A/N:

I want to take some time and thank one person in particular. Nutmeg. They've helped me, and my self esteem far more than I can describe. They helped me realize that we're all here for fun, to be cringe is to be free.

I know they're probably not going to read this for- what, months? Weeks? Maybe they'll binge the whole thing this weekend :P But whenever you read it, I hope you're having a lovely day.

—-

Phillip closed his diary, standing up from his desk and stretching. His aging back let out a loud snap, which briefly hurt like a bastard.

He looked extremely disheveled. Dark bags under his eyes, hair a rat's nest, and clothes unwashed. Caleb's coat was still over his shoulders, which he kept on for the minute.

Walking down stairs, he wanted to speak to Alador. Not just because they wouldn't look out of place next to each other.

"Good morning." Phillip opened.

Alador merely grunted, taking a sip from the cup of coffee in his hand.

"Uh…" Phillip cleared his throat, continuing the conversation. "I had a strange question. Do you know where I could potentially find laboratory mice?"

This made Alador pause, eyeing the former Emperor suspiciously. "Why?"

Phillip choked back his fear. "I want to work on a new, uh…spell? It's…well, a cure for a spell." He badly explained, before just spitting it out. "I want to try and cure petrification, and I need petrified subjects to try and cure."

"Good luck." Alador merely replied. "We tried. Ran into a wall. But if you want to give it a shot, be my guest."

"So, do you know where I could get some?" Phillip raised an eyebrow.

"Oh, yeah, sorry. I raise 'em. But - I don't really know if I trust you not to hurt one of my babies. Maybe a sickada, those are plentiful this time of year. Here's the deal - you work in my lab, and I'll over-see you." Alador was rightly suspicious. "Make sure you don't try anything."

"But of course." Phillip nodded. "I have nothing but the best of intentions."

Alador didn't reply, he just grumbled and walked off.

After a spot of breakfast, a nice hot shower, and a change into some fresh clothes - Phillip got right to work in the Blight's lab. Alador and Darius were already hard at work, toiling away - working on a new set of construction-worker Abominations. Designed to do the grunt-work that nobody particularly liked.

It wasn't exactly a high priority project, so the husbands each took turns watching over Phillip and his work.

Phillip started by catching, and then petrifying, a single Sickada. The first idea on how to revive the creature was the most obvious. The Petrification glyph combination simply transmogrified someone into stone - so he started by reversing that Glyph. Creating one that would transform the special type of petrified stone back into whatever it originated as.

It…worked. Somewhat. The operation was a success, the insect returned to it's initial form, but it didn't survive. The heart wasn't beating, and the brain wasn't transmitting signals.

"Yea, that's about as far as we got too." Darius grumbled, rolling his eyes. But Phillip wasn't discouraged. He just needed to think the problem through…

But, best they break for lunch.

Phillip got a bowl of some left-over meat-stew from the week prior, and got lost in thought while munching away. Or, it was until his concentration was broken by some ambient chatter - Luz and Amity hanging in the living room.

"I thought the new Good Witch Azura reboot was like, really good!" Luz peeped, excitedly. "Didn't make any major deviations from the source material, solid performances, it was all I ever wanted!"

"I don't know, They tried to compress the entire book into a movie and- it felt really tight, like none of the scenes had room to breathe." Amity replied, clearly slightly disappointed.

Hm…Azura? Where had he heard that name before?

"My name's Luzura!"

Oh, right. It was from when he first met Luz, elsewhere and elsewhen. Back far before he became Emperor Belos. During- blimey, the Deadwardian Era.

He always wondered how Luz managed to travel back in time. The obvious answer was a Time Pool, but…

Wait a moment, Time Pools!

That gave him an idea. Perhaps, if he studied time pools further, he could…create a localized timepool, bringing just the subject's body back to the point before they were petrified.

Thinking back, the theory went that Time Pools were the result of Titan's Blood leaking into the sea and mixing with the Algae from the Boiling Sea…

Ugh, any experiment would require an extraordinary amount of Titan's Blood. A substance in remarkably short supply.

