Disclaimer: Blah blah. Not mine!
Chapter Fifteen: The One Ring
6:00
Wyatt stayed crouched in the darkness, the bend in the flight of stairs affording him enough room to see down into the chamber below. The urge to hide was instinctual, even though he knew he could easily just waltz into any room he liked and command attention. No, it was something about this room that made him want to avoid it. He could feel the black magic crawl across his skin from the moment he descended the first step.
It was... a holding room of some magical sort. He could only just barely see the shapes slumped against the walls, penned in by black sparking crystals. There were guards too, three of them gleefully chattering at the table in the middle of the room, sharpening intimidating looking instruments as they did.
Wyatt almost scoffed. It was a dungeon, a cliched, classic, string em up dungeon. He really didn't know why he was surprised, apparently evil!him operated his legions only on what he could pick up from movies, barely a cent of originality to be seen. Yet another fantastic reason to wipe this place off the map.
Sucking in a deep breath and drawing himself up taller, Wyatt stalked down into the dungeons. The demons on guard stood up in a flash, fumbling to salute, a chorus of scraping chairs punctuating the movement.
"Get out." Wyatt barely finished the words before the demons had shimmered away. Apparently word of his "bad mood" had spread through the ranks, as the longer he tried his evil overlord impression, the less he really had to try. He almost grinned at himself. If this went on any longer he was going to do evil legion races and see how long it took for each room of demons to tuck their tails and flee from the sight of him.
The subtle sound of skin brushing on stone snapped Wyatt's attention back to the forms along the wall, and he jumped back into motion, smiling apologetically. He stepped closer to the nearest form, a human teenager, from the look of the person's frame.
"Don't worry, we'll get you guys out of here as soo-" Wyatt halted as the boy, he recognized now, shrunk into himself and back against the wall, burying his head into the crook of his arm.
Wyatt's jaw hung uselessly for a moment, his brain catching as it shifted gears. He slowed his movements significantly, kneeling down so he was near eye level as he could be.
"Hey, no, I'm not who you think..."
Another form down the wall looked up cautiously at that, face seeming incredulous, but that could have also been the poor lighting.
"Really!" Wyatt pleaded, turning to this new person, "I'm here to help you guys out!"
"...really." The figure snorted a laugh after the word and leaned forward into a faint beam of light, "cause you still look evil to me."
Wyatt's eyebrows climbed up his forehead as he finally recognized the girl's face through the grime. "AJ?" He breathed it out, not really believing it. The scared look on the girls face melted into something Wyatt was more used to seeing: teenage attitude.
"Yeah." The word held so much sarcasm that Wyatt had no doubt in his mind about her identity. Only that little brat could be that disrespectful. AJ was a 16 year old witch Piper hired every so often to clean dishes at the restaurant, mostly because whenever she was there, Henry Jr. would actually show up for work due to his debilitating crush on her. A crush AJ seemed stoutly unaware of. She was a good kid, if mouthy... and here she was in a dungeon.
Wyatt started the beginnings of the motion to telekinetically move the crystals out of place when AJ popped her hands up.
"Wait! No! What the heck are you doing?" She hissed, looking utterly scandalized, "Don't you know? These things'll suck the magic right out of you if you do that!"
Wyatt looked down at the things with new respect and sighed, "Okay, that's a problem then. How do I get rid of them?"
AJ stared, disbelieving, "You really aren't him, are you? Lord Wyatt wouldn't be as dumb as you are."
Wyatt sent back a dry look and swirled his hand to make her continue in the explanation before he conveniently forgot that she had any endearing qualities.
"The mortal way. Use a stick." She pointed at a poker across the room and he didn't waste any time retrieving it, dragging the thing in a line and knocking all the cages out of sync as he went. All the captives were witches as far as he could tell, young ones at that, most of them he recognized from the newer classes at Magic School. The task gave him enough time to wonder what the heck he was hoping to accomplish. He just knew he needed to raise some hell, and that he couldn't just leave them down here, but the plan after that... well, he was at a loss.
The witches all congregated in the middle of the room around him, curious and cautiously hopeful. They all still jumped and shied away from him, still scared of him simply because of how he looked. The only person who mostly temped down on the reflex to flinch was AJ, though she still did if he moved too quick. He settled into a spot next to her, careful to seem as nonthreatening as possible, plastering his patented disarming grin onto his face.
"So what kind of spell are you using to look like his lordship? That's got to be some heavy magic! You a shape shifter?" AJ rattled as soon as he got close enough and stopped only when Wyatt held up a halting finger.
"First," Wyatt reached out and pinched her lightly on the arm.
"Ow! What the hell?" AJ reeled back.
