Chapter 4 #2
“When we were burning that serial killer’s body, I don’t know what was going through Ollie’s head, but at one point, the flames started burning hotter, before changing color and spreading. In the end, he rather quickly, I may add, reduced the man to ash, bones and all.”
“Bloody hell,” Red cursed again, a hint of a British accent coming out. “Both of you failed to mention that. It still doesn’t explain why The Living Flame would be so present. Not to mention, why Ollie, of all witches?!”
He pursed his lips. “I know Ollie is technically a late bloomer, even if it was delayed on purpose, but have any of your past witches ever shown this much ability so quickly after awakening?”
The familiar cocked his head, as his brows pulled and he frowned.
Red stayed silent for a few moments, before he finally said, “As talented and powerful as Cross witches have been in the past, there are none that I can recall. Even though they all did tend to develop faster and stronger. But...” The cat’s frown deepened. “They were…hiding something from me.”
“Who?”
“Ollie’s parents, his grandparents. I can’t explain what I do know, because I am still bound, but they were secretive.
I started feeling out of the loop soon after Amelia found out she was pregnant.
And that feeling of knowing they were keeping things from me continued up until their deaths, when Ollie was only ten months old.
“I knew part of what they were planning, that they were prepared to die so Ollie could live. That they in fact did die so Ollie could survive. I just never knew why it had to be that way, or what else they knew.”
They’d been hiding something from their own familiar?
Familiars were beings many witches would trust more than even themselves, so for them to hide something from their own—one who had likely been with their family across many generations—Noble could only think they had to have a very good reason.
“Do you—”
He cut Red off. “Again, as I said before, I was a grunt. All the witch hunters that actually go out there to hunt and kill are basically grunts. While we may learn a hell of a lot about what witches can do, along with the entities they are bound to, we aren’t really that informed about what is going on specifically with those individual witches.
“Though, I will say, if I had ever run into a witch as strong as Ollie appears to be, that was actually trained, I would likely be dead. Because as new to this as Ollie is, he should have never been able to hurt, let alone even come close to taking down Mikael. Knowing that, regardless of what we are still in the dark about, we can agree that something else was there with Ollie yesterday, influencing him.”
“Yes…” Red hummed. “Influencing, but yet, at the same time, it didn’t forcefully take control.”
“In what way didn’t it?” Noble asked. “The surge of emotions would have been rather hard to push back for most.”
“I’m not saying those emotions didn’t take over.
What I’m saying is that whatever it was, it gave Ollie a choice.
It didn’t override his freewill, he was able to push it back.
If we are right and it was The Living Flame, I can’t think Ollie would have been able to do that unless the entity had willingly pulled back when it felt resistance.
It let him choose. Even if it manipulated its way to the choice it wanted, in the end, Ollie was the one who willingly let it in. ”
He frowned at that. “Which is odd, isn’t it? For a being such as The Living Flame to even give him a choice, when it took the time to be so present?”
“None of this is normal. It was odd that The Living Flame was even present, that it gave him a choice is more than that, though. It’s completely unheard of. And I can’t say what I make of it. Though, now the question is, how much, or rather, what should we tell Ollie about this?”
His urge to protect Ollie from what would likely be a scary reality, instantly conflicted with him not wanting to lie to the man any more than he already was. In the end, the latter won out, for more than one reason.
Noble let out a pain-filled groan. “All that we can? Ollie has constantly been lied to. Hell, I’m still lying to him.
We both are in regards to what I am. Not to mention, there are things you can’t tell him due to the binding.
So, whenever it’s possible, I think we should be as honest as we can be with the things we can control.
There is also the very real possibility that this choice will come up again.
He has a right to know the risks involved. ”
Not that Noble was even sure of what the risks were.
The situation was not normal. He had heard of entities taking control, but usually it was when they were pissed off at the witch in question.
Though what he knew came from passing knowledge, so it wasn't clear if any of it could be believed, as the survival rate of hunters when near a witch being controlled by an entity was near zero. There was also the fact that it hadn’t really felt like Ollie was completely absent in that moment to even say the entity had fully taken control.
After a stretch of silence, Red sighed. “You’re right…but we can at least wait a few days for the dust, or in this case, soot, to settle, before freaking him out again. I also want to do some research of my own to make sure there isn’t anything else I’m overlooking.”
Noble grimaced. “Probably a good idea. Let’s give it a few days. You do your research. See what you can find. And then when things have calmed down a bit more, we can tell him.”
Tell him, and then what? Well, the obvious answer was to make sure Ollie was powerful enough, and well-trained enough, to never have to make that choice of giving in again.
And since Noble was now retired, he didn’t have anything else he’d rather be doing.
Mainly as he hadn’t actually had a life outside of hunting, so like, yeah?