Outside of the cabin, the wizard was on the phone with his mysterious boss.
“What’s this all about?” the wizard asked his boss. “Don’t you know that I’m in the middle of an important ritual right now?”
“Victor” the voice replied on the other end. “Have you been acting reckless again?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’ve been given word that the magical police force has a warrant out for your arrest. You may have been able to allude them for a long time, but now they have definitive proof of your crimes and know your location. You have to get out of there before they can arrest you.”
“I can’t, sir. I’m in the middle of the memory erasing ritual. If I don’t complete this, then we’re going to have a big problem on our hands.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Sofya, my daughter, and the two boys she’s been hanging out with, will serve as eye witnesses against me. I have to rid myself of them before I can leave. I’ll get out immediately after that.”
“You don’t have time for this, Victor! The police are on their way right now! Kill the kids if you have to! Just get out of there!”
“I can’t kill my own daughter.”
The wizard did something that he rarely ever did in that moment. He shed a tear, knowing that if he couldn’t perform the ritual in time, he’d have no other choice but the lose the one thing that mattered most to him. His own flesh and blood. His only flesh and blood.
“If you can’t finish the ritual in time, then you have no other choice. You cannot allow her to serve as a witness against you. You may not have another choice.”
The wizard paused, before he spoke again.
“Let me take care of the two boys and then we’ll figure out what to do with my daughter later.”
“I’ll send my men to hold the police off for as long as I can, but they are extremely powerful and will likely take them out easily. You better know what you’re doing, Victor, or your employment with me is finished. Forever.”
The wizard was silent, before his boss spoke to him again.
“Hurry up!” the mysterious boss shouted at him on the other end of the phone.
“Fine” the wizard replied, curtly.
The wizard hung up on his end of the line and proceeded to unlock the back door of the cabin to his way back inside. When he entered, he could see Sofya standing up, freed from her bondage and the dog, Fido, working to remove the ropes that tied his lover to a chair.
“How in the world?!” the wizard screeched.
Fido whimpered, before turning to see Sofya’s angry father staring at him in a fit of rage. Fido began to growl, as Sofya stepped towards him.
“Daddy!” she scolded. “Your life of crime ends now! You’ve lied to me for what I learn tonight is centuries! You’ve stolen my childhood! You’ve stolen my right to be an adult! You’ve stolen any sense of normality in my life and this ends now!”
“Sofya!” her father yelled.
“No daddy! This ends now!”
“I didn’t want to have to do this, but I have no other choice.”
The wizard summoned a gun and pointed it at his daughter, who looked at him with a shocked expression on her face.
“Sofya!” her father continued. “I wanted to do this the easy way, but you’ve left me no other choice. I can’t take any chances with you remembering what I have told you tonight. If I can’t erase your memories, then I have no other choice but to kill you!”
Fido growled and barked loudly, as Michael began to panic in his chair. Sofya began to shed a tear from her eye.
“Daddy” she called to him angrily. “How dare you. This is how you’re going to treat your own flesh and blood? Like a slave? Like your prisoner?”
“Sofya” he mumbled to her.
“No daddy! I am not your property! I am an adult….frozen in time, yes, but an adult, one that is almost half a millennium old. I have long been denied my right to independence and you will not take it from me anymore.”
“Sofya, darling, I only did it to protect you. The world is so cruel outside and you would have been persecuted and even murdered a long time ago. I gave you the only life that you could have expected would be a positive one.”
“I have been denied my right to have a life, Daddy! I have been denied my right to make mistakes! To love! To grow! To go to college and get a job! To be a normal person! Maybe I am part wizard or witch or whatever, but you know what, I can learn to make it on my own! When we’ve put you away in the slammer, then I will end this age freezing curse once and for all and give myself the ability to grow up and grow old! I will escape your control over me forever!”
“You won’t be given that opportunity if I have anything to say about it.”
Sofya’s father drew his gun at his daughter, as she gasped in surprise. Barking loudly, Fido rushed over to Sofya to knock her down to the ground, before her father could fire off a shot.
“Damn it!” the wizard cried, as he aimed his gun to the ground at Fido. “You mangy mutt! You will never interfere with my plans ever again!”
Fido stared up at Sofya’s father, as Freddy’s life flashed before his eyes. Before the wizard could fire the trigger, however, Michael managed to break free of the ropes that bound him to a chair. He had been wiggling in the chair as the commotion was going on. He had hoped that Fido’s gnawing would weaken the ropes enough to have them snap apart on their own. Luck was on his side that night, as the ropes came undone and Michael rose quickly to rush at Sofya’s father.
