A New Mission (7)

"So…is there any anesthesia that'll knock you out for a while." Marc was sitting right across from Theo with his fingers laced and one eyebrow arched up.

The room was crowded with Marc's friends, and everyone was staring at Theo. Except for Clara, she was half-falling asleep due to the after effects of the curse. Even Carrot was poking his head into the living room.

Theo blinked.

"If I need to be knocked out, the best thing would probably be a small amount of reselden root."

"You know we can't bring you to the hospital if something goes wrong, right?" Marc stood up and cracked his knuckles. "Well, I guess there's only one way to go about this, then."

"Give him a hug around his neck." Eloise cheered, barely looking up from her magical artifacts she was shifting through.

"Wait, what?" Theo startled up and off of the sofa.

"Sorry about this." Marc wrapped Theo's neck in a choke-hold.

Theo instinctively thrashed out, but within a few seconds he was unconscious.

"Where do you want him?" Marc asked Eloise.

"Throw him on the couch, we only have a couple of minutes before he wakes up." Eloise was already stabbing Theo's blood and applying it to the divine dagger. "Everyone else, hold a limb. That oath will compel him to fight back if he wakes up. Giselle, summon water under him and around his neck."

Giselle waved her wand and a bed of water lifted Theo a few inches off of the sofa. It was her job to contain his blood.

"Ah, this is a bad idea." Eloise muttered as she attempted to force the unconscious Theo to drink some elixir. "We should have fed him this first."

"That might have been enough for the oath to understand what was happening and interfere." Marc said.

She was able to get the oath to separate from Theo's neck, but not as dramatically as it had on Marc. Eloise quickly marked where she needed to cut.

Then, she began chanting and cut into Theo's neck.

[This mana is deeper.] The dagger said. [You're going to have cut more.]

Eloise gritted her teeth and pressed the blade harder against Theo's throat. His blood was quickly dying the summoned water red.

The two opposing mana's seemed tangible as they struggled against the divine dagger.

That was when Theo woke up with a scream.

"Keep him down." Eloise bit out, breaking her chants. She slipped and Theo struggled and cut a bloody line down to his collarbone.

Eloise winced. That was definitely going to scar.

[Just a little more.] The divine dagger said. [We've almost got it.]

Eloise, began chanting again, louder as if she was trying to drown out Theo. She cut through the oath around Theo's neck once more and it felt like something snapped. Dullahan's mana was gone. The oath was broken.

Theo collapsed, his limbs shaking a little from the shock. His mana felt so bruised that he didn't even notice the cut on his neck.

"Congrats. You're free." Marc grinned. "We broke the oath."

"Let's bandage your neck." Giselle carefully moved the water off of Theo's wounds and quickly poured a potion over Theo's neck to stop the bleeding.

Theo was silent and still as Giselle tended to his wounds. He was still trying to process what had just happened.

"Try not to move your neck too much. This potion doesn't work that well. The wound can reopen."

She went ahead and wrapped his neck in gauze to provide extra protection for the wound.

Theo pushed himself up and placed a hand over the bandages.

Theo had suspected they were working on breaking the oaths, but he hadn't believed they would succeed.

"It's really gone." Theo paused, rolling some words over in his mind. "I…" He paused tentative. "I really hate Dullahan."

His eyes grew wide as he still expected the oath to punish him for speaking against Dullahan.

"I wish Dullahan would drop dead."

Theo pushed the old oath a little more. His courage increased as nothing happened and his words devolved into a five minute monologue of rather creative and vulgar curses against Dullahan.

Nobody interrupted him. In fact, he was met with applause when he finished.

"I hate to be that person," Marie started, "but what do we do now?"

Everyone froze. They hadn't gotten that far along in their plans.

"I should die." Theo's hands started to shake. "If Dullahan finds me, it's going to be another massacre, and-"

"This seems a little extreme." Marie held a hand up. "It feels weird to say this after so many years of wanting you to die, but you deserve to live."

"Yeah, couldn't we at worst, just like put you in a prison or protective custody." Owen said.

"Those are two really different things, Owen." Eloise snorted.

Owen flipped Eloise off which earned him a sharp jab in the ribs.

"I've already let myself be taken in to one of your prisons." Theo said. "It ended quite badly for the prison guards. They didn't believe me about my blood. A lot of people died and Dullahan got me back."

"What if we kill Dullahan?" Marc suggested. "We already got him once and now we have arguably the most powerful magic user on our side."

"That would be breaking so many laws." James said.

"We've already broken a lot of laws, that's why we have Marc on our side, right?" Eloise playfully nudged James.

He snorted and nudged her back.

"What does Marc have to do with it?" Theo asked.

"Prince, duh." Eloise answered. "He's taking the fall if we get caught. I already have a monologue about how you coerced me into all this, Marc."

"Sounds good." Marc gave Eloise a thumbs up.

"You're a prince?" Theo was panicking. "I haven't assassinated anyone from your family, have I? No, that was the kingdom beside you."

"Yeah, this would be a lot more awkward if you had killed my dad. Now brothers, I've got plenty of those to spare." Marc grimaced. "I'm the youngest of eight sons and two daughters."

Looking back, Theo realized that Marc had had more connections to more people than even a member of the King's Guard should have. He felt a bit dull.

"Sorry." Marc said. "I couldn't really tell you I was royal when I was under an oath to you and you were under an oath to Dullahan. It was too much of a hostage-situation risk."

"He's got limited power since eleven royals would have to die for him to rule, but he's great to have around if you want to, um, bend the rules." Marie said with a wink.

"So we're killing Dullahan?" Eloise focused the group back on the original discussion.

Theo shook his head. He could feel a trickle of sweat running down his back.

"There's no way. Dullahan is just going to trap me again." Theo took a deep breath. "I have no control over my mana. He will use me to kill all of you."

The group fell silent for a moment.

"So, we just have to teach you to control your mana better." Marie was the one to break the silence. "We can do some tutoring."

"How hard can it be?" Owen added.

Theo tilted his head.

"Hmm, what's the highest level magic you've managed to use?" James asked.

"Levels?" Theo asked. His cheeks flushed. "I'm not familiar with levels."

The group collectively drew in their breaths.

"How can you not be familiar with levels?" Henley scoffed.

"Dullahan forbid me from learning anything related to magic."

"Do you know your elemental affinity?" Giselle asked while pinching the bridge of her nose.

Theo shook his head. He wasn't even sure what an elemental affinity was.

"Have you done a mana properties analysis?" Marie asked.

"I didn't know that I had any mana before Dullahan got me." Theo said. His shoulders drooped.

"Well, it looks like we have our work cut out for us." Marc said. "Time to start studying."