She's stronger than the last witch, and when she turns to face me, the hood drops and the silver of her eyes flashes at me, showing her rage. The witch markings over her face are etched deeply into her skin and the unnatural black lines glow, a distortion of our traditions and an insult to every Crone, Mother, and Maiden before her.
More horses ride toward us, a promise of outnumbered sword play, but as she looks at the wall, her lips curl into a sneer and she speaks to me. “A pet of the high fae—you're disgusting! They're the reason we were stuck in the forests for so long, forced to do their bidding to keep the balance while they laughed at our stupidity and thought themselves better.”
I study the markings around her eyes, placed there long before she joined Kharl's ranks. Each stroke of the ink is a legacy she’s betrayed, and her shame will be known amongst the forests until the last tree dies.
I shake my head at her, the oak of my mother's scepter warm in my hand as I feel the endless generations of Ravenswyrd witches who clasped it tight before her, only to end with me. The last Mother.
“You think yourself better than the high fae when you’ve forgotten the language of the trees? Or do you still hear them screaming and simply ignore them, far worse? I’m not here for the high fae. I'm here for the Ravenswyrd Forest and the coven within.”
She flinches, her eyes tracing over me for witch markings, but my mother never had the chance to give me any, murdered at Kharl's command before I was old enough to receive them. I’ve never let another witch mark me. If I couldn’t have my mother’s mark on me and the ink of my coven on my skin, then no other would do.
“The Ravenswyrd are dead, all of them,” she hisses, and the corner of my mouth tugs up into a cold and cruel smile.
I watch her comrades ride toward us, death on swift horses. Each of them bolted through the fae door as fast as the old magic would push them, and now they race straight to me to kill me at Kharl’s command.
“Did your leader not tell you he failed? Ah, I see. He told you he defied the Fates themselves and scorned them without retribution, somehow better than the Sol King, more powerful than the old magic.”
She gapes at me but the cold smile on my lips grows wider. “He lied. So filled with his own arrogance and importance that he can tell a good story, but he lied to you all. The Fates are not bowing to him and his whims. The Fates bow to no one, not even a king, or a witch who traveled far from his own forest to burn ours to the ground. You followed a false god, and it led you here.”
I lift my scepter, and her eyes widen with dread as the magic arcs from it, white light flowing through me and into the wood. Magnifying my power, the emerald groans as the white light rains down on the four horses and their witch riders. Their screams fill the air around us as my magic tears them apart, limb from limb, and the screaming stops as their body parts hit the ground.
The witches were strong enough to be sent to fight me, but their magic was no match for what burns within me, a neutral witch called to war with the power of the forest in her veins. The old gods that walk amongst the oaks, resting there for a time unknown, nurtured me and protected me so that I may protect it now.
Kharl might have killed my coven, but their legacy lives on in me. The heart of a healer beats within my chest, but I’ve long since made peace with the war that lives in my mind. A soldier who no longer fears the sword I must take up and the death that must be given by my hand.
The witch backs away from me slowly, tripping over the burned body of one of the raving masses, falling and then scrambling on her hands and knees as she cowers away from me. Every lie Kharl ever told her has unraveled before her eyes, and though she’s a pathetic creature, no empathy tugs at my heart.
The witches who murdered my coven at Kharl’s orders shot my sister in the back as she ran, terrified and sobbing, the tears still wet on her cheeks when I found her.
They slit my mother's throat and killed the baby nursing at her breast where she sat in our family hut. Her blood poured over the son she was sure would grow up safe and strong in the forest, dead but still clutched within her arms.
My father had twelve arrows embedded in his chest, so deep that the fletching of raven feathers was buried in his flesh. In his dying moments, he crawled through the dirt, desperate to reach my mother to protect her and the children they had brought into this world together. He died alone, face down, the screams of his coven the last thing he knew before Elysium.
My brother died before my grandmother's hut, arrows in his back and a dagger slashed across his throat as they finished him off, his hands digging into the dirt just the same as my father’s as he desperately held on through pain and blood and fear to reach our beloved Crone.
I know my siblings’ deaths, every one of them still an open wound within me that time can never heal. A single command from Kharl, and they wiped out an entire legacy of peaceful healers, protectors of the trees, those who never asked for anything in return of their services, who poured into the land selflessly and never ask for more than simple shelter and safety, the forest’s song singing deep within our hearts.
None of those witches showed mercy to my coven.
No matter how deep in my healer's heart I look, I can't find any for this witch either.
Terror shines from her eyes as she looks up at me, prayers to the Fates falling from her lips, but I hope they don’t look kindly on her and the depths of Elysium reject her soul and leave her to wither into nothingness, an eternal torture for the devastation she’s wrought.
I lift my scepter once more, the emerald singing within the clutches of the oak, and the burst of power hits her full force, a hole opening in her chest and her blood pouring into the land. Red and vital, still a willing accomplice to Kharl and his ambitions.
I murmur my own apologies to the land for giving them such a violent sacrifice, but it guzzles it down all the same. Power is power, and though a willing sacrifice is always preferred, an unwilling one is just as strong.
The village is silent around me.
For hours the battle raged, but it’s over now, no more riders crossing the fae door to face me. I wait, not one to be caught unaware, but there is nothing to greet me but the piles of stinking dead.
I send out another pulse of magic through the village just to be sure they're all dead, and when I sense nothing but corpses, I take aim with the scepter once more and put out the fire ravaging the fae door. When there’s nothing left there but the charred structure, I seal the door shut, pushing the magic back into the land to ensure Kharl can never come through it again.
The earth groans and shudders beneath us as it accepts the old magic of the First Fae, a powerful morsel to consume, and then I turn to the bodies of the witches. Their blackened blood is burning as it seeps through the cobblestones, scorching everything with its poison.
Without proper care, the land here at Yregar will never recover.
Still ignoring the shouts and protests from the high-fae soldiers on the walls above me, I hold out my sword, and light flashes from the point at my elbow as I put it away. Grasping my mother's scepter in both hands, I direct the last of the land's magic through the wood to set fire to everything around me, containing the flames to only the poison as I burn it all away. There’ll be no funeral pyres for these dead, no comfort to see them to Elysium safely, and I hope they don’t find peace wherever they end up. I don’t have any kindness left within me for them; that version of me died in the forest with my family. Smoke funnels into the air and arches around the dome shield I still hold, curling at the top as it gathers there.
