Monstrous creatures, steel your nerves.
The realms prepare to try you.
Who knows what prizes you deserve?
Lookie here: it's me. Why, I do.

-- The Old Witch of Acadia

I am the witch with the goblin's face.
It belonged to another, but she's been replaced.

-- Witch's Rap

I am the witch with a thousand names,
And I've foreseen this world go up in flames.

-- Witch's Rap IV

I am the I am the
I am the witch

Whose big, fat ass
You should probably kiss.
Call me what you want.
I'm one bad bitch.

-- Witch's Rap V

ALONE

Ysthyrcia, daughter of Herastine, daughter of Phryggia, daughter of Stheno,
one and all daughters of Thalos, hatched from an egg in the manner of most
of her kind: Ysthyrcia hatched alone. Though fertile lamia can produce as
many as thirteen offspring per brood, the cruel and avaricious race of man
was a plague on Serin, smashing their eggs, selling their eggs, defiling
these sacred fertility nests on sight. Centuries ago the pit mothers began
dividing litters to increase each hatchling's chance at survival. And so it
was that Ysthyrcia emerged from her shell, alone, in a musty cave near the
ruins of a once great city.

Though she would not reach maturity for another year at least, Ysthyrcia
delighted in her newly hatched form. She flexed her tail and observed her
rattle thump artfully against the ground. She examined the whorls of black
diamonds decorating her scales and thought herself beautiful. She thought
herself beautiful but knew herself hungry.

Her forked tongue sampled the air. She could trace her mother's scent this
way, though it spoke of weeks gone from the den. It spoke of other things
too: that her mother last fled this lair in fear, the dank aroma of her kind
threaded with nausea, pursuit. A half-shed naga tail confirmed Ysthyrcia's
suspicions.

Ysthyrcia slithered from the den of her birth in search of food. Though she
knew not yet for what she hungered, her strong body guided her forward. She
wound down a trail toward a larger highway and spied massive city gates a
mile or so in the distance; they were no less imposing for their apparent
disrepair. Ysthyrcia's breath caught in her throat.

A small group of other travelers approached the dilapidated gates, but they
did not give her this pause. Rather, the lines of wooden crosses on each
side of the highway drew her attention and stilled her slithering tail.
Each held aloft a limp frame, a corpse, crucified there perhaps as warning
to incoming travelers, perhaps as sport.

Ysthycia stopped at the first cross. A winged creature sagged under the
burden of its own weight, putrescence bloating its gut, its brownish-gray
feathers dropping in each subtle breeze. The next, a man with black skin
and pointed ears, the remainder of his individuation lost to decay. And the
next ...

One like her: a lamia, a word she would later learn. Perhaps she had not
been dead as long, for Ysthyrcia could still scent her with her tongue. Her
sister's beautiful tail, scaled in jades and emeralds, variegated greens to
make one's heart light, hung limp like a terrible fish.

And the next. Another lamia. The next. On and on, a row of her sisters
displayed together in some macabre family reunion. She stopped at the last
cross bearing her kind and hissed, the sibilant warning echoed by the
twitching rattle capping her tail. Her mother ... The scent as clear as it
had been in the cave. Unlike many of the other victims suspended along the
highway, this corpse had been mutilated, the eyes removed, her entrails
unspooling like a kite string in the wind. Ysthyrcia's mother had suffered
to the last.

Ysthyrcia did not know who had erected these crosses, slain these beasts,
killed her sisters, defiled her mother. She did not even yet know a name
for herself. She only knew that men were a plague on the face of this land.

But there were worse things in Serin than men. Ysthyrcia approached the
group of travelers. She couldn't help but smile.

It was finally time to eat.

TRUE

Phryggia, daughter of Stheno, daughter of Ssybil, daughter of Gitysh,
daughters of Thalos all, was tired. She could rest now ... True. Ever
since she had wept on the altar of the god of tricks and begged him to take
her cursed sight, she could at least rest from the visions that dogged her
waking hours. She must scrape out her own eyes with a dagger, true, but
they always grew back, always grew back, bringing with them the return of
her Oracle sight. One did not entreat the god of tricks and expect an easy
answer.

Even so, she knelt again in supplication at his altar. The babe she laid
there began wailing anew, the cry echoing a momentary pang of regret in her
breast. Sacrificing children did not bring her much joy, even human
children (they had not yet tasted lamia blood but must atone for the sins of
their fathers), but the god would have his due. He always did, in the way
of men and gods.

Phryggia made this pilgrimage every year, and every year she brought a new
child to fulfill the terms of her pact; every year, she waited for a sign
from on high that her debt had finally been absolved, that she could discard
her sacrificial knife. And every year, she found only silence punctuated
sharply by a baby's cries.


