Blue was Snow’s, Rapunzel’s, Ashe’s and Aurelion’s Fairy Godfather. He felt bad about not being able to help Rapunzel in his hour of need once again, but…his current priority was helping Snow. But that didn’t stop the fairy from feeling a little guilty. When Rapunzel had been transported to the Heroes’ Labyrinth and had been forced to face Gothel…Blue had been absent. He hadn’t even known any of that was going on, and only found out about Rapunzel’s adventures in the labyrinth when he returned to the surface.
In the end, Blue knew that Snow needed him more right now. Blue was sure that Rapunzel could take care of himself. Rapunzel had grown up to be a strong, capable King. Snow had the potential to become a very powerful ice mage, but he was emotionally fragile, and overly sensitive.
Water magic was ruled by one’s emotions, which is why Snow’s magic had always been difficult for him to control. Soft-hearted, kind, and easily hurt, Snow liked feeling needed, and women made him feel needed, useful, wanted and even loved. Blue knew that this was the real reason why Snow was such a womanizer. The poor boy…he just wants to be loved. And now that his mother is gone I fear for him. I don’t know if he’ll be able to handle her loss. It may break him.
Blue lay down on the pillow, closed his eyes, and tried to fall asleep. He was determined to protect Snow and watch over him like a real father would do now that Snow was all alone in the world.
***
Fern bit her lip in concentration as she used her double-pronged hairpin to pick the lock on her cell door. It only took her a couple of minutes to get the tumblers aligned, and then a clicking sound filled the air as the lock opened. A triumphant smirk spread across Fern’s face as she pushed the cell door open. It creaked on its rusty hinges.
Yaga clapped his hands with an impressed look on his face. “Ooo! Marvelous job, Fern!”
Fern exited her cell and made her way over to Yaga’s. She used the hairpin to pick the lock on Yaga’s cell door and a few minutes later she was opening to door to his cell.
“Where did you learn to do that?” Yaga asked as he exited the cell.
“My mother taught me,” Fern revealed with a wistful expression on her face. “Before she learned how to use a bow and crossbow, we survived on the road as bandits.”
“Sounds exciting,” Yaga said, his emerald green eyes sparkling with interest.
“It was,” Fern said, her lips quirking into a crooked smile as she remembered some of the adventures she and her mother had had. “Anyways, we need to find my weapons and your jewelry so we can get the hell out of here.” Fern chewed on her lower lip. “I have no idea where Reginald would keep our stuff though. His private chambers? A secret room? I’ve never been anywhere in the castle except for the throne room.”
Yaga stroked his chin thoughtfully. “What we need is…a map.” A rat skittered past Yaga in that moment. “Oh, look there goes one now.” The seer lunged at the rat, grabbed it, and broke its neck in one swift, deadly motion.
Fern cringed and took a step back away from Yaga. “Er, what are you doing? Why did you do that?”
Yaga held his hand out to Fern in an expectant manner. “Give me your hairpin.” Fern hesitated for a moment before shrugging and handing it over. Yaga knelt on the floor, set the dead rat on the floor in front of him, and then used the pin to cut its stomach open. The rat’s guts spilled out of its stomach and onto the floor. “You see, a map.” Yaga told Fern.
Fern looked at the guts on the floor and shook her head. “All I see is rat guts. Sorry.”
Yaga channeled his power, stared at the intestines, and concentrated. He had a vision of the castle’s corridors. His gaze zoomed down the corridors turning left and right until it stopped at a large, wooden door. Yaga’s gaze went past the door and he was suddenly inside of the armory.
Yaga looked around and spotted Fern’s weapons along with his jewelry. Yaga smiled dazedly. “I know where your weapons and my jewelry are.” Yaga shook his head to clear it of the vision and Fern came into focus once more. Yaga stood up and dusted himself off. “Follow me.” The seer took off down the dungeon hallway and headed towards the exit.
Fern shrugged and followed. “So…you used your magic just now?”
Yaga nodded. “Yes.”
“Why didn’t you use your magic to get out of your cell?” Fern asked.
“Reginald cast an anti-magic barrier on the cell,” Yaga began with an amused expression on his face. “But your lock-picking skill requires no magic. That’s why you were able to open my cell.”
“So…what you saw just now was a vision of the future?” Fern asked.
“My magical affinity is foresight,” Yaga began to explain. “I willed my power to show me where our belongings were and my power did the rest. It worked similarly to a scrying spell. I ended up having a vision of where we would end up going even though we haven’t gone there yet.”
