The Witches, Part 1

What follows are the words of Ulvira, the last Witch known to have lived in Aralia. Her tale of the demises of the Witches is fractured, and the meaning of many of her references are lost to time, but I have been able to independently verify several important points of her story by cross-referencing it with contemporaneous writings, and therefore feel justified in presenting it as a historical text. The adventurers who supposedly traveled with the Witches are not mentioned in any other texts that I have uncovered, and so they may be aliases, but their complete fabrication by Ulvira is unlikely.

The Witches, as many know from childhood ghost stories, were a race of beings that did in fact once inhabit Aralia, mostly in The Wilds, but some accounts have them traveling as far west as Loth Maren, or even to the far continent of Teltar, in one instance. Long ago they were feared as magic wielders, but for reasons unknown lost their abilities and were either persecuted or brought to justice for heinous crimes, depending on whom one asks. The following has intrigued me greatly, and I plan to make a study of them. I will of course update my findings accordingly, and hope that subsequent generations will carry on the good work of recording the history of Aralia, lest what once was cease to be a part of our collective identity.

~ Gideon Harker, state historian of the Republic of Loth Maren, in the year 1051 ALM

She comes to us when night is dark,
When all is quieted
You’ll know her by her herald sign,
A glow of bloody red

But does she come by power’s draw?
For crowns upon her head?
For wealth amassed around her feet?
Or something else instead?

Old Krassal comes for just one thing,
A moment for to dread:
To see the world around her fall
With all the Witches dead.

~ Aralian rhyme, c. 315 ALM

Prologue

I write these words for no one’s benefit, perhaps, save my own, and only then to quiet the Other for a few fleeting moments. The peace he gives me is less and less the longer he stays. I agreed to have him here, and I would make the same choice again, but the price has been hard to bear. That, however, is not the point. Read on, if you hold any love in your heart for Aralia, and think yourself strong enough to participate in its salvation.

I was a Witch, when such a thing still existed. I was not a part of the Arch Coven except in the days when we were all one, but I knew the great members of our order. I was there when Walpurga gave up her gifts to seek a mortal death. I was there when Anlara fought all of us together to a standstill with every ounce of her might to save the life of her newborn son, and then fled to Teltar. And I was there when Krassal rejected the covens and sought out her path to power, journeying farther than any before her. In the latter days, I was part of the Final Coven, who retreated from our settlement in the southern reaches of the Wilds to the Mak’Tosh Mountains, pursued by nothing short of extinction. Much has been written about the Witches, but this, our last story, has never been told. I tell it now not to justify our actions or even our existence, or that of those who traveled with us, for nothing we were or have done requires it. As I said, recounting the events gives a hint of brief peace, and allows me the fantasy of hope.

Our powers had begun to diminish in those days, in the year 306, by the common reckoning. We huddled around a campfire, two dozen of us, scarcely more than old crones who had to scare off the Orcs in the Lowlands with sparks from our fingers and shadowplay that left us bedridden for days afterward. We decided to make the journey to Lake Callarhad, where the bones of our god were supposed to lie. Or, perhaps our escape was decided for us, for the dangers in the south grew too much for us until thence we flew. Callarhad was surely majestic, but its crystal waters held nothing for us save some idle beauty, and the reflections of wizened refugees we barely recognized. Still, we stayed, hoping that the bustle of Gar’Bosh Akar would shield us from notice. Perhaps it would have, for a time, but that was when Asfeld attempted to commune with divinity, and found something else on the other end of her entreaty. Madness came on her gradually, and in the end it devoured her. Her actions drew the attention of those who would harm us, Bullvie in particular.

---

Bullvie had been a hero: he had slain the Mother of Wend in her lair and had kept his town safe from the were-creatures that plagued the northern Wilds. But the red frenzy consumed him as well. He hunted us with a malice I had never known in my long years, even before his daughter was destroyed. He said that Asfeld ate his child. I do not know if this is true, but nothing would surprise me now. We left the lake to travel north, to the Mak’Tosh, where the wretched wait to die.

With were-creatures slavering all about us and Bullvie not far behind, I did something that I had never done before--I disobeyed our leader, who was named Amaryllis, a fearful Witch possessed of a modest level of intelligence even after losing her modest level of power, who cared for us very deeply. I sent letters to heroes who I thought could help us. I promised them Mak’Tosh Diamonds, though I had not the right. At once I snuck away and met them in Gavodin, which is still a small town in the northern Wilds that survives because of its warm, comfortable inn, the Rusty Cradle, and light trade with the Eastern Fiefdoms. There were three of them who answered the call: the first, a rogue who distrusted magic, her name was Jancaryn. And there were two men, one with some magic of his own, Diomedes, and another who wanted some, Moses. Were they good people when they answered my call? I do not know. That is not why I chose them. I chose them because they were of the Wilds: hardened and greedy to survive. And because they were mighty, and had all killed before.

