Chapter Text
The day of their execution actually turns out to be a very good day, except for when it isn’t.
The Omega Dimension is located on a fucking ice planet. Icy cannot fucking believe her eyes.
“You - you’re fucking name is - Icy, your name is Icy - “
“Maybe they didn’t know.” Darcy offers weakly, ignoring Stormy, who has hit the ground and is laughing so hard tears are streaming down her cheeks.
“I am concerned by how likely I think that is.” Icy says faintly.
The ice at their feet is hungry, but it quells at her presence and does not try to consume them. And even if it didn’t obey her whims, the actual fucking Dragon Fire is enough to keep the chill from their skin and the cold from their breath. They are doubly prepared for this.
“When you said it was gonna be a vacation - “ Stormy wheezes, and laughs again. Icy’s legs finally give out beneath her and she drops right on top of her sister.
Like, sure, they’d all put a brave face on but -
But -
“I, for one, am delighted that we’re always over-prepared.” Darcy announces.
Icy can’t really argue with that.
They’re underground, the portal having closed up on their heels. Like Domino, they are surrounded by ice. Unlike Domino, this is not a frozen city, but instead a frozen cave system. There are jagged spears of ice dripping down and protruding out from the floor and ceiling alike, blue in every shade coloring tunnels and passages and crevices.
And, like Domino, there are bodies.
These bodies, though, are alive - frozen eternally by the hungry ice, eyes moving and tracking as Icy pushes herself back to her feet and helps Stormy up.
“They’re trophies.” Icy realizes. She’s not very impressed. Like - trophies as a concept are something she approves of, this is just…pathetic. Why leave enemies alive?
“We might find allies here.” Darcy ventures. It would take only a moment for Icy to will the ice to let its prisoners go, after all.
“Not right-the-fuck-now we won’t. But - it’s something to keep in mind.” Stormy allows. She doesn’t seem as excited about a prison-break as Icy would’ve expected her to be. More cautious. That is not a complaint.
Icy dusts her hands off and stomps her feet for lack of anything better to do, and looks down at the ice trembling beneath her.
“There’s a back-door here somewhere, hmm?” She asks, and the ice - ripples. Outward. In concentrated ringlets.
“Convenient.” Darcy says. Icy can’t bring herself to disagree.
Domino had been - one thing. But this ice, this cursed ice, is eager and willing and easy to touch. It had not been formed of something so vile as the death of a planet, and Icy did not carry the blood of the women responsible in her veins.
For cursed ice to be an affinity, that necessarily means it’s something naturally occurring. Maybe the Omega Dimension was chosen as this trophy prison because it naturally produced the cursed ice.
It’s a thought, not an important one. Icy files it away anyway.
They keep together as they follow the ice’s path, twisting and winding deeper and deeper into the heart of Omega.
It should be freezing, cold enough for even Icy to feel it, but the Dragon Flame is warm.
Icy’s never been pleasantly warm before. This is - probably that, she thinks, and it’s…she’s awed by that, more than she would like to admit. Her biology isn’t so different from - well -
Her thoughts stutter to a halt. Again.
She’s been - putting it off. The - the mess from Domino. But this -
The eyes are moving, she reminds herself. She hadn’t brought it up while in a monitored prison cell, she isn’t going to bring it up while in a literal prison filled with half-frozen strangers. Who knows if the Company visit their trophies, if their trophies talk.
“Babe.”
Stormy’s hand is warm when she reaches out and laces their fingers together, and Icy realizes, to her horror, that her face is wet.
“I’ll tell you when we get somewhere private.” She says hoarsely, promises, and her sisters both just - nod. And keep moving.
“I can’t reach your minds right now. The - Flame, I think. It differentiates between us.”
“Wonder if it doesn’t recognize Coven bonds, or if it just doesn’t recognize the whole of our coven.” Stormy muses softly, face pinched. They’ve been three as one so long that it’s - discomforting, the thought that the Dragon Flame itself does not recognize that.
“Is it one Coven bond or two though?” Darcy points out. Icy feels herself scowling an instant before Stormy looks horrified.
Multiple Coven bonds are not a thing. Icy had been assuming they’d just begun the process - hopefully never to be formalized - of expanding their own circle. But -
“That makes much more sense. I hate it. No more talking, let’s go.”
It speaks volumes for their bond, that the ice beneath their feet ripples and pushes at Stormy’s words, insistent and excited, and Icy lets her mind blank for the next fifteen or so minutes as she jogs with her sisters through twisting passages of ice and frost, as they resolutely ignore the lingering eyes and dark blobs denoting their unlucky fellow prisoners.
They take sharp turns and at one point slide right down a tunnel steep enough that Icy’s nails break the skin of Darcy’s arm. Icy has to form platforms beneath them on the other end and use the ice to propel them up a nearly vertical incline shortly thereafter.
It’s not very stressful or taxing, which means Icy’s on extra-bullshit alert when they come up on the mouth of another tunnel and damn near fall right off a sheer cliff onto a giant motherfucking snake.
