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He’d squeezed until he heard its death rattle.
Staggering up onto his hooves, he’d barely managed to avoid the fireball Mab shot at him. He saw she was still having trouble forcing the Wild Magic to obey. He’d stalked forward until he collided with a force field she’d thrown up between them. Henry had pounded on the field and felt it weakening with each blow. It was exhausting, but it was working.
When the field fell, it did so with an enormous boom and a backblast, which tossed Henry back as well. He’d forced himself up and rushed her again only to strike a second field.
His fists were a bloody mess, so he’d pulled on the healing spell and felt its sluggish refusal to budge, so he’d pulled harder and harder until it suddenly came loose and rushed from the surface to fly up into the sky once more. Henry could see out the window behind Mab and saw the swirling green light rise and thin out to its usual invisible state in the upper atmosphere.
Calling it to heal his injuries was far easier now, and working with magic was becoming second nature. Once his fists were better, he’d wrapped them in the green light and began pounding on the next shield as Mab snarled at him from behind it.
Henry saw Marisa was bound to an overly complicated death trap Mab had devised to terrify Henry into submission. The unconscious blonde was strapped to a table with deadly blades positioned above and to her sides, ready to begin dicing her into cubes as vials of nasty caustic liquids prepared to dissolve her remains. As he brutally pounded his fists against Mab’s shield, his mind was busy creating a body profile shield for Marisa as well as a variant of his exploded view spell for the Rube Goldberg death machine.
When the second field fell, he saw they’d done some serious damage as the castle tilted further and began to collapse.
With Mab temporarily distracted, he launched his spells as he opened a tear on the surface of the table below the blonde. The trap sprung, but the pieces flew everywhere but at Marisa. As she slid down into a soft grassy landing, the shield protected her from the stray droplets of the caustic liquids.
Mab wasn’t so lucky and shrieked as a spray of acid splashed against her leg. Henry was knicked by one of the blades spinning past his shoulder.
When the floor behind him began to go, he’d spotted Roy one level down. In a panic, he’d opened multiple tears and dropped everyone he could see into Eden.
When the last tear snapped shut, he’d collapsed in exhaustion. He’d been lucky Mab was occupied, keeping a large portion of her floor mostly intact.Belongs to NôvelDrama.Org - All rights reserved.
He pulled on the energy from the rift within himself and felt his strength slowly returning.
When Baba arrived, his eyes locked onto his daughter. Nothing else existed in the world for him at that moment. Their eyes met, and he felt an immediate connection. Her eyes twinkled happily as he smiled at her.
“You’ve come to interfere, again?” Mab hissed.
Baba knelt on a plush area rug and gently laid the babe down, touching her cheek affectionately. Then she quickly stood and backed away from the child as she made some hand gestures. Henry’s head rocked back as he felt a snapping sensation in his horns.
“No. I’m not here to interfere,” Baba said softly as she watched Henry sadly.
He watched her with a puzzled expression. This gave way to dread as Baba stepped back into a shadow and disappeared. He looked to Mab and saw the insane glee flare in her green eyes once more.
Henry moved first and got his body between Mab and his daughter. Her hastily flung fireball scorched his left side, but he protected the baby.
The pain was excruciating, and Henry immediately triggered his spell for repairing the damage. He barely managed to stay on his hooves as the burnt flesh fell away, and new growth began.
Mab watched his agony with a feverish intensity. His torturous pain seemed to sexually excite her as he clearly saw the impression of her nipples against her clothes. He felt ill from how her face twisted into the most revolting expressions. He hated that she was using the face his daughter should have had. He stumbled forward and grabbed her shoulders. Her fingers clawed at the fresh skin on his side, and he lurched forward as she laughed.
The sound cut short as his forehead bumped against hers painfully. He pulled back and saw Mab was struggling to remain conscious. His skull was far denser than hers due to his horns. He jolted back when he noticed the silver thread connecting his horns to the top of Mab’s head. He looked back and saw a second thread reached out and touched the top of the baby’s head. He felt the three-way connection activate as a shock, and Mab’s eyes flew wide as the thread began to accelerate.
Suddenly, the window behind Mab exploded inwards as Nate pulled his wings in and landed on his feet to run closer.
“HOLD HER, HENRY! HOLD HER!” he screamed, his voice high and tight with tension as he fought his own terror. Nate crashed into Mab’s back, and she screamed. Henry looked down and saw the tip of Mab’s cursed dagger sticking out her chest.