Chapter 1: Bullvie’s Hunt

Scarcely had we left Gavodin before Diomedes slew a man who had taken a dislike to us with a sword he had that burned bright with fire on his command. It was an heirloom, I believe, from a previous life when he and his allies thought to dry up the oncoming tidal wave of Teltar with matchsticks. It worked well enough on the assassin who thought to waylay us, though, when combined with a dearth of pity. It was pleasing to me that he thought so little of doing this thing.

As I led them back to our encampment, I explained my betrayal of my sisters’ trust and the need for secrecy, and I told them what hunted us. Amaryllis assumed our trouble was merely the were-creatures, simply a calculated risk one took when journeying north. I feared Bullvie, though, for I knew his appearance was no coincidence. On scalesteeds we raced the setting sun, which glowed an unnatural red in those perilous days, a dull light which never seemed to dissipate. It stained even the night stars. My new companions did not speak overly much, so it was for a while that we heard only the clop clop of our mounts in the muddy road. Until, that is, we came upon the boy and his father. “An empty road is a treasured boon,” as is said in the Wilds, and so I was not heartened to come upon such an odd pairing in the late hours. I would have gone immediately, but the men wanted to tarry. We broke bread with Joon and his father Tabir before Moses and Diomedes wished them well and pointed the way to Gavodin. I was not there when the adventurers were forced later to slay the monsters hiding in the skins of the travelers, but from what I gathered, things could have gone far more ill and it was good to put the business to rest. It was but one of innumerable nudges that the Red Shadow gave us.

My hirelings discharged their duties admirably: they left a trail of dead werewolves behind them that were never able to catch up with my sisters and me. The three of them stayed hidden for days and even managed to spy on us, if I am not mistaken, learning of Asfeld’s sorry fate, and our quest for the Old One. Eventually, however, their bloody clashes attracted the attention of our scouts. Hattie and Clover were older than I by some years, but had been the last to lose their ability to form new bodies, and so appeared much younger than the rest of our coven. The brown had not left Hattie’s hair entirely, and there was still a lively spark in Clover’s eye that shone when she was fierce. Their apparent youth endeared them to each other, though they could not have been more different, as far as Witches go. Perhaps, though, they counterbalanced each other. Hattie was kind and loyal and far too forgiving. She yearned to bring her sisters with her into the wider world about which she was so intensely curious. Clover resisted this pull with all the stubborn strength of a scalesteed at an ant hill. She was fearful, unpersonable, and wanted nothing more than for those of us that remained to be left alone until the end of time. To Clover, the coven was everything, and the world was an enemy. She would have done anything for Hattie, though. I loved them both.

The pair brought my mercenaries to our camp and presented them to Amaryllis, though Clover probably would have killed them outright, had she still possessed the magic to do so. The discovery deepened the rift between our leader and me, but only, I realized, because I engaged them without her consultation. I could tell that Amaryllis was relieved that I had taken the initiative. She did not suffer challenges to her authority, but was often on the verge of buckling beneath it. I had done what she could not have convinced herself to do, lest she suffer further disapproval in the eyes of Clover and the others who whispered evil things about their mistress.

Rather than send my trio away--not that any of us possessed the ability to do so if they had resisted in the slightest--Amaryllis decided to use them. She told them of Bahamut and Tiamat and the thread of the universe, the path that the dragons weave endlessly throughout reality, bringing order and chaos to all life in equal measure. And she explained that the Witches believe that the choice between creation and destruction is a false one, that true freedom lies in the rejection of the World Dragons. We were invested with our magics at Tiamat’s original defeat by Selikon: when the Old One awoke from her deathly slumber after her slaughter at the hands of the New Gods, who now divide the world. For this, for our preference not to align ourselves with either side of a divine and bloody conflict, each of which recruits an endless stream of mortals into their armies, we were hated. And when our magics waned, we were hunted. Amaryllis told this to our recruits with all the simmering rage of a true Witch, and for a moment I was reminded of our sisterhood. I do not think Jancaryn and the others truly understood. But how could they have?

I stood back, then, knowing it was not my place to direct those I had brought with us, though it was my wish. They moved freely throughout the camp, at home among those who wanted them gone, true men and women of the Wilds. They spoke to Astrid, whose magic fled her first of all, and who was almost dead. She gave them a deck of magic fortune-telling cards, probably because she hoped it would kill them, or erase them from existence. It holds the power of the Witches in it, the only relic left now that does. We had not the strength to wield it anymore, but it hummed with life as Jancaryn took it.

