"And now there is no children from Julie and Frank," Marie-Eliza told Madam Serenity as she reached for the door, "Frank has always been Fran as far as reality is concerned. Daryl has always been Darla. The three of them are sisters and the mothers of Alice, Abbey, and Samantha."
"You know what I mean," Serenity retorted.
"Of course," Marie nodded.
By then Serenity opened the door, which surprisingly hadn't been locked again and let the little glass wolf in. As they entered, Serenity quickly grabbed Marie by the head to cover her eyes.
"Don't look!"
"I am afraid Madame, that your efforts to protect my innocence is somewhat wasted," Marie said, not fighting physically, "thanks to Kurse, I am in a sense the curse now. I know what they've done to one another."
"You're..."
"Relax," Marie urged, "unlike Kurse and the witches before "her" I know that magic isn't the answer to everything. It helps, but isn't the answer. And like you, I wouldn't mind seeing the "game" die. If I could alter it to make it a benign magic, I would, but I am not strong enough to try it."
"Even if killing the game kills your powers?" Serenity wondered.
"No, my powers would remain," Marie answered, "but with only me, the elements of hatred, small-mindedness, uncontrolled lusts and perversions, and other vices that the game has fed on over the centuries would be eliminated."
"What if you have children in the future?"
"Given that I and Julie, Fran, and Darla's daughters only age while we are in the mirrorverse, that is a very LONG way away," Marie answered, "and in the meantime we have four love dolls to deal with."
Serenity nodded and looked back to the bed before them. Two golden colored rubber/plastic male leoman love dolls lay entwined with two female leoman love dolls. For Serenity it was like a never ending nightmare. She had thought that the horrors that Kurse had wrecked on the world as a result of Kyle Perkins and Jennifer Smith's ill-advised use of the game would be enough to scare anyone straight away from it...
But some hopes just didn't appear to come true. And to a certain extent, the maturity exhibited by Marie, who appeared to be somewhere around the age that Abbey and Samantha were at the youngest and possibly as old as Alice, who Serenity had met at the police station, at the oldest. Yet Marie behaved in a very mature manner.
Marie meanwhile listened to the mental pledges of love going on between the four love dolls. Their minds were still there, which left her hoping that they would somehow find their way into Penny Glen's possession, so that the pale white/beige lioness could free them and restore them to the Pride... but unless Serenity took them to her, it was unlikely that that would happen. Leomen generally didn't use such objects.
"What do you need me to do to help?" Marie asked.
++++++++++
Gaal watched quietly as the Witch Pride went about fortifying their manor, largely by taking various child familiars and letting them place Gomorrah's spells in a way that help protect them from the Dog and the army she had to have amassed in the woods...
+++++++++++
"Army?" Lawrence and Maddex asked curiously, not in unison, but Marie was able to understand it, even while her avatar was helping Madam Serenity.
"The witches refused to believe that the steeling of their grandmother's bones was for a practical purpose," Marie-Eliza explained, "they told themselves that Marie had done it to be evil and to attack at their hearts... though to be honest, if Balthilde still lived, she would have been heartbroken at her granddaughters actions and would likely try to help Marie Cruz."
"The witches just gave more and more excuses to justify their position," Maddex surmised.
"Yes," Marie nodded, "and as a result to explain how the geass that protected Meranda and Frank was beaten, they decided that Marie had had to have raised an army of hunters hiding in the woods and that the geass was simply over powered through sheer weight of numbers until it wore down, like the deflector shields in the Star Wars and Star Trek movies."
"Though, not that fortifying their manor would have been a bad strategic decision," Alice commented, "even if Marie didn't have an army, such fortifications would have been dangerous."
"Yes," Marie nodded, "it was a sort of defense in depth, hoping Marie and the hunters would be killed by their defenses before they could even get into the manor and kill their familiars..."
+++++++++++
Gaal watched as the first ring of the manor's defenses were erected. Massive thorn bushes grew out from the ground. They had no leaves and looked rather dead to the naked eye, but they would be more then enough to slow down any invader. The bushes were magically protected, meaning that the dragon couldn't burn them down and were thick enough to prevent the gargoyle from pushing through them. And the thorns on the bushes were as large as nails very close together, making it impossible for them climb over.
There would be gaps in, but this was deliberate. The thorn bushes would act as a maze that would force the hunters to split up and go off on their own. When they finally made it through the maze of thorns, hopefully badly cut up, they would run into a pair of Leoman guards armed with what would be called a bazooka in WWII, which while it wouldn't be invented for many years, being created through magic and Golgotha's second sight, the weapon would be more then enough to kill the gargoyle. It was cheating, obviously, but the witches didn't care.
"It's magic," Gaal spoke repeating a line they had once asked as children, though now with more authority and not as a question, "it shouldn't follow rules."
Ultimately the next line would be to place heavy shudders outside the manor's windows, making it impossible for anyone to fire a weapon into the home.
+++++++
In her sleep, Marie found herself seeing two visions. First was a black and gold Lupman running through woods covered in snow. The trees were thick and made the lupman dodge frequently to avoid running into them. He wore an olive green helmet on his head with interwoven netting covering the top and carried an over-sized tube like weapon.
