“Unnnnnnsatisfactory.” Gurgled the slime. “How would you like to be dissolved, little witch?” it asked. “Would you like me to start with your toes and eat my way up that way? It would be excruciating, but you would get to live for a few moments more before I eat the rest of you. Or should I eat parts of you and the boy in alternating turns so that you might cry and beg and plead together? I’m sure your combined screams would be most delectable.” Siouxsie dropped her broom, allowing it to clatter to the ground as she bent to put her hands over her knees. The amount of strength needed to call such concentrated bolts sapped her strength and left her as winded as someone trying to sprint their way across an entire kingdom.

  “I’m…I’m not done.” She panted, trying to get her breath.

  “Aren’t you?” wiggled and giggled the filthy gel. “My dear you’re all but spent. Cease this nonsense and accept your fate.”

  “I’ll give you one last chance, Sculch.” She huffed, panting for more air.

  “You’re giving me ultimatums now?” laughed the floating face. “I think the game is over and you’ve lost your wager. Your companions cannot help you and your power is gone. You are my property. But if you are to be my property, how shall I manage you? I could keep you alive for as long as it takes for me to devour all the life in these lands. It would stay your deaths until I’ve run out of others to consume. Should I keep you and the boy on long leashes to parade ahead of me as I devour the lands? Would you like to be my heralds of destruction?”

  “I would never be a slave to the likes of you!” shouted Siouxsie.

  “You are the vilest.” Morell scowled at the thing. “How can you be so cruel?”

  “Simple boy.” Sculch growled again. “You are a tiny, stupid thing. Were you granted the opportunity to hold the gems of knowledge, they would slip through your fingers like so many grains of sand… Now then, little witch, your presence no longer amuses me. Send your last bolt so that I may eat you.”

  Siouxsie’s head spun as she tried to gather her strength. She felt woozy, her balance unsteady. Her mind raced to find a way to best the monster. If she wasn’t smart enough, she’d never be given the chance to say goodbye to her friends and brothers.

  I cannot do the same thing I have done before and achieve a new result. She thought. There must be something else. Time was running out. She could mount her broom at any second and escape, but to do so would leave timid but true Morell to a grisly death. No. I will not abandon this boy and his mushroom dreams to save my own skin. I can win if I am smart.

  “What will it be, magic user?” Sculch asked “Your time is quickly running out.

  Siouxsie’s heart felt heavy. Her shoulders drooped from the weight of the gravity of the situation. Her cloak sagged with the weight of the book her brother had given her. Wait! The book! With no time to lose, she threw her cloak wide, scattering her bats to flit about before venting through the ceiling and away. She pulled the old tome from within the folds and with a puff of breath, filled the air with a plume of dust. The pages stretched wide before her, ancient yellow notes and drawings of the arcane. I saw something about spell magnification in here, I know it. Siouxsie thought. Time stood still for her but the pages were hard to see trying to hold the book and glowing gel at the same time to light the pages. She fumbled twice, three times before Morell stood next to her and held the book from underneath to help.

  “Do you think there’s something in there that can help us?” Morell asked.

  “I know there is.” She said with a smile. “There was something that caught my eye when we were next to the beach. It wassss right about….”

  “What are you doing? Stop that playing!” asked Sculch. “Quit stalling and be on with it! I’m tired of waiting for what is mine!”

  “Oh, I’ll give you something…” Siouxsie said, wrinkling her nose with aggravation as she flipped though the last pages to find a sketched rough drawing of a great lightning bolt with arcane words beneath. “Ha! Here it is!”

  “You have it?” Asked Morell

  “Just a second more. The words are right here…” she traced her finger across the phrases and incantations the words seeping in fast like finding old friends she hadn’t seen in a long time. She held her hands under Morell’s hands and slammed the tome shut before letting him hold it. “Get down.” She told the boy. “This may get nasty.” Morell knelt down at her side and Siouxsie pointed her long broom at Sculch’s large wavy face. “Sculch! I am Siouxsie Hex of Spellvale, and this is my last warning! Clear a path and set us free or face the power of my magick!”

  This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

  “I will not relent. I am forever.” Sculch shifted. “Send your Furious Cumulus so that I may be done with you.”

  “So be it!” Shouted Siouxsie, raising her broom high one last time. Her eyes began to glow with a light as bright as the bolts she commanded. Morell watched in awe as the light from them began to make horizontal lines that stretched themselves thin and taught beyond the confines of her face. And as winds outside blew harder and harder beneath a black sky that had turned itself inside out in a black, starless tempest, Siouxsie began to cast aloud:

  “I am bright as lightning! I am storms so frightening! I am deafening thunder! I am witchly wonder! “She chanted aloud.

  “Ha! More of the same!” Sculch roared with laughter. ”I know your lightning chant! I have read all the tomes known to your people! You are doomed, Siouxsie of Spellvale!”

  Siouxsie continued her chant time and again until the echoing sound of her own voice reached a head splitting crescendo.

  Above, Hoxley and the companions cowered together in corner of the decrepit ruins as the storm raged all around them. Winds thrashed them from every side and threatened to yank them into the growing storm that showed no signs of weakening. Each one feared for their lives and wedged themselves between fallen ancient pillars to not be ripped away and lost forever. A dreadful gust collided with them and lifted Robert’s feet from the ground. He might’ve been carried away if not for Atticus’ large hand snatching him by the bicep to keep him from sailing off.

  “Get back here!” the soldier called out. The witch flipped upside down, dangling in reverse with the entire angry sky coming apart at the seams below his boots

  “Don’t let go!” Robert shouted over the storm. “I can’t fly! I’ll be torn apart by the winds!” With a long, pained shrug the old soldier wrenched the boy back and tucked him under his arm like a rolled blanket.

  “There!” You’re not going anywhere!”

  “What’s happening?! The prince yelled.

  “It’s Siouxsie!” Ignatius hollered back. “She’s cast a higher spell!”

  “When does it end?!” shouted Loxo over the screaming wind.

  “Only when she calls the words of execution!” Just as Ignatius said those words, the storm halted and the whole world paused to take a breath as though the black sky were rearing back for a sneeze. A chill of fear unlike anything the faun had ever felt before, Hoxley’s eyes beheld the darkness parting to give way to a beacon of light so amazing it changed the night to day like two suns had risen at the same time. A beam of raw energy as thick as six cyclops huddling came crashing down as the heavens themselves had descended to deliver a divine message with their own hand. The lightning bolt was not a strike as one thinks where it flashes a grand and powerful brilliance for the blink of an eye and then retreats. No, the beam of terrible awesomeness slammed to the ground to enter the whole in the fountain and remain standing, hissing, blasting, blaring, ensnaring, and captivating poor’s Hoxley’s mind like a moth mesmerized by a burning flame.

  Below, the beam raced to obey the master that called it. And Siouxsie, with her lyythium tipped broom raised high caught the sky’s fire and split it into four beams to the north, south, east and west. They penetrated and impaled Sculch, the divine light burning hot and bright!

  “Your beams are powerful!” Sculch called to her over the hellish din of the power filling the room. “But it matters not as my body contains nothing for your sky fire to latch onto!”

  “Oh, but I think it does!” Siouxsie called in return. “You should not have desecrated the resting place of my ancestors! Or if you were, you would have seen to remove the effects of the dead!” The room began to get hotter and hotter, the ever-present lightning bolt filling the chamber like a steaming geyser beginning to slow roast everything it touched. That’s when Morell saw the design of Siouxsie’s final plan; the final lightning spell wasn’t to strike at Sculch himself, but the artifacts still cradled and held by the dead witch’s bodies who remained!