home again.

Conall

The witch sits. She practically slumps to the ground, undergrowth and foliage rustling beneath her. After a moment, the wolf takes a knee beside her, laying that bloody, starved, lesioned woman on the ground.

Only she's not so starved now. She's still painfully thin, bones showing through skin, but there's flesh now between one and the other. And those lesions have closed, leaving only faint bruises here and there. Either unconscious or sleeping, she lies unmoving, breathing shallowly, twitching now and again. There's only dark blood now; no fresh red appears.

The wolf's hand is on the witch's back. He rubs a little, awkward as one must be when one has little idea how to interact with another being. Then he simply wraps his arm around her, pulling her against his side.

Órfhlaith

Would that she had a cloak with her, to cover Beatrice. It isn't terribly warm. The witch, after having her eyes closed for some time, opens them to look at the poor woman. Sighs, faintly.

It takes her a while to notice the rubbing on her back, because the part of her that is weakened beyond reckoning right now submits thoughtlessly, automatically, the way a child does to a familiar touch. The truth is that his touch isn't all that familiar yet, but the manner of it is. When she recognizes that he's touching her, she doesn't start, but she does remember her mother rubbing her back. When she was very little. When she was sleepy. When she was ill. When she was hurt. When she was sad. When she was frightened.

She's all of those things, right now, though she isn't as little as she once was. She's a grown woman now in her own right. She's been motherless a very long time.

Orla submits, too, to the wolf pulling her close. She leans easily, no resistance left in her, to anything. Closes her eyes for the same reason. Speaks, for the same reason:

"My mother's people...they came from distant islands. A very long time ago." She swallows. "Islands full of strange flowers and beasts. Fair Folk lived there, too. They say that my mother's people mingled with them, before anything was written down."

She inhales deeply, exhales slowly, her body relaxed against his. "They say that's where the magic comes from."

Conall

She fits well against him. Tucks right into the hollow between his arm and his body. Tucks right into the hollow between his neck and his chin, too, when he lays his head atop hers. They are both quiet for a while. Just absorbing the moment. Absorbing what's happened; that strange hell they've escaped from.

The wolf imagines Nogg-Htharth for a moment. Imagines him there, raging in his red oblivion. How long before another willing slave enters? How long before another passageway opens? He hopes it will be an eternity. He fears it will not be. Human nature can be cruel, and the desperate can do anything.

The witch -- the girl -- his girl speaks. He stirs a little, listening. Distant islands, strange flowers and beasts. Fair Folk. He cannot imagine such a place. He tries anyway: the smell of salt in the air. The crash of waves. Bright flowers like bursts of color. Birdsong unfamiliar on the wind.

"I don't know who my people were," he replies after a while. "I don't know where the magic comes from. I knew neither father nor mother. My earliest memories were of an old man who lived in a hut in the forest. Grew his own greens, trapped his own meat. He was learned, though. He owned books. He never told me where I came from, or how I came to live with him. Perhaps one day he would have taught me more. My past, my origins, my lineage. The world and all its turnings.

"But one hard winter he went to check his traps and never came back. I was very small. Perhaps seven or eight summers behind me, no more. I waited for him until all the food was gone. Then I took an axe, wrapped myself in furs, and went out into the forest. Perhaps I was looking for him. Certainly I was looking for food. Soon cold and hunger overtook me, and I fell. Yet as I lay in the snow waiting to die, something else roared to life inside me.

"When I woke again I had gorged my fill of a small herd of deer. I remained mostly in monstrous form for a very long time, hunting, feasting, growing strong. I met enemies out there, terrible things birthed from the same sort of place that spawned Nogg-Htharth. I discovered the spirit world, which I could slip into when danger threatened. I was nearly grown when I stumbled upon other men, but I never could live amongst them. Even as a child I had learned nothing of the world of men; by the time I was grown I had forgotten what I'd learned.

"So for all my life I lived in the wilds like a beast. Until I found you."

He takes a deep breath, filling his lungs full of clean air. Exhales.

"It is ... good, living with you."

Órfhlaith

Conall's story is longer, but he has given less of it since that first night he awoke in her hut, injured and hungry. She knows almost nothing about him. Hearing what he tells her now feels strangely nourishing, like being fed. She almost regrets how grateful she feels for it, since the story is so terribly sad. It was both hard and not hard at all, never knowing her father. But she cannot imagine never knowing one's mother. Her hand, as he speaks, closes over his... wrist? Elbow? Whatever is there.

He was still a little boy when he began to change into a beast. She remembers moving things about without touching them when she was younger, learning about ungents and tinctures and all of it as soon as she could speak. They lived in the mountains but they were close enough to the town. To people. But even living Conall's way, alone in the wild, did not spare him the knowledge of how different he was, how unwelcome he would be to mankind.

Her hand is petting him. Idle and slow and tired, but she's stroking his arm all the same, sort of the way he rubbed her back.

"Yes," she says, after a silence, realizing a few beats too late that there is space there for her to tell him this. It is good. Her hand goes on stroking him.

"That light..." the witch whispers. "At the end. I do not know what that was. It has never happened before." A small shudder goes through her as she remembers that pool of brilliant blue that she somehow brought into being, gave to Beatrice, flooded into the other woman's wracked body to heal and purify. It isn't fear, or disgust; something more like awe. Like trembling before one's god.

Conall

It is a sad story, but he does not think of it that way. It is simply his story. It is all he knows, and it is what it is.

Still. Her hand touching him is soothing. He likes it. Before her, he was very rarely touched indeed. After a moment, his hand covers hers atop his arm.

"I don't know either," he admits, "but I have felt it before. In the spirit-world, sometimes. It is something good, and powerful. Magic in a raw shape, perhaps. I have felt spirits bestow it upon me when they were pleased. And I have felt them take it from me as payment, or in anger."

He is quiet again for a while. Then, slowly:

"I think perhaps we are not altogether different. Not the same, but not wholly separate either."

Órfhlaith

Seems strange that their first touches were as unremarkable as they were. He was unconscious or delirious the first few times he touched her. She was so focused on cleaning his wounds and applying poultices and making sure he drank the water she gave him that she didn't entirely notice her fingers on his lips, her hands on his body.

Everything since then has not been accidental, or unconscious, or pragmatic. They avoided touch altogether for the longest time; months and months. Until they didn't. Until every touch was purposeful and heartrending. Until now, when it's thoughtless all over again, but... differently so.

It's comforting, in a way, that he recognized that light. That energy that was unlike any magic she's ever touched before. It wasn't against nature, nor from it, but... beyond it, somehow. But what he says of it settles into her mind: it sounds right, somehow. It rings true, as clear as a bell. She decides to trust on it, and not attempt to call on it again in her lifetime.

She hopes, after all, that her lifetime never brings her another sight like Beatrice's starved body, distended belly, weeping sores. Another threat like --

no. She refuses to even think its name again.

Orla tips her head back, slowly, until she can see his face. Observes him a moment, then... just nods.

Conall

Facing her there in that tangled thicket in the calm after a battering storm with a deeply traumatized woman at their feet,

it somehow suddenly seems exactly the right time to put his hand on her face and kiss her. It is gentle. It is exceedingly tender. It goes on a while, his lips moving leisurely upon hers, and when it is over his eyes open to hers. Search hers. Sees her.

He seals her mouth with another kiss. And then, drawing back, he looks about -- the branches, the undergrowth, the woman Beatrice.

"What shall we do with her?"

