On the boat making its way back to New Zealand, still awaiting its "running out" of fuel and discovery by New Zealand's version of the Coast Guard, Eliza Merryweather, Marie-Eliza's mother, straightened up a few things about the cabin that she shared with Marie... well, Marie used the reflection of the cabin, but still...
As she went about sorting some things, she began to gradually feel her sense of touch get number. As it started, she stopped and stepped back and looked at her hands. As she did so, she saw glass fingers, the same color as her daughters when she was outside the mirrorverse.
"What the...?" Eliza gasped.
The harding of her body continued to progress, yet Eliza found that all her fingers could still bend and were not held in place by the very nature of their material, like Marie wasn't reduced to a statue outside the mirrorverse.
"NO!" Eliza cried as she shook her arms, as if trying to stop the progression.
It did not and once the "glass" had progressed up to her shirt, it vanished, leaving only her bra covering her chest. Eliza's shock and horror at that this part ended when she heard a soft "clink" like noise, and looked down to see two glass feet poking out from the ground.
"NO!" Eliza cried again as the glass now progressing up her legs "dissolved" her pants, leaving her only in her underwear, "I am not glass!"
It didn't stop the progression as the glass began to work its way up her legs and toward her shoulders. She gasped as the progression of the glass reached her breasts, making her bra vanish. A small part of her mind marveled at how they didn't sag, but then as now being made of glass, that theoretically was impossible. The progression of the glass more the moment seemed to stop at her neck while it continued to work its way down to the glass coming up from her knees.
"I AM NOT GLASS!" Eliza screamed.
++++++++++++
It was late spring when the fortification of the Witches' manor began. And for one of the manor's few adults, Benjamin was slightly concerned about some things.
"Miss Golgotha? Are you in?" he asked nervously into one of the manor's bedrooms.
"Yes, Benjamin," answered a voice that sounded cordial.
"May I come in?"
"Of course," Golgotha answered from inside the room.
She then turned to see the man enter her room cautiously and nervously. Herodias barely noticed while in the middle of a nap.
"Miss Golgotha, I'm sorry if this seems out of place, but there are some things that make me nervous," Benjamin slowly.
"Like what?"
"These weapons you and your sisters have conjured up," Benjamin answered, "I've never seen muskets like them before... and the ammunition for it... it's strange. What are the wires for?"
"I do not know," Golgotha answered.
++++++++++
"SHE DIDN'T KNOW?" Lawrence gasped in shock and horror.
"Golgotha saw an image of an American solder blowing a gargoyle apart with one in a vision and assumed it would be the perfect weapon for the Witch Pride to use against Vatican," Marie explained, "but that doesn't mean they knew how the weapon worked. I mean, suppose someone teleports you into the year 4,599 and shows you the schematics basic component parts of some of their technology and then sends you back to your own time, would you know how that technology worked, or the science behind it?"
"Probably not, I might know how to copy it, but if something went wrong, I would not know how to fix it," Lawrence admitted.
"That is the situation the witches put themselves in," Marie said slowly.
"What were the wires for?" Cassandra asked curiously.
"The bazooka of World War Two was the Western Allies main personnel operated rocket launcher," Alice answered, "Grandpa told me they used it for nearly everything. From destroying tanks to pillboxes. Although, contrary to many video games of the war, it took a two man team to operate the weapon under standard conditions. One man carried the launch tube and fired the weapon while the other carried the ammunition for it and handled the loading of the weapon to increase its rate of fire. One person could do both jobs if he had to, but the rate of fire would slow dramatically and the number of rounds the soldier would have on hand would also decrease. The weapon was launched by an electronic command based at the rear of the launch tube. Wires on the projectile would be wrapped around nodes at the rear of the tube. When the soldier pulled the trigger, an electrical signal would ignite the rounds rocket fuel and send the round toward the target."
"He didn't tell you three horror stories about the war did he?" Maddex asked nervously, feeling his responsibility as one of the Omegas to look after the Pack's pups coming to the front of his mind.
"No, he did not," Alice answered, "what he's told us has been a more PG version of his adventures... though considering what we ALL went through with Kurse, I would tend to think that worrying over the horrific nature of one war is somewhat pointless when parts of this tale seem to be just as horrific."
Maddex conceded the point.
+++++++++
"You don't know?" Benjamin asked, "but what about the children? Suppose they play with these weapons?"
"They won't," Golgotha answered, "we've made sure that they won't."
