Chapter Text
The rain was relentless, the thunder was loud, and the wind was whipping against Marcy’s face. She holds onto the giant bird tightly, clinging for dear life as it pushes on through the storm. She buries her face against the birds soft but wet feathers, gripping and digging her nails into its skin. Each drop of rain felt like a needle piercing her skin. She’s tired of being hurt. Tired of the abuse. Tired. She’s hardly slept in a week. She’s been too busy trying to find a safe place for her to stay after she escaped Andrias. You see, Andrias had lured her into a false sense of security when she first arrived in this strange world. He wowed her with history and the splendors of the great Newtopian city. Made her feel comfortable inside the castle. And then ripped it all away from her within the first week when she was taken into his room for testing. He hurt her. Badly. Day after day, she was forced to do horrible tests, puzzles, and experiments. He hurt her over and over again claiming she has a powerful energy inside of her and had to bring it out. But it never got brought out. She was just being abused. She was burned a lot. It was a quick and easy way for him to get her to listen without accidentally killing her with his massive size. He attempted to explain to her WHY he had to put her through such torture. She still didn’t understand. She HAD no powers. She had no idea what he was talking about. She just endured the suffering for months. Each time she would try to scream at him that he was wrong about her, he would burn or shock her until she was silent. He seemed to take pleasure in her pain. He was a monster. Over the last week since her escape, she’s been stopping in towns, hoping for help. Hoping for rest. But it always ends the same. They attack her, chase her out, or try to kill her for the reward. She hasn’t eaten in days. Her clothes are battered and torn up from the hell she’s been through. The burns that scatter her body under the clothes make it hard to maneuver herself, as the wounds tear and pull against her skin. Hell. Her body feels like hell. Like it’s always on fire. Always burning. Always in pain. The rain would normally help, maybe soothe her body a bit in the right conditions, but it’s coming down so hard it’s just irritating each wound.
No one wants to help her. Everyone is either scared of her or wants to kill her. She shakily reaches back, pulling her blue hood up over her head and squinting her eyes in an attempt to see through the thick fog and rain. She has no idea where she is or where she’s going. This bird is on autopilot. She was lucky enough to snag the big bird during her escape, as it was sitting in the courtyard about to be dressed for a battle somewhere. She just took it and flew. Thunder crashes by her face, making her flinch badly. The lack of sleep doesn’t help with her reaction. She jumps, reaching her hand up quickly and squeezing the shell that connects her hood to her cloak as a strange form of self comfort. Despite her situation, she opens her mouth and tries to catch some rain inside. She’s thirsty. Very thirsty. It’s been hard to find clean water in the places she’s been in. But as long as she knows she’s getting further and further away from the castle, she hasn’t really cared about if it’s clean or dirty. Her stomach is eating itself with both sickness and hunger from her actions. She regrets wholeheartedly bringing that music box to the other girls' attention. She wishes she could rewind time and stop herself from even looking at it. She knew the consequences, and still took the risk. Suddenly, the large bird swerves, dodging a clap of thunder. Marcy gets thrown off the birds back, sliding down its shoulder and tries to grip herself against his slick feathers. But her body is so weak. And it’s feathers are too wet-
“No! No! No! No! Please! No!”
She loses grip on the feathers falling helplessly into the unforgiving world down below. As she falls, a few tears leave her eyes, mixing with the rain. The world is moving in slow motion. Her final moments. Was this really the end for Marcy Wu? Her tired eyes slowly shut, accepting her fate as she crashes hundreds of feet into the soil of the swamp below.
The sun rises. A new day! And Maddie is planning on working on some of her spells. She would do it at home, but her sisters might interrupt her at a bad time, so she figures she should do it in a more secluded area. The forest. She excitedly does her hair, pulling it back into a ponytail but being sure to leave one eye covered. She runs around her room, gathering all of her bottles, ingredients, miniature cauldron and any other supplies she’ll need into a large back pack, sweating as she hoists the heavy thing onto herself. As she runs downstairs through the bakery's kitchen, she grabs some snacks like some bread and cakes. She waves to her dad, running out the door and into town, but she doesn’t stop there. She makes her way to the other side of town, reaching the edge of the forest. She looks at the dew drops on the leaves, touching them and watching them bubble together on her finger.
“Perfect! The soil here will be perfect for set up!”
She rushed in, weaving through trees and giant mushrooms. Small droplets of water landing on her head as they roll off the trees from the storm the night before. She makes it to a nice deep area in the woods, with a large leaf covering a small clearing. She sets down her cauldron, opening her spell book and flipping to a new page. She cracks her knuckles, picking up a small bottle and grinning.
