Magi Rasmodius walked back into the shadows, watching intently as Caroline faced numerous magical barriers protecting their prisoner. If he brought them down Esmeralda would know right away, dooming his plan.

Upon Caroline’s whispered instruction to Kaboom, the smallest pumpkaboo of his litter used shadow sneak, a portal teleporting move that he had yet to utilize by himself and was exclusively known by monsters like gourgeist. During his studies, the monsters themselves can move through those shadow portals but he himself was unable to use it. There must be something he was missing. He just didn’t know it yet.

He has this wild niggling intuition that it might have something to do with humans. It’s been hundreds years of experimentation he didn’t want to have to resort to this but he had to. Humans were the only race he hadn’t tried.

A piercing scream disturbed his reflecting thoughts. Just as he had deducted. He saw Caroline getting pulled in the shadow portal Kaboom had created, safely shifting her location to their inner sanctum. Esmeralda’s trained bisharps were patrolling with vigilance but they were no match for Kaboom’s insidious snore. Within a few steps, they fell sleeping, their guards gone and snoring in a heap over the stone floor.

Then he uttered a simple incantation to heighten his senses, allowing him to hear past the magical barriers.

“Who are you?” said Dani, the emerald witch. Her innate natural power served to dispense time around her with abundance, keeping her young and fully fed without any maintenance. She was so self-sufficient that it became easy for him to forget that they even had a prison underground at all.

But Esmeralda never forgot. How could she? The emerald witch’s power flowed to his wife like a coursing river with no holds barred, and most importantly, against her will. The invasive absorption of power over these years should have degraded Dani’s condition. And yet, against all odds, her skin was as bright as morning sunshine. Eyes glittering with sparkling green as though she had only been born yesterday. Her frame that of a 13-year old. Any other men who didn’t know better would have thought her lovely as a dewy spring blossom but Magi wasn’t fooled the first time he saw her. He saw through the astral plane, where her aura of power were visible to his sight. And the sight of it disgusted him like no other.

“My name is Caroline. And this is Kaboom. We’re here to free you.”

Dani’s tired gaze swept around her in a passing glance. She remained undaunted and bored, hugging her knees with barely a twitch to her body. “You did this.”

Caroline’s eyes shifted to the floor where monster guards called bisharps slept soundly, her gulp audible “It was my doing, yes. No one else but me and Kaboom here.”

“Very well.” Dani was locked in a small cage hanging from their ceiling, poised at the center of a circular room filled with piles and piles of arcane protection designed to keep her imprisoned. The golden cage has been her home for a hundredfold years. It kept him up at night, wondering where she would go first if she were set free.

Then, Dani extended her arm through the gold bars offering her hand. “Set me free. And I will grant you a wish. No limits. No laws will defy it. Whatever your heart desires, it will be yours.”

Caroline sputtered senseless words, seeming conflicted for a few beats then she finally said. “I’m not... I-I” she spied Kaboom, twirling around in the air, happily spinning from her swift movements. “I’m just here for a ride-along. If you’re looking to reward someone, give it to Kaboom. She did all the work.”

She frowned, retracting her hand back through golden bars and folding it close to her chest. “Fine.”

Kaboom widened her soulful eyes at Caroline, waiting and watching. Vigilant for a directive. Anticipation buzzing in her pumpkin frame.

Putting her out her misery, she nodded “Let’s do ally switch, Kaboom.”

The smallest pumpkin monster trilled at the attention given her way that she blipped into non-existence in a blink and in her place appeared Dani hunching over, hugging her waist. Dani’s knees automatically buckled from disuse with Caroline catching her fall. “Woop. Take it easy.”

Dani clawed her hands into Caroline’s shoulders, digging painfully into her skin. “A dream?”

Kaboom danced from inside the golden cage as if newly awakened.

“I don’t know,” Caroline said, breathless at the confusing magic. “Do witches dream?”

When she would have replied, it was cut off from the earth-shaking banshee shrill that shook the earth. It came from above. Directly above them.

Heart stopping at her chest, “KABOOM!” shouted Caroline and immediately the little pumpkin teleported out of cage and blinked to existence right in front of her face.

“Boo!” She surprised her, giggling carefree.

Magical barriers surrounding them powered down, one by one. Weakening the room’s atmosphere into a quiet buzz.

The wizard Rasmodius strutted in with an exhausted gait, his left hand resting on the wall. “Go. Now!” His voice thundering above the noise of an earthquake.

Kaboom made a beeline for him in haste but was stopped by a delicate jeweled hand wrapping around her neck. Esmeralda appeared out of thin air in a fury of smoke and gouts of arcane fire burning below her feet. She laughed as her crystal-blue gaze landed on her husband. “You always were too deep in abstract sciences, worrying about complexities. Ever thought a simple matter of sigil magic would have sufficed for portal use?” Under her feet lay powerful flames of circles and another encompassing circle that brought them all together.

Heavy in disbelief, the wizard looked to his wife and said “You knew portal magic all these time?”

“What?” She cocked a hip to the side, “Like it’s hard?” Her grip around Kaboom tightened, burning with glorious flames until the room was swelling in the smell of pumpkin spice.

Before Caroline can found her voice to stop her, Kaboom had transformed to a blackened char. Gravity crumbling her ashen form down to the ground in a graceful drop of destruction.

