Page 67 of Zel
The pair immediately marched toward Zel. Pity he got closer to the truth that time.
Behind the blankness of their eyes, Ulrich saw the real Gregor and Sophie watching in panic. He could see the honest warring in Zel’s eyes too, whether to choose Ulrich over the two other most important people in his life.
“Don’t,” Ulrich said, shaking the bars again, much as the iron stung him. “Do not let him taint you, Zel, with the vileness you managed to rise above.”
“Rise above?” Lothar scoffed. “Do you think the hands of that girl so clean?”
Zel’s head snapped back toward Lothar, even as his parents advanced. There was the true Zel, stronger than the fear that hobbled him. “No one’s hands are clean in this world, Lothar,” he snarled, “but the blood we stain them with is not created equal.”
Golden tendrils lashed out from Zel’s braids, unravelling to act as whips that wrapped around Lothar’s arms and legs and brought him to his knees.
“And I am hardly agirl.”
There was Ulrich’s little cabbage, unbreakable and dazzling.
Gregor and Sophie descended in their attempt to restrain Zel, but he used his hair to keep them back too. Most of it was focused on subduing Lothar, some of which he was tightening more and more around Lothar’s throat.
“P-Pipers,” Lothar croaked, “use Rapunzel’s hands to cut the hair!”
“What?” Zel faltered at the order. While before his parents were merely trying to detain him, now they drew their weapons. “I-it can’t be cut!”
“It can by you,” Lothar rasped.
He knew. He must have gotten the information out of Sophie and Gregor.
Ulrich hesitated to call out again and distract Zel while his attention was already split, but he knew how much more there was to Zel than his hair. Even the massive amount of it wasn’t enough to keep Lothar down and fight his parents off at the same time, not when he was clearly hesitant to harm them.
They both went for Zel’s right arm, forcing one of their daggers into it, and wrenched it around to aim for the hair at the base of his neck.
“Wait!” Zel struggled, as an initial tendril was quickly sliced. “It houses my magic! If I don’t have all my power, you will never be able to kill him!”
“Pipers, hold!” Lothar ordered. In Zel’s distress, the hair had loosened some of its grasp on the guild master’s throat.
Zel was caught in a grapple with his parents, who although halted, had a good grip on his arm and could cut the remainder of his hair with only a few hacks—or slice open his jugular if he moved wrong. “My hair is part of a ritual necessary to drain the sorcerer enough to weaken him. If you cut it, he will find a way out of that cage long before you find another way to end him.”
Oh yes, Ulrich would, he thought as he continued to grip the bars, sizzling skin be damned, and watched for openings to offer words of encouragement.
“Then will you submit to me?” Lothar glared from where he remained on his knees. “Or do I need to have your parents kill each other in front of you for this treachery? With but a word, I can have them turn their weapons on each other’s throats.”
“Zel…” Ulrich called to him softly, and held his stare when their eyes met.
“It is them or him, Rapunzel. And do not doubt young Rudy will quickly follow. Work with me to end the sorcerer, and I will let the rest of you live. Defy me, and your parents’ blood will be the first spilled.”
Zel closed his eyes, but then, with an exhaled release of tension, he said, “No, to be enslaved would be no life at all.” His eyes snapped open with their own severe glare at Lothar. “I will never submit!”
“Cut the hair, Pipers. Then fight each other to the death.”
“No!” Zel struggled valiantly against them, but his hair fell in swiftly sliced clumps until all that remained was a bob at his shoulders.
Ulrich shook the bars again, for he saw the defeat on Zel’s face despite the fury he had displayed in his defiance. That Ulrich could do no more than watch was worse agony than all his centuries of solitude.
Zel’s parents released him, immediately prying away the hair that had been wrapped around them. Lothar began to as well, now that the hair holding him had gone limp. Zel had moments to act before his parents turned on each other, and before Lothar disentangled enough to be a threat.
“Once they are dead,” the guild master said, “I will put one of their collars on you. But you will not be allowed to die. No. You will make a lovely pet for all to see that there are worse fates after crossing me.”
Ulrich felt the fire in him grow hotter like an echo of his blistering palms, for though he could not help directly, he could speak the truth that Zel had failed to realize. “Zel! Your hair may have manifested your magic, butyouare the source. You. And no force but your own disbelief in that can ever stop you.”
Their eyes locked once more, and with resolution fighting away the tears in Zel’s eyes, he gave a short, decisive nod.