Órfhlaith

She's softer than she's ever been. Some sharpness, some prickliness, has left her. They are both of them somewhat defensive; a lifetime of protecting themselves. She simply doesn't have the strength to keep it up right now, though. He would not hurt her. She knows that. He never has. She thinks it's possible he might, but only in the way she might hurt him: foolishly, accidentally, unknowingly. Not willfully. Not from lack of care.

So her mouth is soft and unafraid when he kisses her. She doesn't think it's strange; he can hear her breathing change slightly when his lips touch hers, and she sounds nourished by it. Calmed. And she is grateful that he doesn't pull back right away. That it lingers. That he stays with her.

Her eyes are closed when he does withdraw. She opens them slowly, wearily. Follows his gaze to the naked woman, and it speaks to how odd she is that Conall's eyes on another woman's bare flesh doesn't send her into a spiral of rage and jealousy and fear. She just looks at Beatrice, too, aching.

"I do not know that she can return to the village. They will never -"

forget. Trust her. Leave her alone.

"I think she might have children," Orla adds, but she doesn't quite remember. The fact that Beatrice was once pregnant does not mean anything, in this day and age. "I do not remember if her brother lives." Her voice hardens after a moment: "Though I would not return her to him, if he does."

She looks back at Conall. "What she does with the remainder of her life will be of her choosing, whatever it is. For now, she needs covering. Rest and care. Healing."

Truth is, she's not sure she needs to tell him what she's really thinking.

Conall

They both look upon the woman. With pity, with compassion. When the wolf's eyes turn back to the witch, he doesn't even have to think.

"We shall bring her home, then. I do not think she could harm us now, nor would want to."

He rises to his feet, pulling his coarse tunic off, dropping it over the unconscious woman. "If you clothe her," he adds, "I will carry her back."

Órfhlaith

Home, he says, and the witch doesn't blink at that, either.

She nods. And even as he rises, she tips slightly. She moves to her hands and knees, and rises. Her shift is a horror; her knees bled through it as well, after one of the times she stumbled and fell. Beatrice's blood. The demon-god's... essence. Her face is dirty. Her hands, too. Her hair is unbraided and askew now. She looks as wild a woman, as possessed of something unnatural, as they all believe her to be.

Perhaps they should go back to the village, and tell everyone what happened. But Conall doesn't suggest it, and neither does Orla. She does think of it; she thinks, as deep as her compassion for their fear is, that they will survive a time of not knowing, of living in their terror. Perhaps when she and Beatrice are both a bit healthier, she will come back and tell them some version of what happened. Tell them that they are safe now, or something.

But not right now. Right now she kneels beside Beatrice and carefully puts the unconscious woman into the large tunic that smells of her wolf. It covers Beatrice to her thighs, at least. She is not too much smaller than the other woman; they will find something for her at the cottage. She is a bit shaky on her feet, but stands all the same. Then she looks at Conall, and something seems odd, and then she realizes:

"The sun is almost down."

Conall

He must be tired too. They've both been through so much. Yet he lifts Beatrice without complaint, and with little enough effort. When the witch stands shakily, he frowns at her. The look is not irritation but concern.

Glancing at the westering sun, he shakes his head. "It matters not. When we are in the hills I can become a beast. Carry you both."

Órfhlaith

There's a moment where she looks uncertain, but then... well. She doesn't even decide so much as she relents. For a second there, her mind tried to work. Then her weariness shushed it and tucked it in. She nods, and goes to walk with him.

"I can walk, you know," she tells him, after a little while. "In the dark. I will hold onto you."

Conall

His arms full, he doesn't put one around her. It's possible he wouldn't have anyway. Contact still feels so new, so non-intuitive. But he does look at her: that furrowed look again.

"It is no trouble. You are tired."

Órfhlaith

"I know," she says, perhaps to both: he carried both she and Beatrice at a full run in pitch darkness earlier. And she is tired. Beyond tired. "Still. I wish to walk beside you."

Looks at him, when she tells him that. Perhaps because the light is fading fast now, the sun past the point in its setting where its slow descent seems suddenly precipitous. The light has become searingly bright, red and yellow from the horizon. As it often does, it brings out the gold flecks in his eyes, the hints of red in her dark hair. It heightens every edge, just as the moonlight will soon soften them again.

Orla puts her hand on his arm, and they begin to walk.

--

They bypass the village. It is quiet there, but no longer eerily silent. The animals no longer sense the danger of a demon and its minions coming to feast; they rustle and trill in the oncoming twilight as they normally would. But there are no human sounds, and there are no lights from the church where the townsfolk hide. They are not close enough to look, but Orla doesn't bother anyway. They are the sort of people who will let a raped child be married, and they are the sort who have called her and her mother vile names since her earliest memories. She does not relish the fear they must be feeling, and she feels a bit sick over it, but truth be told, she has nothing left to give them tonight. She is fairly certain that if they came into the church looking like this, carrying Beatrice, it would all be worse. They might try to burn her. And even though she's too weak to defend herself right now, she suspects Conall would not respond to that with any patience or calm.

So they circumvent the town. They head for the path to the hills. Night falls quickly now, the light becoming indigo and violet, the stars coming out. The moon is not full, but it still grants them some light to see by. Not much, once they are in the thick of the trees, but those will thin out over time.

Owls call to one another. Orla walks slowly alongside Conall, her hand on his arm, listening for Beatrice to wake. Calms her, if she does, telling her she is safe, it is safe to sleep for now.

--

It takes much of the night to get back. She has made this walk twice today, which is not out of the ordinary, but nothing else about today was ordinary. When they come upon the outskirts of the area she feels to be her own, she almost weeps from relief, just to be home. The goat is bleating hungrily. The smell of the garden is as rich as the depths of the wood. The air is cleaner here, if thinner.

"We should... put her in my bed," Orla says, though her alcove and straw and furs are barely worth the name. She looks, under moonlight, at Conall. "Shall I lie with you in your... hut?"

It's not a hut. It's the same lean-to he built against her cottage when he first arrived, and has slept in almost all nights but one. But the witch is kind.

Conall

It takes a long time to walk back. It is dark. They walk uphill. When the dark shrouds them, he becomes something else: an enormous wolf as large as a horse, Beatrice slung across his back. His eyes are keen, then. She holds to his fur and he guides her home.

Beatrice stirs a little, halfway through that long journey. She murmurs something incoherent and is shushed. Is calmed by the witch's hand on her brow. She sleeps again.

They have not been gone long in the grand scheme of things. Yet it seems ages, eons. Her relief to be back is palpable. His own takes him a little by surprise. He did not doubt or question his attachment to her, but to this place: perhaps it has become a home in truth. Out of respect to her goat, who has lived here far longer than himself, he shifts back to the shape of a man and carries Beatrice the last few yards.

In the moonlight, he looks at her as she does him. Hut, she terms it. He snorts, amused.

"It has few comforts," he warns. "And it leaks in the rain."

Órfhlaith

In answer, the witch just looks at the clear, starry sky.

Looks back at him. Raises her brows a moment.

She doesn't even argue the point with him. She just goes with him into her cottage, where she finds her way in the darkness by memory. Together, they lay Beatrice down, cover her up with a blanket. The witch finds a clean shift and her cloak, then pulls some salted meat and dried fruit from her stash in the cottage. Outside, they draw a bit of water to share, but it is clear that all she wants right now is to curl up under that cloak and beside him, and sleep.

All the same, she hesitates before entering... his hut.

Conall

Perhaps the witch feels a certain deja vu. Another stranger, grievously wounded, welcomed into her cottage. Another fire lit and banked for a stranger's warmth. Another night in which she gives up her own bed to another who needs it more.

