Thomas, fearful of damnation and temptation, and having no wish to be torn apart by the decidedly unfriendly-looking male who shadows the witch, hurries outside. The wolf, after a glance backward at the undressing witch, follows.
There are many plants outside that Thomas does not recognize. He knows the basics, though, and manages to scrounge a carrot or two from the earth. He drinks from the cistern, filled bucket by bucket from the streams that run cold and clear from the mountaintop. He tries not to meet the wolf's watchful, suspicious glare.
For his part, the wolf hardly prepares at all. He picks up the axe with which he chops wood. He tucks a knife in his boot. He drinks some water, and he waits.
ÓrfhlaithThe wolf sees her shift rising over her thighs, and her bare belly, and
then he turns to follow Thomas out to the garden. The witch grows poisons and herbs together with the vegetables and like, in patterns and tangles that are indecipherable. But carrots, Thomas recognizes. Can tug up from the earth and bite into. He does not stray too close to the dark black berries growing at the edges of her garden, no matter how luscious and tempting they may seem.
Only a short time passes. The witch emerges, washed, her hair braided. She is wearing a dress, a proper dress with a clean shift underneath, and she has even covered her head. She has shoes, which she never wears. A few small pouches hang from her belt. She fills a waterskin and hands it to Conall, as though she knows he will take it from her to carry in a moment, anyway. Then she looks to Thomas.
"Lead the way."
ConallA strange party are they: the villager in the lead, looking unhappy and half-dazed. The witch behind, dressed like a proper maid even if they all know she is not. The wolf bringing up the rear, looking like a wild man even if he's recently hacked his hair and beard into some semblance of order.
They descend from the hills in this order, winding their way down stony slopes, through wooded glens, across broadening streams, around dangerous regions where the land often slips. Down into the heath, and then into the meadows, and finally into the lowlands where god-fearing men live. It takes the better part of a day to travel here -- far did her mother flee, all those years ago -- and the sun is beginning to slip into the west when at last they are in sight of the village and its surrounding farms.
It is a humble affair -- a dozen plots of hardscrabble land surrounding a cluster of tiny cottages behind a simple wall of wood, which is deterrent only against errant beasts. Most of the huts are thatch-roofed with walls of hardened mud, within which families shared space with their livestock. The most impressive building in town is the church, twice as tall as its attendant cottages, built of sturdy stone, though without the impressive spires and steeples that might mark the house of god in a grander village. A single path of hardpacked dirt leads from the village, intersecting a broader rutted road running east-west. Somewhere along that road, out in the wide world, are other villages, other towns; keeps guarded by warlords and warriors; half-ruined cities, remnants of an older world ruled by half-legendary emperors from a half-legendary and distant land.
Uncertain how much of that edgeless world is known to the witch. Likely the wolf knows none of it, beast that he is. They have both been here, though. She has come here to trade and barter, and he has come to be her guardian and her shadow. They have seen men and beasts of burden alike in those fields, tilling and sowing and harvesting. They have seen farmwives beating their laundry by the river; the miller milling grain. They have seen children playing, some of them daring to come close and stare.
They see none of that now. The fields are empty. There isn't a soul in sight, man or animal. Thomas finds the rutted path leading into the village, but even that is empty save for a wagon akilter by the roadside, oxen nowhere to be found, bales of hay still stacked, the whole of it abandoned as though in great haste.
"I don't understand," Thomas says. "This belongs to John the Younger. He traded half a harvest for it. He would never leave it so."
At the front of the wagon, the wolf lifts the yoke. More precisely, he lifts the pieces of the yoke. Heavy, sturdy wood -- snapped clear in half like a twig.
ÓrfhlaithOccasionally on the long trek to the village, they pause for water or rest. Once, the witch draws forth small, flat cakes from one of her pouches. She gives them only the smallest portions, but they fill the belly somehow, giving the three of them strength to keep going, especially Thomas, who is still recovering from his wounds.
The witch does not explain. The Christians have their communion; she communes with older gods, spirits of water and earth that have no true names, who are beyond naming and therefore more powerful than any god dreamt to being by man.
--
They come to the town, if one can call it that, and to actual roads rather than old footpaths and trails. She has been here before. She comes here twice a year as routine, only in an emergency otherwise. Now is not one of those times that the few here know to expect her; they sense an emergency. They see Thomas with her.
Or they would, if there was anyone here. The witch looks at Conall, her eyes deadly serious, her mouth tight. She says nothing of it, but pauses with Thomas at the wagon. She looks at the yoke, and then at the wolf.
"What do you sense?" she asks quietly.
ConallBending his head, the wolf sniffs at the yoke, unmindful of Thomas's baffled stare. Whatever he smells makes him wrinkle his nose and shake his head.
"Corruption," he mutters. "Danger." He lets the heavy pieces fall, small puffs of dust rising as they hit the earth. Dusting his hands off, he frowns at the dirt path with its many and overlapping imprints.
"Too many tracks here. Can't follow just the one."
