章 135: Ch.20
I shimmered to the manor and gave Piper's powers back asking Leo while I did so. "Do you know of a demon named Raynor?"
He frowned and nodded. "He's said to be in the Source's inner circle and runs the entire brotherhood."
I sighed. "Well, you can scratch him and the brotherhood off the list of demonic enemies. The only ones that may have survived are the ones that weren't there when I arrived. Raynor came after he felt all his followers die off and I vanquished him as well."
Prue smiled. "Score one for the good guys!"
I nodded. "Though I'm sure the Source will be searching to find out what happened to his people. They can't track me but let's not go spreading rumors either. The last thing we need is him sending bounty hunters and assassins after you three."
They agreed and Leo asked. "Are you sure they're all dead?"
I nodded. "Except for the ones not there, I wiped out the upper echelons first and went down the latter just to be safe. If there are any left they're either very confused or frightened."
Phoebe and Nym walked in from the kitchen with their morning coffees and what looked to be moon potions they were taking. I raised an eyebrow and Phoebe said. "We're taking an extra dose as you've been rather, shall we say, potente, of late."
I shrugged and Prue, Piper and Leo all three blushed. Two weeks later a banshee was running around and Piper's advancing powers were becoming an issue. She was having trouble not blowing up things to the point where Prue had her try on oven mittens, which failed.
After she ended up blowing up the Banshee, Phoebe turned into one but I was there for her to take her anger out on so after letting her nearly make my head explode with her screams, she reverted back to human form along with Prue who'd used a tracking spell and ended up as a white furred dog.
Piper seemed to get a handle on her powers and a week after that I'd finished training all the whitelighter powers Leo had to teach me about and advised me on a few I'd received from Raynor as well. I'd obtained mostly mental powers like mind manipulation and telepathy but I could already do both before with practice.
The first was apportation, the ability to summon objects to me like a shimmer or teleporting object with a wave of my hand and a thought of what object I wanted. Soul containment, the ability to turn human souls into orb like balls for trade or other uses, and finally the immortality.
I'd been immortal before but it seems I'd stopped aging again thanks to all the demons I'd killed and absorbed that were in fact immortal, Raynor simply being the most recent and most powerful.
My immortality was so concentrated that I'd gained a sort of automatic high speed healing factor from it. What was in fact surprising was that my fire balls, after practice, nearly caught up to my energy blasts because of both the triad and the few brotherhood members that had the power.
When I sensed I was getting physically stronger and tougher than before, I started purifying my body and soul just to be safe. In the end not much of anything came out. It was as if my wolf and vampire parts were consuming the evil and using it to bolster my soul.
Even my world tree seemed to be growing a bit more as my essence or soul did as a whole. I was contemplating this when Leo told me the elders wanted me to go up there for a visit.
I passed a magic ring to Nym who nodded, knowing what to do if necessary, before heading up with Leo. There the elders gathered once more into a long debate and believe it or not I was starting to understand their clicks and clacks.
It was a bit annoying that they were talking over me but then I realized Leo was gone and I got even more cranky. I went to leave and the elder in charge of the hall asked. "Where are you going?"
I snorted and replied off hand. "Back home. Clearly you're busy having a debate without needing me here so there's no need to waste time standing around here."
The others called me everything from impertinent to impatient and young. I responded by calling them old and senile. My words had brought silence to the hall but not for any reason I thought. I found out why when the female elder from before took off her hood and asked. "You can understand us and respond in kind?"
I snorted. "It's just a language. All it takes is to understand the tone and subject matter to figure out the rest. Seeing as how you all enjoy speaking over me like I serve you or else you're my betters, I'm leaving."
The male elder from last time and the one who would eventually lead to Leo's fall from grace, Odin, spoke up. "The fact of the matter is, you are a whitelighter and you do answer to us."
I snorted. "Then we've an agreement, 'you' are an idiot. I answer to no one, I never have and never will. The moment you strike me down as you're clearly wanting to do, you'll fall and become as dark as any demon. You'll be no better then that which you hate most and yet you insist my freedom, my very free will is for you to debate about."
The elders went silent and the female asked. "So you've made your decision then?"
I nodded. "I've no interest in working for those who debate about whether it's okay to strip a person of their free will. If you haven't figured out that it's wrong by now then you're never going to learn."
She sighed as Odin spoke once more. "Then you leave us no choice. While we may not be able to strip your powers, we can bind them and send you to earth to live out the rest of your days as a mortal."
I growled and they all chanted a spell in a language not even I recognized. I felt my magic in my body seize up as if it no longer flowed throughout me. It went deeper, into my very DNA and froze my ability to morph. Then came my soul, and while it bound me there, I realized whatever spell it was, wasn't strong enough even with their magic's to actually bind my soul.
