Chapter 8: The First Generation
"No! What have you done?!" Amélie screeched.
Hilda backed up and pointed her blood-covered dagger at her older sister.
"Stay back, witch!" she ordered.
"You killed her! You killed her, and now I'm gonna kill you!"
"Good luck with that, you pathetic, disgusting fool," Hilda insulted as she looted the witch's belongings, including the catalysts.
"I swear vengeance to the great witch Eleanor!"
"Kay," Hilda left the hut and set out to break the curses on her long lost sisters.
Knock knock knock.
"Just a moment!" a weak voice said from inside the cabin. She had been there just a couple days earlier for the soil of the ground. The door opened to reveal a pretty face concealed by dark weariness and deathly despair.
"A-are you...Eleanor's daughter?" Hilda asked.
"I am. My name is Anais. What do you want?"
"I- my name is Hilda. I am your long lost baby sister."
"Oh... Oh, dear," Anais hugged her sister with a bright smile. "It's been sixteen years. I- I had no idea!"
Hilda smiled. "Yes, it's so great to finally meet you!"
"Oh, but the others, they've... Something has happened to us."
"Say no more, I can help," Hilda said before taking out the Golden Flower.
Anais's eyes widened. "Where did you find that?"
"I took it from Eleanor."
"How did you manage to steal from that witch?"
Hilda had a look of urgency and guilt.
"Oh," Anais realized what Hilda dad done. "Please, please, come in."
Hilda entered. "Perhaps we can dissolve the flower in a solution for you to drink," Hilda suggested. Anais fetched a bottle and filled it with water before Hilda dissolved the flower in it.
Anais sipped the golden solution and her strength and goodness was restored.
"I feel...rejuvenated."
"That's wonderful!" Hilda was proud of her good deeds.
"Let us not rejoice yet. Our sisters have gone absolutely mad. Audrey...she was always so innocent and sweet. She-," Anais gasped shakily and Hilda comforted her. "She tried to kill me. I defended myself, and she ran. And then," she continued as tears rolled down her cheeks, "Aurélie just stood there without a care in the world. She's always so empathetic and honest-... I cried in my chambers until I realized the silence. Aurélie had left me. She took the food. My dagger. I found the necklace she- she made f-for me when we were kids- burning in the hearth."
"Anais," Hilda started, "that was not your sister. That was not our Aurélie. Our Audrey. Eleanor cast a curse using those catalysts. Do you-?"
"Yes, I remember those."
"You were cast with the Death Curse. Amélie was cast with the Life Curse. I took care of her, and Eleanor. Now we need to save Audrey from the Fire Curse and Aurélie from the Ice Curse, with these," Hilda pulled out the Solstice Ring and Solstice Water.
"How will we find them?" Anais asked.
"Is there anything here with great sentimental value of theirs? Eleanor had a crystal ball we can utilize with anything close to the person we're trying to find."
"Um, let's see... I gave Audrey a broach I found when we first moved in here. I told her it represented our everlasting bond. But she doesn't feel that anymore."
"She will. It's still buried deep inside, it will work, I know it," Hilda said confidently.
"Aurélie...she had a partner a couple months ago. When she told him she might be pregnant, he left. You think she still knows that? You think she still cares about her baby?"
"I know she does. But we need to bring her back if we want that child to have its mother."
"The necklace is the only thing of Aurélie's here, and it's burnt. She took everything else."
Hilda snatched the necklace. "It's all we have. Get that broach, and let's go."
Anais hastily acquired the broach, and the sisters departed for Eleanor's chamber.
"If Amélie is not already dead, she may use the last of her power to stop us. I didn't think I'd have to return to this hell hole," Hilda explained.
She unsheathed her dagger, and Anais opened the door, allowing them to barge in. They cautiously scouted every nook and cranny of the hut, finding no sign of the witch sister's presence.
"Okay, let's just hurry and find our sisters, you keep watch while I look," Anais ordered. She took out the broach and offered it to the ball. It dissolved and in seconds, Audrey was revealed.
"Here she is. She's in a village."
Hilda looked. "Oh my God."
"What?" Anais asked.
"That's...my home. We have to stop her!"
Anais quickly offered the necklace to reveal Aurélie in the same town, earning trust and then burning it down by hurting and stealing.
"Let's go!" Anais exclaimed.
Knock knock knock.
Damian opened the door to reveal a weary young woman.
"Who are you?"
"My name is Amélie. I'm looking for my long lost baby sister. Hilda? Do you know her?"
Damian's eyes widened. "Please, come in."
Damian offered Amélie some tea.
"Thank you."
"Hilda was...I found her in the woods. Raised her as my own. She's a strong one, that girl. Sweet and smart."
"Is she?" Amélie pretended to care.
"Oh, yes. She is the world to me."
"Mhm..." Amélie plotted.
"That one!" Hilda hurried to her precious home. "I was raised here."
Hilda unsheathed her dagger and they barged in.
"FATHER!" She shrieked.
Damian was tied to chair with a rag squeezing his mouth shut.
"Amélie, let him go!" Anais screamed.
