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Scrooge McDuck hated magic.
It was something he never bothered concealing from other people, least of all his family. He found magic to be some sort of a cheater’s trick, getting things others (he) had to work hard on. He didn’t like how some people could play tricks with others’ heads either – he didn’t know that Goldie’s charm was a form of magic, at first, but he never liked it when she smiled at him and he felt like a curtain fell and smothered his thoughts until it grew fuzzy and he only had eyes for her. It was only later that he realized he was one of the few who could resist her charm, and that she enjoyed her time being herself around him.
So, there. He didn’t like magic. It brought nothing but trouble. End of discussion.
No, not end of discussions. Apparently his grand nephews all had magic, and Donald knew him enough to know he hated magic and told the kids, who then decided not to tell him until the worst possible time. Knowing they had magic from Magica de Spell of all people was not how he would have preferred to find out.
But they had magic, and that was impossible to deny. Huey’s constant warmth, Dewey’s quick zaps, and Louie’s nose for gold suddenly made sense, like the last pieces of puzzle he never knew he needed to make sense of them.
He put on a smile, told them it was alright, and tried to go on with his life.
“You’re a liar, Uncle Scrooge,” Donald said quietly, after he tucked the boys to sleep and said goodnight to Webby. Here, in the mess of his study, he couldn’t hide the truth anymore.
“I’m not a liar,” he tried anyway.
“You don’t like the kids’ magic,” Donald pointed out.
“I’d rather lie than tell them I don’t like their magic,” he said, finally dropping pretenses.
“They’re smart kids. They’ll know sooner or later.” Donald tilted his head. Scrooge felt the brush of ocean waves against his fingers – it must have been his imagination. “What will you do when they find out?”
Scrooge sighed. “I… don’t want to deny them something they clearly treasure,” he admitted, and pretended he didn’t see Donald straighten in surprise. “I just need more time to process this.”
Huey carried his fire to light their way while exploring, readily providing warmth when the cold started to creep in. Dewey soon gained enough control over his lightning to start helping with engines, electronics, and knocking out beasts when they came to harm them. Louie’s quiet magic helped them chart their course and determine where else to explore.
Scrooge hid behind a smile and told them they did a good job, feeling his chest warming at the way they preened proudly and ignoring the stab of something ugly that snarled in his head, telling him he was a liar, liar, liar, he hated magic and he was lying, ignoring the way Donald watched him from the sidelines while keeping an eye on the kids.
Scrooge pushed the ugly thing down and snarled back. He didn’t like magic, but he loved his family much more than that.
Part of him still wondered if it was better if none of them had magic.
He met with Goldie, under the shades of the trees around Killmotor Hill after her excursion with Louie. He was baffled by the fact that she had been put in glass box as a display of sorts, but honestly, he shouldn’t have been surprised. The triplets may be smart and capable but each of them were also wholly capable of attracting their own kinds of trouble. If anything, this should have been expected.
“He’s an interesting one, that Louie,” Goldie said fondly. “He reminds me of you, you know? You both feel precious.”
He blinked. “Both?”
“Your nephew told me about this earlier. He said I have magic,” Goldie said, then she let out a sound that was halfway a laugh and halfway a sigh. “It answers so many questions I didn’t even know I had. No wonder you always felt like gold.”
“I’m sorry, what.”
It was one of the rare moments that Goldie looked like that, like she knew she slipped and there was no fixing it. “Whoops,” she muttered. “Donald told me you didn’t know.”
“Are you telling me I have magic, too?” Scrooge asked.
“Yes,” Goldie said, light, as if she hadn’t just dropped a verbal bomb in Scrooge’s face. “It’s very subtle, though. Almost as if it’s not there at all. But it is there if you bother to look for it, just under the surface.” She frowned in thought. “Well, Louie can consciously control his. You obviously don’t. Maybe yours is more… passive.”
Scrooge thought it over, and blanched. “Are all the riches I’ve gotten from the blasted magic, then?!”
“Hey, it’s an advantage that’s barely even there. Take whatever you can take.” She shrugged. “Besides, it’s not like they don’t struggle, still, or meet their own challenges.”
“Is this why I always know how much money is in the bin?!”
Goldie threw her head back and laughed, loud and unrestrained, and he found himself deflating, sighing and smiling softly. It was almost worth the wad of cash she somehow swindled out of his pocket.
Della came back, living and breathing and not dead like he’d thought. In fact, she looked more or less healthy considering she spent a decade on the moon.
She also sported a metal leg and breathed white mist and defied gravity with the wind becoming her wings. He warped his disdain for magic into a smile that didn’t quite take root and forced it on, then let go of the mask in the privacy of his room as he thought things through.
