Sparrow Truman May 22th,20XX

“If you miss this, I swear I’m coming after you next!”

Dione’s usually soft voice roared at her previous tormenters as she swung a puppet toward one of them. The target of her roar, the soft-looking witch with bubble-gum pink hair, reacted too late and could only close her eyes to brace for the impact. Dione’s dark blue hair swung across her face as she flung herself back to avoid hitting the other witch unconscious.

Seeing the hair reminded me of how it had used to be, a much lighter candy blue, and I could only try to remember when she had changed it as I manipulated the puppets.

Another witch with electric orange hair and matching eyes blasted an energy ball at the puppets that swung off Dione’s lasso. I winced as I saw my hard-earned puppets crack and break under the pressure of the magic, but I quickly focused on reminding myself that it was all for the best.

They had been at this for about seven hours now, and their senses were getting duller and duller.

Ordinarily, I would have let them take a break, but this level of fatigue was nothing that couldn’t be cured by a potion. I got the feeling that something would happen soon, something big. And I didn’t want Dione to suffer for it. I at least wanted her to be able to run away.

I pulled the remaining puppets off the others and had them gather around Dione, tossing recovery potions into their midst.

Since remembering all their names had been troublesome I’d forced them to change the colour of their hair so I could call them by that. It was a bit tyrannical of me, but the more seriously they took me, the better off they would be.

The pink-haired one was the most suited to Dione’s style of attacking since she specialized in stunning and mental spells. Ideally, she would be able to use her skills in combination with Dione’s to incapacitate enemies without killing them, The one with the orange hair was also a good match with Dione but I wasn’t too enthusiastic about encouraging teenagers to murder.

“Green, red, purple get over here.”

The two crept over to me, cringing at the thought of getting too close to me.

“Derela.”

I put on a small smile and softened my features. I’d been a bit harsh on them before and while I didn’t regret what I’d done I didn’t want that to be a mental barrier against them.

“There was nothing to heal so I couldn’t do anything!”

“Dione had captured all of the puppets so there was nothing to herd.”

The one in green specialized in healing, and the ones in red and purple were herders. I’d thought that they would be useful but it was hard to tell how useful a healer would be against some puppets. As for the herders...

I pulled out all of my puppets, the whole thirty of them and arranged them around the group again.

“Well, I would hate it if you didn’t get to practice because of me.”

The hateful look Dione gave the three witches was enough to give even me chills. I couldn’t help but look back wistfully on the bubbly cute but shy kid she used to be.

I had them run drills until even the recovery potions I’d personally made couldn’t do much and finally let them go away. I’d call them back in the evening but I had somewhere to be.

Rubella had suddenly summoned me over to her office. It was probably to ask about my progress on the immortality potions, but she had sounded a little too urgent for me to be sure about that guess.

Iren slithered around on my skin and its increasingly sharp scales prickled my skin. Although he was my contract beast and could stay inside my tattoos, he tended to get reckless and usually preferred to slither around me.

The giant red door loomed over me as I stood in front of her door. It looked exactly like it had when I had first been kidnapped here, and elicited a wave of nausea within me.

I was angry, furious in fact.

She had kidnapped me, brainwashed me and even made me betray my friends. While I didn’t deny my part in these actions, I similarly acknowledged Rubella’s crimes against me.

I schooled my face back into the stoic expression I’d carried under the effects of the spell and entered the room without knocking.

“What did you want Rubella?”

Rubella didn’t even react to my aggressive tone as she usually would have. Her wig was askew on her head, and her skin was haggard. Papers flew around her like a turbine and her breathing was haggard.

She looked at me like she hadn’t heard me come in and waved me over robotically.

“Sparrow, my dear… We’re- The queen.”

She suddenly got up to her feet and grabbed me by the shoulders, shaking me with every word.

“The queen! The flipping queen that’s been asleep for over three hundred years or however long that old bug slept. She suddenly woke up. WHY? It was all so perfect, I had it all planned out.”

Well, putting the plan aside, I tried to make sense of what she was saying. Her panic rolled out of her in waves and put a wretched edge to her voice.

“Rubella what are you saying? what happened?”

“That wretched’s prince’s grandmother! She suddenly awakened and I heard she is heading over here. Sparrow! I need you to find the prince, NOW!”

I pushed her off me as I recoiled from her scream, and Iren fled into my dress and away from her frightening figure. I wanted to do the same but I could only o my best to keep up the façade that the spell was still active.

“Calm down! If I could bring the prince to you wouldn’t I have done it by now? I’ll go look but you need to focus on what happens if I fail.”

I got out as quickly as possible and broke out into a run back towards the teenagers I’d been training. I eventually switched to my broom and booked it back to the training grounds.

Forget training for battle, what we needed to do now was get away from here.

It was on Rubella if she thought taking down a half-fairy royal with underhanded tricks was enough experience to deal with a full royal who was likely flying over here in a rage, but I wasn’t about to let the kids suffer for it.