Órfhlaith"Aye," says the witch, when he speaks of corruption. It crawls over her skin. It feels like a lure: not the sweet danger at the edge of her garden, which at least comes from nature and returns to nature. This feels like a hook in the mouth, a net around the body, a trap closing on the leg. At least it does to her; she knows it hides its bite behind indulgences even more seductive than a tart berry.
"We follow another track, then," she says, and reaches into another pouch, taking out a few tiny, dried white petals. She crushes them in her palm to almost dust and then turns to Conall, nodding at the waterskin and indicating that he should pour a bit into her cupped hands.
When she has the water, she leans over it, whispering to the surface. Let Thomas cross himself or spout his nonsense; she ignores him, eyes closed and lips just barely hovering over the water. She parts her fingers slightly and begins sprinkling the water and the little flowers over all the distorted tracks, still whispering, her eyes still closed.
When she opens them, she looks at the tracks as though she expects to see something.
Órfhlaith[For the record: The spell she's casting over the tracks is meant to alight a path to follow, with the intention of following not necessarily a particular set of tracks, but the trail to the corruption that caused this.]
Conall[roll percep + occult or enigmas!]
Órfhlaith[perception 3 + occult 4 (witchcraft)]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 4, 7, 7, 9, 9) ( success x 4 )
ConallNot one, but many. Even with the benefit of her Sight, it is impossible to isolate just a single path. At least half a dozen distinct tracks swarm over the wagon, its contents, its vicinity. Two scatter into the fields in opposite directions. Three or four streak down the road toward the village.
There is something almost like joy in the carefree, haphazard dash of those splitting, merging, crisscrossing trails. Hungry, unfettered joy.
ÓrfhlaithShe must see something. Some light, some ghostly vapor, something. Because the witch begins walking a moment later, continuing down the road to the village. She is looking for concentration, for the strongest sense. Four in one direction is more than two in opposite ones. So that is where she goes, her steps quick.
ConallUnhesitatingly, the wolf follows.
With quite a bit more hesitation, and no small amount of trepidation, Thomas does as well.
They move down the road in a loose cluster. The sun sinks lower in the west. Shadows lengthen. The trail laid clear to the witch's eyes draws her unerringly onward, roughly mirroring the direction of the path.
Halfway to the village, one of the four trails swerves abruptly off the road. There are footprints here, a distinct, single set that they can track. The trail follows the prints, swooping left, right, great effortless loops. The prints are human, wide apart, a running gait. Crops broken and trampled: a mad flight. A scuff in the dirt: a sprawling fall. A few yards' worth of broken, smudged tracks -- crawling on all fours, the invisible trail of corruption circling, toying, enjoying itself.
A sudden end to the tracks. A great blotch of blood on the earth, arterial sprays on the trampled grain. No corpse to be found. And the trail continuing alone, turning back, rejoining its brothers on the road toward the village.
ÓrfhlaithFor a while, Órfhlaith stands over the stain of blood. The sun is sinking, and the light will not last forever. The quality of the light is searing, sets her apart from the sky behind her, intensifies the perception of depth and distance. There is no body. She is beginning to see things in her mind's eye that she hopes are not true; she sees someone running, possessed or pursued. She sees the breaking open of flesh and the crack of bone. She sees a devouring maw.
Without a word, she turns again, going back to the road. She does not speak to Thomas or to Conall. Her walk is all the mroe purposeful now on the trail. After the first few steps, she reaches up and rips off the covering she used to try and be polite to the villagers.
In her wake, dust stirs off the ground in spirals and whorls, rising up to the air unbidden.
ConallThere are no villagers to be polite to anyway. There is only silence -- no voices human or animal, no birdsong, no trill of insects. Nothing but silence and wind and the steady crunch of their feet over hardpacked earth.
They approach the village, with its not-so-insurmountable walls of sinew-bound logs. The gate is blown inward, splintered apart by the same immense force that broke the yoke on the road. Close up, they can see the panicked flight of the villagers: the doors standing ajar, the kettles of charred food forgotten over fires, a pail of spilt milk here, someone's cloak half-fastened and then abandoned there.
More tracks on the ground now. More invisible, caustic trails skipping and swooping and twirling and arcing. Bloodstains, overturned furniture, the traceries of unspeakable cataclysm.
Thomas stands before one of the cottages. His arms are slack at his sides. He is swaying on his feet. He stares in through the open door: precious raw meat rotting on the cutting board, the straw on the bed flung asunder by someone digging for a hidden stash of coin. Metal gleams amidst the straw. Most of the secret trove is still there, abandoned in the rush.
"This is Bertrand's home," he says. "Beatrice's brother. If any looked after my Beatrice whilst I was away, it would have been him."
There are footprints leading away from the hut. They join others, a headlong and bloody flight toward the church, hounded by attackers all the way. It is impossible to tell which tracks, if any, made it all the way there.
An interesting thing, though: the trails stop at the church. They do not seem to enter the stone structure. They circle and gyre and eventually ... scatter? Dissipate? As long and hard as the witch may search, she can find no new thread to pick up, no explanation for where the devourers have gone.