“Alright! Let’s try a simple plant spell!” She adds in her ingredients, stirring as she reads from her book, but she hears voices through the trees-
“Let’s kill this thing before it lays eggs!” A hunter growled.
“Shoot it and leave it to bleed out like the other one,” The tallest- and only female- Newt hissed.
Maddie’s eyes widened. Those were the hunters that tried to kill Anne! Maddie considered her options… One, she could curse them and make them leave the creature alone, but risk them coming back- likely with help- once they reverse the curses. Or two, she could let them harm this creature, and then save it when they leave. But that came with its own risks, what if it died before she had a chance to heal it. Well, she did always carry a spare healing potion incase Anne gets hurt at an unexpected time. Maddie finally decides the creature will likely be safer if the hunters believe it is dead. A few minutes later, the creature was in a similar situation to when Sprig found Anne. Arrows shoot in vital places, suffering from blood loss as it bleeds out, even having a broken left arm and leg, her right wrist was hanging on by skin and muscle, all from where one of the Newts purposely stomped on them until them broke. After making sure the hunters weren’t coming back, Maddie creeped over. The creature attempted to let out a pained noise, but all it could do was gargle up some blood. Maddie rushed over, the creature wasn’t able to attack her or even move, so startling it wasn’t a big issue. What was a big issue was the fact that the hunters had spent way too long mocking the creature and Maddie was worried she didn’t have enough time for the temporary healing potion to be digested. She pulled the arrow out of her throat gently to make sure she didn’t cause any more pain than necessary. She lifted the creature’s head up and poured the potion into its mouth and then dragged the creature over to a cave nearby. She needs medical equipment. Or medical potions! She ran over and got her spell book. As she read through the potions, looking for a more permanent one, the creature barely moved and it took a minute for Maddie to realize she was even awake.
“Hey beautiful,” Maddie smiled, the beast flinched at her creepy smile. Maddie wasn’t bothered, she knew others found her creepy, but she was confident in who she was. “You’re an amazing creature. I’m sorry I didn’t save you from those hunters, but it was best if they thought you were already dead, so they wouldn’t come back looking for you.”
The creature just passed out. Maddie needed to hurry. With the beast’s leg and arms injured there was no way it could protect itself from predators. Which would likely lead to its death. But Maddie couldn’t just bring it home, her dad would likely kill it. Either out of fear for their safety or because it’s already dying. Plus, pulling it out of its comfort zone while injured can do more harm than good. It worked for Anne, sure. But these two come from an entirely new, undiscovered species, and there’s no telling how these creatures would react to the same situation. Animals can be very unpredictable after all. Maddie put together two potions, one to stop any internal bleeding or damage to its organs and another that SHOULD fix the bones. The problem was the second potion was for a level five witch, she was only a level two witch. She decided this creature was hurt and needed the help, so it was worth the risk. She made the first potion and helped the creature drink it down, the creature seemed to relax a bit after a few minutes. Then, she got to work on the second potion, she wanted to make sure the creature was already healing so she didn’t need to rush the second potion. The creature kept falling in and out of consciousness. But thanks to the potion, Maddie knew it didn’t have any more internal damage. This version of the potion was the version she gave the second time to Anne, meaning it was more permanent. So, luckily, she wouldn’t be forced to come and stay out here for extended periods to make sure she didn’t bleed out. Maddie smiled, as she finished the potion. She helped the creature drink it and she saw the bones go back into place, but she could tell from how they looked that they were still cracked and useless, however they were put back into place, meaning they would actually heal properly. As the creature rested, she left and decided she’d come back the next day.
When Marcy awoke, it was already midnight, she was tired even after sleeping for frog knows how long, but oddly enough she wasn’t in pain. Had… had the hunters decided to leave her alone? No… She remembered hearing one of them say they were gonna let her bleed out like the… other one… Was- was that other one Anne or Sasha?! It had to be! Meaning one of them is dead, the other could be dead, and she was almost dead- Wait… why wasn’t she dead? If they left her to bleed out she should be dead. She tried to use her arms to push herself up, but let out a scream when she realized that- even though her bones had been put in place in casts, they were NOT fully healed. Someone helped her… Someone… Some frog… Was that creepy little blue frog the one who helped her? She couldn’t really remember what the frog had said to her, she just remembered that creepy smile. If that Frog worked for Andrias, she would be dead. So, what DID she want with her? To torture her? To experiment with her? She didn’t want to know. She looked around, seeing she was in some cave.
“Hey beautiful, good to see you’re still alive…”
‘Oh no…’