Phryggia lowered her knife toward the child, tracing the once-vibrant runes
on the dagger's hilt now softened by worrying fingers and the inexorable
passage of time. She felt the Oracle sight burn and bubble in her chest as
it always did before it overcame her, perhaps gifting visions of a child's
life that would never be, one that in moments she would snuff out to appease
her deceitful god. Her voice intoned loudly, surprising even herself in this
moment of cursed reverie, "SHE COMES. SHE COMES. BLOOD OF MY BLOOD, SHE
COMES. BASILISK OF ASH AND BONE, SHE COMES. TO REVENGE HER SISTERS OR
DESTROY US ALL, SHE COMES." Phryggia collapsed on the altar.

**

She awoke sometime later next to the sniffling babe and heard the sounds of
men at the temple door attempting to dismantle her hasty barricade. They
would find her soon, and no amount of sacrifice seemed to put off humans
once they had scented lamia blood. She began to sing one of the dirge-like
lullabies of her kind to quiet the child's mewling; the eerie music filled
the temple, and even the men paused to listen.

She thought of her daughters Herastine and Ysthme as she sang, all that
survived of her final brood. True, she didn't have much time to complete the
ritual. She brought the knife hastily toward the child but could not
stomach this last beseeching.

Instead, she turned the ceremonial dagger toward her own breast. As she felt
its tip cold against her flesh, she thought to herself, 'She comes.' ... true ...
just a little further now, 'Blood of my blood,' Was she bleeding? True ...
One more push ... 'To destroy us all,' True, true, true.

The knife slipped from Phryggia's fingers. She could rest now ...

HELP 'HARPY'

For a long time, you have been told "harpies are a race of monstrous
creatures twisted by magic," but who told you that? The elves, perhaps,
fatuous and self-righteous as they are in their beauty; or perhaps the race
of men, who make a sport of smashing eggs, defiling nests. The question has
turned rhetorical, so I will omit the mark. I hope you do not miss it.

Whoever spread this claim, by all accounts, did not get it right.
Well-trodden as a rumor or a road, the broad strokes are there, sure, but
the details ...? For instance, you might not know which of the dark gods
created the harpies, but I do. At least, I know who made this one.

An old story, as they all are, and sad (as they all are!): a winged queen,
a covetous suitor, a trickster god. What would you do to protect your
people? Your daughter? We speak of choices as if the last one left were
two doors instead of one, as if we did not know it to be a curse when we
finally crossed through it.

But that was a long time ago and on the other side of the door. You have
been told that harpies are roughly humanoid in appearance with the face of a
maiden, wings of an avian, talons of a dragon, and that is all true. Few
lorists, though, will make mention of the harpy's eyes, most often black (or
what one describes as black when what she really means to convey is a void
from which no light can escape), hypnotic, likely a remnant of the chaotic
magic imbued at the time of their creation.

Harpies are not known for their intelligence, but rather their brutality,
their twisted minds, their alluring songs--as the adage goes, and this is
true enough to be false. You might not know them for their smarts, but they
are sharp as knives if as cruel. Do not blame the harpy for what you have
heard of her.

Finally, you have ben told "doomed is the one who listens too long to the
song of a harpy," and this is indeed true, but not for the reason you
might think. For we are all doomed here.

We are all doomed.

OF HARPIES & VENGEANCE

Born ... Hatched? Rumors of harpy fertility rituals have escaped the
covens for centuries, but they remain just so: rumors. An outsider could
never comprehend such precious wisdom, so our story begins--as most do--in
the middle.

Ocypode, seventh and youngest daughter of Podarce, Warrior Queen of the
Bloodwing coven of harpies, received a feather for her seventeenth birthday.

And not just any feather, but the last of her mother's, snatched from the
battlefield where she lay in a pool of her own entrails. A good harpy
death. A good harpy death.

And yet.

Ocypode considered the feather. Since her Blooding, she had sought the one
who could give her answers. And here the feather sat--no note, no scent,
but undeniably her mother's. What did it mean?

Like all of her kind, Ocypode could touch the feather and know something of
its origin. However a harpy felt when she molted would imprint upon her
feathers, leaving a residue for her coven to track in times of war. Harpies
communicated in this way, primally, before they even acquired language.

But when Podarce died, she'd dropped no feathers.

The plumage of her wings was, of course, in tact--but that said nothing of
the warrior whose intestines had met the morning. No dropped feathers, no
way forward for the daughters who now squabbled for their piece of Podarce's
coven.