“That sounds confusing,” Fern admitted, scratching her cheek with her index finger. “So…you know what’s going to happen next? How often do you glimpse into the future?”
“When I have visions of the future…I see multiple possible futures for all of Fantasia. So nothing is set in stone,” Yaga admitted. “The future of Fantasia is decided by everyone’s choices, and is ever-changing. It’s easier for me to try to glimpse a single person’s future. Even though I see that the person has multiple possible futures there is usually one path that is clearer than the others or more ideal. If I think it will better the future of Fantasia I try to help guide that person to their proper path.”
“Well, that sounds complicated and annoying,” Fern said, letting out a huff. “In the future, you said that we’re good friends, right?”
A small, wistful smile curled Yaga’s lips. “Yes…in the future you call me your ‘friend’.”
“I don’t have any friends,” Fern said pensively, and noticed that Yaga’s expression fell at her words. She wished she’d just kept her mouth shut. Good going, Fern. Open mouth - insert foot. You have a real knack for hurting people’s feelings. This is the main reason why you don’t have any friends. Fern waved her hands in front of her in a gesture of denial. “No! Don’t look disappointed. I didn’t mean you. I meant, that ever since my mother was killed by Scar I’ve been on my own. The few times I teamed up with other people they ended up betraying me so I learned not to trust anyone. This one time I teamed up with some bandits and they ended up trying to sell me off in Apple Kingdom!”
“Sell you?” Yaga paled. “That must have been horrible.”
“Oh, it was,” Fern began and a mischievous smile curled her lips. “For the slave traders! I set their whole secret base on fire when I made my escape.” She chuckled as she fondly remembered how the slave traders had run away screaming about how she was ‘a very bad woman’. “It served them right, anyways!”
“You’re amazing, Fern,” Yaga said, his emerald eyes sparkling.
“Thanks,” Fern said with a slight blush to her cheeks. “Anyways, I’d like for us to be friends, Yaga. It’d be nice to have a friend again. My mom was my best friend.”
Yaga’s expression brightened. “I’d like to be your friend too, Fern.”
“It’s a deal,” Fern said in a cheeky manner and stuck out her hand for Yaga to take it. Yaga gave her a bemused look before taking her hand and shaking it.
The seer returned to his task at hand and led the way up the stairs that took them to the first floor of the castle. Yaga started to pick up the pace and they ran down empty castle corridors, occasionally turning left or right until they finally reached the armory. Yaga skidded to a halt in front of the large wooden door and shot a cocky smile over his shoulder at Fern. “We’re here.” Yaga opened the door and they entered.
Yaga looked around, spotted a basket filled with jewelry, and ran over to it excitedly. “My jewelry!” The seer started to put on gold hoop earrings, several jeweled necklaces, and ten jeweled rings. “Oh, my hat and cape are here too!” Yaga put on a purple, wide-brimmed hat with a crooked point, and a purple cape with a bright, yellow lining.
Fern gave Yaga a thumbs-up. “Now you look like a proper wizard.” Yaga gave her a toothy grin in response. She looked around the armory until she spotted her weapons piled inside of a large basket. Fern concealed the crossbow and bolts inside of her cape, and secured her hatchet to the belt she was wearing. Lastly, she slung her bow and quiver of arrows over her shoulder.
Yaga raised an eyebrow at Fern as she hid a couple of extra knives on her body. “That’s…a lot of weapons.”
“Better to be safe than sorry. It’s a dangerous world out there,” Fern said in an amused tone. “You never know what or who is going to try and kill you. Now, we should probably get the hell out of here before the Wizard Knights spot us. We should sneak into the stables and steal some horses to make our escape.”
“There’s no need for that,” Yaga began. “We just need to head to the front gate of the castle and we’ll be able to make our escape from there.”
Fern shrugged. “Okay. You’re the Seer…so I’ll just follow your lead. I trust you, Yaga.” Fern missed the cute, bashful look that fell over Yaga’s face since he quickly ducked his head to conceal his embarrassing expression from Fern.
Fern and Yaga snuck out of the castle, crossed the courtyard, and made their way to the front gate. Fern kept her hood up so that it shadowed the features of her face. The duo managed to pass through the open front gate without incident, until-
“Look! There they are!” “It’s the prisoners!” “Don’t let them escape!” “Hurry up and capture them!” “After them! Reginald will burn us alive is they get away!” The panicked voices of several Wizard Knights filled the courtyard suddenly.