ÓrfhlaithIn many ways, it was good for her mother to live apart from these people, even after she had a child. Her little girl began to move things very young. She did not speak for years, but seemed able to project thoughts into her mother's mind when she needed something. It was a habit her mother had to break her of, and early, lest she never learn to speak and learned, instead, to invade any mind she chose with whatever she liked. She was an intense child even when she was very small, and damaged things in her wake when she lost her temper. Trees would snap. Stones would crack.
This wall they pass through may well have been laid flat by her in some tantrum.
Orla barely remembers her childhood. It's a vague blur, punctuated by moments too impactful for her to forget. So many of their days were the same. She doesn't remember how she once would tell her mother she was hungry, simply by thinking Very Loud about something to eat. She only remembers that her mother was there, every day, teaching her and feeding her and caring for her. She remembers that a few times, men came, and it was scary, and her mother hid her, but she doesn't recall them clearly enough to know how many times, or how many men, or what happened which time. Just: men and their anger, and her mother hiding her while she dealt with them.
The time that she snapped a man's arm because he was yelling at her mother happened when she was so young that she doesn't remember it at all. She doesn't remember that being part of the reason her mother started hiding her whenever villagers would come by.
--
She pauses now at the wall, at the felled gate, and feels something familiar in it. As they walk through the village, she observes the unsettling, silent chaos of what was left behind and thinks she can almost smell fear. She turns when she notices that Thomas has stopped. She follows him and looks inside. She notices the coin; she doesn't think a thief was after it. Someone trying to gather resources before running, she thinks, even though using money for such things makes little sense to her. What a worthless thing a coin is. Can't eat it, can't grow it, can't hunt with it, can't do anything but make a man go mad.
She supposes that could be useful, in some cases. But there are so many other ways to accomplish the same thing.
The trails eventually lead them to the church, but not inside of it. She frowns and glances at Conall; she doesn't know if he can enter. She's not sure she can, either. She's a witch; he's a beast. She looks at Thomas. "See if anyone's inside," she tells him, not willing to risk being struck by lightning if she sets foot on grounds protected by these people's unseen grandfather-god.
ConallThomas balks. How quickly minds change in the face of primal terror: the company of a witch and a wild man no longer seems so objectionable to him. He fairly cowers behind them now, wincing at the very thought of stepping up to open that door.
"Me?" He looks between the pair of them, one and then the other and back again. "I don't -- I don't ... "
The wolf makes a disgusted noise. In two strides he stands before the church door; the third stride, such as it were, is the bottom of his rough boot meeting the heavy wood of the door. It's a sturdy thing. Doesn't give with just one stomp. But two, three -- something cracks, something gives, the door crashes open.
Thomas yells aloud. Someone else too. Several voices inside, screaming in startlement.
ÓrfhlaithSomething in her heart actually pangs when Thomas's fear writes itself so clearly across his features. She winces, annoyed with herself. She is about to speak, but there goes Conall, and something else pulls at her, something far more powerful than a moment's sympathy with a man who despises her. She's calling out before she can stop it:
"Con, don't --"
But he is, and her fists are clenched as though bracing for something. But he steps onto the ground around the church, and kicks the door, and lightning does not strike him. The clouds don't part and the ground doesn't open up. She stops a moment, frowning in confusion. She wonders --
There isn't time for wondering just now. People shriek and -- after a moment more of hesitation -- she steps onto the church grounds herself. Waits a second. Nothing happens to her, either. She doesn't even feel a tingling in her feet. Her bones don't ache and her head doesn't pound. Blood doesn't stream from her nose or eyes or ears. She's not sure what she thought would happen, but surely something should have.
Nothing, though. So she walks to the door and glances up at Conall with a low murmur: "It may have been unlocked," as though she didn't just cry out for worry over him.
Then she steps forward, into the church, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the lower light to see who is in there.
"Is Beatrice here?"
ConallNo bolt of lightning annihilates the wolf where he stands. No shrieking divine vengeance reduces the witch to ash, either. There they both are, alive and well, on hallowed ground.
It is a small church, but sturdily built, and likely still the largest man-made structure either has set foot in. The interior is dim and cool. When their eyes adjust they see the occupants -- perhaps a dozen or a score of villagers, mostly women and children huddled amongst the pews. A priest, balding through his tonsure, standing before the crucifix and the altar as though expecting to protect it with his life. Two lay brothers brandishing cudgels, tense, shaking, blinking at their sudden visitors.
Silence. Then one of the brothers speaks, "Beatrice? She is a witch, accursed in the eyes of god."
"What?" Thomas, thunderstruck. "What are you saying, Godwin? My Beatrice is a godly woman."
ÓrfhlaithOrla has never gone near the village church before. On the rare occasions when she's been in the village at all, she's even done well to keep it out of her line of sight. Now she's standing in it, and it makes her feel terribly small, and she doesn't like it. So when she looks at the priest and the brothers with cudgels, her spine tightens, hardening into steel. For a moment she has a flash -- could be memory, could be divination -- of her arms bound behind her, of fire devouring her flesh while she stands there screaming.