Mab’s eyes locked on his, then he saw them change from mad green to an innocent blue, filled with pain and confusion.
“NO! NO! NATE, STOP!” Henry screamed, but Nate wrapped his wings around them to keep the dagger in Mab’s back. The look on his face was a mix of terror and righteous joy.
Henry watched in horror as the light faded in the innocent blue eyes and her body shrank and quickly became an infant once again. The silver threads snapped as the process was over.
Nate lurched back and dropped the dagger as the innocent life flooded into him. “What? What? N-n-n-no!” he gasped and shook his head as the gravity of what he’d just done sank into his mind.
Henry sank to his knees, holding the tiny body tenderly against his chest. His mind couldn’t contain his grief, and he just made quiet, keening noises.
Mab, now back in her old body, chuckled and reached out her hand. The dagger leapt from the floor to her, the grip slapping against her palm.
“My darling Nate! You’ve returned my beloved blade to me! Thank you!” she purred with a wide grin.
He turned toward her, his expression twisting between terror and rage. He turned and leapt out the broken window.
“Henry, Henry, Henry. Dry your tears. This was always destined to happen. The child had only one purpose, and even that failed. The truth is, ultimately, everyone ends up disappointing you, even your beloved Baba.” She ran her fingers down her body, and she was suddenly wearing a very provocative skin tight dress. “It feels so good to be in a body that’s linked to the magic that obeys!”
Henry was lost. His daughter was dead. She’d died in his hands. His heart felt like it might shrivel up and die.
He opened up a small rift on the floor before him, and Xiong looked up at him in surprise. Henry gently lowered the little body down into the hands of the glass being and spoke to him through the magic they shared. “She was my daughter, and I failed her. Please lay her to rest… someplace beautiful.”
The sadness returning from Xiong almost shattered Henry’s control. The elder accepted the small bundle and nodded. Henry closed the tear.
He stood slowly to face Mab. The only thing left for him to do was kill this evil creature. Nothing else mattered.
Mab’s expression of delighted surprise wasn’t what he expected to see, but she quickly clued him in.
“Oh, Baba, you shouldn’t have! This is too delicious!” she burst into manic giggles as Henry stared at her.
She looked up at him with tears of joy in her eyes. “My sweet Henry, or should I say… Stanley.”
She held up her right hand, and Henry finally understood the scope of Baba’s final betrayal.
The ring.
Mab was wearing the cursed ring.
“Time to say goodbye to your retched Humanity!” she giggled in delight.
He watched her wide smile as she spun the ring one way around.
Henry couldn’t cross the space between them in time to stop her.
Time!
He had no idea how to activate the temporal energy stored in his horns, but he focused all of his will on them with one simple command, stop.
Mab’s evil grin was filled with her madness as she spun the ring back, slowly, then slower still until she just froze.
Henry tried to surge forward, but he wasn’t able to move though his mind was still active.
“Didn’t I tell you not to mess with time magic?” Baba growled as she walked into view from behind him.
“You need to stop her!” Henry exclaimed and realized he was standing outside of his body. This felt familiar, as he’d been outside of his body so often. He immediately moved to Mab’s side and tried to pull her fingers away from the ring, but it was like pushing a mountain. He turned to look back at Mab. “Help me!”
“What makes you think I can do what you cannot?” she asked scornfully. “What makes you think I’d want to if I could?”
He frowned at her. “You can do things no one else can. You reached back in time and pulled me forward like you did the others!”
Baba shook her head. “I did nothing of the sort. You can’t go back in time. That’s proven to be impossible, even for me. You can go forward, though. I pushed you and the others forward to my present self, who knew when and where to collect you from the time stream. That your horns would collect the temporal energy was a surprise to me.”
Henry shook his head. “Right, the temporal energy in my horns. I’ve seen it age and de-age someone. Isn’t that going forward and backward in time?”
“Don’t be stupid! Those are only local area effect spells modifying the state of an object or person within the field. It follows the stored memory in cells to revert to previous states and predictive algorithms to project their future states. Only temporal energy can power that spell,” Baba snapped. She looked to Mab. “She used it to good effect at her party.”
He sighed as this wasn’t what he wanted to talk about now. “What’s stopping me from preventing her from spinning the ring?”