There are two. Pale things, white enough that her eyes have to strain to pick them out against the ice around them; their large, watery-blue eyes vaguely luminescent and entirely too unfocused. They are twisting and writhing in fierce motions around the first non-frozen structure Icy has seen since their arrival; a raised dais containing a stone arch, inscribed with white runes.
“Can you read that from here?” Stormy asks. Darcy stares at her.
“You know my glasses are for show, right?”
“I’m sorry, is your vision so bad it can’t see the giant runes carved into the giant arch on the giant pedestal?” Stormy snarks back. Icy inches her way between them before Darcy can go for Stormy’s eyes in retaliation.
“It’s an anchor.” Icy says, also in an attempt to head of some witch-on-witch violence.
“Not - technically, yes, but no, it’s mostly a gate.” Darcy’s quick to correct her, hands lifting to sketch in the air before her.
“Gate. Cool. That’s our way out then. How are we going to handle the snakes?”
“The snakes are bound to the gate. Guardians, sure, but - jailers, more like it. I don’t think they’d bother us if we wandered around, but if we get too close or try to use the gate, they’ll attack.” Darcy says.
“Bound as in…if we destroy them, we destroy the gate?”
“It’s the only smart thing these assholes have done in their entire lives.” Darcy says flatly. Icy sighs, and pinches the bridge of her nose. Figures the only intelligent member of the Company had been in charge here.
“So we just distract them.” Stormy says simply.
“With what?”
“One of the prisoners, dipshit. We can sneak by while they’re handling the snakes.”
“The Company’s evil, but that doesn’t mean everybody in here is on our side.”
“That’s offensive. We’re evil.”
“I wouldn’t put it past them to have spies in here. Or - people who would do anything to get back into their good graces.” Icy corrects herself.
“They’d still have to try to leave to get back to the Company. And stop doubting yourself. We’re more than capable of killing whatever poor fuck we unleash.” Darcy says sharply, already spinning on her heel and setting off back the way they came. Icy has to scramble to catch up with her, to keep the ice beneath their feet moving in time with them.
“Nobody’s gonna get pissy with us for murder, right?” Stormy asks.
“As long as we’re not killing kids or like, enacting a genocide, I suspect we’ll be fine.” Darcy says dryly.
“They’re about to start a dimension-wide rebellion, Stormy. It’s war. It’s been war since we figured out what was going on. And none of the pixies or the little knights are stupid enough to throw a tantrum over the realities of war.”
“Timmy’s going to be pissed if he doesn’t get to drop the first body.” Stormy points out.
“Timmy can get in fucking line, he wasn’t executed by those motherfuckers -“
“No, let him test the waters. Maybe they use death curses, who knows.” Icy says mildly. Darcy’s been leading them on a determined but incomprehensible path. She’s likely sensing something. With the Dragon Flame boosting her power, Icy can’t fathom what might’ve drawn her attention.
“Ohh, death curses. We should use those. They’re so much fun. I could cast them on Bloom’s parents! And her cute little baby witch cousin!”
“They are vastly underused.” Icy allows, and Stormy beams. It’d be a comfort to Bloom, Icy thinks, if there was a built in scorched-earth revenge consequence for the Company targeting her family. Icy had contemplated casting one on the three of them junior year, but - who was realistically capable of killing them?
“Shut the fuck up, we’re here. This one, Icy.” Darcy orders suddenly, and Icy finally turns her attention towards her sister. Darcy’s squinting at a -
Huh.
“He’s been here a hot fucking minute.” Stormy says, and she’s right. The ice around him is old, older than the stuff swirling beneath their feet, old enough that it has colored and tinted his whole body a frankly unflattering shade of blue.
He’s sneering, eyes open but glazed - not so much tracking as drifting.
“This is a terrible idea.” Icy says.
“Don’t you trust me?” Darcy asks. Before Icy can get into trouble for not answering that, Stormy waves a frantic hand in front of the prisoner’s face.
“Hey! Fucknut! We’re breaking out. You in?”
It takes an agonizingly long time for his eyes to move up and down. Icy’s so bored that she doesn’t even bother gesturing; the ice covering him drops like a splash of water, grumpier than that which Icy has been interacting with so far. It tunnels deeper beneath their feet, shying away from the air and light, so deeply that it fades from Icy’s awareness.
The man collapses onto one knee, gasping loud and obnoxious. Just for a moment, for an instant, and then he pushes himself up.
The smile he gives them is all teeth, grey eyes wild. Hair perfect, though, not so much as a strand out of place. Fucking wizards, vainer than a fairy.
“A breakout, you say?”
“Mm. Exclusive. One time membership pass. Going, going…” Darcy trails off, examining her nails disinterestedly. He eyes her appreciatively. Out of his line of sight, Stormy mimes gagging.
The smile becomes a little less feral, a little more charming. He straightens up, smooths a hand down his long overcoat. And then bows, eyes wicked.
“I am honored to accept.”