Well, not Aellopus, the first of the queen's brood to die after their mother,
felled in a border skirmish by a rival coven. Nor Ocythoe, who died
avenging her sister. For a harpy, dying in pursuit of vengeance was the
ultimate death. May fury grant your soul some peace.

Then Nicothoe and Podarge, both poison. A coward's weapon, but one employed
against harpies since time immemorial. Whether a rival coven or an outside
enemy, the harpies of Bloodwing were still clouded by grief and unable to
process the next lost. Their keening could be heard for miles away from the
great nest. They prepared for war.

Ocypode considered the feather. Of her sisters, only she, Ocypete, and
Aello remained. Ocypode was not particularly fond of her eldest sister
Pete, heiress apparent to this small clan of harpy warriors and hard, even
by harpy standards. She had not shed a single feather or song for her dead
mother.

But Aello. She'd comforted Ocypode, helped her prepare for her Blooding,
trained with her when the other sisters were busy. Ocypode remembered the
poems Aello would recite to her of harpy courage and vengeance before Pode
could even fly.

She knew that one of these two sisters must be responsible for Podarce's death.

Ocypode considered the feather.

GUARD DUTY
Guard Duty

Podarge hovered at the entrance to the Great Nest's hatching chamber. An
honor, that, to attend the Queen on the eve of a royal birth. Once the
princesses emerged from their eggs, the Harpy Court would feast for a moon
and a month as custom dictated. Perhaps then the Queen would invite Podarge
to join her personal guard. Another great honor.

Podarge clenched her whip as a stranger approached, nearly piercing her own
flesh with the spiny talons capping her fingers. Good. Sharp. The two
other harpies stationed with her assumed the same posture. "Will the queen
receive petitions?" The stranger asked. In the days after a hatching, the
Queen doled out boons, titles, and other ceremonial gifts, even granting an
audience to the lowest harpy among the Nest if she so petitioned. But not
until the feasting began, and certainly not until the Queen's coterie
departed the chamber.

Podarge regarded the stranger. Patches of sparse, graying feathers dotted
the harpy's frail wings. Podarge had never seen her like before, though she
smelled of crowded kennels and the lower runs. "Leave this place, crone,"
Podarge said. "The hatching yet continues."

"Take me to the Queen. I must see her immediately," the stranger said.

Podarge unspooled her whip as a kitten might a ball of string, pivoting at
the last moment to backhand the stranger with the full force of her blunt
grip. The elder harpy staggered backward through the air. Her broken nose
gushed runnels of blood, and she shed a number of feathers in distress.

"I said leave!" Podarge could not keep the fury from her tone. Royal
hatchings were inviolate, sacred, among the most blessed of harpy rites.
Who would dare disturb this moment? Her two attendant guards tittered like
mockingbirds.

"You turn me away, Handmaiden? All is not as it seems." The stranger spoke
with icy composure despite the bib of blood now staining her breasts.

Podarge would not endanger her chance to join the Queen's guard. Not for
this soiled bird. Not even for her own nest mother. "Leave now, or die,"
she said simply.

"Podarge ... Podarge, I think ..." One of the harpies behind her whispered
as the crone produced an amulet from her belt pouch. Podarge did not so
much as blink as she discerned the three interlocking runes indicating a
direct connection to the Queen's royal line. After all, Podarge had
feathered this nest; now she would roost in it.

Podarge prostrated herself on the cloud before the ancient harpy. She did
not understand. All who bore this amulet were presently in the chamber,
assisting the princesses as they shed their shells. All except ...

"Celaeno," Podarge whispered, the Dark Queen, kidnapped by the men and elves
of Valour in an attempt to cripple the harpies forever. All assumed her
dead, had mourned her passing decades ago--long before Podarge and her
sisters had even hatched. Young harpies learned her name as both legend and
cautionary tale. What did this mean for the Nest?

The stranger turned toward Podarge as she drifted toward the chamber doors.

Those large, impenetrable portals to the hatching chamber seemed to open for
the Dark Queen of their own accord. "Podarge, was it? Yes, yes. Well,
Podarge, you and I shall speak again soon." Her voice dripped acid despite
her wide smile. She slipped into the hatching chamber.

And, with that, Podarge felt the doors slam shut.

IN THE DARK

The creature sat in the dark for a long time. A millennia? An hour?
Perhaps time passed differently underneath the mountain. Perhaps time was a
river passing underneath the mountain. It carried you away but only if you
let it. The creature sat in the river. The creature sat in the river in
the dark.

But how did it get there?

What of the trickster who shaped the mountain? What of the three-eyed baby?

