Mage, Beast and Witch!!

**Natasha’s POV**

“I know the way!” The moment the words were out of my mouth, their eyes glazed on me in confusion as if I had grown a new head from my neck.

“And how?” Damon asked flaunting his usual trademark twitched jaw.

“Go to the path that led to a cell. Where the mages loved to dwell.” I spoke in a tone barely above audible. “There is always this intolerable stink of rot and decomposition hammering my head when these mages are nearby. So, like a bloodhound, I’m going in sniff onto this yucky rot and follow wherever it gets stronger.” I focused my attention on that iron-framed door. My heart was hammering wildly against the walls of my ribs as I stepped near that iron door, ready to take my first step. The moment my shadow fell on that door, the carved images of the mages on that iron door started to uncurl their bodies, as if someone has pumped blood straight to their hearts making them some live entity moving about the door. The scene shit scared me, and I was quick enough to step back and jump into the embrace of whoever was near me.

“It's okay Natasha! Breathe easy and keep moving!” Rhaegar hummed softly in my ear, caressing back, and kissing me softly on the cheek.

I took a sharp breath and shake my head to let go of fear, mentally convincing myself that I have been through worse. I lifted my foot once more and stepped into the room beyond, and to my surprise, the room was just a small empty space, with carved walls, ceilings and a big window. The moment my foot touched the floor, something weird started happening as if my presence triggered a trap and ignited a chain reaction that was undisturbed for centuries.

The room started to spin as if morphing into something else. The carved sculptures on the wall and ceiling started to move back and forth like a stack of cards. Then they fused around to form a passage. The large stones stacked to form the rough floor which was covered with leaves and dirty trodden straws. The window shrunk and arched into a small square with vertical metal bars. Even the iron door from which we entered folded in on itself with iron bars shot up from the ground like the stalagmites in the cave.

“What the---?” Damon's reaction made us all spin around to see what he saw. I took in a shuddered breath and my feet literally stumbled back in fear as a chill creep swept over me. The sight before me terrified me enough that I almost lost the strength in my muscles. Hundreds of black-veiled mages filled the space in the opposite passage as if they had been waiting for centuries for us. The primal fear of these witches literally glued my feet on the floor. I was leaning on a heavy wall of muscle behind me.

“We’re fucked,” Rhaegar’s voice hissed from behind.

“Nope, we’re dead!” Damon spoke.

“We are fucking dead!” I was almost about to piss my pants off.

Although their faces were covered, but every fibre of my intuition was screaming in my head that their eyes were glued to us. Every breath we took was felt by them and every hair that stood on our nape was watched by them. And then the most awaited moment of horror came as they all lifted their veil at once as if they were mere robots working under the will of some strange superior force. Their eyes which resemble a black dot glued to us with such intensity as if their power will bore a hole in our bodies. Their transparent skin stretched to the point of almost tearing when their lips formed an elongated O exposing the three rows of razor-sharp incisors.

“It was nice meeting you guys, hope we’ll not meet in the next life,” Rhaegar’s words were meant for Damon, Lukas and me.

“We’re still not done in this life, because we’re not going to die anytime sooner. Remember, Natasha’s mother said that these mages are just spectators. They will let us leave once we’re able to get Aurora’s heart.” Lukas gave a befitting reply to Rhaegar all the while curling his fingers in a firm grip around my arm as if trying to calm my panicked mind.

“But the question is how the hell are we going to get Aurora’s heart if these deadly mages won’t give us the way?” Damon roared in frustration.

“Just keep moving, they will move as well,” Lukas spoke.

“And how do you know that?” Rhaegar taunted Lukas. I gave him a look, ‘Are you ever going to stop?’ Rhaegar slumped his shoulders in defeat, and then turned to Lukas, “Okay then, lead on the way, and trust me if we die, then it's on you.”

Lukas ignored him, and faced me, “Natasha, do you trust me?” His eyes were penetrating mine in search of an answer. I blinked my eyes for more than a second as if silently conveying to him that I do.

“Come on, hold my hand,” he said, extending his arm. I was quick to place mine on his and then he led the way. And like he said, the moment we moved through the passage, those mages shifted giving us the way without taking their eyes off us as if we were some celebrities and they were the crazy fans who had waited for centuries to catch the glimpse of us.

If we ignore those mages, then the rest of the passage was as expected…dark, cold and depressing. And my pregnancy hormones made it worse for me by escalating to a record high. The awful, brain-eating stench of these mages was sickening my body. My head was banging like a drum and the urge to throw up was overbearing in my senses. This nauseating feeling washed over me, and I could almost taste bile in my mouth, and all I wanted to do was puke.