She has a wolf to help her this time. He carries Beatrice while she prepares the bed. He lays her down and she covers her up. He sets a small pail of clean water beside the bed in case Beatrice wakes in the night, and she finds salted meat, dried fruit. They emerge back into the cool night, surrounded by the sound of night-insects and wind.

A small moon in the sky. More stars than can be numbered overhead. The lights of the village below are nonexistent tonight, the people perhaps too afraid to light fires, or perhaps simply too few for their fires to penetrate the distance and the dark.

When he sees her hesitate he reaches out to her. His big hand curls fingers around hers. The lean-to is shabby, crudely constructed; little more than a series of somewhat uniform wooden stakes lashed together with sinew, driven into the ground and leaned against the side of her sturdier stone cottage. There is no distinction between ceiling and wall -- all is a single slanting structure. A heavy fur serves as a door. This he pulls aside, granting her entrance to what one might imagine to be his den.

It is scarcely large enough for the wolf alone. When he follows her in, the space is crowded indeed. With the heavy fur falling back over the entrance, the 'hut' warms quickly enough from their body heat alone - nevermind the gaps between the stakes, large enough through which to glimpse stars.

A pile of furs underfoot serves as a bed, set on hard ground. There is no source of light whatsoever. The wolf reaches around her to pull back a few of the furs, gruffly motioning her to sit.

Órfhlaith

It happened when she was a child. It happened after her mother died. It happened many times before that storm that brought Conall slumping to her door. It has even happened since then. At this point, it is almost routine: the only ones who ever come to her cottage in the hills are in need of help. It is one of the reasons her mother built the cottage there to begin with. It is one of the reasons that Orla stays. One day she will tell him that is something she believes about the reason there is life here: it isn't about gods or messiahs. Life exists - they exist - so that strangers may help one another.

Not tonight, though. Tonight, she is silent. Waits for him to invite her in, and then smiles faintly, and then they are engulfed in the small space hardly large enough for them to occupy together. She brushes against the wall of her cottage and the planks of the lean-to. The air is still crisp here, through cracks to the outside. She feels fur underfoot and smiles to herself again. Sits, though she didn't see him indicating that she should. Reaches for him, in the dark. Shakes her cloak out over sore, blistered feet and bare legs and then lies down beside him, their bodies bumping against one another as they find some manner of comfort in the cramped space.

Without hesitation this time, she wraps her arm over his side, resting her head on his chest.

Conall

When she reaches for him, he is still pulling off his thin linen undershirt. His shoes were kicked off outside -- it seems even wolves try not to track mud into their beds. Wordlessly and a little awkwardly, they find room beside one another.

She lays her cloak over her lower body. He pulls some furs over them both. She wraps her arm around him and he reciprocates. She can feel him sigh silently. Perhaps it is contentment. Comfort. The relief of being off tired feet.

After a time he whispers, "How did you know she could be saved?"

Órfhlaith

Down in the woods, she didn't feel cold. She was fiery with witchcraft, from exertion. Walking back she was warm from the steady walking. Now night has fallen and her body is still and the hills are colder than the lowlands, anyway. She does not mind the fur, the cloak, his nearness. She sinks into that warmth, exhaling.

Her eyes are already closed. She is almost asleep, her head heavy, when he speaks. But she doesn't shush him. He can tell she isn't asleep yet, but she is silent at first. She doesn't know the answer. She never asked herself if Beatrice could be saved. She did not think before she attempted it.

Which is what leads her to understanding:

"I do not believe anyone had ever tried to save Beatrice. Help her."

Her hand moves, idly, over his bare side. She relishes the feel of his skin on her hand. It feels so comfortable, so natural. So rare. So heart-stoppingly precious.

"All creatures need that. But I do not think it was ever truly given to her. Before."

Conall

In the darkness, he is so silent she may wonder if he's heard her at all. Yet after a long quiet he stirs a little, finding her hand with his, replacing it over his heartbeat, covering it with his palm.

"You are gentle," he murmurs. "Some would use that for their own ends. But I will protect you now."

Órfhlaith

On another night, or if the sun were up, she might scoff at him. Say something flippant, glib. But the darkness around them is too soft for that.

"That is not what I want," she whispers. "For I am not -"

a beat. A correction.

"I am many things. But I am no one's pawn, and I do not need protection." Which he knows. He saw her the first time Thomas and Beatrice's brother brought the woman here. Saw her with Thomas, casting a demon from his body. Saw her at the well. Saw her in the other realm, the darker one. He knows.

"I do wish you to stay with me, though," she says, but... he knows that, too. Or should.

She says it aloud, in case he does not.

"Walk beside me," she whispers, but it is almost an echo of words spoken just a moment before.

Conall

Gently, but firmly, she disabuses him of this notion. She tells him what he already knows to be true: that she needs no protection. That she, despite her gentleness, despite even her frail human body that can take no other shape, faced down a god of unimaginable power and malevolence with little more than will and words.

That she does want him with her, though. That she wants him beside her.

He thinks on this a while. Then, softly, he squeezes her hand. "As you will," he whispers. "I will stay. I will walk beside you. I will try ... not to make of you what you are not."

Órfhlaith

Now the teasing: a subtle thread of humor in her sleepy voice: "You could not." A small laugh, low in her throat, amused at herself and her own nature and also somewhat delirious from exhaustion: "I am more stubborn than Fionnuala."

She chuckles to herself, then yawns:

"My goat."

Conall

Again that snort of amusement.

"You would name that ornery beast," he mutters. Then, self-awareness: "You named me."

He shifts a little. Turns on his side, his arm draping over her middle. "Time to sleep," he says, soft.

Órfhlaith

Of course she, being barely older than a toddler, named her goat. Named her on the long walk from the town to the cottage, holding the rope around the baby goat's neck and whispering to it as they followed her mother back home. They straggled behind. She kept letting the little animal lead her off the path to munch on clover. Her mother kept having to call her along. She was so proud when her mother was tucking her in: she did not get lost, and she led the goat back safely, and the goat's name is Fionnuala, like the story, and

so she chattered along, until she wore herself out and slept.

Of course Fionnuala is no baby goat any longer. She's large, and she's quite old, and perhaps only lives still because her mistress is a witch, and she lives a life that would seem luxurious compared to any other livestock's. And Orla hardly ever speaks her name except when she whispers in the goat's ear as she milks her. Strokes those soft, floppy ears. Lets the goat nip at the ends of her hair, because for a very long time after Orla's mother died, it was just the two of them.

"She is less beast than you," the witch mutters back. Doesn't have a quippy rejoinder when he mentions that she named him. She remembers that this is true. She knows his story now, though; it was never that he had a name that he kept from her. He never had one. No one ever gave him a name, just as no one ever tried to save Beatrice. She supposes most people do not name their goats, either.

Her hand strokes his chest where he laid her palm over his heart. Her wraps his arm around her, declaring what time it is, and she huffs a little laugh at him. Tucks her head against his chest, in the crook of his arm, and closes her eyes again.

Soon, thoughts of time leave her. Then names. Soon there is nothing but the sound of the woods past the planks of his lean-to, their mingled breathing, and the heavy, deep beating of his heart.

Conall

Time passes.

The wounded woman in the witch's hut sleeps a fitful and fevered sleep. Sometimes she moans and sometimes she thrashes, but never does she wake. At first the wolf watches her more often than not, wary and mistrustful. He does not leave her alone with his witch. Yet there is only so long a wolf can remain vigilant over a foe who never wakes, let alone attacks. He leaves to hunt. He comes back. He pokes his head into the hut to scowl at Beatrice. He spends the nights with his witch, out in his shabby little lean-to.