When the Moonlanders invaded, Donald revealed his own magic, the very ocean singing in his blood and bending to his will. Scrooge realized, then, that the kids in his care all had magic of their own.
He stepped back from the dislike for magic, thought it over. Goldie’s words rang in his head. It’s not like they don’t struggle, still, or meet their own challenges. They still did. Only, the struggles and challenges were… different. Not ones people without magic would have expected.
It would take some getting used to, but Scrooge refused to let his dislike for magic drive him away from his family.
Della had sky-related magic, he found. She reminded him of gliding in the air, feeling the exhilaration of letting the wind caress his face. Donald, meanwhile, had sea-related magic, and he very much reminded him of diving into the deep blue. Lately, when they were around each other, he would wonder why he was reminded of the sun setting in the sea, the ocean meeting the sky as the horizon expanded.
Huey’s fire magic brought warmth and light to them all. Dewey’s electricity magic was as active as the owner, zapping around and demanding attention. Louie’s gold magic almost felt like it was trying not to get noticed, somehow, but the glow was too bright, the call of something precious too strong. Around each other, Louie’s cold magic mingled with Dewey’s entirely-too-active one, steadied only by Huey’s warmth, and reached an equilibrium of sorts.
Webby said she didn’t have magic, not really, and Scrooge believed her – she was never much of a liar. But her bracelets worked like magic, granting barriers and giving him feeling of reassurance and safety, and it might as well had been woven with magic.
(Later, he would realize Gladstone’s extreme luck was a kind of magic in itself, and Fethry’s ability to seemingly understand whatever animal chittered to him, how critters of all sorts gravitated to him… that was most likely magic, too.)
Scrooge took a deep breath and committed each magic into his mind. He didn’t like magic, but he had learned to tolerate it, and he understood how they could be beneficial.
He would learn to accept it, bit by bit.
He found out about the Void Ring during his excursion to the bin’s library, flipping about and trying to find an adventure in the making in his boredom. It was one of those artefacts with little information, with rumors flying about it without giving anything concrete. Some of them stated the ring would bring fortune to the wearer, another said it would bring misfortune, yet another claimed it would bring swift and painful death or scraped the wearer clean of their powers.
Curious.
He studied the maps and charted a possible course. Mentally, he ran calculations for resources he would need.
The decision to go after the Void Ring wasn’t one he had difficulty to make.
More stories about the Void Ring came in to him, later. One of the most notable ones mentioned corrosion to magic, corrupting it, and scraping it away. Scrooge’s drive to get the ring solidified immediately at that. He would never risk his enemies finding out about the ring and taking it to bring his kids down, to strip them of their advantages.
An ugly part of him that grew quieter each day whispered suggestion to him, telling him that he hated magic, still, and he only wanted to make them normal. He smothered that ugly part viciously, forcing it to silence. He loved his family and he would accept their magic, by force if necessary.
The Void Ring sat somewhere in a temple atop a tall cliff overlooking the sea, broken down and in ruins. The crumbled stones above seemed to go well with the jagged rocks below, the roar of the wind above singing in tandem with the rush of the waves below, sky and sea caught in a duet that was as eternal as it was ethereal.
Della landed the plane by the ruins – there was broad enough land to do so. With the wind whipping wildly, she didn’t trust Launchpad to do such delicate a landing. Launchpad didn’t mind; if anything, he watched how she handled the controls eagerly, like a little boy learning by sight.
Scrooge doubted he would be able to do a smooth landing the way Della did, though. Judging by the white mist leaving her beak as she breathed, she had called to her magic to help calm the winds as she let the plane touch down to earth, as delicate as a songbird landing lightly on a perch. More advantages magic had over the mundanes, he noted quietly.
“Let’s all go inside,” Scrooge said, inviting the twins, triplets, Webby, and Launchpad to follow him. “And be careful.”
“Oh, man, this is so exciting!” Launchpad exclaimed, bouncing at the balls of his heels like a child. “It’s so rare that I get to join your expedition. Thank you, Mr. McDee!”
“I’m inviting you because we might need more muscle power,” Scrooge pointed out, gesturing to the ruins. And they really didn’t need to worry much about the safety for the plane, since the temple ruins was cut off from civilization.
“Still! Thanks a lot, Mr. McDee!”
Launchpad’s enthusiasm was clearly contagious, and it didn’t take long for him to pull the triplets and Webby into his orbit, chattering excitedly about superheroes in their town. Scrooge noted how Launchpad fumbled around Gizmoduck and Darkwing Duck’s names, and how Huey, Dewey, and Webby were careful to use Gizmoduck’s hero name. So within that group Louie was probably the only one who didn’t know Gizmoduck was also Fenton Crackshell-Cabrera.