The creature could not say, for the creature did not speak. Years or
minutes spent underneath the mountain pressed on its larynx like stones.
Now the creature's voice sounded foreign to its own tapered ears. No, the
creature did not speak. But it could see.

The creature sat in the dark and saw many things, the rise and fall of great
nations, the death and birth of gods. It shared these secrets with the
trickster who sometimes visited the river's far shore.

Until the trickster stopped visiting.

Then the creature sat in the river in the dark underneath the mountain, but
alone. A millennia passed. An hour. The creature tried to stand but
instead fell to its side after such a long time crouched in the river. Then
the creature howled, a keening sound, low and guttural in its throat.

The howl sounded like its name and the creature let the sound and the
river carry it away.

THE IDOL OF GESIBA

Treasures, trash, and worse cluttered the backroom of Echuir's potion
shop. The witch presided over dusty shelves teeming with artifacts: here, a
monkey's paw with two curled fingers; there, a skein of yellow ribbon
enchanted to defy labyrinthine mazes. The witch offered hefty discounts on
crystal balls and would talk your ear off--then pretend to keep it--if you
demonstrated an interest in the tiny vials of hellebore, monkshood, and
ox-eyed daisy lining her shelves like little toy soldiers.

But have you ever seen her back-backroom?

I discovered the Idol of Gesiba there, haphazardly discarded among a trove
of other relics. The tiny figurine hovered a few inches off a dais in the
corner like a lazy moon that did not want to rise. Most scholars attributed
the idol's last sighting to the Taekir War, but I knew better.* An
inscription on the dais read, "Unknown Theran Artifact. Most likely cursed.
DO NOT TOUCH!"

I hurried to the figurine only to discover several wards that would prevent
me from retrieving her. Echuir might not know what she possessed, but she
knew enough. Perhaps the idol whispered in the witch's ear of the dark
power they could wield together, or perhaps the statue's eyes disturbed her
with their tendency to track your movement from place to place despite being
carved from stone.

I drew the small dagger I kept tucked in my sleeve for letting rites and
pricked my finger, watching in dismay as the wards absorbed the drop of
blood before Gesiba could. Was that enough?

It was not. I sliced deeper into the flesh of my palm and allowed blood to
rain down upon the warded figurine, coating her despite the protective
charm: coarse magic, if effective. I said the sacred words anyone who
wished upon the idol must say in order to activate their offering.*

Nothing happened.

I wrapped my hand in linen and began stowing the tools I'd used to breach
Echuir's sanctum, watching the graven figurine out of the corner of my eye.
Did it always smile like that?

A commotion in the front of the shop drew my attention as Echuir charged
toward me. I cried out, turning back toward the idol only to discover it
was no longer there, the dais empty, the inscription stripped clean as if it
never were.

"Good," I thought, as Echuir's fireball consumed me, blistering my skin,
cauterizing my palm.

Only two wishes left.

*Portions of this text have been redacted for the safety of the reader.

THE WHITE KING'S DAUGHTER

Philomene stalked the halls of the White Fortress like a ghost.

Seventh daughter of a first son, last child of a righteous king--how the
nobility had flocked in droves to attend the spectacle of her birth,
offering gifts and promises. They flooded the receiving chamber like
locusts, standing shoulder to shoulder. The White King and White Queen
could hardly receive them all. No wonder nobody noticed the handsome
stranger lurking in the back of the room.

Years later, and Philomene stalked the halls. Few now paid attention to the
truculent princess, made so by a curse that trapped her heart like a vice,
one promised to her since birth.

For Philomene was a teenager.

For Philomene was a teenager, and today was her seventeenth birthday. She
would skip her history tutor this Renewal, and she didn't care what her
mother said about the Taekir War and the lessons of the past. Everyone was
always so pious, and so boring, and Philomene yearned for actual adventure
or at least a boy at court whose teeth weren't yellow.

She stopped short in the hallway at the crenellated window, spying a
handsome stranger outside. She studied the man for a long time--he would
make a fine painting--before it dawned on her that they were on the fourth
floor.

"Princess, say that you remember me! I have waited for this day," the
stranger said, floating outside her window.

"I remember you," Philomene found herself saying, drifting toward him as if
strung on a hook.

Philomene gripped the windowsill. The stranger's eyes held her tighter than
hands could.

"Then let me give you a birthday gift."

Philomene found herself climbing out the window. She plummeted to the
ground below.

PRELUDE TO A STORM

"From where do you hail?" The traveler eyed his drinking companion warily.
She looked more a picture of a person than an actual one, her features too
precise and well-ordered, sketched by the hand of a lesser god or one of
Serin's gifted artists. Her eyes, though ... They troubled him.

