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And Griffin seethes.
X
Cloud Tower wails night and day, and her students go still and quiet in ways they never have before. That their home, parent, as close to a coven as most of these girls will ever get, is fighting for them - that is nothing new.
That it is dying for them, however, is.
X
Her girls have been gone three days when she stands in the midst of a silent dinner. All eyes rise to her immediately, but she waits a moment, until utensils have been set down and she can feel her students’ anxiety buzzing between Cloud Tower’s walls like a physical thing.
She dares not speak within its walls; she tilts her head in a gesture they are all familiar with and descends. They follow in rows of two. Her students have never been very touchy - they are all touch-starved in one way or another, but witches hone their weaknesses to a fine edge, they do not bandage over them like fairies do. Her girls have been an incredible asset in understanding the depths witches’ power comes from, but Griffin has always known this particular wound is a result of the rest of the world, not something innate.
Witches come to Cloud Tower to learn. To find safety and surety and belonging. They come for protection, they come for kin. Faragonda and Saladin have violated every single one of her students in ways they cannot imagine, by taking the Tower, by reducing them to hostages. Political hostages, maybe, but there is a reason none of her alumni have set foot on Magix since the takeover.
Since the banishment.
She leads her students down through the stairwells and battlements and into the forest surrounding the Tower, and it keens as they leave but it is a keen of relief more than grief - by the time she stops and turns to face her gathered students, her face is wet. So is theirs.
“We may not speak freely in the Tower quite yet, as many of you have guessed. I will not be able to pull you all out like this without arousing suspicion again. Faragonda and Saladin will allow this, because they believe they know me, and they believe they have accounted for this.”
“Why bother granting that courtesy?” It’s a freshman who asks, pale and trembling and spitting with such rage that it makes something in Griffin’s breast ache.
“They were my coven.” She says, and closes her eyes against the ripple that her words sends through her students. She retrieves the device weighing heavily in her pocket, and holds it out so that the girls may see it. When she opens her eyes, she’s - relieved. There’s rage and horror and pity there, to be sure, but more than that, there is a promise of vengeance. And oh, how they will need that energy.
She has screamed and raged and bled in the privacy of her own chambers already, wept for the betrayal and what few fragments of her heart she has left. Fuel, for later. For justice. For now, it simply is, and she will not waste anymore energy letting it consume her.
“Listen and listen well; we have allies. The Magix Council has not just betrayed us; it has betrayed entire homeworlds. Icy, Darcy, and Stormy were in the process of recovering information the Council, Faragonda, and Saladin had burned out of our grimoires, information they had erased and forgotten. The fairies you have all been so kind as to ignore were their allies in this; our girls were made an example of because Faragonda could not afford to lose the power those fairies hold quite yet. I suspect they are planning to remove it entirely.”
What she is telling them is that they have, that they have had, allies. And she sees the realization dawning on their faces with no small degree of relief - this is tragic news, to be sure, but it is also good news. And she has so precious little of that to give them.
She presses a button on the device in her hand, and an emerald hologram flares to life in the air in front of her.
“I was not aware you took on faces.” Griffin says, and the disembodied head tilts, just slightly. Her students shift and whisper and gasp, but do not move. There is only one being in all the dimensions they could be looking at; if the situation weren’t so dire Griffin might sarcastically congratulate them.
i am war now, headmistress. our enemies will not recognize me as threat nor being without one.
It’s a strange sentiment from it, but Griffin supposes she can understand. Magix will not recognize Mother as a living thing if it remains code and screen. The Council will not recognize Mother even with this facsimile of a face - a mask, edged and hollow and intimidating. All Mother is really doing is forcing their enemies to admit it, once the battles begin. Politics.
“Girls, we are at war. You will make your preparations as subtly as you can. You will prepare yourself, and ready yourself. Mother will explain the details, but if you hear nothing else, hear this. We strike when our sisters return - and make no mistake, return they will. We will reclaim our Tower. We will repair our Tower. We will summon our kin. And we will tear our enemies to pieces.” She cannot help the hiss that her words turn into; one of her juniors with an intense affinity for the serpentine lifts her chin with pride, and that’s. Silly. But sweet. Her students are not keen on sharing care with her - she isn’t even all that enthused about playing her hand so clearly to them now. But it’s - a comfort, she supposes. They will sacrifice for her, and for the Tower, just as she and it sacrifice for them.
“Any discussion of this will occur outside and away from the Tower. It cannot prevent itself from reporting to our enemies. Mother, you have the floor.”
Mother turns its attention back to her students, and Griffin breathes.
Watches.
X
And Griffin waits.