What had that man been doing? How did four out of five people in Scrooge’s immediate contact knew his identity? He did a good job with his hero work, and he was a smart man if he could secure his workplace under Gyro, but Scrooge wondered if there was something lacking in the common sense department if he found it so hard to keep a secret identity. Just one or two people knowing, he could understand. But four out of five? How many more knew about it?
He shoved that thought aside. That was problem for later. Right now, he had a ring to find.
The orb he shoved into his pocket before they went on the trip weighed on his side. That traitorous part whispered, cheater, cheater, you don’t like magic but you’re cheating, you hypocrite. He shoved it aside and continued his trek.
There was something he probably needed to pay attention to, though, and that was how Della and Donald stayed silent but sent each other looks constantly, and how Louie would, from time to time, glance at them with a mixture or confusion and wariness in his eyes. He didn’t understand why he kept getting impressions of the sea and the sky. Was it because where the temple was located?
As they descended a stone stairway down to the earthen crevices of the temple, Donald suddenly whipped his head to Della, a scandalized look in his eyes, while Della threw her head back, laughing raucously. “Della, ew!” Donald yelled, which only seemed to drive Della to laugh harder.
“Mom, Uncle Donald, what are you doing?” Louie asked before Scrooge could. “Why do your magic keep rising?”
“What? I thought they keep buzzing strongly but they weren’t using magic?” Dewey looked at Della and Donald in clear confusion.
Della’s laughter died, but the grin was still in place. “Oh no, no, we were just talking.”
“You weren’t talking,” Huey pointed out.
“Absolutely no word has been exchanged,” Webby added.
Launchpad gasped. “Oh man, do you have twin telepathy?!”
Donald opened his mouth to answer, paused to think, and turned to Della. “Yes and no?”
“Yes and no,” Della agreed. “It’s less telepathy and more communicating with magic.”
Huey’s beak fell open. “You can do that?!”
“Sure you can! You just have to send messages while you flare out your magic a bit, like this, see?” Della looked pointedly at Huey, and Scrooge knew immediately that she was doing the poking equivalent of magic to the boy. The boy jolted in surprise, but then he frowned.
“Uhhh, you were just poking me?”
“What? No, I tried to tell you I’m thinking about tacos,” Della said. “Right, Don?”
“Yeah, I got the impression clear as day,” Donald agreed. “Lemme try – “ he directed his gaze to Dewey, then Louie. Dewey just blinked in confusion, while Louie squinted.
“I can feel you flaring your magic at me, but that’s about it,” Louie admitted.
“That’s weird, that was clearly sushi,” Della tapped her foot in thought. “Launchpad, Webby, Uncle Scrooge. Can you get anything from me?” she asked, staring at them each.
Launchpad scratched his head. “Is this supposed to work like a radio or something? I got nothing.”
“Um, yeah, same,” Webby agreed.
Della turned to Scrooge expectantly. He shook his head; he had felt wind brushing his face, but that was about it.
“Huh,” Della glanced at Donald. “I guess it is a form of telepathy, then.”
“You can communicate using magic,” Scrooge summed up. It was… surprising, to say the least.
“Yeah. It’s a new thing,” Donald said. “We only started recently.”
“So… what, you talk using your magic?” Huey asked. “How?”
“Well, we can’t talk using magic,” Della explained. “Not like we talk right now. It’s mostly just impressions and feelings, and some visuals if we really concentrate on it. And then we fill in the blanks with context clues and stuff.”
“Charades, but with magic,” Donald said. He turned to the Dewey. “I thought you can tell people’s feelings through their magic.”
“Only sometimes. And it’s pretty rare.” Dewey shook his head. “And it’s not their magic I feel, it’s their field. Like this sort of static around people.”
“Yeah, and also, I can sort of tell if Dewey or Louie is upset or something through their heat but it’s not straight up charades with magic,” Huey pointed out.
“Oh. I thought it’s the whole package,” Della mused.
“Nope, nothing like that.” Louie leaned forward. “Wait, so, you can do telepathy? Like genuine twin telepathy?”
“And it’s a new development! Oh my gosh, can you imagine what sort of thing you can communicate once you’ve developed it fully?” Webby bounced in excitement, eyes gleaming. Despite not having magic, other’s magical developments seemed to always lift her to the sky.
“Oh, I can imagine something,” Della wiggled her brows and sent Donald a look. Donald choked and returned the look, and Della gagged. “Ew! Why did you send me that visual of a fish?!”
“Because you’re being gross, that’s why,” Donald huffed. “Shouldn’t we keep going to get that ring already?”
His words elicited a chorus of oh, right from the kids and Launchpad, and they proceeded to walk down. Just as Donald took a step down, Scrooge pulled his sleeve lightly and sent Della a look.