If The Titan even had any undecayed veins left, they would be remarkably difficult to find. Trust him, Belos had tried. Extensively.

King was a titan, but his body was so small and frail. They couldn't risk anything happening to him, lest Phillip incur the Titan's wrath.

Damn it. Scuppered at the first hurdle, once again.

That was, until a curious crow had an idea. She was in his bedroom, taking a mid-day nap in a birdhouse he'd carved. With her mental link, she heard Phillip's plight.

So, she rummaged around his desk. Eventually finding what she was looking for - a crystal of Fool's Blood. The one that made him lose his hand.

"Currant, you're a blooming genius!" Phillip squealed, as his palisman flew up with her shiny loot.

He always knew of Fool's Blood, that it signified a decaying vein. But he never actually tried to find out WHAT it was. But he now had an idea. What if it was pure Titan's Blood, exposed to air for too long and thusly crystalized?

With one hand in his hand and the other half under his shoe, He snapped the crystal in two. Unfortunately, it wasn't so simple. He'd first hoped the air only formed a thin crust, but no, it had fully solidified.

Next up, he heated a shard of the crystal up in a test under a burner, and…

It began to liquify, and soon began to bubble.

Success! He'd done it! It was Titan's Blood!

But that wasn't enough, he knew what he had to do next. Call up an old friend and foremost historian he knew - Lilith. After all, she was the person who had accompanied 'Luzura' on her little field trip back in time, so she had to know more.

"Hoooold on a minute." Darius cut in, grabbing the beaker with a pair of tongs. "Are we SURE we want to give the guy who tried to KILL us all access to something as powerful as Titan's Blood?"

"I mean, the cat's out of the bag now." Alador replied with a small shrug.

Phillip felt a jolt of nervousness. "I- I swear, I'm only going to use it for good-"

"I believe that as much as I believe you were just a humble messenger of the Titan." Darius scoffed. "For all we know, you could be trying to use it to fuel some sort of superweapon!"

"Or." Alador added in. "He could be attempting to create a time-pool back to when Luz defeated him."

"Yea!" Darius huffed.

"What, that's ridiculous! I'm a human again, without magic. I mean, I'm missing a hand for goodness sakes." He said, holding up his left arm - which stopped abruptly about half-way through the forearm. "Wasn't Luz like, powered by the Titan's Magic or something?"

"I don't know. Or you could go back to the day Luz came to the isles, or something." Alador shrugged, seemingly nonplussed by the former emperor's pleas.

Phillip felt backed into a corner. Genuinely, he was doing this for the greater good - but he had no clue how to convince them of that. That was the thing about trust, so difficult to build and yet so easy to decimate. But he couldn't give up! He was just…out of ideas on what to do.

"Please, I…I…I need to do this…" Phillip begged. He didn't want to say it out loud, but…Deep in his mind, there was someone he was thinking about. While he wanted to heal every single person he unjustly cursed, there was but a single face he could think of.

His name was Samuel.

Currant was the one who took initiative, slyly snatching the test tube. Thankfully, it'd cooled down in the frigid basement air enough to carry with her beak. Phillip snapped out of his thoughts and grabbed ahold of it - before quickly popping on a wooden cork in the tube. It didn't exactly make it airtight, but it at least made sure it didn't re-crystalize immediately.

Alador cut in, helping soothe his frustrated husband. "I think we should just ride it out and see it through. What if he does genuinely mean well?"

"But what if he doesn't?" Darius muttered, slightly embarrassed by his husband. The former coven head was frustrated, and defensive - but for a good reason. After all, Darius had worked directly under Belos in the past - and even beyond that, he tutored Hunter. Each tale the boy recounted about his 'uncle' made Darius sick to his stomach, and all the more jaded on the former emperor.

After a moment of further back and forth, Darius took a deep breath and tried to calm his nerves. "Alright. If you're confident in him, then I'll just have to trust you."

"After what I'd done, it's more than understandable." Phillip shook his head, sadly. "I do hope that I will be able to prove myself trustworthy."

"Good luck with that." Alador snarked, with a laugh.

Phillip just let out a deep breath.