Wary as he is, he helps take care of the wounded woman. After a day or so, he performs that minor miracle of his again, lays his hands on Beatrice and heals her with his very spirit. It seems to help a little. It does not wake her, though. No; that takes time. And so,

Time passes.

Hours, then days. On the eve of the third day, Beatrice opens her eyes. She is very weak. She shakes when she moves, and her face is pallid. There is recognition in her eyes when she looks upon the witch, the wolf. She does not speak, though. She seems ashamed. She turns her face to the wall and remains thus, silent and miserable, curled on the witch's bed.

They let her be. Perhaps the witch speaks to her. The wolf does not. He shares meat with her, though. Once, when Beatrice is sick, he even fetches her a drink of cool water. But he keeps his distance. He remains wary.

Time passes.

A week. One morning Beatrice walks unsteadily to the door of the hut. The wolf is working in the garden, boots planted, hands dirty. The witch is making something with her hands, braiding grass and vine. Perhaps it is magic. Perhaps it is only something pretty. They both look at Beatrice. In a soft voice she asks for a little water. And food. And perhaps some straw, to make her own bed. And so the witch moves back into her hut. Beatrice makes a bed on the ground. The wolf sleeps in the witch's bed, and he always faces Beatrice, his brow oft wrought into a heavy frown even in his sleep.

Time passes.

The seasons turn; late summer toward fall. Beatrice grows stronger. There is color in her cheeks again. Flesh on her bones. She is a pretty one, though years of hard living have given her age beyond her years. She helps where she can, carrying water, planting crops, cooking sometimes. It turns out she knows how to weave and teaches them to make their own garments. She speaks more now, fragments of conversation that eventually weave into a story.

They learn a little of the hell that was her life: married to a man who had defiled her, told again and again to cherish him, obey him, stop complaining, he's a good man. They learn of the times her belly grew, and how she rid herself of each of his children. The first time with a crude tool she'd fashioned herself, which made her so ill she nearly died. It did not dissuade Thomas from trying again. The second time, and the third, it turns out she'd sought the witch's help herself. Come up the hill in the dark of night, disguised with a heavy cloak, hiding her face in the shadows. She'd told little of her story then, said only she had been ravished, impregnated. Even then, even without knowing her or her true story, the witch had pitied her. Given her herbs of mercy; perhaps even offered her shelter. Beatrice never accepted. She says now she wishes she had.

But no. In her heart she was still a god-fearing woman. She dared not traffic with witches in the hills. She fled back to her village each time, and back to a man she hated. And she prayed, day after day, year after year. Prayed that he would fall ill. Prayed that he would become incapacitated, unable to torment her, unable to force her, unable. Prayed that he would die.

God never answered her. But something did. And so it began, first with whispers in the night, fragments of dreams. Ideas that formed in her mind, which did not feel like her own. Something else, something malevolent and so very, very ancient, beginning to share her mind. She told herself it was an angel. Perhaps even her god. She knew it was not, but desperation leads one to lie to oneself, and to believe it. She obeyed this god of hers. She became a vessel, through which his minions could peer into this world. When the witch drove the spirits from her the first time, she became a conduit. Not strong enough to withstand a god's passage into this world. But strong enough for his minions, for stray aspects and fragments of his immense and incomprehensible self.

They poured through her, those lesser demons, and tore loose through the village. She was viciously pleased. She wanted them to torment those who had tormented her. She wanted to see them suffer. Her vengefulness had taken on its own life. Sometimes she could still convince herself she was protected by avenging angels. Most times she knew what they were, and what she had done. But it seemed too late. She did not know how to stop them. She did not want to stop them.

Every life taken widened the passage between worlds. Innocent people were dying, but she no longer cared. So long as those who had hurt her were hurting, too. Soon it was large enough for her to see her god's realm. Soon it would be large enough to pass her god into this world. She would sacrifice the man who had destroyed her life to this god. When it was over she would carry him across; bear him into her world and free him there if it killed her.

Time passes.

Fall into winter. Through the cold season they live together, the three of them: two creatures who were not quite human, and one who was but perhaps no longer quite is. Beatrice learns from the witch: the nature of plants, the lore of potions and tinctures. Not everything. Not that which cannot be taught. But enough.

Winter into spring. When the snows melt Beatrice tells them she is leaving. Her mother's people come from the north, she says. Perhaps she will go to them. Perhaps she will live close to them, though not quite amongst them. Perhaps she will live her own solitary life in the hills, with a goat and some plants, some herbs, some knowledge too old and forbidden for the church.

Perhaps they will see each other again, she says. They are friends now, are they not? And perhaps one day a young woman will hurry up Beatrice's hill in the dark of night. Perhaps, just perhaps, she will stay, and Beatrice will aid as she was aided. Teach as she was taught. Perhaps, like this, the art will pass on, and Beatrice will find some balance within herself, some hard-won peace after so long a struggle.

old god of the red void.

Órfhlaith

He loosens his hand, but she lingers a moment. Holds him a second more before she lets him go, too.

She seems to understand what he's doing as he does it: the branch, the test. Then, when he lodges it in place, she gives a little laugh: "Brilliant."

For the third or fourth time now, she takes his hand. Doesn't explain, but perhaps she thinks they could get split up on the way. She hardly knows; this isn't the shadow realm either of them were taught about. So she walks forward holding his hand, making sure not to go headfirst.

Conall

One after the other, they climb over that branch and land in darkness. The ground beneath their feet feels rough and hard, pebbles and dirt atop stone. It slopes down before them. The air is uncomfortably warm. Smells of smoke and some fainter stench. Thomas sounds farther away now, ahead and down, footsteps sliding and scratching on the unstable surface.

"Beatrice!" His voice echoes back up to them. "Beatrice, why do you hide from me? Why -- "

Abruptly, Thomas screams.

Órfhlaith

The scream makes Orla flinch. She keeps her hand on Conall's, since she cannot see him. For once, though, she does not run headlong towards the sound. She walks slowly, but

inexorably,

forward.

Conall

The wolf jerks, too. His hand tightens. Hard to tell if he'd rather bound foward or back, but doing precisely this -- this deliberate, slow progress -- makes him more uncomfortable than both combined.

It is what they do, though. They walk forward. The ground slopes. The air presses in. From the way sounds echo and propagate, they can tell they're in a tunnel. When the wolf reaches his arm to the side, he touches the walls -- makes a disgusted sound and pulls back, wiping his fingers on his shirt.

"Wet," he mutters by way of explanation. "Sticky."

The ground beneath their feet is becoming tacky, too. Their feet squelch slightly with every step. Ahead, the screaming has stopped. A sliding, dragging noise has taken its place. As their eyes adjust to the dark, they become aware of a diffuse, reddish glow that seems to come from nowhere and everywhere at once. Brighter up ahead, perhaps.

Órfhlaith

Which was perhaps the wrong thing to do while holding hands with a witch who blew up a well today.

She pauses. He can hear a rustle of her sleeve, then a squelch. Of course she's touching the disgusting wall he just told her was wet and sticky. In the dark, she can't quite tell if it's the same stuff as the slime that was all over the monster they fought earlier. But she does know this: it's flammable.

Files that away a moment later, as she senses the redness. She frowns. He can see her, soon enough, frowning, her face cast in scarlet. She looks at Conall, and it's hard to tell what is in her eyes, but he sees her lay her finger across her lips. She goes on, as quietly as she can.