"North," she replied. Her hands gripped the mug of ale before her as if it
might escape. He'd hoped to loosen her tongue with drink, but she sipped
infrequently and continued to provide taciturn answers. Soon he might
resort to other means.

"North of where?" He asked good-naturedly. Venturing as he did through
many of the smaller villages surrounding Seringale, he loved stopping for
respite at an Inn and striking up conversation with a stranger. And strange
she was, even by this part's standards. Her eyes occasionally misted over
with foreboding clouds and flickers of lightning. Such witchcraft he had
not witnessed before, and he would know its purpose--even if it took all
night.

"North of here ... The mountains beyond the Sylvan Vale," she offered. She
too seem surprised by the string of words, more than she'd volunteered in
the last hour of questions. So. The drink had finally taken effect.

"My mother belonged to a small tribe of Storm Elves. They retreated after
the great war to purify their faith and stayed there, unmolested, for many
generations. Mother was a priestess of storm. She called the lightning and
the rain from the sky to celebrate Aberdour's bounty." She paused.

"When my father took her, they were shunned. I have never seen this place
that I come from, but I am told it is beautiful." She finished her story
bluntly and short of breath, as if the very act of speaking were a tax on
her body. Or perhaps it was the drink.

As her head began to sway and her grip loosened on the mug of ale, the
woman's eyes flashed for a moment with startling clarity. "You ... The
drink ... What have you ...?" He admired her resilience. Few could resist
the subtle medley of herbs and roots he'd slipped into her cup for as long
as she had, and he knew that the stronger the storm, the sweeter the
rainbow.

PRELUDE TO A STORM II

Vanne awoke with her arms tied above her head in a bed she did not
recognize. Her mouth felt gritty, as if she'd drank a tankard of sand, and
her head pulsed in time to her heartbeat. She had trouble focusing, but,
when her vision finally cleared, she saw the man from the Inn sitting in the
corner.

"I thought you'd sleep all day," he said. She struggled to form a response,
and he shushed her as one might a baby.

"Save your strength," he said. "You'll need it. My buyer is coming soon,
and he likes a little fight in his halfbreeds."

The word triggered something in Vanne, as it had many times before,
sometimes in rooms similar to this one. A breeze tickled the bedskirt,
issuing forth from the lone window on the western wall.

"Half ... Breed?" She asked as she attempted to inch upright.

"Yes, yes. He pays a pretty penny for girls like you. Do not disappoint
him, and you may just live." The man suppressed a smirk as Vanne continued
to struggle against her restraints.

"Half ... Breed." This was less a question now, and the cloud on Vanne's
wits was clearing.

The man stood, perhaps too late, as the breeze gained sudden gale force and
knocked him to the ground. The ropes binding Vanne's arms disintegrated,
pulsed in her radiant aura, leaving angry red marks on her flesh and the
soiled bed smoldering.

"You should know," Vanne said, more calmly than she felt, "that the storm
comes for all who doubt its strength."

The man attempted a response, but the gusting air stifled his cry. Vanne
kicked him in the stomach with a lazy, sparking foot.

"When you meet him--and I promise you will meet him soon--tell the one who
created you ..." She paused as spheres of lightning gathered at her
fingertips.

"Tell him to try harder."

THE STORY OF ALECTA

Not all children are born in Serin. Some are hatched, some are ripped
from their mothers' stomachs like sacks of flour, and some are not born in
Serin at all. So begins one such story, the story of a little girl born
under a black star. The star shone in a crimson sky. I shall try to
describe it to you, but I have never seen such a thing. None have, save the
demons who occasionally escape this place.

This is the story of Alecta.

Alecta came into this world howling, but let us not start there. Instead,
picture a pitted seed in the hand of a cruel god. An offering. An
alliance, extended to the demon prince [redacted] as he prepared his horde
to cross the material abyss. "Why, it can be used for many things," the
cruel god crooned as he closed the demon prince's fingers over the seed--an
act of familiarity not lost upon [redacted], "but I suggest you snort it."

No love was lost between the god and the prince, but the latter craved
Serin's magic, the life that seemed to take root so easily there. When the
prince returned to his own body, seed in tow, he considered the gift
carefully. He arrayed it before himself on a platter made of bone in the
uppermost tower of his fortress, also made of bone. He could spy a black
star in the sky as he stood at the ossified crenellations.

"Bottoms up," said the prince, making quick work of the seed with a mortar
and pestle. He snorted neat lines with a vellum page torn from the Book of
Water--another gift--and began shaking as the acidic granules sped up his
nose and toward his brain.

