came the witch's sudden meltdown, "Do I look like I kill people often!?"

"Well it's not like I had anyone else to ask! I need to find a new home for Jack's body, and then pretend nothing ever happened!"

"Sir Wing, I just said I don't know how to hide a body!"

"No, you just asked me if you looked like you could! Big difference!"

"Shh! Keep it down you two, I'm trying to listen." Said a voice a scant twenty feet away. Magna looked over to see Deandra, who was standing in the middle of nowhere holding a finger to her mouth in the universal sign of 'bruh, shut up'.

"Listen to what?" Magna asked, hiding the giant bloodstain on his sleeve from the girl.

Deandra rolled her eyes and gestured around, explaining, "The accordion ghost."

Twisting, haunting melodies wafted through the stone walls, sounding like a cascade of music that came from another world entirely. Then the tune took a hard left turn into a polka, but the artistry present was no lesser; unseen fingers dancing around the keys like angels on a pinhead. Magna and Frida got lost for a moment alongside the chamberlain, all under the trance of accordion music coming from nowhere.

As the trio let the ghostly strains fall into the background, Deandra spoke up again, asking, "So, you're trying to hide a corpse?"

The other two idiots nodded in assent.

"Well, the funny thing about corpses is that I've never seen one brandishing a knife before."

A yelp escaped Magna when he looked down to see a glistening blade headed for his femoral artery. He slammed the assassin's face into the floor before steel greeted flesh, and exhaled as Jack went out like a light again— the attacker's head buried slightly in stone. Magna also screamed into a hand, because he'd just used his injured arm, and that hurt like an absolute bitch.

Sweet, sweet Dee hopped closer to the teary-eyed, swearing boy and brought her grimoire out and her palm next to his wound.

"Wait! You can't use magic on him, or Jack! The Queen would find out in an instant." Frida said as she moved any and all hands away from Magnus.

The huffing man agreed, backing away while he explained the situation. "Y-yeah… I, uh, disobeyed the Queen, so we need to keep everything that happened tonight a secret— Argh!!" Magna tweaked something as he gestured, and felt his eyes water, "No one can know I got injured, or that I got in a fight at all."

"Hiding a body and patching you up without magic, huh?" Deandra asked the accordion-filled air the rhetorical question, then snapped her fingers and said, "Wait— I've got just the place! Follow me!"

The bird-brained blondie led her group to an alcove that'd clearly seen better days, and opened a dilapidated, discolored door while her co-conspirators dragged the 'not corpse' in after themselves.

"What is this place? It looks like Hell."

"I've seen cleaner scrapyards…"

"It's my room! Nobody ever, ever comes in here, so Jack will be totally safe with me! Probably. I hope…" Deandra put a finger to her chin. "Actually, this is an amazing idea! It'll be tons of fun, and I could even try my new material on him!"

"Maybe don't torture the guy…" Magna said, suddenly quite concerned for the man that shot him.

"Eh." Came her pithy response.

Regardless of future plans, they bound the assassin's arms in rope, stuffed his grimoire into a small rosewood chest, and dragged him across the threshold deeper into Deandra's run-down craphole of a room. Magna and Frida both blushed when they surveyed the state of the blonde girl's quarters, all manner of garments were strewn about the floor and furniture— like the bras and shoes hanging off the nearest chair.

If a tornado ripped through here, probability indicates that it would make the room tidier via accidentally blowing something into the place it belonged.

A pained whimper escaped the lone man left conscious after he took another step into the disaster of a room, so Deandra sat him down before asking Frida to grab a clean stocking; comfortable to ignore Jack for the time being.

When the chamberlain leaned closer to inspect his injury, the ambassador jolted in place and shouted, "Wait, wait wait! Give me something to bite! That's how they do it in all the adventure books! I wanna be like Akiko!"

His eyes were notably crossed.

It seemed Magna was going manic from sleep deprivation and physical trauma, but the witches conceded the insane man had a point. They stuffed a thick chunk of wood and cloth between Magna's teeth, and apologized with their eyes before dressing his arm.

Magna could believe how much this hurt. It was agonizing, but not moreso than what often happened to him in a fight. The thing about this situation that pissed him off so thoroughly was that he couldn't fight back; the boy just bit down and keened in a cold sweat of pain until Deandra backed her hands away.

"You're all good. And, uh, I guess you probably don't want to hear a joke…" the blonde said as she offered a hand to help right the crying man; he took it without a word. After standing up from that torture, Magna grabbed the assassin with his uninjured limb and chucked him effortlessly into the corner.

Stretching his back out, and yawning with a pained wince, he walked towards the door… unsuccessfully. The guardswoman interrupted his egress, piping up at Deandra in a tizzy when she took a second look at the rope-bound agent leaning against the corner; she voiced a concern the others didn't share. "Hey, Wait!? You're not seriously going to keep a boy in your room, are you!?"

"Frida, that's like, the entire plan."

"But a boy, and a girl, alone in the same space…" the bespectacled witch began, her face turning fuchsia as her eyes darted between the long-haired assassin and the shorter woman before her, "Well, you know what a guy and a gal do when they stay in a room together!"

Both of the other conspirators stared at Frida replete with confusion, and ventured a guess from the very bottoms of their brains.

"Play board games?"

"Come up with new team attacks?"

"No! I mean like, like—" the bone witch did some emphatic, yet meaningless hand gestures, "you know!"

"Sorry Frida, you're gonna have to give us a hint." Deandra said, exchanging a lost gaze with her heavily injured buddy.

The flaming-hetero guard was nearly at her wit's end, and seemed anguished by their ignorance. "How could I make it more obvious? Look, Jack's all tied up, and maybe Deandra starts eyeing his lips… leans in a little closer to his face… she steals a fistful of his hair in her passion, and…"

The suggestive situation delineated by the spectacled girl finally hit Magna, and his face went red-hot. "Aw gross! Dee, she means you're gonna kiss him and stuff!"

"What?" The littlest lady said, more confused now than before, "Why would I do that? I don't even know him. Besides— I've never wanted to kiss anyone before!"

Through even a level of pain that reduced him to a shivering mess, Magna's ears perked up at the chamberlain's response; he needed to know what she meant, "Huh? Never? Ya' mean like m—"

"—Deandra, people don't just not want to kiss other people!" Frida interjected, appalled enough by the blondie's response that she's raised her voice, "What the Hell is wrong with you!?"

The guardswoman's pointed question made Magna shrink back, and turned his stomach even if it wasn't aimed at him. An intense sting shot up his wounded arm at his backwards movement, and he daren't speak up after that. He let the other folks' conversation fade away from his mind, trying to steady his breathing by peering out the window.

Just walking towards the stone aperture made him shudder in pain and nearly throw up, but the beams of cold light did calm his spirits for a moment. Outside, the crescent figure of the moon was dipping into the horizon, certain to steal the protective veil of night away with it.

Crap.

"Hey, uh, can we finish up here? 'Cause like, Dee," Magna's drawl had come back in full force as frigid, trauma-induced sweat mixed with dry blood to discolor his pajamas. "I'm gonna need'ya ta' carry me back to my cage."

"Huh? Right now?"

"Yeah, I'm about ta' b-black out from pain…" the man managed to wheeze out before his legs gave way underneath him. His head smacked a bedpost on the way down, and Magna went limp.

Dee and Frida dove like falcons for the ambassador's shivering form, barely refraining screams as they watched the country's most important dignitary whimper to himself, unconscious on the ground.

Grabbing hold of the wounded, insensate Magnus, the witches were surprised by just how cold his body had become. It was obvious now why he'd been shivering, but they at least knew the boy was going to be alright…

Hopefully