"Miss Gita! Miss Gita! Miss Gita!" Becky hollared at a random window at the witches' mansion, hoping to get some attention.
At first it did little more then attract the attention of the other children in the yard, including Mal'akh, Joella, and Aimiliona.
"Mum?" Aimiliona spoke.
"It looks like a woman," Joella answered.
"An African," Mal'akh spoke, her eyes more able to pick up the sight of the human that several of the child familiars were carrying toward the mansion, "an escaped slave."
"Of the Wolf Pack?" Joella wondered, knowing of her "mother's" hatred of the Big Bad Wolf Pack.
"They may be a bit militaristic and very territorial, but they don't have slaves," Mal'akh answered, "at least mother's never seen any on their lands when she and the other lionesses go to hunt."
"Why only the lionesses?" Joella asked curiously.
"It's the way Leoman have always done things," Mal'akh answered, "the males defend the pride, we hunt. Mother also says that the Gold Deer would spot father's mane a mile away."
"So who would own her?"
"I don't know," Mal'akh shrugged as she lead Joella and Aimiliona closer to the scene, "mother and father have always criticized it as uncivilized."
As they approached the scene, Gaal and her sisters appeared at the back door. Mal'akh noticed them quickly and tried to match her face to her sisters, hoping they wouldn't recognize her as someone not under their spell.
"What is this?" Gaal questioned as she approached and looked down to the unconscious African woman that their child familiars were carrying.
"An attacker?" Gomorrah wondered.
"We don't know," Becky spoke.
"We've never seen someone like her before," Rosalie added.
"Is she okay?" Rouge added.
It was then that Golgotha noticed what appeared to be a broken shackle around one of the woman's ankles.
"A slave," Golgotha spoke, "another sign of the evil of all the law followers..."
"Is she okay?" Rouge asked again.
"She will be," Gaal spoke, "we will take care of her, and she will have the opportunity to take full revenge on her oppressors!"
++++++++++
Among Marie's audience, there were a lot heavy sighs at that.
"Is something wrong?" Marie-Eliza asked.
"Not really," Maddex said slowly, "it's just that slavery was a problem and at that time it was very much legal."
"And while the abolition movement would begin in New England, that real start wouldn't be until the 1800s," Lawrence spoke, "and it would ultimately take a war to end slavery... in the sense that it became illegal."
"I see," Marie nodded, "I suppose it would be hard to truly vilify the witches... in this case... but realistically speaking, by being with the witches, Afua would be trading one master for another. Even if she didn't know it."
"We know," Alice spoke, "Though it makes me sad to see the woman run from one evil only to be taken captive by another."
++++++++++
The witches paid no attention to Mal'akh whatsoever as they gathered up the unconscious woman and carried her inside their home. The child familiars that had found her, along with Mal'akh, Aimiliona, and Joella followed quietly behind. For the familiars it was more like they were following their leaders, while for Mal'akh, it was more of a spying mission. A part of her curiosity drove her to find out what the witches would do to this woman... and a part of her mind also wanted to update the hunters of what the witches were doing.
They ended up laying her on a couch that was in a room that looked like it made no sense to have a couch in the room.
"Rosy, go get some water for her," Golgotha instructed to the familiar with rose pink colored hair.
"The rest of you, stand back a bit," Gomorrah urged, "give her some room."
"She's asleep," Oliver spoke, "how much room does she need?"
His question was more curious then insubordinate, but Gomorrah took it as an insubordinate question. She raised her hand and an invisible wall pushed everyone in the group slowly and carefully out of the room, with the exception of Joella. The move did no harm to anyone, but it was clear that they didn't want them in the room. Thankfully, no one shut the door.
Rosalie returned a few minutes later carrying a glass of water and handed it to Gomorrah.
"Will she be okay?" Rosalie asked.
"Of course she will," Gomorrah answered, "she will be free."
Mal'akh privately shuddered wondering but what definition of "free" that the witches were operating under.
++++++++++
Afua awoke feeling pained and exhausted, but what she saw when she awoke frightened her more. Three white human women looking down at her, and there was something in the faces that was frightening... yet there was also something that was trying to make her calm.
"Who are you?" Afua said nervously, "where are the Leomen?"
"The Witch Pride is tending to their duties to defending their home," Gaal spoke, "You may relax. You are safe among us."
"Witch Pride?" Afua asked nervously.
"Yes," Golgotha answered, "my sisters and I are witches. Crusaders for freedom. We will RIGHT EVERY wrong there is. The Witch Pride serves us in our righteous crusade to bring freedom to the world."
"Freedom," Afua answered slowly.
"Yes," Gomorrah nodded, "Who are you?"
"Afua," Afua answered weakly, "Master was hard on me... beat me... I ran... saw Leoman... they would free me..."
"You are free with us," Gaal promised, "free to do as you wish. Free to join a cause to free others..."
"But how?" Afua asked, "Master and slave hunters have guns! They'd shoot me!"
"We can make it so that no gun will ever be a threat to you," Gomorrah commented, as she handed Afua the glass of water, "You'll be stronger then any human and impervious to anything that the law followers could do."
Afua drank the water.
"How?"