Conall

Quiet, then. He nods once. An instant later, that instinctive thoughtless magic of his again: the shape of flesh and bone changing, dense fur pushing through skin. He drops forward on all fours, a large wolf creeping forward on white paws.

They descend. The walls drip ichor. The ground is inches thick in it. The wolf's paws get dirty, and he can't help but lift one and shake it from time to time, disgusted. Still, he makes no sound. The tunnel curves as it burrows deeper and deeper, and as they round a bend they see -- a thing, something wriggling, human-sized.

It's Thomas. At least, it must be. Still alive, struggling feebly, but entirely encased, cocooned in layer upon layer of thin, sticky, glistening-wet material. Things are scuttling ahead of him, spider-creatures as big as hounds, dragging him behind them. They're pulling him toward a gaping hole in the ground, glowing red.

Órfhlaith

It's all right now, she thinks, if she loses his hand. She can see well enough in the darkness with the red glow. They're almost there, wherever 'there' is. Still: when his hand leaves hers so he can shift, she feels a momentary pang. Silly, she tells herself. She shakes it off. It's not like he's going anywhere.

Soon, though, they find Thomas. It's horrific, what they come across. Orla's heart twists. She stops going slow and rushes forward, hands splayed in front of her in a sudden, sharp gesture that coincides with her shout:

"Ignis!"

Not the first name of fire, hardly. But right now, in this era, the loudest.

Órfhlaith

[She is attempting to set the spider-hounds on fire. For teh lulz.]

Conall

[I FEEL LIKE I SHOULD MAKE YOU ROLL SOMETHING :D HOW ABOUT WITS + OCCULT.]

Órfhlaith

[wits 4: quick reactions + occult 4: witchcraft]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 3, 5, 7, 7, 9, 9, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 7 ) Re-rolls: 3

Conall

Fire bursts forth, not from her fingertips but from her mind. Stark shadows suddenly paint the walls as fire licks from the jointed legs of the spider-things, flaring across the coarse-haired, armored backs. After so much darkness the light is blinding, throws the claustrophobic confines of their current situation into hideous relief. An ear-splitting whistle -- not from the creatures' mandibles but from steam escaping carapaces -- accompanies the mad scratch of too many legs on rock as the spiders scramble, writhe, rake at themselves in a futile attempt to escape their scorching bodies.

Two die almost immediately, shuddering. One rushes up the tunnel, aflame, and meets a quick end in the wolf's jaws. The three remaining spiders are devoted to their task, dragging Thomas through that hole with the last of their strength. Two fall through after him, dead or near enough. The last dies at the edge of the hole, eight glistening eyes shriveling in the conflagration.

From below, a thud as Thomas hits ground. A distant, inhumane chittering answers the noise.

Órfhlaith

She sees the fire in mind, first. Her mind goes black, and then fire is coming forward, bursting out of that darkness, erupting, consuming her thoughts. For a few brief moments, she is not so much herself as she is a vessel for a single, raw element of nature, the hungriest and most impatient.

The witch regains her senses just in time to see the first gout of fire that used to be a spider. Her pupils shrink rapidly to dark pinpoints in the blue, equal to the color at the center of the flames. There's no mad joy on her face, no awe or delight in her own power or in the pain of even these creatures. Just a sort of molten, melting look, glassy and dazed, as her body recognizes what she has just spent of its dwindling reserves.

For a while, she doesn't even move; the spiders die. She thinks that should have been enough, so she doesn't react fast enough when she sees that three of them, while burning, are still lugging Thomas along. She sees him at the edge of the hole. She hears him fall. It takes a moment for it to register what has happened: that she failed. It takes another moment for her to summon the strength to go forward, to head for the hole, calling out -

"Con!"

- as she does. She stands at the edge of the hole, looking downward. Beside her, a spider's corpse is burning. When he looks at her, he sees that her hair is still wafting in some kind of invisible wind, floating away from her in dim waves, like heated air above stone.

Conall

At once the wolf is beside her, looking down the hole with her. It's a long drop, but not unsurvivable. Ten feet, fifteen. Two dead spiders and an entombed man lie down there, the last of which is still feebly struggling. The wolf bares his teeth, then leaps down -- shifting in midair, landing in his largest form, flaming spider-corpses crunching beneath his weight.

He reaches handpaws up toward the witch. The meaning is clear: jump, and he'll catch her.

The chittering is closer now.

Órfhlaith

There was need in that call. Easy to see why: her already fair skin is pallid. Magic moves like a corona around her now, unchecked by will or control or whatever mortal leash keeps it subtle in normal, earth-bound realms. The steady burn of her power today has been more than she's done in most of her life; that last burst of energy has all but sapped her, left her almost... human, really. And no human being should be here, facing this.

But she is. And the only reason she can - and the only reason she can go on - is because he's there with her. She knows that. Isn't fighting or denying it, right now. Looks at him and calls the name that she gave him, because he had no other to tell her.

And she may as well be saying it in as many words: I need you.

--

So then he is there. Some of the energy around her calms a bit, settles, returns inward, filling her heart again instead of trying to escape her like a leaf on the breeze. She exhales. She can see, now, that Thomas is still struggling in the cocoon. She nods, as if to herself. Con jumps, and she doesn't yelp, but she does watch him, and

imagine that: has the energy to be amused. To cock a small half-smile.

She jumps.

Conall

They are both not quite human. Even in this age of mud huts and superstition, when mankind sees demons in every shadow and danger in every crevice, they are creatures that stretch the imagination. The raw power that burst from her; the otherworldly energy that seems to unyoke her from the pull of the earth itself. And the sheer scope and scale of him now -- nearly tall enough when he rears like this to grasp the edges of that hole and pull himself back up. Would be able to easily, if he leapt.

She jumps. It's hardly even a drop before he catches her -- a few feet at most. His handpaws are enormous, closing around her torso with surprising gentleness. He sets her down and she finds herself in the corner of a subterranean cavern. The ground slopes down and the ceiling up, opening up into a vast space.

Still that nameless, sourceless glow in the air. Still those weeping walls. Other tunnels and pits lead to this cavern, and that distant, approaching chittering comes from one of the larger tunnels. A faint wind blows out of that tunnel too. Not fresh air but a hot, stinking wind, wet with humidity, pushed ahead of whatever it is that approaches.

Something stirs in the murky depths of the chamber. A human voice, or something like one:

"You should have left him to die. Ran while you still could."

Órfhlaith

Since she first found him and cared for him, she's known he was warm. In fact, when he was injured was the coolest she's ever felt his skin, until he regained some health. It was a wonder to feel him against her bare skin that night on the outcropping; she marveled at the heat that suffused her body wherever she was in contact with his. But right now, her own skin feels uncomfortably cold, except in patches - her hands, her face - that are just a little too warm. Jumping into his arms when he is in this massive, ungodly form is like being buried in a pile of furs. She gasps a little at it, holding tight to him even though it wasn't a very big jump and he obviously has a good hold on her. She looks at him, fully, her eyes unblinking.

Say this much for her: even as drained as she is, she can look at him. And it isn't terror that fills her, but something more like awe.

Her feet, in her muddied and slime-covered shoes, set down on the ground. She exhales and looks around. She chokes a bit on the wind that hits their faces. She coughs.

And then:

"You may still run. While you can."

Conall

A faint, rasping laugh echoes through the acrid air. In the center of the chamber, something moves again. Something rises creakily, shambling forward.

