We regrouped at the junk yard for a sit down and a coffee, and to check on the current state of the various factions now the ward was down. Michael had a chat with the fae via his communication stone, and managed to convince them not to invade just now. Adam called James at the Foundation, with similar results. We had some breathing room, but not much.
I found myself checking for large open areas outside of town, just in case there did end up having to be a massive battle, in the hope that they could at least not have it on the Wicker Valley high street. Elizabeth said something about a scene in a movie, and I thought she meant the Battle of Five Armies from The Hobbit, but apparently it was something from Twilight. I wouldn't know. Some things are too much even for a demon.
After some careful consideration, and making sure that Robin was OK and well supplied with biscuits, we concluded that it would be a good idea if Agnes and Elsa were to retire to the south of France. A lot of people wanted Agnes dead, and for all we'd been through recently, I don't think any of us wanted that. She's still my aunt, after all.
So we met up with Mary for a nice friendly chat and to talk about what was going to happen next. We had some answers now. Mary was figuring out all the things she'd forgotten because of Agnes draining her, and it was now pretty clear that she was the one who'd called for a chosen one, resulting in the current state of Michael and me.
Mary had a less France-based suggestion though. One that would resolve our current problems, most of which were a result of Agnes' abnormally long lifespan. She could send us back into the past again, to undo repairing her heart.
We really didn't like that. Yet another death didn't sit right, especially one that we could - and did - prevent. But we had another idea. How about if instead of killing her, we did something to protect her from Agnes' magic, so that both of them would live out their natural lifespans?
It's amazing, just how big rats look when you're a spider, even when you're quite a big spider. It took me a while to get all my legs sorted out too, and as for producing silk, that was just downright weird. Still, we had a job to do, and that started with finding our way through a house full of magic doors based on a map that one of us had stored in their memory, since we couldn't bring anything back.
After some rather embarrassing efforts at silk production, or butt string as we all ended up calling it, we got out into the garden. Elizabeth located the herbs we needed, and having finally got my spinnarets under control, I wove them together into a charm. Then we had to find Mary, and convince her of what was going on, who we were, and so forth, which was all rather complicated, although simplified considerably when it turned out Mary could use magic to speak to rats.
It was looking like it might work. Just so long as we all managed to hold onto our own minds. I was getting dangerously close to fully embracing spiderhood.
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