“Control…breathe…control…breathe…Why am I scared of this, as the worst has already passed?” I let this mantra sink in to ease my fear and nausea. After a few seconds of walking through the dark haunted passage, we entered a room, and as if our presence has triggered some switch, the flame torches hanging in the crisscrossed patterns on the walls ignited by themselves. The moment the darkness released its hold, I couldn’t stop the scream that tore from my soul.

The room was very similar to the basement of my childhood home where I was locked every night by my father. It brings forth the haunting memories of my past. I grabbed the hands of two of my mates and walked through the cobbled floor. The walls were damp and a mossy smell was lingering in the air. There was this mirror; old, rusted and broken, the same one that was housed in the basement of our home. The same feeling as if someone is controlling my senses took over me, and I instinctively moved and reached to the mirror as if I had to do this. My heart thundered in my chest as I stretched out my fingertips to remove the cloth covering the mirror. I looked in the mirror and what I found chilled me beyond the bones. I found the reflection of my own face staring back at me. My long hair remained but was matted and dirty, with my face covered in dust and soot with a trail of teardrop lingering at the edge of my jaw. It was not me, but my doppelganger!!

“Oh, God!” I whispered when she started shaking as if possessed by some demonic entity. Her eyes turned midnight black, with the black veins branching out of them, throbbing and spreading out through her face as if someone has pumped some black blood straight through them.

“I want my heart,” She hissed in that demonic voice of hers like a bloodthirsty vampire, making me flinch in fear. She then uncurled and shot out her bloodied fingers and pointed them out at a tombstone at the far-end corner of the room, making me jump out of the way.

“What the fuck is that?” Rhaegar cursed beneath his breath, as we moved towards that tombstone.

“We need to open this,” Lukas spoke, using the pressure of his both hands to push through the lid. Damon was quick to give him a hand. The sound of the stone lid crushing the base echoed with a few particles raining down the floor.

Once the lid was lifted, there was something hard with ridges under a dirty cover. I was still contemplating what to do with every fibre of my nerves screaming in fear. My whole body was shaking as if placed on a damn vibrator. A sane part of me was pleading to my brain to get the fuck out of here and then I screamed bloody murder when Rhaegar suddenly grabbed the cover and yanked it hard enough to come off in one whoosh.

“You jerk!” I shouted at him before moving back abruptly, almost getting a heart attack in the process.

“Calm down, it's just a heart,” Rhaegar spoke so casually as if he was born to do this. I was still seething mad at him when he decided to lower his hand and touch whatever was under those covers.

“Stop right now! Only Morrighan or Aurora can touch the heart, so Natasha has to do the deed,” Lukas roared, and trust me I was cursing both, Lukas and my fate for being a Morrighan.

“No, no…I’m not touching it!” My voice stammered with panic rising to an unmatched level because of the disgusting scene in front of me.

“If the heart belonged to Aurora, then why the hell is it nestled inside this creepy skeleton?” I asked no one in particular while looking at the skeleton which was dressed in a long black jacket with open buttons.

“What is intriguing me most is who the hell dresses the skeleton? I mean why dress it if it has nothing to show?” Damon muttered. I gave him a weird look before shifting my gaze back to the skeleton. I don’t give a fucking dime about its clothes because what hit my panic button were the ribs visible through the gap in between the open sides of his jacket. And it won’t take a genius to figure out that ribs are the bones that cage the heart, so the challenge was to insert the hand inside the ribcage to extract the heart, and the blood was boiling in my veins as I had to do the whole disgusting thing.

“Just an advice, it would be better if done swiftly,” Lukas advised sensing the panic that was dripping through every pore of my skin.

“I am not going to do this shit. I don’t care if Aurora gets her heart or not. She is doing fine without the heart, and I’m sure that she will continue to do so irrespectively of if she gets a heart or not. She has deliberating asked me to bring this shitty thing just to make me feel disgusting, and I’m not giving her that peace of mind,” I retorted.

“Natasha, you need to do this if we’re to make out of this realm alive, or those flesh-eating mages were already planning a feast out of our blood.” Lukas tried to reason with me.

“But why do only me have to do all this gross stuff?” I complained, and trust me I was almost on the verge of crying.

“Just take a long breath, insert your hand, grab the dicky heart and throw it inside the bag,” Damon spoke while taking out a small bag from the back pocket of his already tattered pants. I held the bag in one shaky hand and closed my eyes as I stepped closer to the target. I was praying for the body must already be decomposed enough so as to not have any rotting fleshy bits.

“Natasha!” Rhaegar was saying my name as if he was losing his patience with each passing second, given my hands moving at snail’s speed.

“I’m doing it, all right!” I snapped and then used my anger and frustration to open my eyes and ram my fist inside the ribcage with one strong thrust, jumping up and down like a little girl trying to get rid of a cockroach that is crawling inside her dress, screaming, ‘Ewww! Ewww!’ in disgust.

“Stop your girly shit,” Rhaegar was now shouting at me.