The witch has seen this woman before. She's seen her carried up the rocky hills by her brother, her husband. She's seen her laid inside a healing circle. She cleansed her, drove the foul spirits from her, watched color come back into her cheeks. She has seen her before and knows her, but only because there is no one else this could be.

She would not have recognized her on sight. Beatrice is unrecognizable: a grotesque and naked figure, limbs cachetic and wasted. Eyes sunk deep in a skull-like face, the pupils faintly aglow as though that miasma in the air fills her from within. Innumerable weeping sores cover skin hanging loose from jutting bones. Her belly alone is engorged, bulging, full, traced with dark veins. Bony fingers caress that mass absently, and even from across the cavern the witch can see something move inside her in response.

"Brave," that-which-was-Beatrice wheezes. "And blind. Why would you die for them? For him? My husband. They are petty and small and cruel and evil, rotten to their marrow. You know not what they are, nor what they deserve."

Órfhlaith

Beatrice was in her care, once. And she thought she helped her.

Saved her.

For a moment, the witch closes her eyes, then opens them. Takes a breath. Says, of all things:

"Do not call him your husband. He was her husband." Shakes her head. "You cannot be Beatrice."

Conall

"I am Beatrice," she snarls, "but you are right. He is not my husband. He never should have been my husband.

"Ask him yourself. Ask my dear, faithful Thomas how our marriage came to be. He lives still, does he not? Alive a little longer, until my lord arrives."

Órfhlaith

There was hope in her, there, that this wasn't Beatrice. Isn't. It can't be. No human woman --

Orla feels sick. She looks grey. Goes over to the cocoon where Thomas is and, fighting her nausea, puts her hand on the film. Tries to tear it, if she can. Looks at Con for help, if she can't.

Conall

Through all this the wolf has been silent: crouched on all fours, his hackles raised, his eyes fixed on the thing Beatrice has become. When the witch starts to tear at the cocoon, he reaches to help her. His eyes never leaving Beatrice, he digs his claws in, tears the sticky, gelatinous material that encases Thomas. Layer upon layer upon layer shreds -- parting with wet snaps, opening in yawning ovals. As they go, the wolf shifts again, returning to his human shape. Finally, they free Thomas's gasping mouth, bulging eyes. He sucks hungrily at the air, then chokes on the stench and rolls pitifully to his side, retching, arms and legs still entangled.

Beatrice watches impassively, keeping her distance. She strokes her swollen belly. The thing inside her writhes and coils and settles, comforted.

"Beatrice?" Thomas catches sight of her. "What... what has happened to you -- "

He turns on his face and vomits. The wolf, baring his teeth in disgust, tears the rest of the cocoon away so roughly that he heaves the man from the floor several times before spilling him limbs-akimbo onto the filthy ground.

Órfhlaith

Despite the fact that what they're doing is grotesque, the look on the witch's face when Thomas's face is revealed is one of aching relief, of care, of nurturance. Even when he rolls and vomits, she stays with him, helps him on his side so he doesn't choke. Pity and rage and worry and disgust fly around inside of her, crashing in to one another.

"Con, careful," she says, low but clear, as the cocoon gets jerked around. Goes to Thomas when he's free, wishing she had water to give him, something. "Thomas, tell me how you and Beatrice came to be married. Tell me now. The truth."

Conall

"What?"

Blank incomprehension. Then bewilderment.

"What -- why would you -- this is no time to -- "

"Answer her," growls the wolf, impatient.

Thomas flinches. He coughs, turns his face to the side, spits. Wiping his mouth, he sits up. "'Tis a story like any other, I suppose. Her brother and I were playmates as children. She was oft in our shadow. You know how younger sisters are. When I became a man, and she a woman, things happened as they do, between a man and a woman. Soon she was with child," his eyes flicker to her bulging belly and then away, sickened, "and I begged her father for her hand. He gave her to me."

"Oh, how pleasantly you tell the story, Thomas." Beatrice's voice drips with disdain. "Speak the truth for once, worm. You were a man, sixteen and grown. I was yet a child! I had not seen my twelfth summer when you began to torment me, following me, cornering me, saying disgusting things, putting your hands where they did not belong.

"How I begged then. Begged you to leave me be, begged my brother and my father to protect me; begged to be sent away to a convent, begged to be kept safe. None heeded me. Before I was thirteen you'd planted your bastard in me, and then -- salt in my wounds -- my father, my brother, the priest, all the wretched men of the village stood by and let you have me. Let you do what you would with me every night of my life."

"Beatrice, I made you my wife!" Thomas is ashen, genuinely shocked. "I could have left you a fallen woman, carrying a nameless bastard, but I didn't. I loved you! Your brother knew it, and your father. God knows I speak the truth."

Beatrice laughs. "My brother is dead. My father too. I have a new god now." Her lambent eyes flick past Thomas, land on the witch. "Perhaps the witch of the hills will know this one's name."

Órfhlaith

Heat rises around the witch.

Thomas, whom she is crouched over, feels it first: a wave of dry, crackling heat lashing across his face and his wet, tainted flesh. Conall feels it, too, a wave rippling out from her. He can see the ends of her hair rising again. Stranger still, she seems to become somewhat borderless, as though the edges of her body are mixing with the air itself in eddies of energy. The only mortal left in this place is Thomas, and the gods only know what looking at her now is like for him. She is a terror: driving out evil spirits, lifting monsters into the air with a thought, engulfing her enemies in flame that needs no spark. But the uncanny veil of humanity is being stripped away in this dark, strange place, and there is a shifting light in the irises of her eyes that looks like water, clouds, lightning, fire.

Her eyes are, in some ways, not entirely unlike Beatrice's. The energy is all birthed from the same place, as all energy ever was. The line between purity and corruption is terribly thin. And a great tragedy, in life and in magic, is that someone else's action can push you over that line. You have so little control. And none at all, over what others do to you.

Perhaps none of them can tell what it is that causes this reaction in the witch: the way her eyes shine, the way the world around her warps and bends to whatever power she's gathered in her short, solitary life. It is easy enough, for all of them, to recognize it as rage. Blind, murderous fury. Ruthless, ravenous, wrath, the likes of which could bring cities down, could uproot fields, could tear bodies in half. That is often what power looks like. That is often how power is supposed to feel.

But as quick as her temper is, that has never been the root of it. Not for Órfhlaith. Nor her mother, who was also a fearsome master of her craft. There are deeper wells. There are older laws of nature, which are not about what will be rewarded and what will be punished but about what is owed: between earth and sun, between air and life, between the hearts and minds of living creatures. There are contracts, unspoken and unwritten and unremembered by most, that must be honored. The price of breaking such contracts is the corruption they are all surrounded by now. The price of breaking these contracts is always, ultimately, a grief so encompassing that no one is spared.

Not Thomas.

Not Beatrice.

Not the witch.

As steep as the price of wrath is, this price is dearer.

--

She says nothing to Thomas. She does not grab him by the hair and slam his head into the rock. She does not cover his mouth and nose and pin him down, starve him for air and kill him that way. She rises from him, turns away from him, and the air around him gets very cold with her departure.

Then she walks towards Beatrice. Her hands are before her, as if she were carrying a large bowl. She walks slowly, as if that bowl is filled. But as she walks, something is filling the space between her hands. Something Conall has never seen the witch create, has perhaps never seen anyone but another wolf make visible or manipulate. A pale light, clear and blue and shimmering, brighter than the red glow they saw earlier, and achingly familiar. It is so pure it cannot occupy the same space and time as rage. It is the essence of every healing talen made by every theurge since they learned to create it. It is, in truth, the essence of all magic, whether made by wolves or witches or faeries.