“Is this why Duckworth’s been telling me you two were up at ungodly hours drinking coffee and eating brownies in the kitchen?” he whispered lowly to them.
Donald grew rigid upon hearing his words, and Della giggled nervously. “Up at ungodly hours? Who’d be up at ungodly hours?”
“He mentioned you two discussing nightmares,” Scrooge pressed.
Della groaned into her hands. Donald relaxed again, but he muttered under his breath, “snitch.”
“Come on. With how the boys handled their magic, I know it’s easy to lose control of it. If this is a new development, you probably have even less control. Did you share nightmares?” Scrooge prodded. “What about, stuck on the moon? Stuck on an uninhabited island?”
“How are you so perceptive about this?” Della hissed.
“I practically raised you.”
Donald rubbed his temple. “It’s… fine. We’re handling it.”
“Being up at midnight drinking coffee and eating brownies by the tins isn’t my definition of fine or handling it.” Scrooge frowned.
“No, we really are,” Della insisted. “It’s just that… here’s the thing, individually, the nightmares aren’t that bad. Seriously, we might wake up from a bad dream once a week or something, but it’s not the sort of thing that’s, uh… debilitating, or anything.”
Donald sighed. “That’s why I said we’re fine.”
“The problem is more on, um, our magic reacting to each other?” Della twiddled her thumb, then jumped in to the explanation. “I don’t know, I think we unconsciously reach to each other’s magic when sleeping and it might tap into our fears or whatever, because I sure don’t want to be stranded on the moon and separated from my family again. And our magic mingling in sleep might have made some sort of reaction that pushes that worries out to the front or something and made it worse. We don’t know whose magic started it but the end result is that we both share the nightmare and the nightmares occur more frequently.”
“It’s manageable. We made sure to sleep far away from each other. That helps,” Donald added stubbornly.
Ah, these kids. So stubborn. Scrooge sighed and let go of Donald’s sleeve. “Just tell me if it gets worse. We’ll think of something.”
“…like what?” Della asked reluctantly. You can’t use magic, she didn’t say, you won’t understand it. And we barely understand this.
Scrooge brushed aside the stuffy feeling in his chest to reply, “Therapy, perhaps. I heard sleep coaches is an actual profession these days. Sleeping pills, if it comes down to it.” He gripped his cane until his fingers felt numb. “Anything to help.”
“Thanks, Uncle Scrooge, but we probably just need to have this telepathy thing handled,” Donald assured. “We don’t have as many nightmares after we started communicating. This is basically just us practicing.”
“We’ve been keeping the topic light and PG-13, too, since we didn’t know the kids couldn’t tell – “ Della stopped and grinned at Donald. “Oh, we can do so much more now that we know the kids can’t tell.”
Donald snickered. “Stop sending me those right now, we’re descending the stairs, I don’t want to slip and fall.”
“What… have you been communicating about?” Scrooge hedged.
“Things little kids should never know about,” Della whispered teasingly.
“That’s a joke, she’s mostly sending me pinup art visuals, nothing weird,” Donald assured.
“Oh, do you want something more risqué? Something raunchy?” Della snickered.
“Della, you’re the last person I want to discuss something like that with. Can we discuss R-rated horror movies instead?”
“Ooo, that’s an idea.”
A parental side of Scrooge that rarely piped up wanted to tell the twins that no, they weren’t allowed to that, but then again they were over thirty and well into their adulthood and it wasn’t his place to tell them what to discuss with each other anymore. It wasn’t like they were planning to murder someone. He sighed, “Just keep that from the kids, they’re probably not mature enough for that.”
“Sure, Uncle Scrooge.”
From the staircases below, Dewey gasped. “Wait! Does this mean Mom and Uncle Donald can share memes without having to use a phone?!”
Scrooge’s mind blanked out. “What’s a meme?”
Dewey gasped in affront, and the rest of the walk down devolved into teach-Scrooge-about-the-dank-memes session that Scrooge honestly still couldn’t understand. What was so funny about a child running around holding a knife and a president telling people to perish? What even was the context? He wasn’t even sure he wanted to touch on frog on unicycle.
By the time they got to the bottom of the stairs, Dewey had gotten Huey, Louie, and Webby worked up enough to join him talking about memes, Launchpad threw in some memes of his own, and Donald and Della was back to using their magic to communicate, snickering all the time. And Scrooge was more lost than ever. It was honestly a blessing to finally enter the massive circular room and see the stone pillar at the middle of it.