Beside her, Con can see the loose hair around her face lifting, as though by wind, but there is no breeze here.
It takes her a moment to calm herself, to bring herself back, to stop preparing for a war that may not come. Not with these people. Not today, at least.
Thomas starts to argue and Orla, frustrated, lifts a hand. "Then she is not here," she says, coldly. "Where is she?"
Conall"The pits of hell, most like." Godwin lets the heavy head of his cudgel thud against the floor. "Who are you to question me so?"
"I know her," says the other lay brother suddenly. "'Tis the witch of the hills."
Godwin makes a disgusted sound. "Witch upon witch. And how would you know her, Rolfe?"
Rolfe's flush is visible even in the shadowy church. "Father Aldous teaches us to know our enemy -- "
"Enough!" cries Thomas. "Speak of my wife. What has become of her?"
"What became of her?" Godwin again. "I will tell you. After you ran for the hills, your blushing bride stalked the village bare as the day she was born, screeching like a vulture. When she reached the village well she vomited forth bile and blood into the water, and monstrosities boiled up out of the depths. The men banded together, tried to fight. Half were slaughtered, and the other half lost courage and ran. Rolfe and I, we gathered what women and children we could, brought them to shelter here under god's eye."
"This is the only safe place left," Rolfe adds, "or was. But you brought a witch and her minion to our threshold. You fool!"
"Peace, Rolfe!" the priest calls. "All are welcome in the Lord's house. Come in, all of you. Help us bar the door, and we will speak further."
ÓrfhlaithShe is about to scream at them, herself, before Thomas does. He is more polite than she would have been. Less... vulgar.
Her cheeks are red though, a bright angry flush beneath her freckles. She presses her lips together to listen. She hears what became of Beatrice and winces. There is a part of her that would tell them that Beatrice was possessed, but they would not listen. They would not care even if they did listen.
The priest tells them to stay. To speak further. That is when she lashes out.
"What good will that do?" she snaps. She almost tells them that the demons will find their way in here, that they are cowards, that --
but the people among the pews are women and children. Wives barely older than children. Little ones, already weeping in fear. She looks at him, her brow furrowed, and holds her tongue. She looks at the priest. "Bar your door and pray that whatever protection your god has given you holds. As for me and my 'minion', we answer to older powers." There's a heaviness in her voice, an agedness and wisdom her smooth face belies. "It is not for us, to stay behind stone walls." She exhales, begins to turn, half-mutters. "Our prayers are bloodier."
As she moves to leave, she looks at Thomas. "You may go with us, or help them with the door. If you go with us, you will likely perish."
Conall"Heresy," grumbles Godwin. Rolfe turns away, crossing himself furtively. Yet Father Aldous approaches down the nave.
"I will not force you to stay," he says, "nor to speak. Yet know this: the demons grow bolder in darkness. Daylight will not save you, but when night falls you will be in peril tenfold. Come back before sunset if you wish and we will shelter you. Come after sunset, and we will not dare unbar our doors."
Thomas looks at the women, the children. The lay brothers. The priest. Lastly, he looks at the witch, her unpleasant companion. He swallows. He shakes his head quickly, wincing.
"I must be mad," he mutters, "but I will come with you. I must find my wife. I must know what's become of her."
"You're a fool, Thomas," Godwin sighs. "Always were. Help me break a pew, Rolfe. We shall use the wood to bar the door."
ÓrfhlaithSilently, she wonders what would happen if Father Aldous tried to make her -- or Conall -- stay. She doesn't point out to him how fruitless the endeavor would be. She doesn't tell him that demons aren't the only things that grow stronger in darkness, or that she wishes them to grow bold enough to attack so that she and her beastly friend do not wear themselves out hunting them.
She just nods, accepting his offer, and the spirit in which it is given. It is the same for Thomas: she's given him the only warning she can. He will probably die. He makes his decision knowing that.
Before she goes, however, she turns to look at Godwin. She stares at him a moment, long enough to make any god-fearing man fear her as well. And then she makes an incredibly rude, vulgar gesture with her hand in his direction. Heaven knows where she learned such a thing, but it's shocking to see an outsider doing it, much less a woman, and in the church. There are some gasps, and children getting hands clapped over their eyes, and one older child barking out a breathless laugh.
The witch walks out again, into the quickly fading light that remains of the day. "We will want to get you a weapon, Thomas," she says, when they are out of earshot of the priests and others.
ConallBehind them, the lay brothers muscle the heavy doors back into place. A moment later, they hear the muffled THUNK of something -- a broken pew, perhaps -- lowered into place to bar the doors.
Outside, Thomas keeps close to the witch and her companion. He looks miserable. He also looks like he's already regretting his decision. When the witch speaks, he looks at her, startled.
"I... would not know where to find weaponry. Nor how to use most."
The wolf grunts. Pausing midstep, he bends to pull the knife out of his boot. Flipping it around, he holds it handle-first toward Thomas. Gingerly, the man takes the blade.
