Hansel waited for the cover of darkness to perpetrate the crime. Already his body was beginning to protest his complete lack of magical use. The headache that always lingered threateningly in the background had descended in full force, causing the world to wobble in its almost too brightness, despite the dim of the hour. It felt like he should have been recovering from the greatest night of drinking in his life or the worst tangling with a witch in recent memory. The contrast between the aching desperate need and blissful intoxicating numbness was almost enough to make him reconsider what he was about to do.
Magic may have a hold on him, but he could control it enough not to slip completely under, couldn't he? Hansel had seen the book containing the spells to erect magical barriers, he could take it, run away to the middle of nowhere and set his own place up to practice as freely as he liked. He could indulge, and being away from anything and anyone would prevent him from falling off the magical cliff into human sacrifice and hunting children. It would be so easy to give in, to finally stop fighting what was inevitably in his nature.
Hansel placed his hand against the wall to brace himself as a wave of nausea rolled over him. Whether it was a result of his pathetic and disturbing train of thought or the withdrawal of magic that seemed to relentlessly claw and scratch at him, making his skin itch and pull, he didn't know.
His eye caught the smooth and shiny surface of the mirror on the wall. Through the cracks and dirt caked on its surface from years of neglect he managed to make out the haunting image taking up real-estate in its surface. He realized he no longer recognized the man in the mirror. The sad despondent soul staring back at him couldn't possibly be his.
Swallowing back the bile, he shakily pushed off the wall and slowly put one foot in front of the other, careful to avoid the loose and squeaky floor boards that would shout out his secret to the world. It wasn't long before he found himself standing in front of the cabinet, doors pried open to reveal the contents within.
Of all the bottles and vials clogging the shelves the sole onyx one stood out from the others. Its metallic nature caught the shafts of moonlight that dared to cut through the night. The sparkle of the jewels wrapped delicately around the bottle neck, were mesmerizing in their beauty and rarity. If not for the potential contents, Hansel could believe it was something that should adorn the shelves of royalty. Just holding it his hand felt like a violation against its beauty. The rough hands of a tramp seemed unworthy to hold it, let alone steal the contents from within, but still the young hunter pulled the wax sealed cork out with a pop.
He raised the bottle to his lips and paused, the lip of the bottle hovering dangerously close to his mouth. His certainty wavered as Kaspar's words echoed through his memory. "It comes with grave consequences."
Hansel and Gretel had stood in the presence of many impressive foes and still beat the odds. They had tangled with the harbingers of hell and triumphed over all their magic, tricks and curses. How horrible could the consequences be to saving himself from such a dark fate? He knew the consequences if he didn't take it and even though he was well versed in hard to imagine things, he couldn't conjure anything that would be worse than not being able to save his sister.
Taking a deep breath, Hansel tipped the bottle forward and swallowed the contents in one gulp. It was cold and smooth like swallowing a chip of ice. He stood there for a moment, waiting for some sign that the potion had worked. Nothing. He didn't know what he was expecting, what sign there could possibly be for destroying something so vile. There was a fleeting moment of panic, what if it hadn't worked, what if it was just the product of old wives' tales that turned into legend?
The question was quickly answered as a wave of molten agony exploded from his center coating every nerve and muscle in his body. His legs buckled and he collapsed on the floor gasping for breath with lungs that refused to endure the pain. It was like being burned alive from the inside out, the irony which wouldn't have been lost on Hansel if he could focus on anything other than the pain. His limbs flailed uselessly in a desperate effort to find relief. Hansel might have been screaming but he wasn't sure, it was hard to hear anything over the pound of his heart.
Something touched his shoulder, wrapping around his arm to turn him over onto this back. His natural instinct was to fight but he just didn't have it in him to mount any resistance. Hansel pried his eyes open to see Kaspar leaning over him, lips moving in a pattern that should mean something, but the hunter couldn't put it together.
If he thought the pressure of his mystical abilities expanding and bursting to be released upon the world was painful, he had been sorely mistaken. Hansel's vision began to grey around the edges promising merciful death; he would take it greedily, with both hands if it meant an end to the agony. Just when he was sure the he reached his breaking point, that he couldn't take anymore, the haunting darkness that had been lurking at the edge of his vision melted into an electric purple that permeated everything, growing brighter and brighter until he had to shut his eyes against the light.
The burning sensation slowly pulled back from his extremities, coiling in a tight ball in his center and just like a bubble that floated too high, it burst. Hansel cracked his eyelids open just in time to see a purple wave of light emanate from within him and spread out like a ripple in a pond. He laid there for a moment watching the as the ripple moved outwards in all directions, unopposed by anything in its path but leaving everything undisturbed. It continued to move out past the wall of the home where the hunter lost a direct line of sight with it but the eerie glow from outside the window proved the ripple wasn't going to stop.
"Do you have any idea what you've done?" shouted Kaspar.
Hansel had no words, he couldn't even move his tongue if he did conjure anything to say. The warning about consequences was well deserved, but it was over now and as long as it worked, that he didn't now have some vague impression of what it felt to be either burned alive or have one's flesh flayed from their bones for no reason, then he was fine with what transpired.
"You'll regret this. Those you care about will regret what you've done here," raged Kaspar, standing up abruptly and storming out of the room, leaving Hansel a quivering mess on the floor.
Hansel pulled himself into a tight ball, trying to protect himself against the now phantom pain that still lingered. His mind raced with what ifs. Kaspar seemed to believe it had worked and if what Hansel had witnessed was any indication, then it had to have worked, but what if he hadn't purged the curse from his blood? He needed to know but the effort to try any sort of magical display seemed beyond him at the moment.
His tongue darted over his horribly chapped lips as he tried to find enough spit to form words. He fought to pull in sufficient breath and mumbled the first thing that came to mind. His voice was practically no existent and he prayed it would still count. When the room remained unnervingly dark and no candles burst to life, Hansel cautiously held onto hope.
It could have been a fluke, too weak to perform any unholy feats witchcraft. Hansel's fingers began to claw at the makeshift wrap he had tied around his wrist to his mark. He fumbled, but slowly his fingers began to follow his direction. Lifting the frayed edge of the wrap, he exposed a small snippet of his wrist's pale skin and his heart sunk. The black vines still curled and twisted around wrist, as bright as it had ever been.
Dishearten, the hunter whispered every spell he had committed to memory; one after another, then repeating them all again and again. As the first rays of sunlight found their way through the cracks and glass, Hansel realized none of the spells had worked. Nothing had happened. He was free, regardless of the mark that marred his skin.