The circular room was once beautiful from the looks of it. Temple priests might have tried to paint the wall with whatever deities they worshipped, but the paint – probably not long lasting to begin with – had gone muddy and the lines of the art smeared until there was no distinction over what was depicted anymore. The multiple doorways leading to the room were decorated with what were now broken seashells, crumbled to dust, and tarnished gold and silver. The wall and ceiling formed a dome, and at the centermost of the dome was a circle of the same tarnished gold and silver, which might have gleamed under Huey’s firelight once upon a time.
The single stone pillar was decorated with the same crumbling shells and dull, lackluster metal that spiraled up to the top. It was more of a pole than anything, thick enough for him to hug without having his fingers meet, now that Scrooge thought more of it, as it didn’t connect with the ceiling. It stopped three quarters of the way up, with a platform at the top, and a miniature temple of its own. Scrooge squinted at the small temple.
Louie looked around. “I’m surprised there are no traps around,” he noted.
“The Void Ring is an obscure enough object, I suppose,” Scrooge admitted. “And the temple priests most likely did not think it was necessary to put traps. The big cliff that cut the temple off from the rest of the world has been there since basically forever, and the legends did say that only fools would want to take the ring.”
“Then why are we being the fools who want to take the ring?” Louie asked warily.
Scrooge blinked. “Precaution,” he settled at last, and turned his attention away before Louie could ask what precaution he was talking about. “It seems the ring is up there, in that small temple. I don’t think we can climb the pillar. I’m not sure it’s sturdy enough for us to do so.”
“I can fly up there and take the ring,” Della volunteered.
“We don’t know how it will react with your magic,” Scrooge protested.
“I’ll throw it down if anything bad happens. I’ll be fine,” she said with a smile. She looked up and breathed, and mist of white bloomed around her as she floated up, suspended by the very air. “I’ll be back soon.”
The summoned winds carried Della up, and she circled the pillar as she went, then hovered by the small temple. She peered into it, studying it. Her hand reached out to touch it, slow and deliberate.
There was a silver flash, bright, just above the platform. Della cringed back, the white mist around her disappearing for a split second and she slipped down. She regained the white mist and her buoyancy on the air immediately, but the split second lurch was enough to send Scrooge’s heart hammering against his ribcage. He watched Della fly higher, just a little bit, then she bent to pick something on the platform.
“Uncle Scrooge, is the ring silver with a black stone?” Della asked.
“Yes!”
“Okay, I think I got it,” she announced, finally picking up the ring from the platform. She floated back from the platform, looking down to them with a smile, ready to fly back down and land on solid ground.
Then her smile froze on her beaks, and again the white mist disappeared. Her eyes widened in surprise, and she gasped as gravity took hold and she plummeted to the ground, barely even a sound from her mouth.
Scrooge lost the precious milliseconds to save her by being rooted to his spot, too shocked by the development to realize he should have moved to – to catch her, or to break her fall, somehow. The screams of the kids around him and Launchpad gasping loudly broke the spell and he found himself moving, then, but Donald had beaten him to the punch. The sailor had somehow managed to run to Della and jumped, catching her in midair and sending them both tumbling away, skidding to a stop near the wall.
Scrooge ran to them, panic rising, as he watched Donald rise from his spot and hover near his twin. He called her softly, to no avail – she had her eyes shut tight, and she panted, struggling to breathe. Her hand gripped tightly enough that her knuckles shook violently. From her breath, mist grew out, but it wasn’t brilliant white like usual. Instead, it was a hazy reddish-brown that clouded her entire being.
Donald stilled just as Dewey came to a halt by them, reaching to Della, and then, in an alarming moment, shoved Dewey to Huey and Louie. Not violent enough to harm him, but enough to make him stumble as Donald dove to Della’s hands, shaking her rigid fist and trying to pry her fingers open. He snarled when Della only held tighter. He flared with ocean blue light that mingled and mixed with the reddish-brown around Della, like colored oil on water, and yelled, “Give it, Della!”
With a loud gasp that was almost drowned out in her struggle for air, Della’s eyes snapped open, unfocused, and Donald was finally able to pry the ring off her hand. He scrambled back until his back hit the wall.
Della grew slack almost immediately. The reddish-brown haze settled around her, heavy, clinging and refusing to let go. Her breaths were still concerningly short, and her brows were knitted together in pain.
“Mom?” Huey called, voice soft and afraid. Della didn’t respond.
“It must have been the ring,” Scrooge said. “It says it corrodes magic. I shouldn’t have let her take it – “
His words were cut when Donald suddenly fell forward, slumping to the ground without fanfare. He was still for the longest second in Scrooge’s life, and then suddenly he let out a horrible sound that was both a choke and a cough at the same time, and began gulping and coughing madly. Blue liquid, murky and muddy but undeniably sea blue, leeched out of his mouth and coughed out, pooling underneath him and staining his feathers blue.