“And you stop shouting at her!” Damon faced him.

“As if you never shout on her.” Rhaegar was quick to get back to him.

“Stop it! Both of you! NOW!” I screamed, and in the process, my fingers touched the heart, and like it always happens, my touch triggered some shit and the skeleton shuddered. The red sticky palm-sized heart covered in some black mucus that stretched and coiled around the ribcage, started to beat, almost making my panicked heart miss the beats in the process. ‘Sooner you do, the better,’ I just kept chanting this mantra over and over in my mind, as I grabbed the pulsating organ, tearing down the sticky webs and in one quick motion pulled it out of the ribcage. The disgusting droplets of the thick mucus were dripping down in between my fingers, and that was the time when shit hit the fan, and I couldn’t control my senses and puke on the damned heart.

“Fuck! You actually vomited on this shitty heart?” Damon’s unbelievable voice roared through the space.

“So, what, our job was to just extract the heart. It's none of our business if it's marinade in the puke. Let Aurora do the cleaning part, it's her problem,” Rhaegar said like a badass he is, shoving my hand inside the bag, making me drop the heart as if it was a lump of trash and then closing the bag before tossing it Damon.

“Shit!” I screamed as a loud thundering echoed through the temple, making it shudder. The walls started shifting and the floor crumbled.

“Wh... What’s happ…?” I never got to finish as the rumbling increased and Damon pulled me into himself, shielding me from the pieces of stones falling on the ground. I let out my barrier and broke through the big stones to protect our heads.

“Damon, on your left!” Lukas screamed. Damon turned his head to look briefly on the left towards the small opening and then turned back to me and in a quick tug lifted me into his arms. Lukas and Rhaegar were running ahead of us.

“Oh, God!” I gasped as the ceiling caved in behind us, and we were just about to get swallowed by the floor, but Damon took a huge leap, passing me over to Rhaegar, while Lukas held his hands and helped him into the opening which led to a cavern. We didn’t even get to settle our heartbeats as we were already running out of time.

I roamed my eyes around the small cavern. “You have got to be kidding me!” I uttered after a minute of stunned silence with my mouth hanging open at the sight in front of us.

“Finally,” Lukas spoke looking at the strange mirror ahead of us. It was a bit weird with the tall stone frame and three arches. The middle one was bigger than the other two on the periphery. All around the framed edges were the weird symbols, while the mirror part was dark, rusted grey.

“Mirror Portal?” Damon asked.

“And now the question is how to access it? It will surely need some magical mojo,” Rhaegar spoke.

“**I hope you enjoyed your fun-filled trip,

Now take the knife and let the blood drip.

For I’m only a portal to realms,

But scion is the key to the throne of his dreams**.”

With the voice of the invisible audience, some rumbling was also heard.

“Fuck! This place will also cave in. I think the dawn is just seconds away. Think fast,” Lukas’s voice has an unnerving urgency.

“Take the knife, and let the blood drip,” Rhaegar spoke, “We will need the blood!”

“Scion means the heir to the throne. We’ll need the blood of the heir.” Damon retorted.

“Heir of where?” I was still confused.

“Of the place where we want to go. It's Artena! Damon, we’ll need your blood.” Lukas was quick in taking out a small blade he had hidden somewhere. With a deep slash, he cut so that enough blood seeped out to smear the symbols on the mirror. Once the symbols were painted, the dark, grey area of the mirror started to liquefy and formed a small vortex which diffused away, and we could see the dark greenery through the mirror.

“The woods of Artena!” Damon mumbled.

“Jump inside!” Rhaegar shouted as the ceiling caved in, and the far ends of the frame of the mirror portal also started disintegrating. And with a quick leap, we jumped onto the other side. I felt the pressure of pushing at being thrown forward with enough force that I landed hard while rolling down the damp surface of the woods. Rhaegar was quick to hold me.

The moment we landed in Artena, I know something was seriously wrong.

“Damon, we need to go fast to the palace,” I told him, as my instincts were screaming a warning about the incoming danger. We quickly got up and moved towards the city. The entrance gates were abandoned.

“Fuck! Where the hell are the guards?” Damon mumbled.

“Let’s go to the palace,” Lukas spoke looking around suspiciously.

Once we reached the palace gates, the blood ran cold in my veins by looking at the sight in front of us. Harold, Bella, Aaron, Brar, Juan, King and all the other people of Artena were surrounded by the chimaeras and beasts of The Northern realm. On their left side, around fifty of the monstrous creatures were caged. They were scabbling upon themselves on their fours like hungry scavengers with their bloodthirsty eyes focused on the people of Artena to make them their meal.

The moment we took a step toward them, we were cornered by the army of the Northern realm led by Grim Reaper on our back and the sides, while in front stood; The monstrous doppelganger-Aurora, The mighty beast-King Louris and Bitchy witch-Mycelle.