I could break out with my soul at any time. Unfortunately when they tossed me back to the manor, it was already a mess. I saw Prue and Piper injured and downed. I called for Leo but he didn't answer.
I called for an ambulance seeing as how they were severely injured. Phoebe, Nym and Leo arrived as they were being carried off. Nym handed me the ring back nodding and I sighed while driving us to the hospital and explaining how my magic was bound by the elder for not playing ball.
Leo said. "There must be some kind of mistake. I can go talk to them and try to change their minds."
I shook my head. "Leave it be. I've chosen to not serve them and their greater good as a puppet like you have, no offense meant, and they chose to remove a potential power gathering being who wouldn't serve their agendas."
"To tell you the truth, I'd do the same in their position. I'm an unknown to them, a risk they can't take the chance on turning on them. The only reason I'm still alive most likely, is because killing me would mark them as just as evil as their enemies."
Leo frowned. "Aren't they like the personification of good or something?"
I shook my head. "Good and evil are subjective to the opinions of those that see them. Such as how the whitelighters who view the elders as good so they follow them, and the magical beings on earth that follow the whitelighters because they do what the magical creatures see as good deeds. In the end a whitelighter as you've learned is susceptible to sin."
"So are the elders. Only they do things that they can wrap up in a neat bow and call good just as easily as the demons can. They're as flawed as any many and while they work for a common goal called the greater good, they can pass anything off as the greater good and have others do as they say because they believe in them and have faith."
Leo's frown deepened and I sighed. "I believe they do some good, yes, but they also do bad through the actions and intentions of doing good. They call that sacrifices to preserve the greater good and I've no doubt many of the elders up there would do so in a heartbeat."
We reached the hospital while they thought on my words deeply. There we found out that they were both alive and stable but the doctor they'd been protecting from Shax, the Source's demonic hitman, he was dead.
Nym told me while I entered her mind that there had in fact been some time high-jinx but that she herself had used her connection to my other mates to remember before going further back and having Prue eat a golden apple.
Technically she was no longer a witch because a witch was defined as a human female with magic and like Nicolas, his wife and all the other immortals I'd met over the years, they were in fact another species all together. Their blood wasn't even red like humans so they were classified as immortals or lower deities.
The sisters still had tons of magic in their blood and they lived over one of the world's largest ley line intersections so Prue was in fact becoming an immortal at a rapid pace as she'd already stopped aging.
I needed my abilities so I broke the binding on my soul, then mind. All that was left was what was on my magic and body but that would take longer to do. When I saw gold blood in the doctors mind, I erased the thoughts and sent Nym to take care of it all.
She read everyone's mind that she needed to and erased those that knew about the golden blood. She also went about it in a round about way destroying all the evidence until Leo asked me. "What's she doing?"
He gestured to Nym so I sighed and answered. "She's erasing evidence of the supernatural from the hospital. The doctors and a few staff have learned that Prue is becoming an immortal. Listen, I know you have further questions and you might get angry but there's no choice. She's erasing all evidence of them being here so you need to heal them so we can leave."
He nodded and got to it while Phoebe came to me next asking. "What's going on?"
I sighed. "I'll tell you at the house. This place is too public. Sorry love but I'm serious."
She nodded and helped Leo by closing the curtains and I reminded Phoebe to erase the security tapes and security guard's minds. Once Leo healed them and took them back to the house, I drove Phoebe and Nym back.
When we got there Prue demanded. "Alright, what's going on? What's happening to me?"
Before I could answer, the reaper returned. "I'd like an explanation as well."
I snorted. "Piss off idiot or you'll find even reapers can die by my blades. Check your own list and you'll see your name at the top right now."
My blades appeared in my hands and he frowned before reading his list. "That's not possible!"
I snorted. "It is because my blades were consecrated by the death of a god of death, many in fact. You don't even rank on the list of beings I've killed over the years now really, piss off before I end you."
He vanished from the girl's sight but I snorted. "I can still see you dumbass. Nothing and no one can hide from my gaze."
To prove a point, I swung my blade and cut off a lock of his hair. "I'd leave now before I take more than a few hairs, last chance!"
He gulped and vanished completely. I stowed away my swords and turned to the stunned sisters and their whitelighter. Sighing I apologized. "Sorry, where do I begin?"
Prue snorted. "I'd say at the beginning but I'm more curious as to why my blood is suddenly changing colors."