The ring, his mind screamed, and then it was Scrooge’s turn to frantically pry the silver band out of Donald’s grasp. Unlike Della, who had been clenching, Donald was worryingly slack. He barely found any resistance taking the ring and staining his own feathers with the blue that Donald had coughed up, that smelled of dirty shore and fish markets.
The effect was immediate on him. He gasped as he lost his balance, knees going weak, and he could feel small hands trying to break his fall and let him sit slowly. Goldie’s words played in his mind. It’s very subtle, almost like it’s not there at all.
The ring made him unable to properly move, like he was becoming stiff from head to toe. He could imagine himself as a being made out of metal, with the ring slowly burning rust and holes into his body. He realized, then, that he couldn’t let the triplets touch the ring, and how he really shouldn’t have let Della take the ring. If the effect was so profound on him, who barely had any magic at all, he wasn’t sure how Della and Donald would feel like.
“Webby,” he called feebly, knowing he could only entrust the ring to someone without magic. “Did you bring the pouch I asked you to bring?”
“Yes,” Webby answered, frantically taking said pouch. “Here, let me – “
“Don’t let anyone hold it in their bare hands,” Scrooge instructed just a moment too late. Webby grasped the ring, frowning when she swayed a little and regaining her balance when she shoved the ring into the pouch and closed it off. She didn’t seem to be aware of how Scrooge’s heart clenched when she swayed. Scrooge stared and asked, “Are you alright?”
“Um, a little weirdly tired, but mostly okay,” she admitted.
“Good, that means it’s only directly harmful for people with magic. I’m entrusting you with the ring,” he said. Webby straightened up and nodded.
Their attention was taken away when Launchpad suddenly hissed, “Oh, no,” and dove to Donald, starting chest compression.
“Launchpad knows CPR?” Webby muttered.
“Junior Woodchuck training,” Launchpad said. “Huey, sing Stayin’ Alive for me. Webby, time me – count if I’ve done 120 compressions.”
“Launchpad, what’s happening?” Scrooge demanded, slowly getting to his feet.
“He’s not breathing,” Launchpad said distractedly. “Huey, sing!”
Huey startled, fumbled, and sang the song Launchpad requested, a little off-key but keeping the rhythm. Webby rushed forward, counting for Launchpad.
Della moaned, stirring, and Scrooge found himself lurching forward to her. He knelt by her, and she directed an unfocused gaze at him. “…Uncle?” she called weakly.
“I’m here,” he said, grasping her hand. The hazy reddish-brown around her stirred with his touch.
“My head hurts,” she breathed, closing her teary eyes and frowning in pain. To Scrooge’s alarm, a stream of blood dripped from her nostril. “Everything is ringing. Uncle, please… it hurts.”
“Della – “ Scrooge squeezed her hand, searching for soothing words, but found his tongue dry and wordless.
“Please,” Della pleaded, sniffing, and coughed when she inhaled her own blood.
Dewey and Louie crawled closer to them, and Scrooge bit his tongue. Della wouldn’t want them so see her like this. He opened his mouth to tell them to stand back a little, just as Louie leaned forward, hand outstretched to touch Della. His hand touched the reddish-brown around Della, and he choked, scrambling back and gripping his beak shut with both hands. Alarmed, Dewey followed and steadied him.
Della pawed weakly at Scrooge’s lap and stilled when she touched something in Scrooge’s pocket. Her eyes flickered up, regaining some sort of clarity. “Uncle…? What’s that in your pocket?”
Scrooge’s eyes widened when he remembered what he had brought, and he hurried to take it out. The pure turquoise orb the size of his fist rested on a bed of jagged obsidian and amethyst. Della blinked when she saw it, and she reached for it, fingers brushing the cool stones. Almost immediately, the shallow breaths grew deeper and the nosebleed stopped. Her face grew slack as she relaxed. The reddish-brown changed color, lighter and lighter until it was brilliant while once more, lightly dancing like wisps around her, then clung to her skin and seemingly absorbed back through her breath. Her eyes fluttered close again, but instead of debilitating unconsciousness, Scrooge could tell it was healing sleep this time. He brushed the blood away from her face, but only succeeded in smearing it all over her cheek.
He turned around to Donald, who was still receiving chest compression from Launchpad – the pilot had gained a panicked edge in his gaze, clearly concerned when Donald didn’t respond to the aid he gave. Scrooge pushed him gently and took Donald’s blue-stained hand, resting it on the orb. As soon as he touched the orb, he drew a deep breath and his eyes fluttered open. He glanced about in apparent confusion and stopped to stare at Scrooge, then he sighed and closed his eyes again. The blue around him lost its murkiness and seeped back into Donald’s skin, like water absorbed by a sponge.