"Gargoyles," Golgotha spoke, "Made of stone, but can still move and even fly, they are impervious to the weapons of the races of man..."
++++++++
"What about the spy that poured acid on the gargoyles in the Vatican?" Betty asked, "and while musket fire would probably be of little worry to a gargoyle, I'd think that cannon fire of the day would be powerful enough to do a gargoyle harm."
"Cannon would do that," Marie-Eliza nodded, "but remember that the string of wars between France and Britain over the frontier of their North American colonies had yet to really start, so as yet there were few, if any, cannons available in the New World..."
"And I'd doubt that Marie Cruz would have risked a war to steal a cannon to deal with one gargoyle," Maddex commented, beginning to get the sense of what was going to happen to Afua.
Marie-Eliza nodded, "and neither did Marie Curz have access to the ingredients to make the acid that the spy had used in the Vatican."
+++++++++
"How can they move?" Afua asked.
"We do not know," Gomorrah replied, "at least not for certain. Our best guess is that they channel magic somehow."
"And you would become a powerful enforcer of freedom," Golgotha promised, "strong enough to free everyone from the bondage that the law followers have placed on them."
"I could free them?" Afua asked.
"All of them," Gaal promised, "although, if you accept our offer, there are a few things that you must know and accept and do in return."
"Such as?" Afua asked suspicious.
"There are a group of slave hunters in the woods," Golgotha spoke, "they seek not only to find you, but to kill the children we protect and enslave all the world. My sisters and I are trying to stop them, but doing so will take time. If you accept our offer, we ask that you defend us and "our" children from them. To insure that they do not enslave anyone else."
"Slavers..." Afua said with a low growl, "I hate them... I'd fight these slavers even if I didn't have to! Do it!"
"As you wish," Golgotha, Gaal, and Gomorrah said in unison.
++++++++
"I can't believe this," Mal'akh thought to herself as she watched what was going on, "this woman is volunteering to let them take her humanity and enslave her to them! The hunters MUST know of this! They must!"
It was then that she noticed the eyes of the child familiar's begin to glow, including her own sisters.
"No, Aimiliona, fight it! Don't do it!" Mal'akh silently cried to herself.
++++++++++
Afua sat on couch for a moment before she began to feel a strange tingle enter into her body. The witches before held their hands up and her body suddenly lifted into the air... and then the pain hit like there was no tomorrow.
"It hurts!" Afua screamed as claws burst from her fingertips. As she looked at them, she found them made not out of bone but of granite. They weighed her hands down.
Her body began to swell in size, first making her clothing feel tight against her body, but after a few moments she felt nothing. Her clothing was getting tighter around her, but she couldn't feel it. It was as if her was no longer connected to her nerves.
As Afua looked down she soon saw why. As the muscles around her arms enlarged, her skin was soon stretched to the point where it ripped to reveal solid granite underneath.
"I'm a gargoyle," Afua whispered as two stone horns burst from her temples, and then said with more firmness, "I'M A GARGOYLE!"
Her feet lengthened into a more digitigrade stance and destroyed the torn shoes that she had been been wearing. Her human skin was soon stretched beyond its capacity as well and two hoofed granite feet soon tore through her skin.
Afua's growing horns then began to curl backward, like the horns of a ram, wrapping around her ears, which ripped open to reveal the growing pointed stone ears underneath. A row of smaller horns burst through the skin at the top of Afua's nose and running in a line into her hair, which was falling out.
"I'M A GARGOYLE!" Afua roared, her voice becoming more gravelly, and would be thought to actually be masculine by those who had never seen a gargoyle before. Then two stone demonic wings grew out of her back, destroying the tattered clothes she wore. That left her larger, but still stone breasts exposed to those in the room, though nudity was not something that the witches punished, and to Mal'akh, it wasn't even a concern. Her parents went around naked all the time.
Then a long stone spade tipped tail burst out from the base of Afua's spine rendering her completely naked.
"Yes," Afua smiled, "Yes. I AM a gargoyle."
The newly transformed woman then brought her clawed fingers up to her face and slowly pulled the human skin off the rest of her face and spit out the human teeth and flesh that had collected inside of a fanged mouth that had more in common with a crocodile then with with any mammal.
The witches then dropped Afua, and she landed on the couch, her dense weight crushing it beneath her. She now stood close to ten feet tall, which because of the Leoman that lived at the mansion was large enough to house her, but unlike most other gargoyles, which usually resembled dragons, griffins, or a combination of dragons and various animals, usually lions, wolves, or bears for their imagery of power, Afua resembled a demon. A succubus, and was another sign of the witches' insanity and increasingly evil nature.
"I live to serve and protect you, Golgotha, Gomorrah, and Gaal," Afua spoke, "until all the world is free and the hunters are dead."
"Excellent," Gaal smiled.
Joella, meanwhile looked on from the newly transformed gargoyle to where Mal'akh had been to find Aimiliona standing alone, playing with her tail.
"Where did she go? Is she scared?" Joella wondered.
++++++++++++
Mal'akh, meanwhile ran out of the house and managed to avoid detection as she left the grounds and then began to make a beeline for the hunters...
"They have to know, they have to know, they have to know," Mal'akh said to herself.