"Miss Golgotha," Benjamin began, "as a parent, I'd always like to think I can control Alissa and Samantha. To protect them from those that would harm them, but I can't do that... not without being with them all the time, which would cause different problems. What if one of the kids gets into them while you, your sisters, the Witch Pride, or my wife and I aren't looking? I don't want to see them hurt."
"Once the Hunters that seek to enslave the children are no longer a threat we will dispose of the weapons," Golgotha spoke, "Until then, they are necessary."
Benjamin went glassy eyed for a moment, nodded, and then left the room.
+++++++++
"They're breaking the laws of time?" Linus asked.
"Using magic to create weaponry that isn't supposed to exist in THIS time," Marie answered, "largely to deal with Vatican."
"And you're certain it will work as it is supposed to work in its own time?" Draco asked nervously.
Marie slowly nodded, "meaning that we will drastically need to rethink things."
"If they think they're doing good and freeing people by what they're doing," Katherine said slowly, "maybe some of this is some attempt to protect all children that they've driven insane and kidnapped. Either they're afraid we'll send them back to their families, where they belong, or the fear that we're out to kill them."
"The children with them are innocent victims," Marie answered, "I'm sure of it."
"Then maybe it would be best to avoid the defenses altogether," Linus suggested, "if they fear that we will attack their manor and kill "their" children, perhaps we should issue a formal challenge. Go in under a flag of truce and allow them to pick the location so long as it is an area away from their children."
"I don't think they'd let us live if we approached under a flag of truce," Marie sighed, "they'd break it the instant they saw that we weren't fighting. And I think they're using the children to bolster their powers. While they may genuinely care for the survival of them, they also want to maintain their power levels and so they will prefer to remain close to them."
"But that means they would be deliberately putting the very things they'd want to protect in danger," Draco told her.
"I know," Marie answered, "they are MAD you know."
The others only sighed.
"Which is why we need to rethink things," Marie sighed.
She turned to Katherine. "You're doing fairly well and may be able to move about without the crutch soon, but I wouldn't think that the bones will heal fully until sometime in August."
She turned to Draco.
"My wing bones are healing," Draco told her, "but my wing membranes won't fully regenerate to a usable point until August. By that time though, maybe flight might help with these weapons. From what you've described I can't imagine they'd be that accurate... and it sounds like the witches don't want to actually fight, themselves, they'd rather have their slaves do it for them."
"I'm sorry, Draco," Marie told him.
Draco nodded. Marie, meanwhile turned to Linus.
"And in the meantime, Linus, there is you," Marie spoke, "You've been helpful, but there is something about you that strikes me as odd. You jumped at the opportunity to join us far faster then any sane person would. Katherine volunteered quickly because she is my friend, Vatican volunteered because of his vow to my father to protect me, Draco accepted my recruiting him because he had no other option. You had the option to simply move on... yet you didn't."
"And a man of conscience is supposed to just flee acts of evil?" Linus retorted.
"And then there is the things that you know," Marie continued, "Know I'm sure the Puritans have some old scrolls that date back centuries, as there were records of men like Merlin in Britain, but most of them are merely parts of the Arthurian Legend, not the actual history of Merlin Ambrosius and Arthur Pendragon. Most of the records of these things are in ROME and are incomplete... yet you know all the gaps between those sources."
"The Catholic Church has long BURIED sources on such things and even generated lies on others," Linus answered, "Remember the Donation of Constantine? The supposed donation of the entire Western Roman Empire to the Pope?"
"That is in Rome," Draco answered, "written in Latin, the language of the Romans."
"But in Medieval CHURCH Latin," Linus corrected, "Not in the dialect of Latin spoken by the Romans in the 300s AD when Constantine reigned. If you'd ever read Valla, you'd know that."
"I do not question your abilities as a scholar," Marie told him, "and do not question your morals. But there is something about you that leads me to believe you are not a Puritan... or that you are being guided by something more then books."
+++++++++++
In our own time, Marie-Eliza's mother stood nervously in front of the mirror in her cabin, looking at the glass statue of a naked woman there. She was at a complete loss for how it happened and was at the same time feeling a strange mental link to her daughter.
"I'm not a glass human," Eliza said to herself as she then looked down at her body, "I'm not a glass human... I'm..."
"Eliza?" came a voice from outside her cabin, "are you alright?"
It was the man Rick, probably with his fiance and her son. Eliza didn't answer as she was too nervous.
"Are you alright? I heard screaming?"
As she saw the door handle begin to turn, she gasped in fear and rushed into the mirrorverse without thinking. She had to get to Marie... Marie would protect her...
Rick finally got the door open to find an empty room and then shrugged.
"Marie must have taken her into the mirrorverse for some exploring," he sighed and then shut the door again.