“Don’t destroy any more of them, Evil Theo!” Caelin quickly yelled out. She twisted back her sword mid-swing and kicked back the red-haired puppet instead.

Changing stances, Theo hit his current target with the blunt side of his sword instead of the edge, knocking it down. “What’s wrong?”

Caelin looked to Jacob, who still stood on the dining table, watching the fight with a maniacal grin. 

“What did you do with the townspeople that you kidnapped?” she demanded. 

Jacob laughed gleefully, clapping his hands together like he would at a great circus. “Isn’t it obvious? I gave them the chance to be reborn as something better. My puppets. At last, they’re no longer tied down by their weak, physical bodies. Their sad, boring lives now have new meaning.”

“You turned people into puppets?” Caelin looked at the wooden figures around her incredulously. “But how? What did you do with their original—” She dodged a dagger to her face. The blade managed to nick her left cheek with a thin cut and a drop of blood trickled down. She had underestimated the puppets’ combat abilities. It had truly been too long since she last fought someone with killing intent. She couldn’t afford to get distracted.

“You thought this was going to be a simple fae prank?” Jacob said spitefully as his puppets circled Caelin and Theo, brandishing their weapons like a homicidal puppet show. “Well nothing in life is simple. Nothing is easy.” 

Caelin and Theo stood with their backs to each other as they tracked the group of puppets surrounding them. An eerie chittering noise emitted from their hollow mouths as their jaws opened and closed like some sort of wooden war cry.

“I think the colored balls controlling them are their souls or something like that,” Caelin said under her breath. “Lilac would want us to get them back to AIKA. There may be some way to reverse whatever that creepy kid did to them.”

“So we can’t kill them now because they’re technically the missing townspeople? That’s just wonderful,” Theo said sarcastically. He struck out at a puppet with the flat of his sword as it approached closer. “What does your Imperium do? It lets you summon a red sword out of nowhere?”

“Not just any sword,” Caelin said. “It can cut through anything tangible.” As if on cue, she beheaded another advancing puppet. 

The blade glided through the wood like soft butter. Unfortunately, the puppet’s colored ball just so happened to be located in the neck. It disintegrated into an amber-colored powder under her sword.

“Oh fae-locks,” Caelin cursed. 

“What happened to not killing them?” Theo remarked wryly.

“Well why don’t you use your Imperium?” Caelin said defensively. “Telekinesis to pin them would be really helpful right now.”

Theo gritted his teeth and tightened his grip on his sword. “I told you I can’t control it as well as he can.”

“Well then you should really switch places with the other Theo,” Caelin said exasperatedly.

Choosing to ignore her, Theo smashed in the face of a puppet with an uppercut, but the move only stalled the puppet for a moment before it lunged at him again with its saw. “Are you sure we can’t kill them? Lilac won’t have to know. We’ve each killed one already by accident. How would she know which deaths were accidental and which ones were not?”

“Lilac always finds out in the end.” Caelin shuddered. “I can’t afford to fail this test, so I need you to properly follow directions.”

“Talk all you want, but your Imperiums are useless against mine!” Jacob gloated from his seat on the table. “I knew he gave me the best one.”

Hearing his words, Caelin observed Jacob’s appearance as a sly smile crept across her lips. “So you’re saying that all of this is done using your Imperium?” She studied the golden pin in the shape of a crown on the collar of his shirt.  

“I can see through your weak plan to gain more information out of me,” Jacob sneered. “I won’t fall for your petty trick and reveal any of my Imperium’s weaknesses to you.” 

Fortunately for Caelin, he had just given her all the information she needed. “Buy me some time, Evil Theo,” she said. “I need to get out of this group of puppets.”

“You get one minute,” Theo said.

Caelin sprinted towards the puppets while Theo struck back anything made of wood attempting to stop her. Without any puppets to hinder her path, Caelin rushed towards Jacob. When she was only an arm’s reach away, another puppet—not part of the original five—suddenly leapt out from behind him. 

“Did you really think I wouldn’t have a bodyguard?” Jacob taunted.