Nym spoke up. "That would be because I gave you a golden apple this morning and you ate it for breakfast. Congratulations, you're an immortal and you've stopped aging. Soon you'll be almost impossible to kill even by demons. It'd take the Source to do the job soon enough."
Piper looked shocked enough to yell. "Wait what?"
I sighed. "Sit down, I'll explain it all. It's a very long story and one you'll want to be sitting to hear all of."
Nym snorted. "Actually we'll need privacy and the best place for that right now is your realm."
I nodded and took us all inside with a thought. We all appeared in the exact same spots only in the second manor. "Now let's sit down. We're in your honeymoon home."
We all went to the living room and sat down where I told them about the golden apple and the reason that this fiasco all started. When I finished, Prue said. "That doesn't explain why death was so afraid of you, nor why you had a golden apple of immortality to start with."
I smiled. "No it doesn't does it? Well, like I said to the reaper, aka an angel of death and one of many, I killed a god of death and consecrated my blades with it's death. Gods are a lot higher on the totem pole of power then a mere angel of death. A god of death, the god of death, is their bosses boss. They answer to the angel of Destiny now that their boss left but when it was here they answered to it alone as they were made by it."
Leo frowned. "So you killed death?"
I shook my head. "No, this one left on it's own volition. I killed another god of death, many in fact. There are as many gods of death as there are religions in this world. As well as many other gods. Most left, while others were killed off eons ago one a battle with the old ones, the first demons."
Leo's eyes went wide and I nodded. "Yep, that's one of many secrets you'll find out about this world. As for one of mine, I'm very smart, smarter than you could imagine and I've spent these past few months digging through this world's history, demonic or otherwise."
"I've been trying to understand how the grand design was built. I understand the why's of it, power mostly, but the how's are a mystery I can't quite comprehend. But let's set that aside for now. You asked about the apple of immortality. The truth is simple and more complicated than you can imagine and tied to my biggest secrets."
"All I can do is ask that you'll trust me for now and not share what we've spoken about to the elders. Suffice it to say Prue, you'd be dead right now if Nym hadn't fed you that apple. The reaper was after you once more. Now though he can't collect your soul unless you willingly give up your immortality and end up dying by some random demon attack."
She snorted. "Pass on that. So if I'm immortal, am I still a witch?"
I shook my head. "Not technically no. You get to keep your powers but the power of three is broken when all your blood turns golden. You'll be completely immortal and while you'll retain your powers Piper and Phoebe will lose theirs. But as it's your mortal destiny to be dead now if you become mortal you'll probably die very quickly from a random cosmic accident. Not exactly a good thing but so long as you're immortal you'll live."
She frowned. "So what now? Does the power of three just vanish?"
I shook my head. "No, but you'll have to summon your mother and grandmother to ask them why. You can tell them you're immortal if that helps. Tell everyone I transferred my immortality to you with a binding stone or a philosopher's stone. That'll explain the break in the power of three for now and keep the elders off my back."
Leo asked. "What happens if I tell them?"
I snorted. "They come after me and I'll either kill them or they'll kill me. I'm an outside power with abilities they can't control or stop so they'll attempt to end me before I can do more."
Phoebe asked. "But aren't you immortal?"
I shrugged. "My current immortality comes from demons and whitelighters. I can be vanquished because of it or killed in other more painful ways. Not that I'd really die because of my spirit animal being a phoenix. I'd be reborn or come back in a flash of flames, I'm not entirely sure which actually. But if they exhaust my soul I'm fairly certain I can be killed for good. They'd just have to find and kill me enough times."
We left my realm not long after that and they went about calling their grams while they still had magic. It was noticeably spotty at best as the book of shadows was visibly weakened and their powers were fading faster then I realized.
I poked Prue with a needle in her arm and she exclaimed. "Ow! Why'd you do that?"
I pointed to the golden blood. "You're immortality is almost complete. You'll need to focus the spell yourself to make sure it goes through. The power of three is almost gone."
She did just that while her arm healed and she called her mother and grams. They demanded to know about why the power of three could be reconstituted and when they found out they had a younger sister, Paige, they weren't happy.
Phoebe asked. "What does this mean for us? Do we tell her and ask her to move in with us?"
Their mother, Patty, told her. "That's really up to you but I can only hope you do right by her. It was dangerous for us to even have her at the time and not even the elders knew about her."
I sighed. "So she's half whitelighter and half witch? That bodes well for you and Leo, Piper. If kids are a possibility then I'm fairly confident you'll be fine."
Leo was called away right then and I chuckled. "It seems there's peepers in the room. They're listening huh, bunch of pervs."
I knew it'd make them frustrated but then I couldn't care less. They bound me and as far as they knew I was staying that way. Phoebe said. "And that's it, the power of three just vanished."