It comes from Gaia.

It is Gaia.

Orla is standing before Beatrice, holding a swirling, growing pool of gnosis. Like an offering. Like a gift. Like a sacrifice.

The fire in her eyes has revealed itself as unshed tears. One rolls down. Then another.

"This is not who you are."

And even quieter, a plea:

"Come back."

Conall

With every word from Beatrice, Thomas cowered.

With every flicker of wrath, of power rising in the witch, he flinches lower still, whimpering. He cannot bear to look at her. He cannot bear to look at either of them -- not the woman who tried to help him, and not the woman who tried to escape him.

The wolf looks, though. His eyes flick between she-who-was-Beatrice and his witch. When the latter begins to step forward, he rises to his feet. Takes a step after her before some older, deeper understanding passes through him, and he stops.

She goes on alone, then. She walks forward, step by step, power crackling through the strands of her hair, purity cupped in her hands. Filling between her hands like water from an unseen spring. That pale, perfect light shines out from what she carries, lancing through the dim baleful red. The squelching slime peels back from her feet, leaving her standing on dry stone. When that light falls upon Beatrice, a few sores on her body close. That which grows inside her writhes visibly, and not in delight.

Beatrice meets the witch's eyes. The rage and triumph twisting her face subsides; becomes uncertainty. That dull glow at the heart of her pupils dims. Hesitantly, she reaches out her hand. Stops just shy of touching what is offered.

"I don't know if I can," she whispers. "My master is one of the Old Ones. He has burrowed so deeply inside me. And he is coming."

A shuddering breath.

"Nogg-Htharth of the Red Void. That is his true name. You must run. He cannot die, but if you can seal what I have opened..."

She jerks, as though struck by lightning. Her limbs spasm. Her head arches back. The dull red glow in the air begins to thicken again. The ground beneath their feet trembles.

"He is almost here."

Órfhlaith

Deep down, she's not sure this is going to work. She's not sure it can work. She's not sure Conall will let her get near Beatrice. She's not sure Beatrice deserves this, even now.

But again: the witch is a fool.

--

Conall does not stop her. Everything he is comes from those ancient contracts, that well of grief at their breaking. His strength, and his rage, are simply other expressions of it. In him, that rage can be a holy thing, as holy and pure as the light forming between Orla's hands now. So though he does not instantly understand, it takes only a moment for his soul to recognize it. Honor it.

Beatrice does not stop her, either. The witch thinks she might attack. Thinks she might run. Thinks there are a dozen other possibilities she hasn't considered. But Beatrice stands there, and a part of her heals. Small healings, against almost insurmountable wounds. The witch does not look away from Beatrice's baleful eyes though. That is where the change must happen.

And then... it does.

"The Old Ones are not as old as this," Orla tells her, still holding the light. "You can trust it."

And maybe it is too late;

he is coming.

Orla takes a deep breath, and commits that name to memory. And she should save her strength, re-absorb what she has offered, do what she can to seal this gate or opening that Beatrice speaks of. But then if they fail anyway, then Beatrice's soul is also lost. The part of her that understands the old ways does not think she deserves to succeed, if she walks away from Beatrice and leaves her to that fate.

So the witch surges forward those last few steps, and the light between her hands moves between her body and Beatrice's, and she wraps her arms around the other woman's starved frame as she does so. For a moment the light is too bright to look at. It does whatever it can do: whether wrapping around Beatrice or entering her. It does not matter. It was a gift freely given, a willing sacrifice. Orla does not regret it, even should it fail.

"Tell me what we must do," she gasps into the other woman's ear.

Conall

As the witch closes those last steps, Beatrice -- whether out of fear and self-preservation, or because she is compelled by what is inside her -- flinches away. It is not fast enough. She is upon her -- wrapping her arms around her, tightly, holding her as that brilliant light dazzles them both.

It surrounds them both, that light. Fills Beatrice, flows into her through every pore and orifice, sealing wounds and healing bruises. Yet that which is clean and pure can also be ruthless and unyielding. When it meets what is inside Beatrice, as it inevitably must, a great spasm wracks the emaciated woman. Twists her spine back, turns her fingers into gripping, grasping claws. She shakes like a leaf, and to that desperate gasp she can say only one thing --

"Close the passageway. The hole between worlds. Close it. I don't know how, but you must -- you must -- "

She screams. Dark blood runs down the insides of her thighs, pattering down on stone. Then something thicker than blood, and darker still -- purulent and black, stinking. Her abdomen collapses as it pours from her. As it hits the ground, it begins to coalesce.

"He is here. He is here. You must flee!"

Her eyes roll back. She goes limp, says nothing more. It's impossible to tell if the woman lives or not. An instant later the wolf is at his witch's side, scooping the collapsed Beatrice up in one arm, hurrying her along with the other.

Órfhlaith

The witch holds Beatrice as she collapses. She eases that passage to the ground, even though blood and worse gets on her shift, even though the spasms going through Beatrice threaten to bruise her. She holds her as she falls, but then she lets her go. She is shaking when she stands, intending to move, to do as Beatrice says and close the opening. She looks down at what is moving, in the blood, and chokes on a scream. Conall grabs Beatrice and they turn to run.

Thomas is still there on the ground. Still wounded, still wretched. And in a better world, or in a purer state, she might stop for him, give him some words, try to heal his soul as she has tried to heal Beatrice's. But here is the truth: he has broken so many of the old laws. He feels no remorse, has staved off the pain that is his ultimate repayment. It will come for him eventually, no matter what. And there will be no true justice for him, in their world. Orla knows that.

And here is the deeper, darker truth:

she just has so little left to give, right now. Especially not for him.

They run. And they leave him behind.

--

"How do we get back?" she pants to Conall, as they run. "The hole - we jumped - how are we going to get back up?"

Conall

Thomas is screaming as they pass him. He thrashes against the last of the biofilm that coated him, scrambling to his feet, slipping in the muck, falling again. He reaches for them, his fingers brushing the witch's ankles.

The wolf shifts. Turns into something huge and horrifying. Turns on him, snapping his jaws at the man. Thomas is well and truly screaming now, incoherent, scrabbling away.

They turn. They run.

They leave him behind.

--

"I lift you." In this form, the wolf's words are grating growls, barely intelligible. He runs on three paws, the fourth carrying the unconscious Beatrice. "Then I jump."

The ground quakes, sudden, much harder than ever before. Even the wolf stumbles. A crack runs across the cavern's ceiling. A foul wind blasts out of that yawning tunnel. The red glow in the air is suddenly incandescent, casting everything into sharp bloody relief, throwing their shadows ahead of them. They don't dare look back. They can't help but look back, eyes drawn by a force they cannot understand.

Nogg-Htharth roars into the cavern: a gargantuan presence so profane that the mind cannot quite grasp its true shape. Only impressions linger -- its size, its stench, its blindness and its walls of bulbous, pulsating flesh the dull red of organ-meat. Its noise is deafening, and if the witch listens to the cacophony she'll hear -- she'll understand, somehow -- the insinuations, the intent, the revolting things it wants to do.

It finds Thomas first. It descends on him, and his wordless wails follow them as they flee.

Órfhlaith

Well... that sorts that, then. Orla doesn't argue. She just runs, as fast as she can, even though her limbs feel like they are about to detach. She does fall, for a moment, only to feel a handpaw yanking her up again, putting her on her feet to run again. She is choking on dust from the crumbling earth above, though she doubts it's the earth she knows.

