Cents and Kents

Chapter 10

"Every taur in the town? How many came searching?" I asked.
"Half of us, the rest are still cleaning and building at the castle." one said.
"Without anyone to stop us, we can get to the castle easily." Éxy said.
"And we can... Stop her." I hesitantly said.
"It's just like you said, we have to do this."
"Okay, everyone. Pretend like you are still under the spell and take us to the castle and then we can... Kill Vasílissa." I said. They all agreed and we got out of the forest and into our positions, with me and Éxy in front. After what seemed liked ages of walking, we arrived at the castle.
"Alright, we've talked about this for a really long time. Now... We do it." Éxy said.
"I'm ready." I said. We ran to the cellar, got in lines of two, and ran into the concrete room.
"Perfect, you found them. Now put them on the wall!" Vasílissa said. The moment she did, the townspeople ran to her and held her arms so she couldn't move.
"What are you doing? Them, I said them!"
"We were freed Vasílissa, and now you'll pay for everything you did!" one of the cents said. They went to the wall and tied her there like we were supposed to be.
"We didn't need a book to know what powers we have, we can use all of them now." Éxy said.
"Please, you wouldn't really use them on me. You're just bluffing again." I could sense some fear in her.
"Actually, we aren't this time." I said. We got into the position we used for ice and demonstrated by freezing a section of the wall next to her.
"Oh my gosh! Fili! Fili! Come in here!" Vasílissa yelled. Fili soon came galloping in.
"Put her in the other one!" I yelled. She struggled a lot more, but she was outnumbered and was soon trapped next to Vasílissa.
"You expected us to use fire, which your armor protects you against, but we plan to use the exact opposite." I said.
"You might be able to, but do you have the guts to?" Fili said.
"We've prepared ourselves, and we do," Éxy said, "Are you ready, Agápe?"
"They still have half of the town trapped, I'm ready." I replied.
"Wait! Please! I swear I'll let them go and you'll never see me again!" Vasílissa begged.
"Sorry, it's too late for that. I can't trust anything either one of you say. This has to happen." I said. Éxy and I got into the position and held our hands out.
"Please! No!" Vasílissa yelled. The coldness ran through my arm and I felt it escape through my hand. I watched as her body struggled until she couldn't move because of the ice trapping her. Her body froze with her screaming and her arms flailing out.
"Oh... My... Gosh. You actually killed her. I never thought you would do that." Fili said in fear.
"Yeah, and you're next." I said.
"What? No! We've been friends for years, you wouldn't possibly do this!" Fili said.
"We were never friends. You were willing to trap us and everyone you've ever known forever. I can understand how Vasílissa did it, but you knew all these people. They cared for you and you used them as slaves just for some power. Vasílissa had to die, but you just disgust me," I said, "Let's do this, Éxy."
"I'm not sure if I can." he said.
"What? But you just killed Vasílissa, and Fili was never really your friend." I said in confusion.
"I know but... I think I love her. I know after everything she did that I should've stopped, but I had a crush on her ever since I saw her." Both Fili and I were looking at him in shock.
"I always thought if love was going to hold anyone back, it would have been me." I said.
"This isn't just about names or the fact that I'm your twin so I share part of your's, these feelings are real."
"Éxy, I love you too. I know you probably don't believe me because I could use this to save my life, but it's true. To prove it, I deserve to die and I know you can't kill me. There's a knife behind the throne, Agápe can kill me on her own." Fili said.
"I don't know if I can kill someone Éxy loves, but I don't know if there's any other way since there's a good chance you're just lying again." I said.
"It's fine, Agápe. She should die, but I just can't do it." Éxy said.
"Alright." I said hesitantly. I went behind the throne and found the knife. At least she didn't lie about that. I grabbed it and went back to where they were.
"Okay, kill me." Fili said.
"You know I will, right? No matter how much you lie, you're going to be dead." I said.
"I'm not lying, I swear. I didn't want to tell Vasílissa, but she found out that I was talking with you, she sent a guard to listen in on our conversations and it was the only way to explain it." she said.
"It's true! They sent to me to listen and I had to repeat it to Vasílissa!" a kent said.
"I didn't want to do it of course, but I was under the spell. She's telling the truth about that." she continued.
"So you didn't really betray us? You were just doing what you had to do to protect yourself so you could help save everyone?" I asked.
"Everything I told you before was true, but I was a coward and I still deserve to die." Fili said. I mustered up all the courage I had and slashed the knife.
The ropes fell and Fili was freed.
"I know I'll regret this, but I still trust you for some reason." I said.
"Thank you so much! I don't know how you could still believe me, but I'm really glad that you did!" Fili said as she untied the remainder of rope on her wrists.
"Does that mean you weren't lying about loving me?" Éxy asked. Fili ran up to him and kissed him.
"I didn't think we would ever get together, especially after everything I did." Fili said.
"That doesn't matter to me anymore, I know you were just doing what you had to do." Éxy said. They separated and looked at the frozen Vasílissa.
"What are we going to do with her body?" Fili asked.
"It would thaw eventually. Should we cremate her?" Éxy asked.
"Probably." I said. Éxy and I stood in front of her and held hands. At high power, we shot purple fire at her and she was soon ashes.
