Lawrence asked what was on everyone's minds, "You told us before that Herodias was just
a mundane cat before she became a familiar. But the way Herodias said it, SHE was the
black cat that tried to make little girl Marie just after her parents' deaths to hate the man
who would become her god father for failing her. That SHE was the black cat that Marie
accidently killed with a hot poker and Father Gaberiel threw outside. And it's clear that
Marie had remembered that cat."
"If there could indeed be a thing called fate, one could say that the original fate would
have been there to be four witches, and for what the witches sought to happen TO happen,
and for the world to be remade into a mad house only for a new order to slowly rise out of
the muck stronger than the order that the chaos had torn down. But destiny it seemed in
opposition for the world to go on struggling, building itself painstaking one piece at a
time. Maybe Herodias healed from that fatal encounter -after- dying, but that would make
no sense given Solome's fate. Maybe she played dead. But given her relentless attitude that
also makes no sense. Perhaps what made Herodias greater than she was, simply found a
new vessel."
1689 - March
In the witch's house, the two lupman pups, one male and one female, played together on
the rug. The boy pulled on the girl's super long hair making her cry out.
"Francis! That's not fair!"
The boy quickly apologized. "Sorry Julianna."
Gaal looked on with satisfaction, before these two less-than-dogs had been determined to
kill her, her sisters, and those close to them. Now they were pure and innocent as they
should have stayed from the beginning if not for an unfair god. Lilith turned her head as
she coiled around Gaal looking at the small family of leoman as the lion people worked
tirelessly, endlessly, and dauntlessly continued to work on and expand the house.
'Before they were just drifters, vagrants, drunks, now they have a family, a purpose, and
once the spell is complete, will be among the first to feel absolute freedom from this unfair
universe.'
The first one they changed had become the male of the group, the rest that followed had
become his lionesses, and a couple had become brother and sister, a common pattern to
the witch's games.
The leoman family worked without complaint or word, to a point that would have even the
normally altruistic leomans stunned. Even their two cubs worked with bright eyes and
smiles on their faces, none showing the slightest frown of boredom. The witches had built
up their family one by one, not only working as free carpenters to continue the work of
expanding the house, but also to act as physical body guards in case their magic somehow
failed them. The witches didn't comprehend how their magic failing them was remotely
possible, but there was a chance they could be away when another gang of less-than-
dogs attacked their familiars, and that would be totally unacceptable!
The leomans did their absolute hardest not to get in the way of the unruly children, and
serving in other tasks when needed.
Gold Deer were ideal prey animals, if for no other reason than they had no true mating
season, and could reproduce year round if need be. Hunting was thus one of the things
that naturally kept their numbers in check. This meant that there always fawns in some
form or another among the herds.
And sometimes they wandered off. This led to an incident where the witches' charges had
wanted to play with a gold fawn that had also wandered from it's parents. When the buck
found them however, it thought the worst and decided an example needed to be made. As
it ran foreword with it's horns lowered, one of the witch's leomans grabbed hold of the
buck by the horns and twisted it's neck, dead. The fawn cried out and fled in terror. The
buck's pelt became a nice skin for many of the children including Joella.
That was all the witches needed to know, to be sure that these leoman they had created,
with reddish gold fur and crimson manes, were indeed the perfect physical protectors.
'Princess' mates and kittens had of course moved in with the witches now. Princess' litters
now acting as the witches eyes and ears, there was little that now happened in Glendale
that these witches didn't know.
'Princess'' first mate, a plain brown cat named Cain, was only vaguely aware of the world
around him anymore than any mundane cat, he knew that these humans however were
making life easier for him, his mate, and his litters, so why complain?
Cain did it very odd that he didn't feel like fighting to the death over Herodias/Princess,
but something about her presence made him shrug off these urges to battle... besides... his
brown coat had long since turned to gray, and his muscles decayed and his body grew
chubby. 'Maybe it's better something about her makes us not want to kill each other... I
don't think I'd last long... anymore...'