She knows it isn't.

When the roar of the old one echoes through the cavern, she covers her ears as she runs like a child. She is crying; at one point she screams. She is very afraid, and she is exhausted, and all her energy is reserved for the last thing she knows she must do. She has no time to worry about controlling tears or stifling screams.

They get to the hole, though no light comes from above. She holds tight to Conall's fur where she can, as he hefts her up. Grabs the edge of the hole when it's within reach and hauls herself up, scrabbling across slime left from Thomas's cocoon, ash and char left by the spiders she ignited. And perhaps it would be wiser if she ran, without waiting, but

that would take greater strength of will than she has left. So she waits for Conall to join her, still clutching Beatrice, and then she runs onward. Back up the slope, around the bend in the tunnels, gasping for air now, sweating, trying not to listen to the voice in her mind that make every thought pulse an ugly, violated red.

She runs until she sees, sticking out of nowhere, the end of a branch.

Conall

Neither of them have any delusions of battle. Neither of them imagine, even for an instant, standing to face the horror at their backs. They run, and the first time she slips he hauls her up. The second time, he lifts her altogether, carrying her as he carries the unconscious woman.

They reach the hole that dropped them into this cavern. He heaves her up. She scrabbles her way up, up where the air isn't so red, so thick, so distorted with the mindcrushing presence of Nogg-Htharth. The respite is brief. The old one has finished with Thomas; a mere snack, an appetizer. It is not Thomas it wants, or even Beatrice, or even a witch or a wolf. It is the world it wants, their whole entire world with all its light and beauty, and even though the opening between its world and theirs is so very small right now it can find a way through. It is patient. It is very old, and very strong.

The ground trembles again: the wolf, leaping up through the hole, squeezing through a space not really intended for monsters out of myth. He is panting. She is running again. He is running with her, helping her along, pushing her along, sometimes dragging her along when he must, running until they see, sticking out of nowhere, the end of a branch.

He shoves Beatrice through first. Truth is, left to himself he would have tried to kill her. He would have left her behind, too. But he is not alone and that is not what his witch wants, and so Beatrice is the first of all of them to escape. She plunges through that stupefying gap in midair, disappearing head-first exactly in the way that so disturbs the wolf.

Then it's her turn. He pushes her toward that passage between the worlds, looking over his shoulder to see the walls of the tunnel quiver and shake. The air is growing thick again, thick and red. It is hard to breathe; so warm and filthy.

Órfhlaith

"Con-"

and she is through the gap between worlds, tumbling out beside Beatrice in the mud,

"-all!"

A heartbeat that threatens to kill her, then. She feels it breaking inside of her,

and then he's there. He wasn't wrong: it's beyond unsettling, watching pieces of a person come through the air like that. She feels such relief she doesn't mind, though. And then panic: Nogg-Htharth is still coming.

So she scrambles forward. She goes to the branch and shoves it out of the way so it cannot wedge the door open, as it were. And then she casts about, trying to figure out what to do, and how, until she looks down.

Her shift is covered in the blood and worse-than-blood that left Beatrice's body when the light entered her. And she knows: this is a part of him. So she puts her hands on it. Still wet. Cold now, and coagulating. She shudders, but gets it all over her palms, getting as close to the spot where she knows the opening is as she dares, and then moving her hands just that much closer. Stops just shy of her fingertips entering the other world.

"I bind you, Nogg-Htharth of the Red Void, Old One, Undying. With your own essence, I bind you. With your true name, I bind you."

The witch takes a deep breath.

"I bind you, Nogg-Htharth of the Red Void, Old One, Undying. With your own essence, I bind you. With your true name, I bind you."

Another breath.

She begins again. And even as the roaring from the other side grows louder, and the roaring of her own thoughts in her ears grows piercing, she goes on.

I bind you.

Conall

The air is so sweet on this side. The ground so firm. The trees, the sky -- all of it so clean, even if they live in a preindustrial world of mud huts and rutted roads, even if personal hygiene meant a monthly dip in a stream to most, even if refrigeration and antibiotics and hand soap haven't even begun to occur to the population yet. It is clean. It is pure here, and sweet, and clean.

She tumbles through. She falls over the tangle of roots and branches; she scrambles back up. He's right behind her, barely a second behind, an eternity behind. He bursts through, yellow eyes and white fur, white paws caked in thick red-black filth. She knocks the branch aside. He faces the invisible gap between worlds, panting, ears laid back, snarling.

It is clean here. It was clean here. But already Nogg-Htharth is coming. Already that profane beat in their minds; already the air congealing in their nostrils. She slathers her hands in filth. She holds her palms just shy of the doorway between worlds. She speaks words, and they have power. Or rather: she speaks words, and she has magic. She has magic because her mother raised her. She has magic because her mother taught her. She has magic because her mother had magic, and her grandmother, and her ancestresses back a thousand generations or more, and they have died and been murdered and sacrificed and bled so that it could pass on, down through the centuries, into her.

It is in her blood. It is in her bones. Even exhausted, stripped down to the barest bones of will, it is within her.

She speaks the words once. The palms of her hands feel hot. The air trembles, wavering like the air above a fire. That terrible red corruption is seeping through, curling contagion into the edges of leaves, spreading dark over the branches.

She speaks the words twice. Her hands burn. Through empty air itself she can see the other side, swelling closer by the second. She can see Nogg-Htharth closing, can feel the weight and heft of that mighty old one, can feel the earth beneath her feet begin to tremble as well. He is so close now. He is howling, somewhere between desperation and triumph, reaching through and any moment now she'll feel it, feel his touch against her fingertips, meeting across that thinning between worlds.

She speaks the words thrice. Her breath burning in her throat, her vision darkening, her bones aching, her senses dulling into numbness, she pushes the words out.

I bind you, Nogg-Htharth of the Red Void. Old One. Undying.

With your own essence, I bind you.

With your true name, I bind you.

She speaks the words thrice, and all at once,

a great silence.

--

A pressure lifting from the mind. She can see again. She can feel again -- the ground beneath her feet, the wolf at her side. His fur brushing her cheek and her arm; then the solidity of his body as he stands beside her, human again.

There is nothing where the passageway used to be. Only air, a few charred leaves. Little by little, birds begin to sing again.

the haunted village.

Conall

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.

Órfhlaith

The 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."

Conall

A 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.

Órfhlaith

Occasionally 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.

Conall

Bending 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 )

Conall

Not 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.

Órfhlaith

She 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.

Conall

Unhesitatingly, 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.

Órfhlaith

For 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.

Conall

There 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.

Órfhlaith

In 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.

Conall

Thomas 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.

Órfhlaith

Something 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?"

Conall

No 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."

Órfhlaith

Orla 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."

Órfhlaith

She 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."

Órfhlaith

Silently, 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.

Conall

Behind 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?"

Órfhlaith

The 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!]

Órfhlaith

When 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.

Conall

The 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.

Órfhlaith

Perhaps 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.

Conall

The 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?!"

Órfhlaith

Not 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.

Conall

The 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.

Órfhlaith

The 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.

Conall

One 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.

Órfhlaith

The 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.]

Conall

By 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?"

Órfhlaith

Of 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."

Conall

The 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.

Órfhlaith

The 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!]

Órfhlaith

The 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.

Conall

The 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."

Órfhlaith

Oh, 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."

Conall

That 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."

Órfhlaith

Well, 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."

Conall

Alarmed 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."

Órfhlaith

There 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."

Conall

He 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."

Órfhlaith

Again: 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.

Conall

A 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."