1689
Marie and Katherine stood horror stricken at what the witches had commanded of them, while witches enjoyed it.
Golgotha then turned to Draco, Linus, and Vatican.
"And since the rest of you either refuse to play, or did not answer within a minute's time, you all receive both," Golgotha said with much venom, "for your dare, you will serve Joella without question in whatever she does... and our PERFECT WORLD WILL BE MADE!"
"And you, handless man... you think us snakes?" Gaal then challenged toward Linus, "you will remain for the rest of your days as a Naga with potent venom and six arms, each tipped with the head of a snake. And NOTHING may change you back."
"And you, Dragon... you think you're so wonderful with your long life? You will become a Human and will die within the next thirty years!" Gomorrah vowed, "and NOTHING may change you back."
"And you stone monster," Golgotha finished, "you will grow small and weak, barely able to move, and the damage in that form will never heal, as punishment!"
+++++++++++++
Before Marie-Eliza continued, Lawrence cut her off.
"Could you excuse me for a moment?" Lawrence asked asked and then rushed off before any answer could be given. He rushed down a hall and into a bathroom that wasn't connected to an individual bedroom or anything else. The sound of him emptying his stomach into the toilet was soon heard afterward.
Marie only sighed.
"That... that's... that's not fair," Abbey said slowly, not really thinking of any other thing to say.
"The tale is not one for the faint of heart," Marie sighed, looking at the three blond pups where nearly identical in outward appearance, if it weren't for the coloring of their dresses and Alice's age in comparison to her sister/cousins, "the witches still wanted their world to come about. They knew that their time had ended, but figured that Marie would deliberately hold back, let Katherine kill her, and then they could mock her as she went to hell and they went to heaven..."
"I couldn't see them going there," Maddex grumbled, finding his voice, "after all they have done."
"They were mad," Marie answered, "they had twisted things in their own belief system that everything they did was good and that everything anyone who opposed them did was wrong. And they wouldn't be the last. Among the "last words" discovered in the Fuhrer Bunker, the Russians found that Hitler claimed no remorse for what Nazi Germany had brought on the world and that the world would remember him fondly. The witches were the same. So fanatical that they would revel in the destruction of the world to undo what they perceived as wrong."
There was then a brief silence.
"But some of what the witches did, wouldn't last, or was based on their own lack of knowledge," Marie then spoke, "their curse on Vatican was mostly redundant. He couldn't "heal" already, and would be dependent on Free transferring him to a different body. Once that was done, his strength would be restored..."
Lawrence then began to return.
"On a more positive note, all of the witches Dares fell apart," Marie sighed, "mostly from some mistakes in semantics. Katherine's dare wasn't locked the way Draco, Linus, and Vatican's lock was. And while in theory the Marie's Dare was intended to have her kill Katherine, the terms specified and individual that was still alive. Being dropped from horseback... that is the short drop, which can take around twenty minutes to kill an individual at the longest and around ten minutes at the shortest. It did not take the witches ten to twenty minutes to say their curses. And in the case of Linus, Draco, and Vatican, Joella manipulated a loophole in their Dare. Since the witches made them essentially Joella's slaves, she essentially freed them by commanding them to live their lives as they would if they were not under a spell. And this mostly came from the fact that Joella had no desire to make war on Glendale the way the witches did."
"It would seem, then, that the Curses's use of semantics was there from the beginning," Alice said slowly.
Marie-Eliza nodded.
"So where did Kurse come from then? The mind that ran the Curse?"
"By using the spot where the rune experiment failed, an image, a shadow of the witches' persona bonded with the curse. And since at the time, they were filled with nothing but malicious hatred, that is what Kurse became," Marie answered, "though it would "learn" from the mistakes the witches had made in their Curse on the hunters to make itself a master of semantics... allowing it to twist peoples words to insure that the most misery is caused. Though even still, there have been smart people who have outsmarted the Curse from time to time, for good and for bad."
++++++++++++++
As the witches finished the ToD for Vatican, the full affects of their curse hit each of them.
Katherine gripped her spear tightly and extended the point and charged at Marie, knowing that she had a disadvantage in height and weight. But while she followed the commands of the dare, her mind remained clear, even if her body didn't obey her commands.
Marie stood still for a moment, pondering whether it would be smarter to just let Katherine kill her... but no, Katherine was already struggling with disemboweling the two Leomen. She couldn't let Katherine struggle with killing her own friend besides... but privately she tried to think of someway to save them both.
As Katherine came closer she reached out and caught the blade of the spear with one hand and one end of the handle with the other. The blade cut her flesh all the way to the bone as she gripped it, but Marie did her best to hide the pain. Dropping backward and kicking at Katherine's mid-section, she managed to kick Katherine forward sending her tumbling along the ground and left Marie holding the spear.
"Marie, you've got to stop them!" Katherine pleaded as she got up, "I... I... I can't control my body."