Launchpad checked his pulse frantically and heaved a breath of relief. “Oh, phew. I thought we lost him for a second there.”
“I didn’t know Junior Woodchucks have CPR training,” Webby commented weakly, wobbling on her knees and letting herself slump to the ground at last.
“We all have basic medical training,” Huey said. His breaths came short, but it was more because he was shaken and less because he had a pressing problem. “I haven’t had it yet. I need to take it soon.”
“Uncle Scrooge, what’s that orb?” Dewey asked from his spot by Louie. Scrooge turned to see him holding Louie’s shoulders, with the youngest triplet staring at both Della and Donald with an unreadable look in his eyes.
“The Orb of Remedies,” Scrooge recited, “it has the ability to heal, restore, and purify. I thought it would be a good idea to bring as precaution against the Void Ring. I’m glad I brought it with me.”
“Yeah,” Louie agreed feebly. “I don’t want to see them like that ever again.” He shuddered. “Their magic felt… wrong.”
“Wrong?” Dewey repeated.
Louie nodded. “Mom felt like smog,” he said, hissing the last word hatefully. “And Uncle Donald reminded me of… of that huge island of trash in the middle of the ocean.”
Scrooge’s mouth felt dry. “The Void Ring corrodes, corrupts, and scrapes away magic,” he breathed weakly.
Dewey’s head whipped to look at him. “Why did you choose to take it?” he asked, tone sharp and accusing.
“I didn’t want to risk anyone taking it to harm any of you,” he admitted. He swallowed. “I never thought Della and Donald would…” he trailed off, and sighed. “We should probably get up. There’s a chance we might have to put Della and Donald in the hospital, with what they’ve gone through.” He stared at the Orb of Remedies. “We’ll keep them in contact with the orb later, on the plane. We’ll monitor their progress. We’ll have them checked over once we got back home.”
“How do we get them up there?” Huey said, looking up to the ceiling at the direction of the stairs they descended down from. Scrooge took a deep breath to answer him, but then realized the problem in that most of the people present were children. He hummed in thought.
“It’s okay, I got it,” Launchpad assured. Scrooge frowned, ready to argue that they would have to think it through, but he found himself silenced when Launchpad easily slung Della over his left shoulder and brought Donald under his right arm as if he had a basketball instead of a full grown person. He shuffled to balance his weight and nodded at them, apparently ready to go.
“Whoa, Launchpad, you’re so strong,” Webby commented, eyes wide, staring. “I’ve only seen Granny hold up weight like that.”
“Oh, I’m nowhere near Mrs. B’s level!” Launchpad said. “She’s very strong.”
Scrooge sighed and slipped the Orb of Remedies into Launchpad’s pocket, instructing him to make sure the orb would be safe, and let him climb up the stairs as fast as he was able without jostling the twins too much.
“Where’s the ring?” Huey asked, looking around in worry.
“I have it here,” Webby answered, holding up the pouch. “Don’t touch it.”
“I don’t want to. Keep it away,” Louie said, shuddering.
“It’s okay. I’ll make sure it’ll be safe,” Scrooge said, waving the kids to go up the stairs after Launchpad. “You won’t ever see it again, if it were up to me.”
He thought of Della, plummeting like a stone to the unforgiving earth, gasping for breath and hurting. He thought of Donald, choking and gulping and far too still. His fists clenched, and he vowed to never let the triplets get close to the ring.
The trek back to the plane felt so much longer than it had any right to be, and by the time they secured Donald and Della side by side on the passengers’ seats, Scrooge kneeling by the seats and securing the orbs between them, they’d had Launchpad fly the plane and told him to fly as fast as the Sunchaser was able to.
There was a gnawing in his stomach, the ugly part that he kept silencing hissing in his head, this was his fault, this was his fault. He didn’t have it in himself to push it away this time, and prayed his kids were alright.
Della woke up halfway through the trip back to Duckburg, good as new, her plumes of white bright and shining like cotton clouds in a sunny summer day. She blinked, gaze landing on Donald, and immediately demanded them to land on sea.
“Donald needs to get back home and get checked by a doctor! As well as you, I might say!” Scrooge protested.
“I’m fine, we’re in the sky,” Della said. “Donald doesn’t need a doctor, this is magic-related. Doctors are useless in this case. He just needs the sea.”
“How do you know?”
“I’m all healed, aren’t I?”
Somehow, she managed to convince them, and Launchpad made a relatively smooth landing on water. Della hoisted Donald over her shoulders and practically ran out of the plane, plunging into the sea and laid Donald out, letting him float on the surface.
The effect was immediate. The seawater around Donald seemed to glitter, climbing to his chest and receding. Scrooge straightened and stared, hope blooming in his chest.