"Patrick! A voice called OVER HERE!"
The Lupman turned to the voice and approached a human crouched in the snow and leaning against a tree. He was shivering from the cold, but doing his best to persevere down there.
Speaking proved to be a problem as the buzz saw like sound of a German machine gun then echoed through the forest, taking down branches from the trees and forcing the human to drop to the ground to avoid being hit.
"Ratzies really don't want to give up their advance," the man grumbled, "Patton got to Bastogne and these guys are still fighting!"
"Our supply problems aren't helping," Patrick grumbled, "I had to go all the way to battalion HQ to get a bazooka to replace the one they destroyed when that damn Tiger first attacked us."
"You gotta get it, Pat," the man told him, "rest of our squad's been pinned down by that thing for the better part of the day. Blow that tank and we can push back toward Malmedy."
Patrick nodded and moved along the ground. His fur collecting snow as it did, but he was not bothered by the cold as much as his human comrades. He eventually got to a point where the tank wasn't firing his his direction and he peered over the edge to see who was manning the machine gun on the tank. A silvery gray lupman with the Waffen SS runes burned into his shoulder. That made the black and gold Lupman growl angrily that Lupman would follow some man that wanted to conquer the world and from Patrick's point of view lacked the honor that would have made the position understandable.
"Stupid Nazis," Patrick growled and aimed the bazooka directly at the SS Lupman, and fired, killing the Lupman and crippling the Tiger II tank that the SS Lupman had been manning.
+++++++++
Marie didn't know who these "Nazis" or "Patrick" were, but guessed that it was too far in the future for her to be concerned with. Part of it wondered if that meant that she would be successful ultimately... but she had no time to worry about that as a second vision then came to her.
She saw Vatican come out of a narrow opening in a maze of massive thorn bushes that he barely fit through, only to be attacked by a Leoman armed with a weapon practically identical to the one "Patrick" wielded . The Leoman fired the weapon and Vatican exploded in a shower of stone splinters. And that shook Marie awake.
++++++++
Marie sat up quickly and looked around the camp. Linus was asleep under the blankets they had, mostly given to them by the people of the praying town. Draco was also asleep, but since his wing bones were still healing, he could not lay down and was seated near their campfire area, his head resting in his hands. Katherine lay beside Marie. Vatican was on sentry duty, since gargoyles had no need for sleep.
"They're breaking the laws of time and development," Marie sighed to herself, "that weapon, and the technology behind it shouldn't be invented for MANY years, probably more then a hundred, maybe even close to two hundred years..."
Marie then looked to her comrades.
"This will require some rethinking," Marie sighed, "if they're going to cheat, we do not have the numbers nor the power to simply overcome them. And I can not fail my friends again."
+++++++++
Meanwhile, Marie-Eliza and Serenity looked on at one brief flash of light went through the enclosed space as Serenity finished the incantation that would kill the curse in accordance with Merlin's spell.
"Did it work?" Serenity asked the small avatar of the glass wolf.
Marie looked at the four love dolls and sighed. She could still hear their mental voices saying how much they loved one another, but she could no longer feel her powers, or the "game's" powers coming from them. The Leoman cascade powers were likely still there, but the combination of those powers and the game's powers wasn't there. There would be no cascade of Leoman love dolls.
"I believe so," Marie told the older woman, "and their minds are still there."
"They can be turned back?"
"Back into Leomen," Marie answered, "the original terms of the transforms of the Pack and the Pride were locked, which the curse took to mean that their species couldn't be changed..."
"But their form could if they were changed into a Leoman or Lupman statue or some Leoman or Lupman made out of some other material," Serenity sighed.
Marie nodded, "which means, in order to free their minds from being inanimate objects, they need to become Leomen... again."
"Can you do that?" Serenity asked.
"Not without cheating, and going too much into the Infinite Chaos, and to be honest, I'm probably close to my limit by sending this avatar form to help you," Marie sighed, "though Penny Glen of the Pride here can restore them back into Leomen, just as Amy and Zelipe are able to restore those that were Lupmen."
Serenity only sighed. They had managed to prevent one thing, but if what Marie had told her was true the Pride's "true love" powers wouldn't go away, and the "extras" that certain members of the Pack had wouldn't go away when the game ended. It was frustrating to say the least, but she was certain that it would only anger Father Michael, Paul, and Gill, one of the few people she could say was a friend of hers that was still around, would not like it even more.
"And the Pride and the Pack's powers have separated from the game?"
"Yes," Marie nodded, "I'm sorry if this frustrates you, but responding with more magic to try and stop it would only make things worse."
"I understand," Serenity nodded.
"Now, if you will excuse me, I will leave the moving of these four to you, as I am in the midst of a rather "epic" story and must return my full attention to it," Marie responded and then seemed to vanish into nothingness.
Serenity only looked on with a sigh. She silently wondered how reality would affect her ability to sense the game. It had grown stronger because of the frequent use of it by Jensen and the Pack early on, and then by Brian and Felicity to create the Pride, but now that reality had altered for them to the point where none of them had played the game, would that revert her powers back to before Jensen began using it? Or would reality shift it so that her ability to sense the game was ALWAYS that strong.