Witch Doctors Inc: SEASON TWO (Ongoing)

Part 1.15

You want me to break, Pandora snarls. I'm not going to break, you are!

The vines tighten around me. Frost seeps from my fingertips, coating the vines until they crack apart. Free, I conjure a ball of blue magic that sinks into Maya's body, spreading frost throughout the vines. The flowers turn to ice and clink to the ground.

Pandora howls with rage. Vines rise up from the shadows, and shoot towards Maya's throat. I make another magic ball, but Pandora hisses. I know the dark power, she says. Go away or I'll use it on her. I'll break her so she never comes back.

Shock grips me. She can't be serious. The dark power, the power to destroy energy...she can't possibly know how to use it. Who would've taught her?

It's easy for me, Pandora giggles. People say it's hard, but it's easy! When you use it, people go poof! and disappear. But sometimes they do a funny dance too. And they scream. I want Maya to dance!

There's absolute joy in her tone now, a mindless glee that makes me go cold. Black smoke hisses from the vines, and butterflies swirl in and out of existence.

"No," I cry, raising an ice shield around Maya. The shield knocks the vines out of the way, but where it touches them the ice smoulders. I need to teleport Maya out of here.

Suddenly, moonlight sears through my brain. It scorches my defiance, and I know I can't leave anymore. I'm anchored to this place, my prison. A part of me doesn't want to leave.

But an even bigger part of me does.

I pour more strength into Maya's shield. "Stay," I order it, and I don't know if the magic will listen to me or not, but I have no choice. With every passing second, moonlight takes over my mind.

Pandora giggles. It won't stay, she taunts in a sing-song voice.

I have to break Pandora's hold over me, but I can't leave Naemar. The shield slackens. I pour more strength into it.

Then I teleport to the only place I know of that is here and not here at the same time.

I teleport to the fragment.

I plunge into its waters, and am immediately overwhelmed by light and colour. Shards of searing white hurtle past me. They pull me along with them in a current of watersong, bringing me images my mind can't process.

Rushes of coaral, in all the colours of the pastel rainbow. Humans with fish tails glinting silver. And a face, peering, worrying. Hair of the deepest black, and eyes like rain-speckled moss. In her mouth not teeth, but gills, blinking.

A voice invades my thoughts. Why here?

Hiding, I reply.

The creature's expression turns to one of alarm. No gills. Will die. Must go!

She pushes me away, and the shards take me back the way I came, back to a surface like wavering curtains. Water pours down my face as I breach the surface.

The moonlight no longer burns my mind. Those few seconds (or was it longer?) were enough to free me from Pandora's hold.

Above the pond, bubbles of ice-blue coalesce into a shining blade. I shoot up from the water, grab my ice sword, and plunge it into the nearest cluster of otherworldly vines. Cracks of ice shoot from the blade like lightning, breaking the vines apart as they go.

I channel all my energy into the sword.

Pandora shrieks.

The vines are cracking, not just here, but all throughout the town. Magic sizzles and sparks all up and down the blade of my sword.

Stop it or I'll break Maya! Pandora screams.

And I know she'll do it.

I know I'm not fast enough.

And the anger surges in me like nothing before.

It's like hot ice - anger, sickening anger, burning rage. Flames. Laughing faces. The First Witch, the first death. But not the last.

Black butterflies appear in the ice. They feed off the vine's energy.

I feel Pandora slacken.

I miss my mother, she sobs. Her voice is weak.

Panic drowns me. No, no, no - what did I do? "Your mother loves you," I shout, desperate to undo what's happening. "She never meant to leave you!"

Pandora's fading voice twists into a scowl. Not that mother, she says.

Then she is gone.

I can't find my breath. What have I done? I clutch my sword, sweat coating my skin like cold sin, but another consciousness opens up around me. It rumbles out of the earth, out of the branches around me, out of the very air.

The ground shudders.

There's a whisper in the wind, a voice that isn't a voice. It tells Ignatius that his journey is at an end. It knows that Ignatius heard its voice so many centuries ago, calling him home. It knows he was following its call when the vines lured him in. Now the vines are now more.

Ignatius wavers. Sleep falls from his bark like an old curse.

Thank you, child of the stars, he says.

Then he, too, is gone.