When Michael made contact with the powerful wizard, he knocked him back slightly, causing the gun to shoot in the wrong direction. In response, he turned his gun towards Michael and glared at him angrily, his face red as a tomato.
“I will also be ridding the world of you once and for all!” Sofya’s father cried to him.
Before he could fire a bullet, Fido barked loudly and ran to the wizard. He bit his leg, which caused the wizard to stumble backwards.
“Ack!” the wizard cried. “You mangy mutt! Get off of me!”
Sofya’s father shook his leg and flung Fido to the floor. Sofya stood up to face him again.
“I’m not letting you possess that gun anymore, you monster!” she cried, as he put her hand up towards him.
Summoning up all the strength in her disposal, Sofya telepathically lifted the gun from her father’s hand and sent to the wall. It blurred into the wood paneling, making it completely useless.
“You bitch!” the wizard called to her, as he looked at the now destroyed weapon merged into the wall.
“Is that what you call your only daughter?” she asked him curtly. “Your flesh and blood?”
In a fit of rage, the wizard ran towards her and proceeded to grab her neck. Although she tried to summon magic to fend him off, her powers were useless against her father’s overwhelming might. He proceeded to beat the life out of her, as she began to bleed from her head.
“Stop it!” Michael yelled to him, as Fido barked loudly. “You’re going to kill her! You’re going to kill your own daughter!”
Ignoring his pleas, Sofya’s father threw her to the ground and continued to beat her face to a pulp. In no time at all, she laid unconscious on the floor, blood rushing out of her head at a rapid speed.
“Oh my god!” Michael shrieked, as he began to cry. “Look what you’ve done to her!”
Fido growled angrily, as he stared at Sofya’s father.
“You monster!” Freddy thought angrily, as Fido barked and lunged at Sofya’s father.
When Fido landed on his arm, the wizard let out a sharp cry. His seemingly impenetrable skin began to bleed.
“Ow!” he cried, as he shook his arm rapidly back and forth. “You mangy mutt! Get off of me!”
The wizard flung Fido back to the floor, as he landed with a painful thud. The blood from the glass shard wounds resumed pouring onto the floor below. In anger, the wizard summoned up another gun and drew it at Michael.
“Play time is over!” he yelled at a scared Michael, who now saw his own life flash before his eyes.
Michael recoiled and put his hands to his face. As a bullet was shot from the gun, he could see Fido quickly stand up, as he rushed towards him at a rapid speed. Shielding him from the impact of the shot, Sofya's father managed to hit Fido in the middle of his stomach.
“Freddy!” Michael yelled, as Fido whimpered and fell onto the floor in front of him.
After the bullet was fired, the front door of the cabin made a strange noise. By magic, it was lifted off of the handle. After being dragged into the air outside, armed police men, glowing with a magical aura, stood with their weapons drawn at the wizard.
“Magical world police force!” an officer yelled. “You are under arrest for the crime of wide scale conspiracy and piracy! Come out with your hands up!”
“Never!” the wizard replied, as he summoned more guns and began to use his mind to open fire on the officers.
The police used magical shields to dodge the line of fire, as they made their way inside and tackled the wizard to the ground. As he struggled, one of the officers pulled out a strange looking taser and proceeded to shock him into a state of unconsciousness. Despite his best attempts at wriggling himself free from their grasp, their sheer numbers, coupled with his weakened state, led the wizard to collapse onto the floor below. It was over in an instant. Despite taking over one hundred years to apprehend him, the wizard, Sofya’s father, was finally in police custody; ready to be taken to magical court to receive long overdue justice.
As the guards secured the wizard, they got up and flung his unconscious body over their shoulders. Carefully making their way to the front door, Michael called out to them.
“Wait!”
One of the officers turned to him, as Michael looked up with a red face and tears rolling down his cheeks.
“You got to help him! Freddy is dying! Please! Please help him!”
“I’m sorry young man” the officer replied. “We only deal with issues pertaining to the magical world. You’re going to have to call a human ambulance if you want to save your friend.”
The officer turned back to head out the door frame.
“Bastard” Michael thought to himself, as he began to heavily sob.
Michael looked off into the distance, as the wizard was loaded into a van. In an instant, they all disappeared into the night sky.
Then……