(Author's notes: S1, please please PLEASE don't wait on replying to Unknown, out of the
fear he'd write a reply.)
Gillie kept hearing the word 'reverting back', 'Does that mean these wolf people and cat
people when they're born look like mundane animal and get their thumbs and biped status
a short time after?' Gillie wish she knew, sometimes being the only sane person in the
world sucked. 'No. There's still Serenity... at least I can count on her to never change or
get swept up in reality covering it's own ass.'
++++++++++
Abbey asked worried, "Miss Afua wouldn't be sent off after the hunters would she?"
"No." Marie-Eliza shook her head slowly, "She was a gargoyle now, defensive strategy was
ingrained into her. And the witches knew at this point they just had to out wait the 'hunter
army' wherever that might be."
Samantha said, "Never mind there was no hunter army."
"The witches didn't know that, and that was why they didn't decide to again venture out to
attack the hunter, certain that they had an army waiting for him. If they had, they likely
would have annihilated Marie Cruz and the rest. And their world of lunatics they'd call free
but in reality regulated by the witches would have come about with little opposition."
Alice merely stayed silent for once in her life.
"The witches at this point just had to sit in their fortress waiting for the spell they had
placed over Glendale to reach critical mass.
In the fear and panic, of course Mal'Akh hadn't noticed that Joella's eyes hadn't glowed
while the other children channeled the witches' power to level beyond anything else they
could have before.
A very gruesome thought occurred to the little girl, 'Does Aimiliona still exist?' She felt a
chill go down her tail, 'Or is there now just a demon inside her body where her soul used to
be? Familiars are supposed to be angels of the devil sent to serve witches in another form
aren't they? And what they turned that poor human into...' Mal'Akh recounted what the
puritans had told her about witches. Mal'Akh fell to her knees and vomited.
Abbey asked, "Was Afua really a suck-you-bus now?"
"No." Marie-Eliza answered her mother embracing her from behind, "Angels, rebel or
loyalist, are spirits, beings that normally don't have a material form. People simple
depicted angels with bird wings and demons with bat wings because more people like birds
than bats. Afua's form was chosen out of SPITE of the God whom Marie Cruz served, much
like the Satanist movement chose THEIR name out of spite rather than any devil worship.
And the witches figured that if demons opposed an 'unfair and jealous' god, that the
demons themselves must be logically good."
"That is insane..." Lawrence said simply, everyone looked at him, "Oh right."
Afua meanwhile assumed a short bowing position before the three witches who had given
her the power to protect herself from her old master and the killers he had sent after her.
And the promise to free all those she was forced to leave behind in fell swoop.
Deep down, a tiny voice in Afua called out, 'You're just trading one set of masters for
another!' But the gargoyle that had been Afua replied to that tiny voice, 'But this time is MY
choice, and that makes all the difference!' And the tiny voice died.
And in Afua's stone innards, a much stronger voice called out, an instinct that screamed
like the instinct to breath had. '-Guard and Protect!-' Afua thought about that, and felt a
strange and powerful detachment to her name, like it no longer mattered to her, like it was
just a meaningless sound.
True it had been the first and only gift her parents had ever given her. But that seemed to
meaningless now. 'Where and what I protect is who I am.' The thought thundered in her
mind.
She looked at the children looking back at her in awe and wonder, she looked at the
witches who looked back in delight, and the fours walls around her... And she thought of
the witch's said. She thought of what she was now.
"Free."
"Eh?" Gaal and Lilith tilted their heads.
"My name, is Free."
The witches and familiars looked at each other, somewhat surprised, since they had
created her much like they had created the weapons from an age absurdly distant to their
own. While copying it with their vast magic, letting the force itself do all the practical
details, they hadn't known much of gargoyles except what their family had taught during
their early life in Europe.
"Welcome to our family Free." Gaal finally said.
"Everyone!" Called Gomorrah, "Come here and greet Free!"
So Joella, and the child familiars behind her, and the leoman last, slowly lined up and
began to shake the hand and greet the newest member of their circle.
+++++++++
"SISTER CRUZ! SISTER CRUZ!" Mal'akh tirelessly ran, fall on her hands and knees more than
once before the leoman cub got up again, not biologically built for endurance running. By
the time she stumbled into Running-Bear's home, she practically fell asleep on the floor.
She came too a minute or so later, with two of the hunters hunters and the old man
looking over her.
"Sister Cruz, my sister, a woman, everyone, she, they, how could she-"
"Calm down." Sister Cruz said. "What happened Mal'Akh? Did they find you out? Did
something happen to your sister? What's wrong?"
"They... they took a woman who they found at their house and... she was human, a slave,
and... she ASKED THEM TO MAKE HER A MONSTER!"
Linus, Marie, and Running-Bear all stepped back at this.
"She was scared her master would find her, the witches suggested making her like, like Mr.
Vatican... and she WANTED THEM TO... they made her into a stone demon... and...
Aimiliona HELPED THEM... her eyes glowed, all their eyes glowed... is my sister still there?
Or is she a demon now too?"
The three human adults looked at each other.
+++++++
Free climbed to the top of the house, which supported her weight due to magic and
Benjamin and the Witch Pride's hard work. The stone succubus felt a wave of content as she
silently watched over the grounds that were the home of the witches who had freed her.
Gargoyles did not experience boredom or impatience, but Free did however enjoy the
fantasy images of killing the hunters and slavers in various creative and agonizing ways.
If the Puritans still had the sense to noticed, they would have been nothing less than up at
arms over the witches' latest addition, enraged and armed ready to demand it's removal or
theirs. As it was only two people in Glendale still had the wits to really notice or care.
+++++++
Kathrine with her good arm hugged the crying and near hysterical Mal'Akh... wishing she
had taken more lessons from her sisters when she had the chance.
"Your sister isn't a demon now," Marie Cruz promised doing her best to use terms the little
girl was likely to understand, "She's just possessed, I promise once the witches are dealt
with we'll have her and the rest of the children back tot themselves." 'I pray I'm not just
lying again.'
Marie left Linus and Kathrine to deal with Mal'Akh's heart break, Marie.. had bad experience
with children.
Draco of course followed, walking VERY carefully not to damage his wings more as they
slowly healed.
"Marie?" The dragon asked once they were outside and away from ears.
"All my life Draco, not always, but often enough, I've been back at that mausoleum, forced
to kill innocents who had no choice in what they had become or what they were doing...
that girl, Meranda, and that leoman Frank, no, not 'that.' They. They're dead because I
couldn't find a better solution. Now I'm worried I'm going to be stuck in that mausoleum
again."
"You told me on our boat trip, the nosferatu?"
"Yes."
"Marie you're not a child yourself anymore, and you know it, and these children aren't just
corpses being animated by a curse, they're alive!"
"I know that. Just what Mal'Akh said brought it all back the surface."
"You'll be alright?"
"No. But I will be."