“Be careful there, Commander!” said Encanzo sharply. “We’re talking about the pieces of a human being here.”

“An extremely hazardous human being!” said the Drood Commander.

“How dare you take advantage of my daughter’s dustlike state to attempt to imprison her?” snapped Queen Sychorax.

“Don’t you move any closer, Queen!” warned the Drood, pointing his staff at her. “Or I will put the lid on this gourd and throw it into the sea! And that will be far worse for your daughter than you can imagine, for she shall be half here, and half there…”

Encanzo and Sychorax froze, for a state of limbo was a dreadful fate.

But the werewolf stepped forward, growling, low, ominously, deep in his throat.

“Get back!” ordered Encanzo. “That Drood is dangerous…”

The werewolf ignored him.

“What are you doing, werewolf?” screamed the Drood Commander, madly sweeping the blue dust into the gourd in great drifts. “Step back, you evil-bound beast! Halt, you loveless furball! I’m doing historically important work here!”

And then Xar had a brilliant idea…

And he did a Good Thing.

A really, really Good Thing.

Xar needed to get rid of those Witches. He knew that it was unlikely that the Kingwitch would have been defeated forever. His hand was still burning bright green. He needed all the ingredients in the spell to get rid of Witches, and they had just gone to considerable lengths to get hold of this one.

But for the first time in Xar’s life, he cared about somebody else more than he did about himself.

So Xar undid the stopper on the collecting bottle he was carrying.

In a great glorious roar, the Giant’s Last Breath blasted out of the collecting bottle into which it had been shrunk only an hour or so earlier.

“FORGIVE THEM!” roared the Giant’s Last Breath.

“FORGIVE THEM!!!” at a decibel so loud that Sychorax and Encanzo and Xar and Bodkin had to put their hands over their ears.

“FORGIVE THEM.”