“Run!” Fern shouted, and grabbed Yaga’s hand before starting to run down the dirt road that led to the forest. “You know,” Fern began breathlessly. “This would have been a hell of a lot easier on horseback!”
“Don’t worry,” Yaga panted back. “It is coming.”
Fern shot Yaga a quizzical look. “What’s coming? And are you always so ominous?”
“Home,” Yaga said simply.
“Damn, I wish I had more anti-magic bombs with me,” Fern lamented.
Yaga shot Fern an incredulous look. “Those dreadful things?” He shuddered. “Dr. Henrietta Jekyll is behind their creation, and they-”
The thunderous sound of heavy, approaching footsteps reached their ears coming from the direction of the forest, and Yaga was unable to continue what he was saying about the anti-magic bombs. A monster? Fern thought wildly. Great, just great. The last thing we need is to fight a monster right now! That’s just my luck though. Out of the frying pan and into the fire!
All of a sudden, the ‘monster’ exited the edge of the forest and Fern’s jaw dropped at the sight of it. A Tudor-style house with a gray, sloping tiled roof and multiple crooked chimneys stood on two twenty-foot-tall chicken legs. The monster? House? Was charging towards Fern and Yaga. “What the hell is that?” Fern demanded, her eyes wide and fearful.
“There’s no reason to be afraid. That’s my house,” Yaga explained in a fond, serene tone.
“That monster is your house?” Fern asked, her voice tinged with disbelief. “Could this day get any stranger?”
At the same time, the Wizard Knights that had been running after Fern and Yaga were closing in. Now that they were close enough they started to whip out their wands and enchanted weapons and launched offensive spells their way. Fireballs, lightning bolts, earth lances and wind blades all went flying through the air in their direction.
“We’re so dead!” Fern said, glancing over her shoulder.
“Jump!” Yaga instructed.
Fern knew better than to question the crazy seer and did as she was told. Just as Yaga and Fern jumped up into the air the house opened its front door that suddenly resembled a beast’s maw more than an actual door and gobbled the two of them up. As soon as the house had Yaga and Fern safely inside of its depths it turned around and fled into the nearby forest.
The Wizard Knights came to a halt when they realized a pursuit on foot would be futile. One of the Wizard Knights addressed one of his comrades. “So…who’s going to tell Reginald the bad news?” His friend smacked him upside the head in response.
***
Fern and Yaga materialized in the center of the house, and landed on the floor with a thud. Fern realized she was still screaming, blushed, and quickly shut her mouth. “Well, that was easy. Where are we?” Fern looked around the interior of Yaga’s house curiously. “I guess we didn’t get eaten by a monster, after all.”
“Welcome to my humble home,” Yaga said in an amused tone. “Please, make yourself comfortable while I make us something to eat. It is a long journey to Rapunzel’s Tower.”
Bundles of dried herbs and cages filled with live animals were hanging from the ceiling. Fern couldn’t help but worry about the animals’ future prospects after what happened to that rat in the dungeon. Fern wondered if the species would affect the strength of Yaga’s visions since he had all kinds of animals: birds, bats, rats and even snakes.
A bookcase lined with ancient, dusty tomes, grimoires and magic books caught Fern’s attention next and she went over to inspect them. Next to the bookcase was a shelving unit that was lined with specimen jars. One of the large glass jars was filled with eyeballs and Fern could have sworn they blinked at her.
The rest of Yaga’s house was surprisingly normal in appearance. There was a single cot in the corner, covered by a white bed sheet and a single white pillow, a dining area with a square table and that was surrounded by four chairs, and a large hearth that had a bubbling cauldron hanging over the fire. “Hey, Yaga, your house is kind of warm and cozy. I like it. And it’s surprisingly normal-” Fern was saying until she spotted a large pile of treasure. “Wait, I take that back. Where did you get all that treasure?” Fern ran over to check it out. She’d expected to see gold coins as part of the pile, but the pile consisted only of jewels and jewelry. “You have a very impressive jewelry collection, Yaga. I bet you could give King Reginald himself a run for his money.”
“I received most of it as payment for my services as a seer,” Yaga explained while he chopped up an onion on his cutting board. “You can try some on if you would like.”
“Really?” A flash of surprise crossed Fern’s face. She could tell the jewelry was very precious to Yaga and was flattered by his offer. Fern started to reach her hand out towards the pile of jewelry, but then stopped. “It’s all a little too fancy for someone like me. The only piece of jewelry I’ve ever worn is this necklace that my mother gave me.” Fern took out the necklace from inside of her shirt so that Yaga would be able to see it.
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