He felt like he was dying. Flying? Brackish ichor spilled from the
prince's nose as the acid in the seed took what it wanted, taking root. He
leaned back, nearly tumbling through the open window. Nothing for a
moment--and then:

A pounding within his skull as such he had never felt, as if his brain might
demand egress and escape forcibly. Drums. The drums of war? He fell upon
the ground as the plates of his head split open, sundered.

And out spilled a little girl. Not a baby, for Alecta was never a baby, but
a small child, say five or six. The prince looked upon his daughter and was
pleased. Many sons had he fathered in the way of demons, but a daughter?
This was truly a gift worth celebrating.

[Redacted] looked at the black star, throbbing in the crimson sky like a
vein, the frantic pulse of a cornered animal, then back to the little girl
covered in gore and viscera, picking herself up off the floor.

She whispered to him her name and also the one that he might call her. She
said in a sing-song voice, wicked despite its juvenile timbre, "The star
will lead us to Winter, father."

"And then?"

"And then the howling can begin."

DAUGHTER OF ACID

Alecta met her god in the space before creation.

She was not Alecta then, only a tiny drop in a great river: a river of acid
and of ice. Corroded rock formations jutted from the banks of the river
like the god's twisted fingers as he crouched low to scoop up his prize.

"Hello, little one," he whispered to the granule in his hand, "We have work
to do."

Then the god vanished in a cloud of smoke with his fist drawn shut like a
trap.

***

Later, Alecta would tell me this was her first memory. She would tell me a
great many things, most of them wicked un- or half-truths pocked by a
child's acid tongue. Still--here, an inkling of origin, a whiff of the
divine.

That I lived to tell you seems like truth enough to me.

***

Back in his workshop, the god labored at his table. He considered his
tools: a scythe sharp enough to cleave a soul in two and then contain the
pieces; a Necromonicon bearing the true names of several greater demons; and
a vase of dead poppies, for balance. He sat back after a long moment-- what
are minutes or hours to a god? How do they measure time? --at last
satisfied with the object of his infernal ministrations. He tucked Alecta
in his pocket and traveled to his next appointment.

Perhaps you remember what happened next: a poison seed, a demon prince, a
call to Winter and the boundaries where realms touch.

So it was that Alecta led her new father, [Redacted] of the material abyss,
to the bank of a great river and the foot of a fallen black star.

"See--father--he prepares the way for us!" Alecta squealed as she undbound
a mask from the star's face. A gruesome visage stared back at her, its lips
curled in a rictus of pain. Alecta toyed with the mask in her hands. She
knew what she must do.

She knelt among the rocks, motioning for her father to join her. The demon
hissed at the child's temerity, too bold, even if she'd been right so far.
Finally, after a look that could wither grass, [Redacted] lowered himself
next to Alecta, kneeling as he would in sight of no other.

What happened next happened so quickly that [Redacted] could not react.
Alecta flung herself toward the river. The demon grabbed her by the neck,
but not before the child's head whipped forward, fully submerging her face.

The howl that tore from Alecta's throat as the acid consumed her would have
been heard in every corner of Serin, through the barren plains of Winter,
through the material Abyss, into Acadia, to the very nether-corners of the
void itself. Check your calendar for fields gone fallow overnight and
livestock born with too many heads--this was Alecta's gift, she later told
me, purifying.

When Alecta finally stopped screaming, [Redacted] watched her fasten the
mask to her face.

THE BALLAD OF MOZELLE MEREEM

Mozelle Mereem did not remember dying.

A pestilent battlefield littered with feathers; a young healer who stayed
too long behind; white robes dipped in blood, the most expensive dye by her
order's reckoning, yet so easily bought and paid for here; and that
smell--these glimmers she remembered, glimmers of the time before.

Before what? This strange new world? She awoke in it herself strange and
new, new as a babe, brand new, the sound on every tongue foreign, the
creatures below her caricatures of those who walked the realms when Mozelle
first flew above them.

And fly she did, with glorious wings that meant freedom. Now, she could
pass a hand through those same wings, and watch the air caper and contort
like a drunken djinn. She could barely even take form. She could see right
through her shoes.

She could still see the mark of spirit upon her wrist though, could still
touch it. A great gift, this healer's mark, or so her people said. Mozelle
had used it to escape her bride price, so she supposed they must be right.


But that all seemed so faraway now ... Her parents; their tiny farm; her
younger brother, taken ill and then miraculously healed; the pilgrimage to
the tower; the years that followed; the clutching Prince, who eventually
encroached upon them; the priestesses, her sisters, who defied him.