"Pretend you're slaughtering pigs," the wolf says. Then, to the witch, "Where shall we go now?"
ÓrfhlaithThe witch didn't know Con had a knife. She watches him take it out. She looks from his boot to his face, eyebrows raised. But he asks where to go, and she sighs. For a moment she has no answer, and frowns at the ground. She's lost the trail. But then it comes to her, and she says simply: "The well."
She looks at Thomas, but she doesn't need him to lead the way; she knows where it is. And so she sets off.
Órfhlaith[DLP!]
ÓrfhlaithWhen Con asks where to go, she sighs. For a moment she has no answer, and frowns at the ground. She's lost the trail. But then it comes to her, and she says simply: "The well."
She looks at Thomas, but she doesn't need him to lead the way; she knows where it is. And so she sets off.
ConallThe well isn't far. The village is small. As they walk, their footsteps are the only sound to be heard. No birdsong. No human voices. They move in loose and instinctive formation, the witch flanked by the wolf, their unlikely ally straggling behind, though never very far.
They pass a few more huts. In each one, the same mute story: overturned chests and scattered belongings, forgotten possessions. Sometimes, bloodstains. Before long they come to the village green, where people once gathered to socialize and graze their animals. There they find the well -- surrounded by scorched grass, its wooden shelter splintered apart.
No Beatrice. Something else, though. A faint, scratchy hissing from the depths of the well.
ÓrfhlaithPerhaps later, if there is a later, it will occur to her how she never doubted her own safety while standing in Conall's shadow. It may enter her head to even tell him that she trusts him, or tell him that his presence emboldened her among people she has had reason to fear for most of her life.
Right now, as they walk towards the well, she isn't thinking of it. She's keeping an eye out for Beatrice, for monsters, for more pools of blood, for signs of devouring monsters. She is also minding the angle of the sun, the breeze when it comes, the smells beyond death and dismemberment. All of these are part of her magic; the whole of the natural world informs what she does, is the birthplace of what she can do.
Or rather: the mother of what she can do. It has another progenitor, too. But even Conall, she thinks, would balk if he knew what it was.
Regardless, meditating as she walks helps her rebuild her strength. She focuses on that.
--
The scorched grass gives her pause, and makes her frown. She hears the hissing, though. Reaches down and plucks a small rock from among the grass. With care, she lobs the rock into the well and listens.
ConallThe rock arcs rather gracefully into the well. A small clack as it hits the side going down -- then, a duller thuk! as it strikes something within.
The hissing stops.
An instant later, the rapid scratch of something -- claws? -- against wet stone. Something's coming up the well. Fast. The wolf at her side growls, swinging that woodcutter's axe around once before bringing it up, ready.
Thomas, terrified and clutching his borrowed knife: "Now why did you have to do that?!"
ÓrfhlaithNot a splash. Orla rears back a bit, like an animal that just smelled something rotted. She jerks back when she hears the scrabbling, and ignores Thomas. She had to do that because his entire village is dead or cowering, that's why. But it wouldn't do any good to say that right now, would it.
She makes sure she's not within Thomas's arm's reach, since he may panic, nor the swinging arc of Con's axe.
ConallThe scrabbling and scratching races up from the deeps. Thomas's breathing is a panicked crescendo. The wolf's breathing is audible too: a growl on every exhale, but steady. Unhurried. He steps in front of his witch. He bares his teeth.
The noise is very close now. All at once Thomas's nerve breaks. He rushes forward screaming, slashing wildly at air --
-- only to be grabbed by the scruff of the neck. By the wolf. Who yanks him back, toppling him onto his back; twists around to bark, "Stay back!"
The well erupts. A blur of scales and claws, neither snake nor lizard but something closer to a fish, slimed and stinking, eyeless, hissing loud as a shriek. It hurls itself at the wolf. Slams into him, catches him off balance. They hit the earth together, a tangle of motion and violence.
ÓrfhlaithThe witch's eyes are focused on the well. Her breathing has become very quiet, very rhythmic. It's almost as if she were sleeping. Conall steps in front of her and she steps to the side, keeping the well in her line of sight. It almost breaks her concentration when Conall plucks Thomas up like an errant pup and deposits him back where he should be, but she keeps her eyes focused on the stones ringing the well. Or what used to be the well. It will have to become something else, now.
Then it comes, and it's unlike anything she's ever seen before, and it horrifies her. Her eyes fly wide. Her skin grows clammy, and instead of the pure, hard focus she had a moment ago, something like panic rises up in her so fast she can't quite get a hold of it.
And the monster goes flying straight up into the air, as if plucked by the hand of god, as if gravity reversed itself. It goes higher than the roof of the church, higher than the tops of the old trees. There is a half a breath, a mere moment, where it hangs in midair,
then comes slamming down, faster even than the reassertion of gravity could insist upon, as though that same god's hand were not just dropping it but throwing it back to the earth.
