Kai was rolling a staff between his fingers again, the weight of it tapping against his palm like a metronome of irritation.
"So… dead broke," he muttered, dragging the words out with all the enthusiasm of a condemned man reading his own charges. "We're actually dead broke."
Margo shot him a glare from the throne. "You don't need to say it like it's my fault."
Eliot, ever the diplomat, replied dryly, "Technically, it's all our fault. Collectively. As in: congratulations, we're failures as monarchs."
Kai let the staff roll off his hand and caught it lazily. "You mean Ember taking a dump in the Wellspring wasn't the root of all this?" He shook his head. "That literal god-shit really screwed the magical plumbing of this realm."
He sighed and leaned against the throne's arm. "Then again, Margo, maybe if you hadn't gone all Xena and declared war on Loria, we'd have a treasury that's more than three coins and a beetle that farts glitter."
Margo scoffed. "Excuse me for having ambition."
"Ambition's great," Kai said, smirking. "Unless it comes with bankruptcy and a pending war crime."
Eliot rubbed his temple. "Can we please not turn this into another Margo vs. Kai sparring match? We're supposed to be brainstorming, not roasting."
Kai looked over at Fen, who stood near the window, her hands unconsciously resting over her stomach. "Well, congratulations on that, by the way," he said, nodding toward her belly.
Eliot blinked. "Oh. Uh—thank you?"
"Yeah," Kai said, pushing off the armrest. "Parenthood and poverty nothing screams 'royalty' like both at once."
Margo huffed. "Being broke never helped anyone. If anything, it just makes more problems crawl out of the walls."
Kai pointed at her. "Finally, something we agree on." Then, muttering under his breath, "Welcome to Fillory, the land of magic, mayhem, and magnificent mismanagement."
——————-
Tom
"This bitch is messed up," Tom muttered under his breath, "Seriously, who in their right mind keeps that in their house?"
Ok, let's back track a bit shall we. He'd been tailing Kady, Julia, and Anya for the last half hour per the boss's orders to the suburban home of Dana Wallace, the woman infamous for banishing Raynard the Trickster God years ago.
Even for a vampire like him, that kind of power was unsettling.
Banish a god? he thought, narrowing his eyes. That's not power. That's suicide with extra steps…'well then again the boss could definitely do it.'
He remembered the chaos Raynard had caused and Michael's death, the fear and utter inability of them to properly contain him which lead to one of them dying and more of them would have perished had it not been for the boss interfering. Tom scoffed softly. "A god? More like a damn demon with good PR."
He kept to the shadows as the three women entered the house. The moment the door shut, something felt off. The sound vanished. His vampiric hearing which was normally sharp enough to pick up a heartbeat across a block went dead silent.
Panic crept in.
He vamp-sped to the back, crouched beneath a window, listening. Nothing. He saw Anya move near the window and immediately ducked down. "Great. Can't hear a damn thing."
He whispered an incantation and flicked his wrist. 'Invisique'.
The spell fizzled instantly and not violently like when magic failed but faded smoothly, as if slipping through his grasp. He frowned. "Okay… that's new."
He focused, tried again, this time slower. The magic slipped again without no resistance, just gone.
Before he could curse again, he looked over the window and he saw Dana dragging Anya.
He was at the front door in a blink, slamming into it but was met with resistance as he wasn't invited in. "Fuck!"
He scanned the street, eyes landing on a car parked across the road. He gritted his teeth. "Sorry about this, lady."
A second later, the car exploded into a bloom of orange fire. Alarms wailed, neighbors shouted.
A few minutes later Dana rushed outside, panic in her eyes right before Tom appeared in front of her, he looked into her eyes and gripped her by the neck.
"Invite me in," he ordered, voice low and commanding.
Dana froze, the compulsion taking hold. "Come in," she whispered.
The instant she said it, he blurred through the doorway, dragging her inside, closing it behind them. Smoke and chaos reflected in the windows. "I could've done something less loud," he muttered, "but hey distraction's a distraction."
He glanced around. "Where are they?"
Dana's trembling lips barely formed the word. "Basement."
He was gone before she blinked.
The basement was dim and humming with pressure than made the air thick. In the corner, a hulking shape loomed with a cloth covering its face, chained to the wall.
Tom froze mid-step. "What the fuck is that?"
"My haxenpaxen," Dana's voice stammered behind him.
He turned slowly. "Your what now? Why do you have a thing like that in your house?"
"It disrupts magic and It keeps me hidden," she said, voice trembling.
His eyes flicked toward the three women i on the floor. Anya was out cold, Kady and Julia barely conscious, bound tightly on the floor. "Disrupts magic," he repeated. "That's how you took them down."
He shook his head. "You really don't know when to stop digging your grave, do you?"
Then crack. Dana's head hit the wall, and she dropped like a sack of potatoes.