With Herodias' mates and litters as a security network, and their created leomans as
bodyguards, and the geass around Joella, their familiars now (they wouldn't make that
mistake again) and themselves, the witches were certain that they were effectively
invincible.
Glass Marie said, "For Joella, and the children she shared the house with now, the 'oath'
was ultimately just a game that Joella had invented on the spot. the witches had nothing to
do with it.
But there was one thing if the witches had found out they would have gone mad if they
were not already lost in their own world. To the many mad children they had inflicted, by
using them as a massive joint familiar, they had brought ORDER to them! They had given
the chaos inside them DIRECTION! It had created a sense of unity and form. It wasn't a hive
mind, not in the least. But it had brought a sense of clarity back to these broken children's
minds.
This 'miracle,' the witches barely noticed, after all, this little world was supposed to be
perfect already. They also didn't realize how it worked in their favor, since the people of
Glendale stopped fleeing... and slowly began to trickle back to their home town. And new
ones were drawn back to Glendale as well, either to add to their leomans, their children, or
become a new family to support their increasingly large household.
This would leave Joella as the sole inheritor of a surprisingly impressive estate when the
witches died. But that's getting ahead of the story.
It was March by the time that the hunters had their disastrous first encounter with the
witches. When the spell over Glendale was only twenty-five percent complete more or
less. And it wouldn't be until around ninety-two or ninety-three percent that the spell had
completely changed Glendale from what it was and began to build up to expand.
Of course, Marie had no way to know this, only knowing that it was by the end of the year
that it would be too late to stop the tiny snow ball from becoming an avalanche.
Sadly, Draco was now in no condition to go anywhere. Kathrine had suffered a concussion
and several broken bones from impacting the gargoyle from the hammer of water. And
Vatican, had lost his wings, and had come dangerous close to losing his head, and with no
other Gargoyles around to perform a transference ceremony, this would have left him
blind, deaf, and mute."
"Don't you mean dead?" Betty had to ask. Maddex glared.
"No." Glass Marie said, "Remember when the assassin killed the gargoyle security? A
gargoyles' awareness is housed within the very center of their beings."
"Oh right." Betty nodded.
"Only Linus had suffered no crippling injury from the battle, and he was needed mostly to
take care of the others. Marie had come with mostly brushes, but her injury was in it's own
way the most crippling of all. She had failed. She knew there was still time, she knew there
would be another chance, but that all felt so meaningless. Such an utter defeat did not
click in Marie's mind, she thought that they would win, die trying, or end up slaves. The
idea of being so utterly defeated and LIVING left her completely jarred.
During the time they recovered, Linus and occasionally Marie tried to discouraged people
from returning to going to Glendale... but it was no use, and those that they did
successfully block simply via other than the roads, to be quickly spotted by one of the cats,
and for the witches to transform them through one of the children sent with a leoman
bodyguard.
Joella, didn't know any of this. She knew what the witches had done to the mob of killers,
but figured that had been simple self defense, like the leoman who had killed the buck
whose fur she was now wearing.
But she had no idea where the REST of the children, supportive families, or leomans were
coming from. In no small part due to realizing this would mean realizing how awful her
foster parents were, which Joella, born from idealized memories, couldn't comprehend
doing.
Joella DID however hear about the awful evil hunters who had sought to destroy her family,
and had sought to murder her foster parents, not to mention try to destroy all the hard
work the witches had done for Glendale.
Joella immediately asked around of Herodias' cats of what they had seen and what they had
heard in relation to these five hunters, where they had gone, and what they looked like.
Taking only Le-Fay, a small black and brown kitten recently born from Herodias, Joella left
the house, no being stopped, after all, the witches (rightfully) trusted Joella with their lives
and trusted her not to do anything foolish.
Joella's geass, and to a small effect the trees that would soon enough act as ANOTHER
protective barrier around Glendale and the witches themselves as they became living
guardians, protected her easily enough.
She found the battered, bloody, and broken hunters in the forest beyond the protective
reach of the trees that would be recruited into Glendale's protection. They were talking
among themselves, what Joella didn't hear, but she announced her presence with a, "Hello."