ConallOne moment they're thrashing on the ground. The creature with its slippery scaled skin, its snapping jaw full of translucent razor teeth. The wolf, still in man-shape, hands slipping every time he tries to get purchase, axe glancing off scales, too close to be used to full effect.
One moment, this chaos. The next -- the creature soaring up, tearing out of the wolf's grasp, higher and higher and higher. Thomas cranes his neck back, mouth agape. Wolf rolls to his feet, snapping a streak of mucus off his hand. Grabs the axe in both hands, ready, gleaming eyes fixed on the soaring fish-monster.
Up and up and up. And then -- down and down and down. The wolf is counting in his head. The wolf is timing it, timing the upswing of his axe,
catches the creature right as it comes down, buries the entirety of the axe-head in its underbelly. The hissing becomes a scream. Thomas is screaming too, disgusted and horrified. The wolf gives a single bloodthirsty snarl of a laugh, yanks the axe out, hacks it down again.
ÓrfhlaithThe witch is pale. Her breathing is heavier now, more shallow, more rapid. She doesn't blink. Entrails, stinking of mold and sewage, spill out of the thing as it is split nearly in two from the force of the axe meeting it as it plummeted with such momentum. The witch, dazed, looks over at Thomas as Conall hacks at the monster almost gleefully.
She doesn't have it in her right now to make some sort of quip. She just reaches down, picking up another stone. A different one. Takes a few steps and, still leaning over, rolls it in the slime that Conall just recently tossed off his hand. Coats the stone in it, making sure it recognizes the filth it will soon be aimed at.
Then, drawing the stone up, focusing on the well, she whispers the seven names of fire that her mother taught her before she died. Seven, out of hundreds or more, but it should be enough. The stone -- and the mucus -- are growing hotter in her hand as she murmures the names, three times over. It is almost unbearably hot by the last, and she is all too glad to throw it into the well.
Órfhlaith[Idea: enchanting the rock to basically explode in a fireball when it gets to more of the monster slime.]
ConallBy the time the witch finishes coating the stone, the monster is no longer thrashing. By the time she finishes the seventh name for the third time, the monster isn't even hissing anymore. By the time the stone sails over the edge of the well and into the darkness, the wolf has stopped hacking at the monster, convinced of its demise. Pulling the axe out of the carcass, he shakes slime and cold blood from the head.
"What -- "
That's as much as he gets out. An enormous explosion deafens them. The ground shakes. The well cracks. Thomas screams, covering his head. A fireball belches up from the wellshaft, followed by a spray of mingled water and ichor pitter-pattering down like the most foul of rains.
And afterward: stillness. No other monsters hurtling up from the ruined well. No rumble of some otherworldly gate sealing, either.
Just a destroyed well. And a dead monster. And Thomas, still yelping, cautiously uncovering his head to look around.
"Beatrice?"
The wolf looks up from cleaning his axe. He frowns at Thomas, but Thomas doesn't seem to notice. The man picks himself up out of the dirt and starts walking away, quickening his pace as he goes. He stares fixedly into the distance, but try as they might neither wolf nor witch can see what he sees.
"Beatrice? Bea! Wait!"
The wolf scowls. "Where the hell is he going?"
ÓrfhlaithOf course she doesn't think to warn anyone. Conall's only been with her recently; she's never spent that much time around other people. She's never been part of a team that didn't understand witchcraft. And secrecy is such a part of it that she doesn't even consider explaining. She just acts, because there may be monsters.
Well. There may have been. She doubts there are any left after that. It surprises her, even, how massive the reaction is; it makes her think there were more than a couple of those things hiding in the well.
Her hair is wet. She doesn't dare reach up to touch it, to see what might be in there. She just stares at the ruined well, then at Con, checking to make sure he's still all right. The next thing she knows, Thomas is yelling to his wife, who no one can see.
The witch swears in some language Con doesn't know. "This entire village is mad," she says, and takes off after him. "Come -- following the madness has brought us this far."
ConallThe wolf barely knows this one language, let alone others in which to curse. He growls instead, shouldering that considerably messy axe as he falls in behind the witch.
"Wait, you fool," he snarls.
Thomas doesn't listen. Thomas has broken into a hobbling run. He's heading away from the dirty little village, into the old thickets pressing into the hard-eked borders of what passes for civilization. Wolf and witch, following, find themselves wading through mud and fallen leaves, stepping over gnarled roots, ducking 'neath tangled branches. Ahead of them, Thomas -- driven by something neither of them can see -- slips and scrabbles, bloodies his hands on thorns, clambers awkwardly over a lowhanging branch and
quite suddenly vanishes from sight.
ÓrfhlaithThe witch doesn't seem perturbed by being called a fool by Conall. She's been called worse. She's called him worse, she's pretty sure. And it is foolish, chasing after a madman in a mad village looking for his mad (though most likely dead) wife. She suspects that foolishness, to a wolf, is another word for someone who may as well be dead. It's different, in witchcraft, and in her lineage, which she has not recounted in full to him. Foolishness is the beginning of a journey. Foolishness is, in some cases, the only way to find what you're really looking for, before you quite know what it is you should keep your eyes open for.
