Sparrow Truman May 22th,20XX

“Derela Sparrow.. please. I'm so tired.”

Dione panted heavily and bobbed up and down like a puppet on her broom. Exhaustion furrowed her brow and her dark blue hair shone with sweat. I almost felt bad for working her so hard but it was necessary for the plan I had in mind. Since I had somehow grown attached to her I was unwilling to leave her completely unprepared and untrained.

She was an ‘original’ witch and hadn’t gotten a knowledge packet so anything that she knew would have to be created by herself.

“You’re so weak as well. Try it again.”

She brought out her lasso and swung it at the puppets I controlled, yet another spell that I’d had tattoed on myself. Using it left a bad taste in my mouth since it was initially created to use other witches as meat shields, or 'death soldiers' but after some modifications, I’d figured out how to use it for inanimate objects. It wasn’t as efficient since I had to do more than just give simple commands and since the dolls had no wills of their own, I had to give very complex yet straightforward orders.

At this point, it was more of an avatar technique than a mind-control spell.

She captured two of the six with a single swing and used the captured puppets to knock out two others. I maneuvered one of the remaining two to attack her and used the other to ‘heal’ the others, as would happen in a real battle.

Dione tried her best to loosen the lasso from around the two mannequins before the one reached her but she was too slow.

She eventually abandoned the plan and began to mutter a shield spell, weathering the weak attacks that the puppet gave her.

It was a decent plan against the weak dolls but in an actual battlefield, she couldn't rely on her opponent's attack power being weaker than her shield.

Looks like I needed to find her a team. And I knew just the group.

“Dione.”

I called off the puppets and waved her over to me.

“You remember those brats that were kind enough to donate reparations for messing with you?”

She flinched at my description of the group that had bullied her so harshly but nodded all the same. I would need a closer look but was that…pity I saw in her eyes?

I dismissed the notion.

“Go bring them over here. Tell them if they aren’t all in front of me exactly an hour from now they’ll have hell to pay for it.”

She hesitated for a moment, probably tempted to plead for more time but one look at my face must have told her all she needed to know.

I sort of felt bad too, especially since I had recovered the majority of my memories. it was difficult to juggle all of these new emotions and considerations with my actions but I didn’t have much of a choice, nor did I have time.

“Dione, you have fifty-seven minutes, time is ticking.”

She hopped back onto her broom and held her lasso tightly in hand, it didn’t take much brainpower to guess what she was going to use it for.

“I wish you could talk instead of just standing there when you arrive.”

I turned around to see Ion standing in a servile position. The goblin had popped up yesterday, bandaged up to the high heavens and reeking of healing potions. I was somewhat surprised that the witches in the infirmary had gone through so much trouble for a goblin, but it also served as a testament to how hurt he must have been.

On another note, I’d been concerned that my tone would change too much once I had escaped the memory suppression spell, but now my concern was that it would be hard to return to the way I used to speak. The power that I had in this place… it had thoroughly corrupted me.

I walked back into the building, out of the practice court and settled down on a table. The goblin watched me with dead eyes as I brought out a piece of paper and a writing utensil and slammed them both onto the table.

“I want to know where you were Ion, and I would rather not have to dig thought your mind to find out.”

The goblin looked at the pen and paper for a few seconds before looking back up at my face with a blank expression.

IF it had been another goblin I wouldn’t have bothered trying this but since I had been lax with his mind binding spells in the first place and had only occasionally reinforced the ones originally set in place by the witches that had made them in the first place, I was sure he had some level of consciousness. It may not have been enough to speak or to act against me, but if it was according to my orders then he should be able to write.

I searched his face as he looked at the piece of paper and saw it. That small spark of emotion that showed he was conscious. I seized the opportunity and wrote out a big, YES, and NO on the paper and placed it in front of him.

“Fine then, I’m sure you can at least answer yes or no. Just point to which is which.”

That same dead stare. I wanted so badly to remove the spell on him. But I couldn’t risk doing so and letting other witches know something was wrong. And by other witches I meant Rubella.

“Look, I know you’re still somewhat awake, I didn’t reinforce the spell that much. I've been different from myself, It feels like I just woke up and for some reason am in another world where witches and fairies and goblins are all two incidents away from a race war! I don’t want any part of this... I just. I just want to get my old life back!”

I suddenly heard myself confessing everything to the goblin. Maybe it was because he looked so familiar, or because I knew he wouldn’t be able to tell anyone else what I had said but somehow I felt like I had to say all of that to get a response. ‘

“Could You just tell me if you were there with the prince when the explosion happened?”

I waited and waited for a response, but just before I could remove the paper and give up, his hand robotically raised and pointed at the YES option.

“Did you see what happened.”

His hand hovered over yes but then switched to no.

“…Is the prince…. Still alive?”

Once again it hovered over no but then switched to yes, but then back to no.

I almost ripped the paper apart in confusion. The hell was that supposed to mean?

“What about the human that came with the prince? Is he okay?”

He repeated the same pattern of yes, no, yes.

I didn’t know exactly what he meant, but from what I had gathered, They were both alive. The only question now was how the goblin knew… and how to track the prince through the goblin.