"Or what? You'll kill me with your purity and goodness? You're just in time for the show. As I promised...Hilda"
Hilda charged towards her, dagger raised. Amélie slit his throat before she could get close.
"NOOOO!" Hilda toppled the witch and stabbed her repeatedly in the skull, her tears mixing with Damian's blood. Amélie was still and lifeless, but Hilda kept stabbing. Anais pulled her off with glistening eyeballs.
"It's over, Hilda! We've done all we could!"
"FATHER!"
Hilda stood up, sheathed her bloody dagger, and left the house.
"Hilda?"
She silently left, and Anais followed.
"Hilda, we-," she was cut off by a scream in the village. Hilda ran towards it without thinking twice, followed by a concerned Anais. They hurried into the next home to see Audrey struggling with a woman above a man's dead body. Before Hilda and Anais could do anything to help, a boy with a sword ran to the rescue to kill Audrey.
"WAIT!" Anais exclaimed. "She's my sister!"
"She killed my father!" the boy said.
"She's possessed! Just let me help... Please!"
"She's not possessed," a girl said from the doorway, "she's a murderer. I know her," Aurélie finished.
The woman let her guard down for a second and was struck by Audrey across the face.
"NO!" Anais cried.
The boy drove the sword into Audrey's back, and Aurélie smiled. Hilda quickly and skillfully threw her knife at Aurélie, and it stuck in her shoulder. She halted long enough for Hilda to pin her down and knock her unconscious. All Anais could do was sob on her knees.
Hilda and Anais tried to count their blessing when they finally got Aurélie back home. Hilda had cleaned out and patched up the wound she inflicted upon the now tied-down Aurélie and waited for the summer solstice in a couple weeks.
"No one never loved you. Not your father. Not Eleanor. That's why she left you in the middle of woods. No one would ever want you," Aurélie said to Hilda.
"Shut up, Aurélie," Anais said bitterly.
"You can't keep me here long enough to take away my power!"
"We can, and we will," Hilda said.
"Aurélie you have a baby coming! Don't you remember? Don't you care?" Anais started.
"Oh, that's right! Do me a favor...and punch me incessantly in the stomach until I puke all the life out-"
Anais hit her little sister in the face without restraint, and Hilda grabbed her wrist.
"Hey! That will only make it worse! She's still in there somewhere! She can feel you hitting her! She knows what she's saying, and she doesn't mean it!"
"Oh, I mean it, sweetheart. Every. Word."
Anais stood up and walked away.
"Don't leave her. She can see this. She's broken right now, and it may not look like it, but you staying by her side and fighting through this means more than the world," Hilda explained.
"You know what would mean more than the world right now? If you would just kill yourself right here and spill your blood all over me."
Anais flinched. "Can we tie her mouth shut?"
"I tried," Hilda said, "She bit my hand. Almost took a chunk off."
Aurélie laughed.
Hilda reassured, "We can do this."
"Good morning, sister," Hilda said to Aurélie with Solstice Ring in hand.
"I don't want this."
"Sure you do!" Anais said.
Hilda slipped the metal-coated rock brace onto Aurélie's wrist. Aurélie screamed, and a flurry of ice shot out of her eyes and mouth, leaving her unconscious.
"Aurélie!" Anais exclaimed and stroked her cheek. Aurélie awoke, and tears started flowing from her eyes first thing.
"Oh, Anais. I'm so-"
"You didn't mean it, I know. It's okay. I'm here. And so is our baby sister."
"It's so nice to finally meet you," Aurélie said.
"You too," Hilda said with a smile. Aurélie's smile quickly faded at the remembrance of her big sister Audrey's death. The three remaining sisters lied mourning, finally reunited in each others arms.
After six months of living together happily, the sisters now had another member of the household on the way. It was a boy. They named him Damian, after Hilda's adoptive father. And just a month or so after his birth, something happened. Hilda was rummaging through old stuff in the attic, organizing trash and keepers. Then she remembered the catalysts. She lifted the plank on the wall that concealed Eleanor's old satchel. Inside was the bottle of Golden Water, three Death Fruits, the Solstice Ring, and the Solstice Water.
"What the...?" she noticed something else. Eleanor's journal. She opened it and read the first page.
Angel, dull and dim
Let your death disperse
Make the clock run out
Bring judgment harsh and terse
Wounds that have been sealed
Scars that have been healed
Kill what has been saved
Bring judgment harsh and terse
With no remorse
Flower, gleam and glow
Let your power shine
Make the clock reverse
Bring back what once was mine
Heal what has been hurt
Change the Fates' design
Save what has been lost
Bring back what once was mine
What once was mine
She spent a while up there reading about the catalysts until she got to mutations part. Her eyes widened. Suddenly she realized she smelt smoke.
"Aurélie! Anais!" she ran downstairs to see the crib on fire.
"OH MY GOD" she yelled before her older sisters hurried into the scene. Hilda yanked the silk curtains down and engulfed the flame with them. The fire died. They stared intently waiting for her to raise the curtain, but before she did, the baby laughed. She removed the curtain to reveal the happy, untarnished Damian in his incinerated crib.