The demons he let in.

No, Mozelle Mereem did not remember dying. She did not remember the sacred
name of the holy order of ascetic healers to which she'd devoted her first
life. She did not remember her brother's face.

But. She remembered the acrid vapor pouring off that that demon as he
towered over her with his great big sword, his red eyes burning and burning
and burning. She could almost chew the smoke as she choked on it.

Mozelle Mereem did not remember dying, but she would never forget that
smell.

NEVER WIPE AND NEVER WILL

Deep within the Witch Wood, three sisters prophesied her coming: a
daughter of the East and West, rival ogre clans joined through blood.
Through the birth of a princess.

This is the story Bouerghita's mother tells as she tucks her into bed.

***

The witch-goddess Hela found Amanghita in one of the many chambers the
village shaman used for letting. The seventh child and only daughter of the
ogre chieftain, Amanghita Never Will bled onto the sacrificial stone. The
shaman carved her flesh despite Amanghita's lineage or perhaps because of
it. She sought only the comfort of death the night Hela came scratching at
her window.

Who knows what honeyed poison Hela whispered into Amanghita's ear? She
awoke the next morning only confident of her deeper purpose and with a large
axe to grind. In fact, she ground that axe into the shaman's neck, over and
over, blood spraying like the arc of an enchanted fountain, the shaman's
blood mingling with Amanghita's own upon the altar where she'd lain.

Only dark magic could have kept the shaman from death. Even so, Amanghita
hurried to heed the witch's warning. She stumbled across the Sands of
Sorrow and through the Highlands mist, ever forward, ever forward, toward
the focus of her desire.

Rockwort of the Never Wipe tribe--once King of the Drkshtyre Wood, now
enslaved. Rockwort was not a good king--ogres never are--but he might have
been a great one were it not for the wizard who'd perverted him.

When Amanghita finally approached, she lay black roses at Rockwort's feet.
She sang a lament common to all ogre tribes, and it broke the spell, if only
for a night. Who knows what honeyed poison Amanghita then whispered into
Rockwort's ear?

She left in the morning and ventured to the Wood.

THE REVELATION OF TUTYISH TEACAKE

The old witch regarded Tutyish Teacake of the Gnome Village Teacakes
across a pile of chicken bones. Tutyish's betrothed did not know she was
here, but she had made the journey all the same, as every seventh daughter
of her line had since before a time when even gnomes knew records. Some in
the village would call this heresy.

"You have brought the offering?" The old witch asked.

Finding the Book of Names had required careful planning, but Tutyish wielded
other magic than the pastries which had made her father's family famous.
Tutyish plopped the Book onto the table with an audible thud. "Careful now,
child," the old witch said as she grabbed the Book and began thumbing
through it eagerly. Tutyish held her breath. The witch looked up from her
scrying. "You dare deceive me, child?"

"I ... I don't understand," Tutyish stammered.

"It would be better if you didn't." The witch waved her hand over the Book,
stripping away in a second the seven layers of enchantment over which
Tutyish had labored for months.

"This is not the Book."

Tutyish licked her lips. "I ... I tried, I did! The magus would not let
the Book out of his sight, not even for a moment. But I have recreated it
faithfully for you, I swear it."

"Your oath means even less than your pitiful spellcraft." The old witch
fingered one of her bones as she might a favored charm. "I have given your
family much, Tutyish, and now I shall give you one more gift." Tutyish
began readying several cantrips that would allow her hasty egress from the
witch's lair.

"You think to escape me with my own spells?" The witch snapped her fingers,
and Tutyish felt her arcane energies dissipate.

"That's better. Now hear me, Tutyish Teacake, and heed my revelation well."
The witch's voice gained in force, and her eyes fluttered, twin portals to
the ethereal plane. "Mother, Maiden, Crone, of the power that is known,
your seventh child shall bear my curse. A lack of hair will make it worse.
Known far and wide, your new family's shame: a Teacake bride and a changing
name."

Tutyish felt something burrow deep into her abdomen, and, to her credit, she
did not make a sound.

ANOTHER CURSE OF ACADIA

The old witch died in her sleep, and so began her story.

We are taught that many parts of the realm of Acadia are beautiful,
beautiful and strange, and it was in one such place that the old witch found
herself after awaking from the first death. In a new body, no less.

The enchantments that govern a soul's journey between Serin and Acadia are
esoteric at best, so the old witch thrilled to discover she had not
transformed into a tadpole or mushroom in the becoming of her next self.
The bones she cast had held.

Soon, memories of her former life would fade, taking with them the hedge
magic she had cultivated over decades in exile. She must work quickly then.