“Is… is this going to work?” Webby asked nervously.
“I think it is,” Louie said. “Uncle Donald’s magic is getting more… clean? And stable.”
“That’s good, right?” Dewey asked nervously. “I mean, you said he felt like a trash island. This should be a good thing, right?”
Huey squinted and leaned forward. “Wait, what’s the water doing – oh my god, Mom, Mom! Mom, Uncle Donald’s sinking!”
Scrooge squawked in horror when the water pulled Donald down, and the horror was mirrored in Della’s eyes. She dove down to follow Donald, but she resurfaced instantly, looking down the water in what seemed to be bemusement. And then the water exploded and Donald shot up to the surface, bobbing up and down like a bottle, coughing and hissing, glowing sea blue and blinking seawater out of his eyes.
“Don! You’re alive!” Della screeched, making Donald wince, and enveloped him in a hug. The triplets whooped and dove in, swimming to Donald and hugging him, ignoring his protests and orders to wear a lifejacket. His protest turned into panicked screech when Launchpad cannonballed into the water and cheered, splashing water to them.
Webby shook her hands, looking like she wanted to jump in, but her feet remained planted to the plane’s floor. Scrooge took a glance at her and extended a hand.
“I’ll take the ring,” he said. “Go join the others.”
Webby lit up immediately. She handed the pouch over and jumped to the sea just as the others began to wave her in. scrooge stayed firmly on the plane, keeping hold of the magical artefacts they had, and smiled at the way the kids cheered and laughed, then bawled when the weight of the situation finally hit them – the leftover fear finally sinking in and the relief hitting like a bludgeon – while the adults tried to keep them calm.
Well, more like Donald and Della. Launchpad joined the crying squad without much resistance and hugged both Donald and Della, blubbering and telling them not to die.
(“When did Launchpad get so close to Della and Donald?” Scrooge would later wonder.
“Oh, Launchpad had me for a Darkwing Duck marathon, then Mom and Uncle Donald joined us,” Dewey explained. “After that they began chatting about piloting stuff, and then they got close.”
Scrooge blinked. “Didn’t his relationship with Mrs. Beakley get better because they watched that show, too?”
“Oh yeah, Darkwing Duck is Launchpad’s go-to when he wants to make friends quick and easy. I can’t blame him, it’s a good show.”)
For once, the ugly part that kept telling him whispers of his past faults kept silent. Scrooge was grateful for that.
He insisted the twins get looked at by a doctor anyway, just in case, and the doctor conceded that they were perfectly fine and healthy. Scrooge breathed in relief and hurried to the bin to lock the Void Ring away, and kept the Orb of Remedies with him. With chances of magic hurting his family being quite high, he decided it would probably be best to always have it around in adventures, just in case.
He thought of how the Void Ring hurt Della and Donald, how it managed to get Donald so close to death. They dodged a bullet this time, but magic causing problems… this won’t be the last time it happened.
Magic brings nothing but trouble, that ugly part whispered to him.
Magic is what keeps my family alive, Scrooge argued. If their magic being scraped away could make Della gasp for air and Donald drown on land, he could only conclude that without magic, they would die.
The world would be better without magic. Your family being normal would be far better.
But that wasn’t so. Without their magic, they wouldn’t be his family, would they? A Della who couldn’t fly wouldn’t be his Della, a Donald who couldn’t call the wrath of the sea wouldn’t be his Donald. Magic was a part of them, deep and intrinsic, and Scrooge would never wish to change them for anything in the world.
You hate magic, the ugly part whispered, but its voice grew quieter as Scrooge stepped confidently into the manor. You hate magic, it brings nothing but trouble.
Your family is magic. Your family is trouble.
“No,” Scrooge whispered as he watched Della’s bright white mingling with Donald’s sea blue as they exchanged fond looks, watching Huey play with flames of his own creation, Dewey sparking electricity, and Louie calling his khopesh to polish. He glanced at the bracelet Webby wove for him, and reveled in the warmth and security it lent him, how it managed to quiet the anxieties that screamed in his mind. “Magic simply makes them what they are. Family is trouble, and curse me kilts, have I missed trouble.”
The ugly part grew quiet at last.
Later, Donald would enter his study after he and Della tucked the triplets to bed, said goodnight to Webby, and departed for bed – Della going to her room and Donald going to him before he went to his houseboat.
“You’re not a liar anymore,” Donald noted quietly. “You don’t have that look when the kids use magic, now.”
He simply shrugged. “I did tell you I’m not a liar.”
Donald’s smile was fond, and quiet, and at peace. “Goodnight, Uncle Scrooge.”
“Goodnight, Donald.” Then, barely louder than a whisper, “Sweet dreams.”
The door clicked shut.