Wizard's Wish - (Kinda) Yandere SGE x reader

Chapter 90: The Four Point & Lion and the Snake pt 2

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In the vast, empty night, two dozen nooses glowed green, fluorescing like electric eels, lighting up the prisoners with heads looped through.

At the front of the stage, Y/n, Sophie, and Agatha faced off against the Snake, awash in the gallows' alien green haze.
Beyond the iced walls, the crowd was hushed in the dark, like an audience waiting for a play. Y/n could see them looking back anxiously, searching for any sign of Tedros.
"Perhaps we shouldn't write off the Lion so soon. By now he knows your predicament," the Snake said to the girls, the edge coming off his voice. "I'll give him ten more seconds to show his face."

None of them moved.

"Aren't you going to help your friends?" The Snake said serenely. "1...2..."
"GO!" Kiko shrieked.
Sophie twirled to Y/n. "I'll take the front row."
"No," Agatha said, looking at Y/n. "He's lying."
"3..." the Snake said.
Y/n took off, shooting the nooses with her f/c glow. Agatha and Sophie followed suit.
"It's not working!" Sophie shouted–
"Magic won't break it!" said Dot.
"Try something else!" said Anadil, her three rats dangling from tiny nooses next to her.
"4...5..."
"Break the wood!" Nicola cried, eyeing the beams over their heads.
Y/n fired at them–
The beams only turned thicker and stronger.
"6..."
"Hurry!" Hester bellowed.
Sophie magically sealed the trapdoors around her feet, but the doors grew weaker, threatening to break.
"Spells are backfiring!" Hort said.
"7... 8..."
Agatha shot the frozen walls with her glow, hoping to shatter them and let the crowd storm in–
Nothing.
"9..."
Y/n climbed the beams and tried to undo the nooses by hand. They shocked her like lightning and she fell to the platform–

"10," said the Snake.
The three girls turned to him, panting.

"And still no Lion...," the Snake tutted. "So now the real show begins." He
opened his palm and a pack of playing cars appeared with a tuft of smoke. He spread them out in his fingers, revealing some of their faces–
Not card faced, Y/n realized. Actual faces. For each of the cards had a prisoner painted on it: Hort... Dot... Bogden... Nicola... the King of Bloodbrook...
"Each of you takes a turn picking a card," the Snake said to the girls. "Whoever you pick, their doors drops."
The crowd drew a breath, cocking towards the horizon like panicked chickens. Surely Tedros would stop this. Surely he would slay this villain the way King Arthur had slain many before...

"Why are you doing this?" Y/n rasped. "What do you gain from killing innocent people?"
The Snake's eyes glittered like gems. "Ask my father." He held out the deck, eyes turning to Agatha. "Pick."
Sophie looked to Y/n, paralyzed.
Agatha glanced at Y/n, before she slackened, her cheeks bright red. Then she picked the first card, the back of it painted with the Snake's crest. Her hands shook as she turned it over.
The face on it was Kiko's.

The door under Kiko's feet dropped open by Agatha was already diving, snagging her friend by the legs and pulling her back onto the platform so she could fall through.
It happened so fast that the crowd didn't make a sound.
Agatha stayed on her knees, hugging Kiko's calves with all of her strength, as Kiko hung from the noose at an angel. If Agatha let her go, her friend would drop and break her neck. Which means both of them were trapped in this position.
"Don't leave me," Y/n heard Kiko whimper.
"I won't," Agatha assured.
"Bad things happen when you leave me," Kiko said. "Bad things happen to all of us."

"Your turn," the Snake said, eyes on Sophie.
Sophie did.
The car was Nicola's.
Across the platform, Nicola's trapdoor opened.
In a flash, Sophie sprinted across the stage and tackled the first year just before she fell through, shoving her to the side of the opening and holding her by the ankles.
Sophie looked at and saw Nicola goggling at her. As did Agatha and Y/n.
"Guess we're friends now," Sophie said to Nicola.
With no sign of Tedros, the crowd revolted, battering the walls with renewed force–
Suddenly, thirty young pirates broke through the crowd, seizing the hardest protesters from behind, swords to their necks. The rest of the mob went quiet with fear.