She tested her new wings, gossamer and gauze-like, sprinkling motes of
iridescent powder as they flexed. She ran her fingers through the stream
and saw a map of the stars to guide her. Perhaps she was born under a lucky
one to receive such gifts.

The old witch knew who she must find; they called to her as if attached to
her heart by hooks. Where she traveled now was not so beautiful, a dark
place that touched Serin even as it blackened the spirits of any who
lingered there.

The Cavern of the Witch Sisters. Painstaking divination had guided the old
witch to this conclusion in life, and, in this first death, some sense
memory propelled her. She readied her patchwork incantations, all
certainties dwindling save one: her first chance would be her only.

"They must not see the augury," she thought to herself grimly as she sailed
on minute wings. But time, space, magic--all worked differently in Acadia.
Twisted hands snatched her from the air and delivered her to the desecrated
earth. The old witch would conjure no magic here.

The grinning faces of the Sisters regarded her from their familiars: Aude,
Hela, Gertrude, vile creatures corrupted by their own cantrips and thirst
for power. They had seen the old witch coming in their cauldrons, as they
saw many things. Now they would stop her.

"Feeble hedge witch," Aude cackled, "Did you really think you could defeat
such as us?"

"Little witch," Gertrude cooed, "Perhaps we shall have you for supper."

Hela said nothing, but her face grinned wickedly before dissolving from the
golem she had sent to capture the old witch.

The bewitched familiars stretched the tiny pixie on their rack. So
frightened were they of her magical words, her curses, that first they
scorched out her tongue with a heated iron. Then they carved her face with
wicked runes, runnels of disfigurement that would not heal.

But, afraid that the slaying of even a silenced witch would bring a scourge
upon them, the familiars defied the will of their masters at the last: they
placed the old witchs fragile body on a raft and towed her out to the open sea,
where she was set adrift.

The old witch would not waken for many turns of the moon, and, when she finally
did, the pain of loss consumed her. Quivering hands reached upward toward
her mouth, the throbbing absence she found there nearly driving her over the
edge of the raft to her final death. Remnants of thought cycled through her
mind. She stilled her hands to rest.

The Sisters had not seen the augury, the shining portent in the night sky
she had been so desperate to conceal from them that she'd nearly lost her
soul a second time. What was a tongue in the bargain? The old witch shivered.
She knew of worse curses than this.

NASTY, BRUTISH, AND SHORT

Nasty, brutish, and short--an apt description, the old witch thought
drily, as the fat little goblin tumbled through her portal. Goblin.
Strange. The old witch chased the word through her memory. But memory
worked differently in the realm of Acadia. Was that where she was then?

She looked down at her hands, so small as to be infinitesimal. A new body,
another life. They did get smaller though. So. A wisp. How many more
chances before the old witch disappeared completely? She would not have
much time to consider even these thoughts before they began to fade.

"Little goblin," she called, in what she hoped was a common tongue, "you
should not be here."

"Little?" The goblin sneered, its chins wobbling. "I could eat you for
breakfast. In fact, I might."

"I can help you, you know."

The goblin inched forward in a pathetic display of stealth. "Me? How could
you help me?"

"I know you quest for wisps," the old witch said. Funny, now she was one.

The goblin licked its lips greedily. "Come here then. I will not hurt you.
My master never told me your kind could speak!"

"I am special," the old witch said. She closed her eyes, and a dozen other
wisps drifted toward her from the ether. The goblin gasped in apparent
delight.

"I ... I can have them?" The goblin asked, her fat fingers dancing.

"Them, and more. Take me from this realm, and I shall be your familiar. I
sense great gifts in you, little goblin, and together we will show them to
this master."

The old witch landed on the goblin's shoulder. She whispered something in a
much older language into the goblin's ear, thinking to herself that perhaps
this form did have its advantages. The goblin looked on vacantly for a
moment before startling back to the present.

"I am Valindra, apprentice to the magus of the Skitterwit clan, and I ..."
The goblin trailed off as she turned her head to the wisp on her shoulder.
"I am not sure how to get back."

Good. More pliable now. The old witch smiled, though she doubted the
goblin could discern her expressions at this size. "A simple spell. I will
show you."

"What is your name?"

"You could not pronounce it with that tongue, but you may call me ...
Hibbadibity."

The goblin giggled at the name's absurdity as the air before them somehow
dilated, shimmering with force as a portal formed back to the village. The
old witch eyed her new surroundings warily as they crossed over the
threshold. On one tiny hand, she hoped the spell worked.

And, on the other, she didn't.