The viscous spiderwebs burst from the corners, devouring the living room in a single blink until the walls, the floor and the ceiling were erased from existence, replaced by a cage of gray silk where dozens of dolls with button eyes hung like macabre trophies.
And above, clinging to the spiderwebs, the Beldam's elongated body contracted before releasing a rain of sharp threads that cut the air like arrows.
Thwip Thwip Thwip
Seeing them, Coraline let out a stifled scream while Airam pulled her violently backward just as Lief projected a mental barrier.
Stopping the arrows centimeters from their faces as if they had crashed against a wall of solid glass.
!
With a flash of genuine surprise in her buttons, the witch hissed upon seeing that her prey had teeth, but she didn't lose time and began to scurry along the ceiling at an incredible speed that left blurry trails.
Forcing Lief to react quickly while he took out a black crossbow from his backpack.
"Take this," he growled pushing the weapon and a bag into Airam's hands without taking his eyes off the ceiling. "In total there are ten arrows, special ammunition for witches, so make them count."
Slunging the bag over her shoulder, Airam took the crossbow in a fluid movement while grabbing an arrow and placing it in the weapon with a movement so professional that it seemed like she had done it thousands of times.
The arrow's tip emitted a lethal glow, and she nodded dryly before tracking with her gaze the witch who was scurrying over their heads.
At that same instant, Lief made his two pistols, Ebony and Ivory, appear in his hands, and with a defiant smile raised the barrels toward the shadow moving among the spiderwebs.
Bang Bang Bang Bang
The roar of the shots broke the void, launching tongues of fire that illuminated the cage intermittently while the bullets chased the witch, opening smoking holes in the spiderweb and forcing her to twist and jump desperately to avoid being shot.
'Left, Lief! She is using the mirrors!'
With Airam's mental shout, Lief spun aiming toward a mirror floating suspended in the spiderweb, where the Beldam's distorted face was already lunging from the glass to attack from behind, but before Lief could pull the trigger...
Swish
An arrow of bluish light beat his shot to it, impacting with precision in the center of the glass.
Clang
But the mirror didn't shatter, instead it rippled like water hit by a stone, releasing rings of bluish light that burned the witch, ripping a roar of pain from her that forced her to retreat and vanish.
'Good shot,' Lief acknowledged without lowering his guard.
'It's normal. But in her lair there are many mirrors like that... and I can feel three very weak souls trapped on the other side,' Airam explained quickly while pushing Coraline toward a safe corner and evaluating the mirror's rippling surface, 'I'm going in to get them out, cover my back.'
Without waiting for an answer, she extended her hand toward the glass, passing through it without resistance and allowing the mirror to swallow her whole body in a second.
"Aaarrgh...!"
A howl of fury resonated from every corner of the darkness, for the Witch never imagined that her own mirror trap would become the door for her to be invaded, and her anger made the immense spiderweb vibrate violently.
"HOW DARE YOU...! DAMNED RATS, HOW DARE YOU DESECRATE MY HOME!"
On the spiderweb, her figure reappeared, but nothing human remained in her anymore, her body had elongated even more and deformed until becoming a monstrosity, and from her back sprouted eight additional legs, sharp as scythes: "I will tear you to pieces!"
Swish
The legs descended from the sky directed directly at Lief's skull, but he did not retreat nor show the slightest trace of fear, instead, he made his weapons disappear and raised his left hand, allowing a dark energy to solidify around his arm forming the Oni Gauntlet.
Boom
The spiderweb sank under the sudden pressure when Lief channeled an immense force and launched himself upward like a missile, defying gravity and going directly for the impact instead of fleeing.
Clang Krang Clang
A series of metallic clashes occurred, when the gauntlet intercepted every thrust, deflecting the needle legs that sought his eyes and leaving the Witch paralyzed by disbelief upon seeing how she was not only matched, but completely dominated by a simple human.
It is now!
Swish
In the exact instant he deflected the last stinger, Lief used the momentum to spin in the air, manipulating gravity at his whim to fall directly onto the creature's face, and before she could even try to get him off her, his hand closed over her skull with great force.
"No...!" shrieked Beldam, but the sound drowned in her throat when the gauntlet's purple gem shone with a voracious hunger and a terrifying suction began to drain everything.
She felt how her strength, her magic and every fragment of soul she had stolen and devoured for centuries were violently torn from her being, leaving her body dry and withered like an empty shell that began to crumble in the air, dissolving into gray dust while the spiderweb cage fractured into a thousand pieces.
From among the ashes, a glass sphere detached itself and plummeted into the void.
Inside it, two adult figures were banging on the glass desperately, and Coraline, upon recognizing them, screamed "Dad! Mom!" with her voice broken by crying and threw herself to the ground sliding to catch the snow globe against her chest just before it shattered against nothingness.