I turned to see the symbol on the book of shadows she was talking about and how it separated. Sighing I told her. "Perhaps it's a good thing I bought the house next door then. Why don't you move in with us and your room can become Paige's when she's ready? It's just right next door and if it gets too be too far I can have the houses connected into one big manor."
Piper asked. "You can do that?"
I nodded. "Easily. I'll just summon some house elves to build it under my watch. This three bedroom manor will become a six bedroom one with one big ass attic and basement. Magic is a beautiful thing and house elves love to clean and cook. They practically live for it."
Prue asked. "You don't mind? I mean, that's like giving up your privacy, trust me."
I chuckled and looked at Phoebe who was smiling and nodded. "I don't mind. It'll add more room and I'll have to take care of the paperwork with the city but you've sold enough of the Aztec gold that money isn't an issue anymore."
Patty asked. "Aztec gold?"
Phoebe nodded. "Yeah mom, Damien here is a sort of wizard adventurer. He found the city of gold and some big treasures all around the world."
Prue spoke up. "He's even donated a few of his funds worth billions to fund charities and help museum's. I got to see one of the worlds most valuable lost sea treasures brought in and donated. It was amazing and a lot of powerful magic."
I snorted. "Don't remind me. That nearly drained all the magic I had out of me. I still can't believe one spell can take so much to pull a ship from the ocean floor."
Patty looked me over and told Phoebe. "He'll do."
I bowed lightly. "Thanks for your approval ma'am."
She smiled brighter and I pulled phoebe into my arms before the connection was cut and Prue said. "Alright, we need to find our new sister and you all need to reconstitute the charmed ones."
I sighed. "On the bright side their active powers won't fail unless we fail to find her."
Phoebe touched the book and had a vision. When she came out of it she said. "We need to find her fast. Shax is after her or he will be soon enough."
I sighed. "That means the Source knows about her. He probably has a seer of his own. Where did you see her?"
Phoebe sighed. "It was on the roof of a building but not one I'm familiar with."
I gave her a gentle mental knock to ask for permission in and she lowered her shields long enough for me to see. I exited her mind right afterwards and nodded. "We'll find it. I'm sure Nym can apparate there."
I entered Nym's mind and showed her the place. She nodded and took us with her. When Phoebe saw it she said. "This is the place. Only it was night time in my vision. Where are we?."
I nodded. "We're on top of P3. She'll be here tonight. For now let's go downstairs and relax. I could use a break after today's events and I'm sure the rest of you can too."
Prue snorted. "You're preaching to the choir. Is being immortal at least fun?"
I shrugged. "You'll survive pretty much anything except disintegration and that covers a lot of ground. Though your magic is weaker then when you were a charmed one, you'll still be able to get stronger and gain more magic. Though you'll have to cleanse the evil out the same way I do when I take in demonic powers as you're still influenced by them and an evil immortal Prue is one thing I don't look forward to seeing."
Phoebe snorted. "Amen! I definitely don't want to fight her if she goes evil."
I shrugged and we headed down to the club. There I saw Paige relaxing with a man and pointed her out to the sisters. "Look, there she is. You'll need to get her back to the house near the book to reconstitute your powers as charmed ones."
Prue stood up. "I'll go talk to her. Seeing as she'll have a version of my powers we might have a lot in common."
I chuckled. "Good luck, though I wouldn't mention the witch part until you know she won't bolt."
Phoebe asked. "But what about my vision?"
I shrugged. "Visions are subjective and the future is always changing. Right now your visions can't take me in account as I've blocked myself from most forms of future sight and scrying powers. A bit of handy rune work I picked up in my travels. Therefore if I hadn't spotted her you'd probably not see her until tonight."
She nodded and Prue headed over to introduce herself. After a while she came back leading Paige and her boyfriend over. She'd invited them to our booth to relax.
She asked us a bit about ourselves and while Prue mentioned her photography and Piper the club, Phoebe mentioned just finishing college and looking for a decent job. Then came Nym who said she was into antiques and I told her I was a bit of everything.
I mentioned a bit about being a treasure hunter and adventure type and she asked. "Oh? Have you found any treasures?"
I nodded and kissed Nym then Phoebe. "Two, and like a dragon I protect my treasures fiercely."
Her eyes went wide. "Oh? Oh!"
Phoebe rolled her eyes. "Don't worry about being embarrassed. He did that to make you react like that. In fact he's quite the accomplished treasure hunter. He found a bunch of gold and Prue is in the process of selling it off with her old contacts in the auction business."
The boyfriend, Shane, asked. "So you're rich then?"