This started the hunters as a whole, good.
"Hello little girl," Said the blue felman, a make-shift pad and bandage around her head.
"How are you today?"
Marie said, "Hello child, are you lost? We can get you some help if you need it."
"No I don't, thank you." Said Joella as polite and calm and civilized as possible.
"Where are you parents?" the dragon with the ruined wings and looking a little like a
mummy asked.
"Back in Glendale." She said simply.
This caused more small starts.
"My parents are good people, they're nice people, they -help- people! They shouldn't be
hurt for that!"
The hunters wondered if this girl was a victim of the witches.
"My parents saved me and all my friends and their families from a bunch of bad men who
were going to kill us! They shouldn't be called bad people for that."
The hunters all slowly nodded. Wondering where this girl truly came from and why she was
saying all of this to them out of the blue.
"So please, please," the girl who had not even given her name said, "JUST LEAVE MY FAMILY
ALONE! Just leave us be! We don't want to hurt you so please don't try to hurt us!!! Please! I
don't want to see any of you hurt!.... I... I just wanted to say that because I don't like seeing
people hurt and in spite of what you did you're still people... Please. Just stay away if you
don't want to get along, at least let us be.... I'm going home now, please don't follow me."
Linus wondered if this was one of the witches in disguise. When the girl began to back up,
Kathrine stood up and used her good arm to grab the child.
Draco's magical sense screamed at Kathrine to stop seeing the protective aura surrounding
the child like a fortress, but it was too late.
This contact combined with Kathrine's intent trigger Joella's geass, and Kathrine's arm was
on fire, and began to spread to the rest of her.
Kathrine screamed, Marie at once, ignoring that it burned her own hands began to roll her
on the ground to put out the flames, Linus helped too, and to the shock of the hunters, so
did Joella....
The deadly fire were put out.
Everyone worked quickly and silently and when it was done, Kathrine's was shedding
streams of tears of pain... If not for her time with Armando, she'd be screaming in agony.
The small felman body on one side was now devoid of fur, she looked half like some
strange goblin from fairy tales rather than a human suddenly without fur.
Linus, Marie, and Joella helped her up. Le-Fay just watched all this confused, not knowing
why the Big But Not Giant Cat had suddenly caught on fire, but glade she seemed to be
okay.
"Please," Joella said at last still not having given her name, BEGGING, "Just live your lives
and let my family and friends be!"
Joella ran away, no one stopped her this time.
Joella had unwittingly given the witches another service... efforts to Kathrine's recovery
would now add yet another month to the hero's mending on top of the months needed for
Draco and Vatican to recover....
Joella returned to Glendale, waved at one of the trees, and it looked like it tried hard to
wave back, it would have it down in a few months.
Joella wandered the streets for a bit, looking about town. The buildings were all the same.
The people were all the same. Besides some newborn lupman with odd fur. The spell was
only thirty three percent complete at this point after all. But things would be truly
interesting soon enough.
She wandered into a book store and saw a large book with several names in it. She asked
what it was about, and she learned it was a ship's book for writing down names of the
crew. Getting an idea she took a large blank book promising that she'd come back with
money for it later and was believed (no one had ever known Joella to lie even once to
anyone).
She let Le-Fay go and returned to her home, the leomans happily nodded at her as she
came by.
She put down the book next to a grinning monkey figurine (still in the loop of reliving the
few happy memories it had when it had been a man after all these years) and the smiling
fairy figurines that resembled her.
"Hey everyone!" Joella cried out getting the attention of her 'brothers' and 'sisters.' She put
on the captain's head that was just hanging about. "Your captain wants you to write down
your names, gender, species, and hair/fur color for the ship manifest! If you don't know
how to write you can just say and I'll write it in for you."
Intrigued by the new game the children driven mad by the witches, the two leoman cubs,
the two lupman pups, and those transformed from coming into Glendale into children
including Samantha and Alissa, and the former angry mob, began to wander to the smiling
girl with a quill nearby.