Page 67 of Zero Happily Ever Afters

The other members of the Celestial Coven remained veiled from visions, but he’d seen three other pillars of support connected to The True Witch, Amara. The Sisters Three, the divine psychics. Now this Grim, a witch made of bone and rotten insides.

Milo had an idea of their motives, how the puzzle pieces of their goals, their agendas, their roles, fit to create the picture of today’s future. A future Enchanter Evergreen planned to prevent.

Grim drew his discarded sickle into his grasp with a telekinetic pulse as he draped the black cloak over his skeleton form again.

This was his form, too. Something about his magic, I’d never seen a branch like it before, but he wasn’t like The Sisters Three. They wedged their minds into the body of an unwilling host; I could taste it pulsating in vile waves. But Grim…his consciousness fluctuated throughout the entirety of this bizarre skeletal system like his very being had seeped into every bone, his thoughts woven into the desiccating organs stitched to the shambled body.

Grim released a giddy giggle, his teeth chattering.“I can’t wait to pick apart your bones. Save the best for my altar.”

“Bring it on, you sick fuck.” Gladiatrix dug a heel into the floor, cracking the ground beneath her before taking a calming breath. “Stay in control.”

If she wanted, Gladiatrix could level this entire building, the entire street, with an overzealous stomp of her foot. But that wouldn’t resolve this problem; it’d merely injure everyone nearby.

Grim lunged toward Gladiatrix. As their thoughts collided, each with opposing goals, each studying their surroundings, each with a respect for the daunting power the other possessed, I drifted further back. Not drifted. I was pulled away.

Milo.He drew me closer. The same sense of panic throughout the MDC hadn’t gripped his heart and seized him. In fact, he zipped through the facility, taking out the occasional threat with carefree admiration for all the allies who’d helped make this possible. The devastation. The destruction. The discord. None of it concerned him because Milo flew down a path following the strands of possibility that shined the brightest, seeing and believing the best outcome was well on its way.

Milo soared past the injured, inmates and guards alike, those who didn’t relish brutality, who didn’t have the magic to defend themselves, who had become overwhelmed by the chaos in everydirection. A pinch of guilt tugged at his heart then, stalling his pursuit of the goal that danced in his mind. Part of him wanted to gamble everything to stop and help these people.

I reached out, willing and wanting to take the burden of that guilt away, prepared to carry all of it as I’d grown accustomed to such feelings of failure. But I didn’t need to. Milo hardened his expression, eyes fluttering momentarily, and he reminded himself that sometimes the best future resulted in a few cuts and scrapes along the way. He desperately wanted to shield everyone from every possible pain out there, but even The Inevitable Future knew such things weren’t conceivable.

“They’ll be fine. We’ll all be fine. Everyone will be fine.” Milo zipped through long corridors, evading combat, dodging magic, and knocking back persistent enemies who targeted him. His telekinesis rumbled through the halls, cracking the foundation.

Milo arrived at the warden’s station that’d been highly fortified by the guards who’d grouped there, by the security defenses that didn’t rely on a magical component, by the warden himself who conjured an electrical barrier to prevent anyone from passing. He opened a tiny length, not much wider than the fence posts on a farm, for Milo to squeeze between.

“What happened to those Global Guild forces you demanded?” The warden grimaced, magic straining under such continuous output.

“They’re where they’re needed.” Milo eyed the sealed chamber doors behind the warden, the doors that led down to the deepest sectors of the MDC.

Enchanter Evergreen needed to join the rest of the forces below in the solitary confinement cells.

“You’re not seriously going down there, too?” The warden winced, feeling the backlash of his own electrical warding defenses. “You’ve sent a damn near fifty witches to detain a handful below and left a handful to handle thousands!”

The walls above rumbled. Sparkling scarlet portals opened. Mist seeped between the cracks of the building. Concrete divided, creating a chasm for enchanters to funnel through. The warden’s station filled with industry witches from every guild across Chicago, exactly how Milo had planned it. Hundreds of the most highly trained witches surrounded the MDC and stormed into the buildings to detain every threat.

“You’re in good hands,” Milo said, stepping onto the elevator to join Wadsworth and the Global Guild forces who were stationed to hold back The True Witch. “Everything is going exactly as expected.”

Anxiety gnawed at Milo’s nerves. Failures of his past crept out of the shadows, stalking him from the back of his mind. Since the protective magics cloaking the MDC had fallen, Milo had a clearer read on the events transpiring. So much of his plan hinged on absolutes outweighing unknowns. Nothing ever went exactly according to plan, no matter how well Milo planned, no matter how many dominos he personally tipped, no matter how precisely he accounted for every possible variable.

Milo used the elevator ride down to steady his breathing and settle his shaky hands. Using his clairvoyance, Milo dived into his inner core, scanning the screens that projected infinite possibilities, and everything seemed exactly on track.

Milo’s expression turned sour, fighting back a frown of disgust. For someone who believed deeply in happily ever afters winning out over everything else, he didn’t buy this easy success for a second.

The elevator dinged, and Milo looked on in horror as the doors opened. The entire floor was covered in blood and bodies from the reinforcements sent by the Global Guild. Every single support witch they’d sent lay on the ground, barely breathing, barely a thought in their unconscious minds, some already fallen to the dark silence of death.

I quivered, holding back my fear. Fear I didn’t wish to pass along to Milo, who stepped off the elevator, assessing the situation, calculating missteps, planning new phases, and searching desperately for an ending that didn’t result in more bloodshed.

The True Witch stood in her full garb from the night they detained her, an outfit removed when she was escorted through the MDC. Last time Milo saw her, she was in an orange jumpsuit, much to her distaste, as Enchanter Wadsworth sat across from her sealed cell, shooting daggers with his scowl.

Now, Amara stood tall, floating above a bloody and impaled Wadsworth, staff in her hand and smirk on her face.

“How’d she get her staff?” Milo cycled through visions, uncertain of what went wrong.

I found myself drawn to Enchanter Wadsworth. The memory of what happened here bubbled in his fleeting thoughts; each image of the incident seared in his darkening mind. He replayed every step as he took haggard breaths. He second-guessed his decisions as he watched those around him writhe in agony. He expected better of himself from the decades he’d spent preparing for the reappearance of The True Witch and her Celestial Coven.

In an instance, the wards had fallen everywhere in the Metropolitan Detainment Center except for the underground solitary confinement sector, where the Global Guild forces had already intercepted the circuits, re-tasked the casting, and circumvented any attempt at shattering the barriers that held the most dangerous inmates.

It didn’t stop the intruder, though. The fourth and final pillar had barreled into the underground bunker, hacking his way through the forces Enchanter Wadsworth gathered.

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