---

In the days that followed, the adventurers hunted with Hattie and Clover and brought back more food than we had had since we had set out. Those who could have been swayed to accept the outsiders were swayed. Hattie found kinship with them such as she had never known outside of Clover, and even Clover suffered to let them accompany her, for though she and her sister had foreseen the day when magic would fail them and taken up tracking in order to survive, they had not the skill or the strength of these warriors. She likely thought to steal what knowledge she could from the three, and perhaps use it against them when she came into her power again, for they still thought that their weakness was temporary.

It was not only food that they brought back, however: ill news was also among their spoils. There was something with intelligence hunting us. It used the same pattern of concentric circles to move ever closer to us that the adventurers had. Diomedes reported seeing the silhouette of a man on a scalesteed backlit by lightning on one of their sorties. This was Bullvie, I told Amaryllis. I forgot my place and I screamed it at her. She was calm while I paced about her tent and ranted about marching toward our deaths in a place that wanted to erase us. She was a leader, then. I did not realize it. She told me to give them what they needed to defend us. She did not believe in Bullvie, but she sought our safety ahead of her pride.

The adventurers did not need much. We gave them a sturdy wire we had traded for long ago. My heart raced at the thought that they intended to draw in our would-be killer. I had imagined the fighting would happen far away from us, where the clang of steel would not make us wince. What a difference it makes in life, to know fear. Where once I could have torn the soul from a knight’s body long before he could have set upon me, I shuddered then in my frailty at the pointed sticks that the rabble brandished. Still, I could not abandon them, my fellows. My friends, as I could not yet admit I thought of them as. Amaryllis stood with me in the woods that had thickened around us as we had made our way northward.

He appeared as a giant atop his mount, flanked by the were-creatures I knew to be under his control by some arcane mechanism. He spoke to the three as if he knew them. “Adventurers,” he said--I remember so clearly. “Do you know what you protect? What did it take to purchase your loyalty to death itself? You guard murderers, the consorts of demons. I do not relish the thought of cutting down those who seek to do right, but I will, to bring justice to my daughter. And it will be swift.” He told them of his child’s gruesome death, and proudly proclaimed his slaughter of Asfeld.

I never truly knew what life was like for the three before I met them in Gavodin, but it must have been hard, for they did not quail for an instant at the scene. Jancaryn let loose an arrow that would have felled any beast I have ever come across in the Wilds. Bullvie in his bloodlust only charged. She retreated, sliding deftly underneath the wire they had strung. Bullvie’s mount fell when it tripped, breaking its legs and throwing him off. When he rose, he was no man. He was growling and writhing. And changing. His face hardened and lengthened. Feathers and fur grew out of his skin. His bulk tripled. Before us stood the most grotesque mutant anyone is ever likely to see. This was old magic, and the use of it struck me. Then the adventurers attacked.

Moses charged the monster head on. Diomedes lit his sword aflame with a word of power. And Jancaryn stung the wretched beast in its arms until it could not lift them. In its eyes until it could not see. And in its throat until it could not breathe. The warriors slew the foul amalgamation, and it retreated inside Bullvie’s human form. He was not dead--the butchering by the three was precise--but he was powerless, and alone, after his sway over the other creatures failed. His prone, mutilated mount watched its master with the wide eyes of an animal who does not understand that death will soon take away its agony.

The wretch ignored the warriors completely, crawling instead, naked and bloody, toward the woods. He mumbled “my daughter. She calls to me. In the day and the night, never resting. Not the little girl I knew, but a vengeful spirit, thirsting for the blood of those who wronged her. Oh how I long to be rid of her! To be at peace! She has driven me so far, but--forgive me, Marte--I can go no further.” He took no heed of any of us, but exclaimed “there . . . there in the trees! Marte! My beautiful girl! Release me from your anger, dearest daughter! Let me die here and we can be together again with your mother!” To nothing he spoke. To the air and the leaves and the reddish dark. He was mad, so we thought. After his entreaties, he was lifted off the ground and blown backward. Registering no shock or pain, he gestured and wailed “look there, she begins to fade! Marte, no! I am sorry! I will do as you wish! I will kill these heroes and then I will slaughter the Witches! I cannot bear to leave you!” He tried once more to assail us, but Diomedes cut him down lazily, both cold and merciful at once.

Punctuating the demise of the great hunter was a scream from our camp. We rushed away, the gore of battle still upon the warriors, and arrived to see an even more terrible sight. Astrid’s wagon had been crushed by the severed lower half of our sister Sabine. Her torso lay at the camp, where she had been spooning soup into a bowl. Blood and broth now covered her face, which would be twisted into a look of shock until her corpse faded into the earth forever. A winged shadow, my sisters said, had swooped down to pick her up, then bitten her in half.

While my sisters scrambled to gather their things to flee from the accursed woods, Amaryllis turned back to me, so that only the three and I could hear. “Ulvira,” she whispered hoarsely, “what do you know about the whereabouts of your sister?”

To be continued…