"That's for calling me dumb. Respect your elders," Wyatt explained smugly, "Secondly... who knows the way out of here?"
6:00
Tap. Tap. Tap.
The demon looked over from his assigned guard post, shoulders hitched, eyes darting to locate the sound. He was obviously uptight, probably due to the fact that the halls felt desolate now, after the majority of the soldiers rushed out to put down some large scale rebellion in the lower part of the city. He wasn't used to the place being so empty. It was... creepy. He told himself not to worry, he wasn't guarding anything important, just a glorified broom closet. No reason for anyone to come after him.
Tap. tap. tap.
He twisted to look down the hallway. It was closer this time! He wasn't imagining it! Ever so slowly, he crept down the hallway, palms dripping with an acidic solution that could burn a hole through his victim's trachea.
Tap. Tap...
The demon launched himself around the bend in the hallway, stopping short just as the person in front of him tapped the athame in his hand against the wall for the final time.
"Hi." Chris Halliwell smiled dimly down at him and crossed his arms. The demon didn't wait to give him an opportunity, he launched forward, hand outstretched, only to feel the odd sensation of having an athame buried in his back.
"Yeeaah," Chris winced in near sympathy, "I'm not the one you need to worry about."
Bianca let the demon drop, carefully avoiding his hands as he went down trying to claw at her. As soon as he hit the floor Bianca firmly planted the heel of her boot on his neck. "This the right spot?" She looked back up at Chris for a second, careful to keep her balance as the demon thrashed.
"Should work." He stepped up a little bit closer, staring at the floor.
The demon twisted its face around enough to gurgle out some words, "Should work for wha-" That was right about the time he was abruptly vanquished, collapsing into a puddle of green acidic goo which didn't waste any time burning a demon shaped hole in the floor. Chris reached out quickly, tugging Bianca back towards him to keep her from falling straight through.
"Well!" Bianca leaned forward to look down the hole, arm still looped in Chris's to keep her balance, "So far so good."
"Yeah, should take us right down to the lowest level." Chris sighed in relief, "It's a straight shot from there."
Bianca turned her looks sideways at him, eyebrow slightly raised as the thoughts ran back through her head and she had to once again figure out if she even wanted to bring it up. They had a little time to wait before the majority of the castle cleared out to chase after the Valkyries, she knew, and if she didn't bring it up now, she might never get an answer.
"You didn't just think this plan up did you?" She hedged cautiously, Chris caught on to the tone immediately, expression shifting to something a little more guarded.
"No... it was escape plan F." He answered after a moment, shrugging at the intense look he received for that answer, "In my earlier years I got caught. It was a dumb mistake and I paid for it, so I had plenty of time to think of plans."
It was most of the truth, Bianca recognized, meant to give the questioning party a sense of achievement so maybe they'll let up and stop asking. She recognized the strategy, she used it all the time. The fact that he even tried spoke volumes for his desperation to get rid of the topic. He hadn't outright tried to lie to her in a long long time.
She stared at him flatly, letting him know he was caught, "Fine. You can keep that one but you have to tell me something else." She crossed her arms, "That necklace you chased that basket case away with, the one you made sure you didn't mention to your dad. Don't give me that look, did you think I'd temporarily gone blind?" Bianca smiled proudly, knowing she'd won regardless, mostly because Chris was giving her the most panicked look she'd ever seen from him.
"Bianca..." He nearly pleaded.
"Chris." She returned solidly, voice equal parts affection and warning. He just stared back at her, visibly trying to think his way out of the situation and coming up with nothing.
"You're not going to like it." He started, hoping she'd call the whole thing off, when the miracle of her backing out didn't occur, he dropped his hands noisily to his sides. "I can use it to take away his powers."
"Funny enough, I'm not hating this option."
"Just-" He held up a hand, "give it a sec. When I say take, I mean it. The powers get transferred to me."
Bianca halted, mouth snapping shut, trying to work through the connotations, "...and what happens then..."
"Crazy guy wasn't crazy before he got this power. There's something about it that just messes with you. It could do nothing or it could... do a lot. The way my luck is going today I don't really feel like playing those odds." Chris shrugged halfheartedly, trying to read Bianca's reaction. She tensed, looking of to the side for a second to let out a breath before she turned back to him.
"Okay, you're right. I don't like this." She frowned, not even trying to hide the worry, "Can't someone else-"
"Sorry..." Chris shook his head slowly, running a hand down her arm, feeling her unconsciously lean into the touch, "If this works out, I won't have to use it at all. We'll leave it to the Elders to clean up their own mess for once."
