A Tad Unhinged

Chapter 14: Favors

OKAY OKAY IT WAS ANNOYING ME THAT THIS STORY WASNT FINISHED SO IM FINISHING IT YEARS AND YEARS LATER OKAY OKAY IM SORRY IN SO SORRY JUSY IGNORE ME

STAR

"What did you do!?" I scream at Eclipsa. The room has broken into an unrecognizable mess. All that was left was a ash filled fireplace, a decaying spruce floor and a single leather chair that held the worst person in the entire world.
"What did you do?" She retorts. "I haven't exactly been alive for a while, deary."
"That spell. That stopping time spell. What is it actually."
"Oh it stop time, all right." She stands up and walks towards me, her heels clicking lightly on the wood floor. She approaches the dead fireplace, and turns around right under the decaying warnacornz "It stops time for everything. Heart, lungs, kidneys, humans can't survive that long with nothing moving, can they?"
"I dont-" my eyes dabble with tears. "I don't understand he's just... dead?"
"Yes." She smiles. "But you can bring him back."
What? "What?"
She gets up and walks out of the dying room. She stops in the doorway and looks behind her. "Coming?"
I walk towards her as we descended the hallway. As we did, the rooms were slowly being ripped apart, like someone grabbed the wrong string in a sweater and the whole thing was unraveling slowly. The whole thing was coming down and we were somehow avoiding it.
We stopped at That Door.
The Door that begged me to open it.
"What is it?"
"It's power, honey." She smiles at me. "Real power. The kind that can bring him back."
"Can it really?" I look at her, tears falling down my face. "No tricks?"
"No tricks this time."
And so I open it. Slowly was the plan at first but as soon as my hand touched t the door flew open.
And all that was before me was a small room filled with gold. Not the metal, the color. Somehow, the room was pure, undisrupted gold.
The color of magic.
I take a deep breath and close my eyes only to have Marco's lifeless body laying in front of me.
I take a step and I'm enveloped in magic. The good kind, the bad kind, just all of it. Pure magic, pure power. The kind that could raise the dead, reset time. The kind that could fix everything.
But it wasn't mind.
I flip around, enraged. Eclipsa is a worlds away now but somehow still right next to me. I look down at my hands which are black as the universe and I look at hers, which are the same.
"This was a trap!" I scream. "This was never going to bring Marco back was it!?"
She smiles. "Yes, sweety. And it's a good thing too, I mean, they were never going to let you be together."
"Just like you and your stupid husband." I shake my head, rolling my eyes. "God you and Toffee are both so keen on getting Marco and I to relive your tragic past, huh?"
"Not sure who this Toffee fellow is but no, Star, I don't want you to relive my past. No that's not why I'm in your subconscious."
"Then why?"
"A while ago," she puts on a pair of gloves, "You used my section of the spell book to get into Marco's mind to free him from Toffee's grip and I warned you Star, I told you there would be consequences to your actions. I mean I wrote it all over that page."
"Yes I know." I snap. "I read them all."
"But, later into my life, I decided that I didn't want there to be a consequence. Dark Magic, while appropriately named, shouldn't make the caster pay for using it. So, I did away with the retaliations and replaced it with a favor."
"A favor?"
"For me, yes." She seems pleased with herself. "That favor was you get to bring me back to life."
"I have to do what!?"
"Not have to, get to!" She claps. "But you see, resurrection is more necromancy and now we're into the terribleness that is Natural Magic. And that is all about balance and what not."
My stomach sinks. I killed Jackie. I killed Marco. I killed people and what was it for? So she could come back!?
I shout "Why do you even want to come back?"
She grits her tears. "BECAUSE I WAS ROBBED OF EVERYTHING!" She was frustrated, mad, her spades were glowing and her eyes were teary. "I was robbed of a loving family, a loving husband and a beautiful life because people decided I needed to be a certain way! They forced me, locked me in a tower and killed my husband and my child and than planned to marry me off to someone I didn't care for! But I wouldn't play there game, no no I wouldn't." She rests her hand on the doorframe to steady her. The hold that had enveloped the room all flowed quickly towards her hands and left me in complete darkness. She lit up in a purple haze, a smile on her face. "So I did the only thing I could. I grabbed the sheets and ripped them up and then tied them all around my bed frame. And then my neck. And then, in front of the whole kingdom I jumped off and they all got to see what being royalty is all like."
I couldn't feel my whole body. "You killed yourself."
"For love and for loss, I had to." Her face grows serious. "I thought I'd find my husband and child waiting for me on the other side but no such luck, I was trapped in your wand now. Just in case any future princesses needed me." She takes a moment. "No one did but you. And I feel so bad for taking advantage of you Star, truly I am. We are similar, both willing to do anything for the ones we love. But Marco needed to die."
"Why?" I breathe. "If necromancy needs a balance why didn't Jackie's death do it?"
"Dimensions need balance. Each individual universe is always on the verge of dying if one thing goes wrong. When you killed Marco so completely, you also killed the rest of Toffee, who is of our dimension."
"So when you're resurrected-"
"The balance is maintained. A life for a life."
I can't think of anything to say. Everything, from the beginning to the end was all planned out. And everything I did played right into her hands.
She turns. "I really am sorry, Star. But don't worry, everything will be fine."
The door is closed.
And then blackness.

YUP SO 2 PARTS LEFT :)

WOLFIE