Chapter Text
Hecate looked around her, shivering as the cold seeped into her bones. The founding stone was dark, everyone else frozen solid and yet here she was, shivering but not yet bound in ice. This was the moment; if there were to be a drastic act to save the day, this was the moment for it and Hecate knew with absolute certainty that she was the only one who could make the sacrifice required.
Stepping up to the stone she opened her hands and taking a deep breath began;
To restore the stone,
I give my magic away,
And the magic of…
But nothing was happening. There was no magic coursing or surging through her ready to be directed. There wasn’t even a spark.
Twisting her hand she tried to relocate to the other side of the room but nothing happened. She attempted to conjure a simple flower and then tried half a dozen other pieces of magic she normally used a hundred times a day but there was just nothing there. She glanced around, frantic at the sight of the frozen students and knowing that there was only one way to save them. She needed to cast this spell and to cast the spell she needed magic. If she didn’t have any magic then she needed to find something that did.
There was a shattering and splintering sound behind her and Hecate turned on the spot, just in time to see Ethel Hallow disintegrating into powder.
“No…!” she cried out, clamping a hand over her mouth as she took a step to where the young girl had stood only moments before. There was another crack and she couldn’t even bring herself to turn in the direction of the sound and look. She had to find some magic somewhere, enough to reignite the stone. There must be something somewhere in the school that hadn’t been entirely extinguished.
The tower room they were in was almost empty so she fled to the door and down the stairs, scouring her mind for where there might be something, anything that might have escaped the touch of the frost. Reaching the hallway below though, she stopped aghast; there were frozen students everywhere, terrified faces staring out at her from inside cubes of ice. They were reaching out, as though trying to grab her as she stood there frozen for an entirely different reason. Hadn’t they evacuated the school? Had these students all come back? She had hoped that they at least had been safe.
“What were you thinking?!” The hissed accusation echoed down the halls. “How could you have done this?!” Her mother seemed to be a long way away and Hecate couldn’t see her but there was no doubt that it was her nonetheless. It had been nearly three decades but there was no chance that she would ever forget that tone. Taking a shuddering a breath, Hecate tried to tune out the sound of her Mother as she turned and pulling up her skirt ran towards the far side of the school.
The sound of ice shattering and the bite of the accusations followed her, echoing off the stone. She tried desperately not to look at the faces of the students around her.
“You’re an embarrassment!” The vehemence in the whispered threat made it all the more terrifying. “An insult to the craft and to this family. Why we ever thought otherwise is beyond me.”
“I’m trying to fix it…” she whispered, mostly to herself.
“How dare you think that you have the right to even try! You are going to be stripped of everything girl and you will be alone and ordinary . And you deserve no better. You have shamed us all!”
The air around her was biting cold which somehow made the strings of fire that whipped across her back all the more severe. But they weren’t really lashing her now though were they? That had happened before, years ago, like the insults that were chasing her. Her mother wasn’t there, couldn’t be there. This wasn’t right, none of it. Was she hallucinating? Why hadn’t she been frozen too?
She kept moving. The basement level at the west of the castle had the best chance of being untouched by the spreading frost. If she could just find something with a spark of magic left. If she could get it back to allow her to cast the spell and initiate the transference then she was sure the rest would follow. She would gladly give anything it took, give it all. Her very blood would be no more of an ask than her magic but she would gladly give it for Indigo Moon, or Ada, or any one of her students never mind what was in the balance now. She turned into the staircase, her feet sliding out from under her and sending her straight to the floor.
“Hecate?” This voice was equally familiar but like day to the other’s night. “Hiccup? Are you there?”
“Pippa?” she breathed as her heart screamed ’Nooooo!’ She shouldn’t here, there was no reason for her to be here too.
“Where were you Hecate? Why weren’t you there?” She could see this Pippa, young and eager still so innocent in her ferocious anger. “You let me down.” Pippa said it so differently to Hecate’s mother. Her mother who had demanded she come back to the estate, who was waiting for her so that she could dole out her own punishment. Her mother who was chasing her down now.
“Hecate? What’s the matter?” Pippa asked. She sounded closer now, but Hecate could see nothing but the frozen landscape of the school. The sound of shattering behind her made her turn as the ice-cubes containing a first year and two fifth year students crumbled into dust.
She couldn’t stop. She had to fix this. Had to stay away from her mother had to save as many students as she could. Had to make this right.
“Hecate dear?” Ada asked. Hecate blinked and suddenly Ada was there sitting next to her.
“How…?” Ada should have been in the potions lab still, but here she was alive and warm.
“It’s alright dear, you can stop.” There was a hand on her knee, comforting and entirely out of place.
“But…?” Hecate asked, entirely lost as to what was happening in front of her. “The Students Ada, they’re dying. They’re… I have to… we have to relight the stone.”
“The stone has been charged Hecate,” Ada said calmly. “The student’s are well.”
“No! I…” she turned around wanting to see for herself the students still trapped. There was nothing there though. Nothing but her own bedroom. “Wha…?”
“You were having a nightmare Hecate. The stone is lit, the girls are safe.”
“Pippa?” she asked, trying desperately to regain control of her breathing.
“I’m right here Hiccup, in the mirror.” She sounded upset. Hecate didn’t understand.
“You… you weren’t frozen? You shouldn’t have been there but you… You can’t be here.”
“Miss Pentangle called while you were in distress,” Ada said, still holding her hands firmly in her grasp, her thumbs rubbing in gentle circles. “It’s possible that your subconscious wove her into your nightmare.”
“I…” Hecate said. “Sorry…”
“There’s no need to apologise. Just take a minute.”
“I’m going to go,” Pippa said from above them. “I’ll set off as soon as I can Ada, and I should be with you in a few hours.”
“Travel safely dear. And thank you for letting us know.”
“I’ll be there soon Hiccup.” Hecate didn’t reply, too caught up in trying to find the reality in amongst the haze of her memory.
“Hecate? Hecate dear?” Ada was saying. “Slowly. That’s it, breath slowly now.”
“The founding stone?” she asked again.
“It was extinguished but it is now relit.”
“I can’t feel it,” she said quietly.
“We’ve had to create a clean space for you. The magic the stone was recharged with isn’t reacting well with your own. You’ve been really very unwell Hecate.”
It was coming back to her now, Mildred Hubble’s mother had been here. The other woman had already explained what had happened. Hecate remembered tha now, but somehow it felt less real than the sound of those shattering cubes of ice and the students they contained.
“No one… I didn’t…. They’re all ok?”
“They are my dear and so will you be,” Ada said calmly, running a hand over her shoulders. “We’ll get you back into bed and then maybe you’d like some tea…” Hecate let Ada’s voice wash over her as with a final tremble her taut muscles relaxed leaving her collapsed against the side of the bed and the older woman.