Tom didn't waste time. He crouched beside Kady, untying her, then Julia and Anya. The haxenpaxen gave a deep, guttural growls echoing from beneath the cloth.
Tom raised a hand. "Hey. Easy there, big fella. I'm not here for you. Just keep sitting pretty."
The creature groaned, shifting its weight but didn't lash out.
Tom carried each woman up the stairs with vampiric speed, laying them on the couch in the living room. After checking their vitals, he sighed in relief, they were only weak, but alive. "She drugged them."
He went back down, tied Dana to a beam using the rope, and looked back at the covered monster. "You stay quiet, you stay alive," he muttered.
Back upstairs, he glanced once more at the three women.
"Another day, another mess I don't get paid enough for," he said under his breath.
Kady twitched.
Tom blurred. Gone before her eyes even opened.
——————-
The world came back in fragments. First the pounding in Julia's head, then the sound of her own breathing, ragged and uneven. Her eyelids fluttered open to a dull orange glow from a lamp that flickered as if uncertain it wanted to live in this room.
"Kady…" she whispered, voice hoarse.
A groan answered her. "Ugh—what the hell did that bitch give me…?" Kady blinked against the light, her hand going straight to her side like she expected to find a weapon. Anya, slumped nearby, shifted slightly, mumbling something incoherent before letting her head fall back against the couch.
Julia's eyes darted around. They were still in Dana's house but the tension that had coiled around her like a living thing was gone. Her hands were free.
Kady sat up, rubbing her temple. "Okay. Either we're dead, or someone had a crisis of conscience."
"Unlikely," Julia muttered, as she and the other moved downstairs and saw Dana lay slumped on the floor, hands tied behind her back with a length of extension cord. A small trickle of blood ran down from her hairline.
Kady's lips curved into a cold smirk. "Good riddance. That bitch tried to sell us out to Raynard. Guess karma doesn't waste time."
Julia rose unsteadily to her feet. Her legs felt like rubber, the aftereffects of whatever drug Dana had pumped into them still lingering. "We need to make sure she doesn't wake up anytime soon."
"Or ever," Kady said under her breath, giving the unconscious woman a sharp kick to the side.
"Kady."
"What?" Kady raised her brows innocently. "She deserves worse. You saw what she was planning."
Julia sighed but didn't argue. They then looked at the creature, It was still chained, massive and hunched, its presence radiating a strange, nauseating energy that made the edges of the world blur slightly.
Anya froze. "That thing is alive?"
"Barely," Kady muttered, her hand twitching like she wanted to summon magic then remembered it wouldn't work properly around the creature. "God, no wonder our spells were slipping. This thing's a walking magical black hole."
Julia took a cautious step closer. The creature turned its head toward her, slow and deliberate, the cloth still draped over its face. "It's not its fault," she said quietly. "Dana kept it imprisoned for years. She used it."
"Yeah, well, Stockholm Syndrome doesn't really apply to demons," Kady replied dryly.
Anya frowned, scanning the chains. "We should free it. Maybe it'll leave once it's not bound here."
Kady raised a brow. "Or maybe it'll eat us. Just throwing that out there."
Julia knelt beside one of the iron locks. "No, I think it wants out… not blood." She pressed her fingers against the chain and whispered a low incantation. Even with the interference, the words sparked faintly and the magic sputtering as she channeled from inside of herself. The first shackle snapped open with a metallic groan.
The creature didn't move. Didn't lunge. Didn't attack. It just turned its face upward, like it could finally breathe.
"Okay," Kady said, grudgingly impressed. "Guess you were right."
One by one, they removed the bindings. When the last fell, the Hexenpaxen stood to its full height of a hulking shadow that nearly brushed the ceiling. It looked down at them for a long, tense moment, then stepped toward the wall. A shimmer rippled across its form and it was gone. Just… gone.
Kady exhaled. "Well, that was horrifying."
Julia managed a faint smile. "And freeing."
Anya crossed her arms. "We should go before that woman wakes up and decides to try round two."
Kady was already halfway up the stairs. "No arguments here. I'm done playing hostage to psycho witches with pet demons."
They emerged back into the living room, where Dana now lay tied and unconscious as they moved her up. Julia gave her one last look of pity flickering briefly in her eyes. "You could've helped us," she murmured softly. "You could've done something good."
Kady grabbed her coat from the chair. "She made her choice. Let's make ours."
As they stepped out the wail of sirens grew louder. Red and blue lights flashed down the street as neighbors murmuring, smoke still curling from the charred remains of Dana's car.
Julia glanced once over her shoulder. "Let's hope whoever saved us isn't sticking around."
Kady snorted. "Yeah. Whoever knocked her out and untied us, I owe them a drink. Or maybe a blood oath."
Anya smiled faintly. "Probably both."
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