In that same second, the mirror burst outward and Airam emerged rolling, followed closely by three child-like silhouettes, pale and translucent.
Ruuuuuumble
The fake world gave a writhe of agony and with Beldam dead, the pocket reality collapsed upon itself, disintegrating the floor, the ceiling and the shadows until everything was devoured by a black and deep void.
Leaving as the only reference point the small wooden door in the distance, which shone weakly as the only exit from that nightmare.
The floor simply ceased to exist.
Gravity claimed its rights with violence and, Coraline and Airam felt the nauseating vertigo of free fall.
"I got you."
Lief's voice cut through their vertigo.
Suspended in the darkness, with his robe fluttering like a flag in the storm, he extended his hand and an invisible force wrapped around the two girls, stopping their fall dead and dragging them toward him.
"Hold on. We are going home."
Without shiny spells, the three turned into projectiles, shot through the darkness toward the only remaining point of light: the rectangular outline of the small door.
They crossed the threshold at a dizzying speed, traversing the living tunnel that connected the worlds, and were shot out toward reality.
Thump
The three landed heavily on the dusty wooden floor of the living room.
Blam
And with them out the door behind them slammed shut with the force of a gunshot, and the sound of the lock turning automatically resonated with a definitive click.
The tunnel, the bright colors... everything disappeared.
The living room was silent. Everyone remained silent for a moment, recovering from everything that had happened so fast, as if everything they had just lived had been a hallucination.
Rrr-clack
But the sound of a key turning in the main door broke their moment.
The entrance door opened, letting in the noise of the rain and a gust of cold wind.
Mel and Charlie Jones entered, shaking their umbrellas and carrying bags full of groceries, arguing about trivial things.
"...I told you we should have bought the spicy mustard. That cheap brand tastes like cardboard," Mel complained with a tone of chronic tiredness.
"But it was on sale, Mel. Besides, cardboard has a lot of fiber," he joked, putting the bags on the kitchen table.
But upon turning around, they froze.
They saw their daughter and two strangers getting up from their living room floor.
"Oh?" Mel arched an eyebrow, looking at Lief and Airam with more curiosity than alarm. "Coraline... are they your friends? I didn't know we had company."
Coraline did not answer, but instead her eyes filled with tears.
And letting go of the glass sphere, she ran toward them, crashing into her mother in a desperate hug.
"Mom! Dad! You're okay!" she sobbed, burying her face in her wet coat. "You came back! You really came back!"
"..."
Mel and Charlie exchanged a look of total confusion.
"Come back?" Charlie scratched his head, bewildered. "What are you talking about, honey? We just went to the supermarket. We were gone... what? An hour?"
"You and your imagination..." Mel sighed, although she stroked her head. "What story did you invent this time? Were we kidnapped by aliens?"
Lief, who had dusted himself off, observed the scene from a distance and his gaze fell on the glass sphere that had rolled across the floor.
The inside was empty.
The fake snow floated serenely in the liquid, but the parents' figures had disappeared. With Beldam's death, their souls had returned to their bodies in the supermarket, and the trauma had been erased from their memories as if it had never happened.
He cleared his throat, attracting the girl's attention.
"Alright, kid. The job is done. The plague has been exterminated."
Coraline separated from her parents, wiping her tears with her sleeve. She looked at Lief and then at Airam, suddenly remembering that she had hired them.
"Right... the payment," she murmured, rummaging in the pockets of her yellow raincoat and her face flushed with shame. "But... I... I don't have much money. I only have my savings and..."
"I'm not interested in money."
Lief smirked, a smile that didn't quite reach cruel, but that was undeniably mercantile and pointed with his finger toward the floor.
"I want that."
Coraline followed the direction of his finger.
The snow globe.
"The... snow globe?" she asked, confused.
"Yes," he said with indifference, bending down to pick it up. He held it against the light, examining it.
"It's all yours," said Coraline quickly. "I never want to see that thing again."
"A pleasure doing business."
With a wave of his hand, Lief made it disappear
At that moment, the space behind Coraline seemed to ripple and three translucent figures flickered.
They were the ghost children and they no longer had buttons in their eyes, and their faces shone with absolute peace.
No one else could see them, except Lief, Airam and Coraline.
The children bowed their heads toward the three one last time, before fading into motes of golden light that dissolved, free at last to cross to the other side.
"Thank you, Mr. Lief... and Miss Airam," Coraline whispered suddenly, seeing the children leave.
Airam nodded with a slight smile, the first sincere one she had shown in a long time.
"Let's go, Airam. There is nothing left for us here."
Without saying goodbye to the adults, who were still busy taking the milk and eggs out of the bags, both walked toward the front door. Lief turned the knob, opened the door to the rain and, with a fluid step, both disappeared, leaving the Pink Palace behind.
________
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