Thomas is running, but he's not quite well, and so it isn't hard to keep up with him. For her part, Orla stays closer to Con than to Thomas. She may be a fool, and would readily admit as such, but she's not stupid.
But then he vanishes. And she pulls up short. Her shoes squelch in the mud from the suddenness of her stop. She looks at the wolf beside her, then reaches down
and takes his hand. She nods at him, at his feet, as if to tell him to plant himself. And then, holding his fingers tight with hers, she walks forward, their arms between them like a rope, and peers over the branch that Thomas disappeared over.
Órfhlaith[DLP!]
ÓrfhlaithThe witch gives a small snort when Conall calls Thomas a fool, tells him to wait. He's a fool himself if he thinks Thomas is listening, but she doesn't say it. She's not sure if he'd think she means it, or if he'd understand that 'fool' isn't quite an insult in her vocabulary. Besides, they're busy. So she keeps her thoughts to herself, even as they set off.
Truth be told, it is foolish, chasing after a madman in a mad village looking for his mad (though most likely dead) wife. She suspects that foolishness, to a wolf, is another word for someone who may as well be dead. In battle, in war, in a hunt - there isn't any room for foolishness, is there? It's different, in witchcraft, and in her lineage, which she has not recounted in full to him. Foolishness is the beginning of a journey. Foolishness is, in some cases, the only way to find what you're really looking for, before you quite know what it is you should keep your eyes open for.
Thomas is running, but he's not quite well, and so it isn't hard to keep up with him. For her part, Orla stays closer to Con than to Thomas. She may be a fool, too, and would readily admit as such, but she's not stupid.
But then he vanishes. And she pulls up short. Her shoes squelch in the mud from the suddenness of her stop. She looks at the wolf beside her, then reaches down
and takes his hand. She nods at him, at his feet, as if to tell him to plant himself. And then, holding his fingers tight with hers, she walks forward, their arms between them like a rope, and peers over the branch that Thomas disappeared over.
ConallThe wolf's eyes are drawn immediately to her hand against his. Despite what they've done with each other, he still seems surprised she reaches out to him. It is a very new thing to him when she links her fingers with his -- new, and precious, and sweet.
Still, when she starts forward, she feels resistance in his grip. "Wait," he mutters, but
she's already peered over the branch. Or at least, that's what she was trying to do. What she sees instead doesn't seem to make sense at all. One moment the tangled thicket, the wet smell of loam and moss. The next -- a smoking, fetid darkness, musty and warm, as though buried deep in some unknown mountain's heart. She can hear a distant dripping. She can hear the scratch of shoes on rock, a rapid, frightened breathing. Thomas, must be. Can't see him though. Can't see the wolf either, nor the world she came from, though she can still feel his hand gripping hers.
Pulling her back. Yanking, actually, so fast that she stumbles and he catches her. There's rapid frightened breathing on this side too, his, with his rough hands pawing at her head and her face as though --
"You were gone. Your head." His nostrils flare with a deep breath. "I never want to see that again."
ÓrfhlaithOh, she still doesn't know why he smiled when she was fighting with him about helping Thomas or not, about getting involved in all this or not. Still doesn't know, or understand, that when she mentioned him coming to her bed again, he was just happy to hear that the idea of it was shared: that even if she was, at the moment, yelling at him, she was talking about lying with him again. Of course Orla has no idea that's what he took away, there. He smiled, and she was baffled, and ignored it.
Right now she is using his arm as a rope so she doesn't fall down a hole, and doesn't seem to have any idea that this surprises him: being touched. Being touched by her. She's quite practical, for a foolish witch. So she steps forward, leans forward, and
everything changes. The smell, the sound, the light or lack of it. She jerks slightly, and surely Conall must feel the spasm go through her, even before he yanks her back. She stumbles a bit and thuds against him, but doesn't seem angry at him for pulling on her. Not until a second later, when he's pawing at her. She bats with annoyance at his hands on her face, especially since they're both still splattered with the blood and slime of a monster he split in half.
But he's telling her what he saw, and she winces. She stops batting at him. She puts her hands around his wrists, as though to steady him. As though he's the one that needs steadying. "You will not," she tells him, like a promise. But she glances over her shoulder briefly, before turning back to him. "I believe there is... a sort of doorway, here. Not to a room, but to another place. That is where Thomas went."
A beat. She cannot help but want to laugh: "Where my head went."
Her hands are still on his wrists, letting him hold her face in his hands. "And where you and I will go next. I heard Thomas in this other place, though I could not see him."
ConallThat he dislikes this idea is plain as day to see. The tendons in those thick wrists shift as he flexes his hands. He doesn't naysay her. For whatever it may be worth, he does seem to have faith in her.
Even if she can be foolish. Foolhardy, perhaps.
"Another place?" he echoes. "Wait," he says again.
This time it's his turn to disappear. One moment he is there; the next gone, suddenly enough that a brief wind rushes past the witch -- air hurrying to fill the void where he once was. The moment after, back again, wind pushing away from him this time.