Bianca wordlessly wrapped her own arm around his and leaned into his side and Chris welcomed it, pulling her closer even as a dark thought solidified in the back of his mind. It rose from the same practical part of his brain that had driven him to grab the necklace off the table in the first place. What if he did have to do this? What if it drove him as completely insane as it had the Pale Man? What was the good of getting rid of one threat if you turned into the other, he couldn't just leave it like that.
"Bianca," He started slowly, "If something happens and I do have to do this, could you do something for me?"
"What?" She looked up at him, suspicious.
"Take away my powers."
Bianca pulled back harshly, "What? No. I can't just pull out one power, they all go or none. I don't even know if I could pull a power like that anyway! It might just take all the magic out of you period."
"Better than me going homicidal, isn't it?" Chris shot back defiantly.
"You wouldn't have any magic." She returned.
"So what!" Chris tossed up his arms, "I wouldn't be able to go on hunts anymore. Big deal. I could still help with the passive stuff if they needed it. Wyatt has enough powers for the rest of us and I have six cousins who we barely keep from going off on demon hunts as is, no one would miss me. Besides, what's so horrible about actually having a normal life, huh? I could actually go to a college without having to worry about a demon dropping in the middle of class. You and I could go and get married like I wanted to without starting some stupid blood feud. I don't see any downsides, do you?"
Chris finally managed to stop himself from talking, only registering the words a few minutes after they came out. The two of them remained in silence for the time it took him to rework what he'd said again. Looking them over, none of them rang untrue.
"You want to get married?" She repeated, almost unbelieving.
"Not exactly how I wanted that to come out but... yeah, of course," He smiled lightly, reaching out to take her hand to look at the ring there, the light catching off it as she twisted her fingers around his, "In this time line, we were engaged. We promised each other that we'd get married after we'd fixed everything and I came back to you. After you died," Chris swallowed uncomfortably at the word, "I had your mother give it to you to say the promise still stood... if you ever wanted to."
Bianca looked at the ring in amazement, remembering when her mom first gave it to her as a kid. Lynn hadn't given much of an explanation other than, "It belongs to you." She'd kept it ever since, becoming absolutely inconsolable if she thought she'd lost it for even a minute.
Wordlessly, she took the ring off and held it out to him, face unreadable for just long enough to make him nervous, "I believe tradition says you're supposed to put it on my other hand." She broke out into a huge smile. Chris gave her a chance to take in a breath before he pulled her in for a kiss, managing to slip the ring on the correct finger without looking.
"There is a condition," Bianca said after she took in a giddy breath.
"That is?" Chris asked distractedly.
"When we get back to our correct time and you don't need that necklace anymore, you get rid of it." She pulled back to see his reaction, gaze intense.
Chris laughed, "Believe me, I will be more than glad to toss that thing into the fires of Mount Doom."
Bianca kissed him again, "Nerd."
"Love you too."
6:00
With things being so immensely different on the ground, it was amazingly jarring when Leo arrived in the whiteness of the Overworld to find absolutely nothing had changed. Still the same blinding incandescent white purity, the tall pillars that reached up into a ceiling so high you couldn't even see it. There was one difference though... it was empty. The usually packed rooms were bare, not even the whisper of a whitelighter or Elder present.
"Hello?" Leo called hesitantly, perturbed as his own voice echoed back to him. He brushed it off, making a line for the large carved double doors at the end of the main hall. While he'd never actually closed off a realm, he knew how to do it in theory, and the ritual for opening it back up wasn't much different. He didn't need any other Elder's help with this so it was probably better that no one was there.
Leo curled a hand around the handle just as the echoes of footsteps sounded behind him.
"Leo?" The voice made him halt, the door only open a few inches, "Where have you been?"
Ever so slowly, Leo turned, more tense than he could ever remember being in his life. It couldn't be. Why would he... Leo's eyes focused on the single robed figure in the middle of the empty hall, looking up at him with an unguarded, benevolent expression.
Gideon stared at him curiously, "Leo, are you alright?"
AN: Holy crap on a stick guys. I hadn't meant to let this sit for this long, but I had to concentrate on my art, I still do have to actually, but I'm in a (hopefully) small slump that's allowed me some time to work on this. We're really closet to the end here of this fic. Probably two or three more chapters and an epilogue. Apologies for the shortness of this chapter but it was a little difficult to get back into the swing of things. I'd love for some reviews to kick my butt into gear (hint hint) :).
If anyone would like to take a looksie at my art you can find me either through deviantart at Vylla (dot) deviantart (dot) com or I also have an sketch blog up at Risahulett (dot) blogspot (dot) com where I post something every day (mostly _).
Cheers guys, and thanks for sticking around.