The puppet was larger than the others, and it lunged for Caelin’s right arm. It latched onto her wrist with a tight grip, preventing her blade from touching it. As it attempted to drag her away, Caelin dug her heels into the carpeted floor, refusing to budge. 

“You shouldn’t reveal your Imperium’s power during a fight, even to an ally,” Jacob chastised with a sinister grin. “You never know when your enemy is listening. And I’m always listening.”

“I only said it because I don’t really mind if you know. Besides…” Caelin grabbed Jacob’s arm with her left hand momentarily before she was roughly yanked back by the large puppet. “Who said that I only had one Imperium?”

Immediately, all of the puppets froze in place. Those in unbalanced positions dropped to the ground at awkward angles in a clatter of wooden limbs. 

“You have two Imperiums?” Theo asked, looking at Caelin incredulously.

“Yes, we’ve already been over this before,” Caelin said, confused by his shocked reaction until she remembered. “Oh no wait, that was with the other Theo.”

“That’s impossible!” Jacob shrieked, scrambling away from Caelin. He reached out and waved his hands, attempting to control his puppets again, but they failed to respond. “No one can bond with two Imperiums. If anyone tried to do that, they’d die instantly from the clashing energies!” 

“Well, let me prove you otherwise,” Caelin gestured up and down to herself theatrically. “Lo and behold, I am alive and reasonably well.” 

She swung her sword down on Jacob. He barely rolled off the table before the crimson blade tore through where his arm would’ve been. The table he was sitting on unfortunately suffered the blow, and was cleanly split in two, the edges of the cut impeccably smooth.

Jacob tried one more desperate attempt to control his puppets and succeeded, much to the surprise of him and Caelin. The wooden figures moved again from where they had previously been frozen. 

“Looks like your Imperium’s power ran out,” Jacob sneered tauntingly. “Even with two, you’re not all that strong. Better luck next time!”

Caelin cursed under her breath. It’d been too long since she last used her Imperium. She’d lost her sense of timing. Because she didn’t have a proper hold on him earlier, she didn’t seal his Imperium’s power away for long enough.

“Don’t worry, there won’t be a next time,” Caelin said through gritted teeth, and adjusted her stance to charge at Jacob again.

“I know how to defeat them without killing them!” Theo called out suddenly to Caelin. “If we sever the threads connected to the colored balls from the puppets, they won’t be able to move anymore. It acts like their ‘heart’.” He held up a red colored ball for her to see. It vibrated faintly in his hand while the dissected wooden carcass beside Theo’s feet remained still.

To further test his hypothesis, Theo approached the puppets. His sword glanced off the red-haired puppet’s dagger arm as she attempted to stab him. He kicked in the puppet’s face, and in a fluid motion, thrusted his sword through another puppet’s chest. However, the blade caught in the wood and refused to budge. The red-haired puppet raised its wooden fist to strike first. Letting go of his sword, Theo grabbed the puppet by its neck, smashing its face against the head of the puppet with his sword impaled in its chest. Both of the puppets cracked from the impact, and Theo successfully reclaimed his sword with a forceful tug. Theo dug inside the skull of the red-haired puppet, searching for its “heart” while it thrashed wildly in his arms. Successfully pulling out the navy colored ball, he cut off the attached strings and pocketed the sphere before proceeding to the next puppet.

Though Caelin watched Theo dissect the two puppets with ease, she, unfortunately, had a much harder time. The stout puppet guarding Jacob did not have any limbs replaced with weapons because his arms itself were enough. One smash from his fist left a crack in the black marble floor. Despite his large frame, the puppet was also surprisingly fast, and Caelin couldn’t land a proper strike. The most she managed was amputating some of its fingers, along with a few gaping gashes in the wooden body. 

As soon as he finished,  Theo hurried to Caelin and blocked the monstrous puppet’s direct line of attack, brandishing his broadsword in both hands. Caelin, however, began to formulate a different plan. Glancing up at the large crystal chandelier hanging precariously above the large puppet, a smile formed on her face as an idea popped up in her head.