Katherine then lunged forward with a swipe of one paw toward Marie's face, which proved to be a deception. When Marie blocked it it with the spear, Katherine swiped the weapon away with the other paw. It landed harmlessly a few yards away. Katherine with a sweeping kick then took Marie's legs out from under her.
It was then then that the fight was interrupted.
"STOP THIS!" Rosa roared out and tackled Katherine with Monica following, "It is uncivilized!"
"They... can... not!" Gomorrah choked out, "they... must... obey... the... terms... of... the... dare... the... cat... will... fight... to kill... the... Dog... and... she... will... kill... the... one... she... cares... about... the... most!"
Marie, however remembered that the line was that the person had to be alive, and glancing at the witches, she noticed that while the three were were now beginning to choke and lose their lives, they were still alive for the moment. Elbowing Winifred, who had tried to restrain Marie, Marie freed herself and produced one of her normal throwing knives from inside her own clothes and threw the weapon, though not at the target the witches thought...
The blade struck Golgotha squarely in the chest, and pierced the heart, killing her in an instant.
"What...?!" Gaal and Gomorrah both choked out.
"You commanded me to kill the one still living that I cared about the most," Marie slowly answered, as Rosa held one of Katherine's arms down at the shoulder while Monica held down Katherine's other hand by sitting on it, "you are, for the moment, still alive, and while I will love Katherine like a sister... you were the first friends that I made that knew me as female. I never opposed you out of hatred, which is all you seem to have now. My opposition to your plans came from the knowledge that what you were doing was wrong and HAD to be stopped."
Gaal and and Gomorrah couldn't answer, as they were choking for air far too much.
"Why else do you think that I tried to make sure everything was done fairly? That I defended you? That I tried to illustrate that what you had done came from a misunderstanding of your own magics rather then a desire to conquer the world?" Marie questioned, "Contrary to what you think of us... I do care. I had hoped that there was a way that you could live... you think that by making me kill Katherine that would hurt me... you have no idea how much doing this has done the same..."
Marie heard no response, and had no chance as Katherine broke free of Monica and Rosa's grasp, slashing Rosa across the chest and giving Monica a black eye. Winifred attempted to cut her off, but Katherine ducked under her and slashed at the tendons behind Winifred's knees. Thankfully for the silver Lupman her thicker fur prevented Katherine from doing serious harm, but it the blow still brought Winifred to her knees.
Katherine then tackled Marie from the side and through the leverage of her body landing Marie's shoulders, taking Marie to the ground. Mare tried to roll away, but Katherine managed to get a grasp around Marie's neck. She only had one hope to try and end this without any more death then necessary.
"Transform or Dare, Katherine," Marie spoke, hoping that the witches' own curse might stop this.
Katherine's body still tried to strangle Marie, but her mind made a quick decision. Hoping Marie would turn her into something harmless, she said...
"Transform."
Marie barely choked out, "Become a Felman with no knowledge of combat skills and has absolutely no desire or capacity to be violent."
Katherine then suddenly blinked as everything she had learned from the Roman Lupmen vanished from her mind. She had no idea why she was strangling her best friend, and immediately let go.
+++++++++++
"But how could Marie know that would work?" Betty asked, "I mean they had only just laid the curse down."
"She didn't," Marie spoke, "but she was desperate... and had seen the curse coming. She thought that by defeating the witches, they would avoid the curse..."
"But it didn't," Samantha said slowly.
"And Marie then did what she thought was her only option to save her friend's life, since she used the unintended semantics loophole to escape the Dare on her."
+++++++++++
Linus was immediately caught by a wave of pain. The fighting between Katherine and Marie and then Rosa, Monica, Winifred's intervention to try and stop the fight didn't even matter to him. He could feel his spine lengthening underneath his skin. The bones in his arms were also melting and reforming, becoming more like a spine rather then normal arm bones.
Looking down, he also saw his skin changing, reforming, becoming heavily keeled scales. The stumps where his hands had been also began to grow and alter, new bones forming. The growth soon moved out until it became larger then the width of his arm and was distinctly triangular shaped. Then, suddenly, his brain was flooded with images and scents coming from his hands, as well as some strange sense that seemed to pick up body heat. He then noticed the dark eyes with the narrow slit pupils on the head at the end of his arms. It then stuck out its forked tongue and Linus could feel like he was tasting the air.
"No!" Linus gasped. He stretched his hands... the heads at the ends of his arms opened their jaws, and long needle-like (though needles wouldn't be invented for a while yet) fangs folded down from the roof of the mouth.
The pain then became worse as he noticed his hair falling out. His own head began to feel compressed as it felt like his cheeks were pushing out wider and as his face began to push forward into a snake's muzzle, his brain somehow adapting to all these strange senses. His vision remained relatively good, but it seemed to merge with his "heat" sense, and things that were warm were easier to see then others. And then he saw his own forked tongue extend to test the air, as if by instinct.