Esmeralda clapped her hands together, wiping the dust off. “Kept you busy, didn’t it?”

“Why?!”

“Because you are human. Easily subjected to my power. Why else would I have married you?”

“No. I am wizard. I am power in every way imaginable—“

In a heartbeat, Esmeralda appeared across the wizard. Her face a breath away from his. “By my power.” She smiled, gaze lingering on each planes of his face. “All that you are. All you have become. And the power you wield. Came from me. My bloodline. Do you know why I chose you? I chose you because you leeched off my power immediately upon our meeting. And honestly? You would never have so easily leeched off my power if it weren’t for your humanity. That’s right. Your humanity. No other species would have been able to absorb and adapt such power.”

Another disbelieving breath left him, “Is humanity the answer to everything?”

Her eyes grew half-lidded, a smug grin from her painted lips. “Humanity is the center of earth’s magic. Silly, silly boy.”

His jaw gritted, rumbling “I’m your husband.”

“No you’re not. A means to an end yes. All these times playing scientist to your different species of labrats, hasn’t it occurred to you that you might be a labrat?”

“Enough, daughter” said Dani, words that trembled with a hundredfold of authority that the earth itself shifted to disquiet, opening up to her voice, awaiting directive.

A thousand daggers were facing Esmeralda, and yet, she was unperturbed by the sight of its pointed tips being inches away from her. Instead she lifted a brow at Dani. “Do you really think I would risk turning my back to you without thought for my safety?”

In exhaustion, Dani fell forward. Her dagger enchantment undone. “I’ve finished paying for my dues. You can’t possibly punish me for crimes our entire legacy of ancient witches are guilty of.”

“No. But it will be a great start.” Upon seeing Caroline’s struck face, filled with shock and fear. Esmeralda turned to her with empathy, “Generations of my family are responsible for crimes of segregation. It gave them consolidated power. Would you like to know how?”

Through it all, Dani leaned her full weight to Caroline’s. The immediate trust of a little small girl depending on her gave Caroline strength, burdened with a newfound purpose that prompted her to find a voice, small as it may be. “I-I don’t know..”

Esmeralda rolled her eyes, passing a devil-may-care glance at Rasmodius. “They held bloodline samples of each species. Live. Here. Several levels deeper than this basement. My husband’s playground.”

Rasmodius crashed his fist against the wall “It’s wrong, Esmeralda. It shouldn’t be done.”

“And yet you still found a way to cut them open, and use them for your rituals and offerings. It’s all fair play here, honey. I win and you lose.”

“You’re guilty too. Our crimes are yours too.”

She bared her teeth. “I was born into it. You had your choice. You could have gotten out.”

“Esmeralda, I’m a good guy. Nobody would have saved these creatures if it weren’t for me. I’m saving them.”

“Saving them? After you’re done using them up for experimentation?”

“What the fuck would you have done?” He boomed.

Crystal-blue eyes gone cold, unforgiving. “Reparations.” She said, swiping her palms at an invisible wall until rainbow sigils bloomed in a starlight glow. “My husband, obsessed with image and reputation that it sent you to a dark path of enforcing your will upon unwilling species. I sentence you to an eternal life of decrepit starvation for revenge. And I cast this evil to the valley of Starew. For turning me away.” Her tone had changed, voice turning to a different sultry tone as her hair visibly transformed to orange and her dress turning blue as an ocean.

“Sandy!” exclaimed Caroline, hand shooting up to palm her cheek. “Don’t, please.”

“Too late. From hereon, husband. You will be known as the emerald witch. My cursed bloodline will end with you.“

With a vicious roar, “What are you doing?” His skin turned green, grand purple robes have shifted to a permanent charred black and the sound of his roar became like the shrill scream of a banshee.

Not done yet, she lifted an accusing finger at Dani. “Mother, I sentence you to a lesser power and subject your existence to one that you have long taken advantage of. Human.”

Caroline hugged Dani close to her chest, “Stop. Whatever you’re doing. Stop it right now.”

“I cannot take life, sweet Caroline.” Kaboom manifested next to her, joy and glee exuding from her trill. “I can only direct. If magics were able to take life, then it would have destroyed the world ages ago would it?”

Dani groaned as a dark force of magic entered her body, slouching forward she grew taller and taller into purple robes. Her eyes were matching the outfit— vibrant purple so infectious that it became the color of her hair and beard as well.

Esmeralda who has been disguising herself as Sandy, smacked her palms together, satisfied “Now you look like your age, Mother.”

Dani didn’t have time to respond as she was dizzy with magic impact. Caroline held her for support and told Esmeralda “You can’t curse us like this.”

Suddenly, she grew quiet. “It is not my curse. This evil here was created since the dawn of time. I’m merely directing it to its righteous recipients.”

Dani grunted, the sound of her voice matching that of the wizard’s.

“Whatever you want to call it.” said Caroline. “Just stop making life difficult for all of us.”

Esmeralda’s new face was even more stunning than her previous one, the eyes of hers were even deeper in blue. “Isn’t it already difficult?” she asked, a question that shot straight through her insides.

Caroline was struck dumb, mouth hanging agog. How could someone so gorgeous and looking stunningly divine be so cruelly direct?

“Otherwise why would you have followed a strange man like Rasmodius into the most dangerous part of Cindersap forest?”