I shrugged. "More like well off but nothing I haven't earned. Adventuring and finding lost gold and treasure is dangerous work. There were death traps all over the place where I found the gold that's being sold off. The people who buried their treasures way back when really don't like people disturbing it."
He nodded. "Sounds fun."
I shrugged. "It can be though most of it is boring tedious work. The real fun is seeing Prue's shocked face when I showed it to her and told her which treasures I've found. As of right now the government is buying most of the gold up to increase the overall worth of the our current currency. Soon the US dollar will be worth a lot more."
Paige's eyebrows shot up. "Jesus, how much gold did you find?"
I smiled and Prue spoke up. "We're keeping that a secret for now as we're having it all authenticated and sold but it's somewhere in the ballpark of fifteen tons. And since the world only had around one hundred and sixty disc tons before to count on, it's a good boost to our economy."
Phoebe snorted. "So long as inflation doesn't hit again anyway. But yeah, we're doing just fine."
Piper sighed. "Phoebe, you know you can't just use your boyfriend as an atm."
I chuckled. "Relax Piper, money meant very little to me before I found the gold. It means less to me now that the gold's mostly traded for cash. Besides, we'll be living together soon so it's only fair we count the income as one household. I intended to wait until Christmas or some other holiday but as today's a decent day to do so, here."
I handed them each bank cards, even Leo. When they took them I said. "It's for household purchases but you can treat yourselves on occasions to. It only allows for ten grand transfers or purchases without my co-signature unfortunately, Prue insisted on this point."
Prue snorted. "Well yeah, if it were up to you one unfortunate incident could see you broke."
I shrugged. "Says the woman whose putting all her money into stock trades on a whim."
She rolled her eyes. "You picked the stock so I just went with it besides, it's already paying off."
I shrugged. "Whatever. Anyway, it's nice to meet you Paige, Shane. So what are you two doing?"
Paige was as open as possible saying. "I'm working as an assistant social worker for child services."
Shane spoke up. "I play in a band."
I raised an eyebrow. "Oh? Anything I should know?"
He shook his head. "We haven't gotten any good singers so we're struggling."
I sighed. "A pity."
Piper nodded. "I agree. We could use a house band to play when guest bands can't. Not that the hologram bands aren't decent though."
Paige nodded. "Yeah, how did you get ahold of that kind of technology? I talked to a few friends of mine after I saw it the first time and they said we were decades away from that kind of technology, maybe even centuries."
I chuckled while Nym told her. "Damien here figured it out and made it for the club while he was running it in Piper's absence."
They looked to me and I shrugged. "It's rather simple actually. Think of a projection from the movie theaters then add more plus a see through reflective surface like the glass panels on the ceiling and floor. Add small laser light sensors for movement and you have a decent hologram bases in the simplest terms. It's a lot more complicated than that in actuality but you get the picture."
(I am not a hologram or otherwise professional technician but it sounded decent enough. If you have a better description then bite me.)
Paige asked. "Is it patented because there's some people that've been showing up lately to look it over."
I nodded. "It is. If they try to duplicate it, I'll take their company and dismantle it before giving its proceeds to charity. If the government tries to take it they'll find I'm not so easily swayed by their warrants as I'm a dual citizen. I'm from the UK but I got my dual citizenship almost half a year ago and the patents were completed in both the UK and the US to protect me from them claiming it as their own or vital to national secrets."
Paige frowned. "I take it you're not a fan of government secrets?"
I sighed. "The government can have their secrets and keep them to. Just don't shit in my coffee and call it cocoa you understand?"
She grimaced at my lack of caring for public politeness. "I get it. So long as they're not taking your stuff and claiming it as theirs they can do what they want."
I shrugged. "It's a capitalist world out there and while it's interesting to mess with the machine of capitalism, it won't bother me a bit if someone hits it with an EMP and it crumbles. There'll be another machine of some sort to take it's place sooner or later."
Leo spoke up. "I'm the meantime there'd be chaos in the streets and people dying."
I nodded. "And yet people die every day. Hell, they're killing the planet faster than it can recover and in a century or two more it'll be dead because of it or it'll freeze into another ice age taking most of the world's population with it."
"Neither of which is my fault and yet I'm sure eventually it'll become my problem as well as yours. I'm not saying I wouldn't help if it did collapse, all I'm saying is that it wouldn't be my problem if it did. It wouldn't be up to me to fix the problem nor would it be up to any of you unless you're planning to run for government office soon as didn't tell me?"
He shook his head and I nodded. "See, not even you are willing to wade into that shark infested pool. A shining example of why it's best to deal with one problem at a time and not focus on what you can't change."
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