"I never would have thought that you could have the courage to kill someone, but I can't say she didn't deserve it." Fili said.
"I just remembered! We have to free the rest of the town!" I said.
"How could we forget that? We just killed someone over it! No wait, too soon. Sorry." Éxy said.
"They're all building another room, everything is already clean." Fili said.
"Lead the way." I said. We went through a hallway and then one door and found a large group of people building. In there, I saw everyone I've ever cared about. Dia, my parents, a lot people from school including Néa amd Domi. Éxy and I assumed the position and held out our hands. It felt like slow motion as I saw everyone come out of the spell and finally be freed.
"Agápe! Éxy!" our parents exclaimed. We all hugged again for the fourth time. It was probably weird for me to be counting, but I didn't care.
"We've never been prouder of you than we are right now!" our mother said.
"There's something you should know though. We had to kill someone in order to free everyone." I said.
"It was a sacrifice that had to be made. You still had a lot of courage and faith in order to do what you did." our father said.
"You freed me! Thank you so much!" Fili said as she came running up to me and Éxy.
"Fili." she said.
"I didn't want to do what I did, but it was the only way to keep myself free so I could save you." Fili said.
"You put me under a spell, but I guess I can forgive you." I watched as they both hugged.
"Group hug!" Fili exclaimed as she took me and Éxy in. The other half of the town quickly came up to me and Éxy telling us how thankful they were.
"I forgot to mention, I see you learned your powers." our mother said.
"Yeah, we sort of had to. Saving the town and such." Éxy said.
"We were going to tell you that you had powers, much we got mind controlled and trapped in a castle before we had the right moment to." our father said.
"No problem, we figured it out at the right time and that's all that matters." I said.
"Did you learn how to fly yet?" our father asked.
"We an do that?" Éxy asked.
"I saw it in the book about twins after we put you up for adoption. It's part of the air power." he said.
"THAT'S the difference between wind and air." I said.
"Wanna try?" Éxy asked.
"Why not?" I said. We got into a new position and put our hands down instead of out. I felt myself lifting off of the ground and was eventually levitating in the air.
"This is awesome!" Éxy said.
"Very." I responded in awe. We slowly let ourselves back onto the ground.
"I can't believe you're able to do all of this just because you're twins!" Dia said.
"We can also shoot fire, water, ice, and wind out of our hands and make things earthier." I said.
"How do you make something earthier?" Dia asked.
"Heal dead plants, make living plants have brighter colors, etcetera." Éxy said.
"We should probably get back to the town." Fili said.
"Yeah, I'm not sure which way to go though." Dia said.
"Éxy and I do. We can lead everyone there." I said. After a long time of getting the town out of the castle and cellar, we led them across the road back to town. Everyone was cheering and yelling because they were back home, most of the yelling was from the teenage taurs.
"It feels like forever since I've seen this place." Dia said.
"It feel like forever since I've seen this place without having the entire town depending on me and Éxy to save them from mind control." I said.
"Hi Agápe, I'm sorry I took advantage of you and forced you to look me in the eyes about a week ago." the cent from school said.
"It seems like such a small thing now. Besides, I don't think that will be a problem anymore." I said.
"What do you mean?" he asked.
"Oh, my name doesn't affect me anymore. Around the middle of this whole thing I took away the part of my name that makes me have a crush on every cent I see." I said.
"When were you planning on telling me this?" Dia said. I shrugged.
"Never had the chance I guess," I said, "Fili did too so it seems insignificant." Dia looked at Fili.
"I told you, that's just what I told Dia so she'd think I didn't care about you guys anymore." Fili said.
"Wait, so I was the first one to take away the meaning of their name? Maybe I never really did. Hope you don't mind if I try on you." I said to the cent who apologized to me. I looked into his eyes.
"Hrm... Nope. Nothing." I said.
"That's awesome! You actually don't have any curse in your name now!" Fili said.
"It's going to help with a lot, it was interfering with school. Nerd problems!" I said.
"I'm just happy things will go back to normal. Way too much drama over the past couple of days." Fili said.
A few days later, the excitement died down a little more and things had gotten back to their regular schedule. I met up with everyone after school.
"Wanna go to the forest?" Fili asked.
"Sounds awesome." Dia said. We trotted and arrived there after a few minutes.
"Seems like only yesterday Éxy and I were shooting our spell reversal powers at a bunch of mind controlled townspeople." I said as we walked in.
"Just thinking about a few days ago makes me tired. You may have had all the drama but I had to clean and build nonstop." Dia said.
"Yeah, even after killing a person and trying to figure out what our powers were, I still prefer it over the thought of doing all the work you did." Éxy said.
"It's been so nice to go back to just doing school and Algebra." I said.
"Can I ask you a question, Agápe?" Fili asked.
"Sure. I love questions." I replied.
"Me too." Éxy said. We high-fived and said "twins" as usual.
"Do you ever... Want love? I know your name is Agápe and everything and you got rid of the meaning of it but do you ever want to have real feelings with someone?" Fili asked.
"Would they be similar to what I have with Éxy but in a romantic way?" I asked.
"Almost exactly. If someone didn't know better, they would think you're dating."
"Then I would take it any day."
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