"It is not the other-place I know of." Who knows if he's ever even mentioned that to her before. Probably not. "It must be another ... other place. Perhaps farther away. We must take care, lest we lose our way back."
ÓrfhlaithWell, she expects him to dislike it. Didn't like it when she started healing folks or bringing them into her home. Didn't like the idea of coming back here. Really, he hasn't been in favor of almost any of these decisions to help these townsfolk or investigate this darkness, but in a way, that just charms Orla a bit more. Because he so obviously doesn't like any of this, doesn't like her rushing headlong into danger, doesn't like her getting splattered with ichor or sticking her head into other dimensions, but he keeps going with her. Keeps helping her. Carries water for her. Walks alongside her. Fights beside her.
Of course she's charmed.
And then she is baffled. He vanishes. Whole, entire, and quickly enough to make air rush in to fill the void where he once was. To say she's stunned doesn't even begin to cover it. And then when he's back, he barely gets a word out before she is yelling at him:
"THAT WAS NOT JUST YOUR HEAD, CONALL."
ConallAlarmed and rather taken aback, he's every bit as baffled.
A beat of silence. Then: "More frightening when it's just a head." A moment more. "But I am sorry. If I frightened you. I've always been able to go to an other-place. It is as a shadow of this world. Close, but not touching. I should have told you. Didn't think to. It was just part of me, like becoming a wolf. I don't... I've never had someone to tell.
"Thomas did not go there. Where he went, what you saw -- I think it is farther."
ÓrfhlaithThere is high color in her pale cheeks, even in the dim light. She's angry, but he can see easily beneath that: he vanished. All of him. Without ritual, without effort. And what she felt was less fear than utter shock, and perhaps... even a bit of betrayal. She didn't know he could do that.
That sense of hurt swims closer to the surface when he explains what happened: that he can visit the shadow realm. That he can visit it like that, shedding the earthly world as easily as one might shrug a cloak off one's shoulders. She looks hurt, and maybe a little envious.
"I was not frightened," she says tersely, even though that is at least partly a lie. She's not entirely sure if what she felt was fear. But she has distance between them now, where a moment ago he was touching her face, she was touching his hands. "I know what the shadow realm is," she adds, still a bit tight in the voice, because in a terribly petty way it seems important that he understand right now that she's quite knowledgeable in the ways of the world.
She's uncomfortable with her own terseness and upset, though, when he adds that he simply hasn't had anyone to tell. Now she looks a bit guilty for having shouted at him, and for being short with him. Her brow is furrowed. She does not apologize, even though he did. She shakes her head a bit.
"We still must go." Back to business, then. Without all the shouting and snipping at ever-faithful Conall. She exhales. "He saw Beatrice. Whatever filled her with its essence, I think it is luring him to its nest."
ConallHe is not wise in the ways of the world; even more a neophyte to the complexities of a human heart. He can sense she is upset, that she is hurt and perhaps even betrayed, but he cannot understand it. He has only past experience to fall back on; a conversation at her hut and the very little they spoke of one another's magic.
She refocuses on the task at hand. Yet he halts her -- reaching out, catching her hand with his. It is still new, still a rare and novel pleasure. He looks at her hand in his, its smallness and slenderness, the callouses from a hard life in the hills. Such is the price of freedom.
"We are different, you and I," he says. "What you can do... it is far beyond what I can do in breadth, in power. But what I do comes natural to me. It is limited but it is effortless. I do not think or focus. It simply happens. It is who I am."
He is quiet a moment, eyes lowering, jaw tense. Then he looks at her again.
"Don't hate me for it, I beg you."
ÓrfhlaithAgain: hands. Those strangely intimate appendages, all strength and delicacy, filled with all the secret and not-so-secret things of a person's life: how long one will live, how much they will love, the work they have done, the memory of everything they've ever touched. In all but two of his forms he has something like a hand. Opposing thumb. Knuckles.
Orla's hands have callouses from the tools she uses every day just to keep herself fed and sheltered. She has little scars from places where she's nicked herself. Dirt under her nails, though he's seen her cleaning them. Softer than a farmer's, though, or those of a laundress. Reactive, too: the moment he takes her hand, catches it in his own, her fingers are curling around his, holding him back, instinctive. But her eyes are on his face.
For a moment, he can see she doesn't quite understand why he's saying what he's saying. Or she's pretending not to understand. Not until he says the last bit, and things fall into place.
Silence, at first.
Her brow, furrowing deeper.
"I do not hate you," she says. And that is all.
ConallA moment longer he holds her hand. Then, without another word, he exhales and releases her.
Reaching up, he grasps a long branch in his hands and breaks it off its tree. Cautiously, mistrustfully, he pushes it over the branch that seems to mark the gap between worlds. Little by little, leaf and twig and then the length of the branch begins to disappear. When it is halfway through, the wolf wedges the back end of the branch against the ground and piles a few rocks around it to hold it in place.
"So we can find our way back," he explains. "I am ready."
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