And then his clothing lost the battle. Four additional arms grew out, destroying his shirt, revealing that each arm ended in a snake's head. His brain was somehow able to process the information. His pants were then ripped open as a long snake tail grew out of his spine. It quickly reached the ground and continued to grow in both length and width. At the same time, he fell to the ground as his legs lost all their strength and began to shrivel away, the bones and material dissolving to feed the growing mass of his tail. After a few moments, his legs were gone completely and from where his waist was, Linus now had about ten feet of tail behind him.
"What hassssssss happened to me?" Linus hissed out as he rose up, finding that muscles in his tail were more then strong enough to let him stand erect. He then began to look himself over.
His head, and the heads on the end of his arms were all triangular. For the most part he was covered in grayish-brown scales. But the scales above each eye and in one band that ran down his cheek toward his jaw was dark brown with a pair of white bands on either side of he dark brown band.
His body was much the same color as his head, a grayish-brown color, though the flat scales on his belly and on the underside of his arms were all a faded cream/white color. And running down his back and most of his tail were a row of nearly perfect diamonds, with white scales surrounding dark brown scales... although on the larger ones, there was some lighter shades of brown in them, but they were still darker then the rest of his grayish-brown body. There were also some splotches of dark brown scales along his sides as well.
The end of his tail was more interesting. It was tipped by series of thick heavy scales, the color of caramel that made a buzzing noise whenever the tail moved. The portion of his tail next to these scales was also different from the rest of his body. They were a dark brown in color, though there were also a series of bands that went around the tail, and some of the bands were a lighter shade of brown... though the difference was not enough to be easily noticeable.
He also could not find anything that identified his gender, as that was all inside the scales along his belly.
Other then the arms, he resembled a tremendously enlarged version of the Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnake, which didn't range that far north, but in 1689, few would actually make that specific species reference, and would simply say, "Rattler". And only one thought went through his mind.
"I musssssssssssst serve Joella."
++++++++++++
Draco, meanwhile, writhed in pain as well. His claws were dulling, shortening, and his scales smoothing out. They were turning to a more "peach" color that human flesh was. His body shrank, and he felt his tail and wings fall off and shriveled away into dust. He then screamed in pain as his muzzle pushed backward and his neck shortened.
"I must serve Joella," Draco said as black human hair grew on his head, leaving him as a human, clutching at clothing that was made for something larger then he was physically now.
+++++++++++++
Vatican was unable to say much as much of his body began to fall away. Whether this was from the damage he had sustained or from the curse that they had placed on him, he didn't know. And gargoyles really couldn't feel pain, but he could sense that he was getting smaller and weaker. His feet and hands felt heavy, and it was taking all he had just to lift his head. He ended up slumping his head to try and reduce that amount strain he was feeling.
At the same time, his promise to protect Marie didn't matter. To protect didn't matter. He had only one purpose in life.
"I must serve Joella," Vatican said slowly and then turned to leave the area. Draco slowly walked behind him with Linus managing to slither behind both of them.
++++++++++
"Are you alright?" Katherine asked nervously.
"Nothing that won't heal," Marie choked out as she sat up.
The two then looked up to the witches. Golgotha was dead and hung limply. Gaal and Gomorrah were still kicking and trying to free themselves. Their bodies turning slightly as they kicked their legs.
"You care for them more then for me?" Katherine spoke, feeling slightly betrayed.
"They were the first friends I ever thought I made," Marie said slowly, "they knew me as Marie at a time when I was pretending to be a boy. And they accepted me as Marie. In a way they allowed me to open up in ways that I was too scared to do otherwise."
"But don't you care for me?" Katherine asked.
Marie hugged her.
"Of course I do," Marie answered, "but this isn't a competition about who cares about who more. I thought I could be friends with Goldwyn, Gita, and Griselle, and I had great hopes of being friends with them."
"But all the wrongs they've done!" Katherine protested.
"Running-Bear loved them in spite of what they had done," Marie spoke, "and I'd probably bet that their grandmother in heaven still loves them. They've done wrong, and we did what we had to do... but that doesn't mean that I suddenly didn't care. I didn't hate them. I was just... disappointed."
"You are my best friend," Katherine answered, "how did you know that would work?"
"I didn't really," Marie answered, "I couldn't stomach the thought of you being guilty with killing me, and I didn't want to be put in a position where I would have to kill you. Using their curse was the only thing I could think of."
+++++++++++
It took more then twenty minutes for Gomorrah and Gaal to strangle to death, while Marie, Katherine, Rosa, Monica, and Omega-Winifred watched the life drain from them. Once they were certain they were dead, Winifred was asked to take the bodies down.
"What am I to do with them?" Winifred asked.
"You may present them to your Alpha as the threat to his Pack," Marie sighed, wiping away a tear, "then burn the bodies. Maybe that will kill this curse before it can spread."
"Where are the others?" Katherine asked after a moment.
"They left after their transformations finished," Rosa spoke up.
"Wonderful," Marie grumbled.