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“Wow. That’s rude.”
“Will you shut up and let me tell the story?”
“I’m sorry. The dude ate magic, turned into a dragon … continue.”
She took a fortifying breath and went on. “Other witches tried and failed to kill him, their magic adding another spelled scale to his skin. He was indestructible. Or so they thought. In a vision, a witch saw his grieving nephew promising revenge and knew he would be the one to save them.
She visited him, told him she was looking for a defender, someone who could be called upon to rescue witches, humans, and the world alike. This included getting the revenge he desired. He was young and excited by the task and agreed without listening to the terms. The witches set to making him the best defender the world had ever seen. They spelled his armor, gave him potions, and every day for a year, they gave him a touch of magic.”
“Wouldn’t that make him a dragon like the other guy?”
“Fafnir was doing it at an uncontrolled rate. He wasn’t giving his body time to process the magic. With just a touch a day, Sigurd could internalize the magic, become faster and stronger without changing his form. The time eventually came to put their plan into action.
The witches created a trap, which Fafnir flew straight into. Stupid with the size of his ego, he saw his nephew and thought it would be an easy kill. It was a long and tiring battle, but Sigurd did the impossible and killed his uncle. As the winged body fell flat against the ground, the witches celebrated the defeat of a monster.
With everyone thinking the day was done, they were unprepared when, with his last breath, Fafnir took a giant claw and stabbed it into Sigurd’s body. The witches flew into a panic to save him. They bathed his body in the dragon’s blood and fed him parts of the dragon’s heart, tried to heal him with spells and potions. But it was too late. He died there as a hero to all witches.
The witch with foresight knew Sigurd would be needed again, and so she wrote the truth of the story, including her vision of the future, when witches would be threatened again, and a plan to save us. The ceremony tonight is the first part of the plan.”
I processed the information as I sipped my coffee. “I have a lot of issues and questions with this story, and I’m not sure where to start.”
She sighed. “You wouldn’t be you if you didn’t interrogate everything.”
“How do you know all of this?”
“Because she wrote it.” She looked at me defiantly, daring me to find the untruth in her words.
“How can you trust it?”
“Because she had the Sight. People with the Sight are bound to tell the truth.”
“Bound?”
“Yes, with magic. It punishes you if you don’t do as you promised.”
“Okay.” I took a breath. “So, the ceremony tonight. What does it entail? What’s the end goal?”
“The end goal is to raise Sigurd again.”
“Raise him from the dead.”
“Yes.” She said it so matter of fact, so calmly, as though it would be so easy, I had to freeze for a moment.
What the hell have I gotten myself into? Raising the dead? Protection from something threatening witches?
Fuck my life.
I shook my thoughts away and got back to business. “Okay, how?”
There was a fire in her eyes that freaked me out as gesticulated. “Well, the first step is to raise the body. The problem they had the first time they tried to heal him was that there weren’t enough witches. Not enough magic. This time, we have witches from all over the world here. Everyone is so excited to be part of this event. We have enough now—more than enough.”
“Yes, but you aren’t just trying to heal him. You’re trying to raise him from the dead.”
“Correct, and so that involves another part. Raising the soul. This would usually present as a challenge. However, witches have been using demon fire for lots of things in spells and potions. It can do almost anything. Obviously, this is a big ask of any ingredient, so we needed more. Lots and lots. The foreseeing witch said that until this day, every witch that could should summon a demon and bury them in the earth.”
I swallowed thickly before asking, “What does burying it do?”
“It forces its fire to keep healing the body of the demon. When buried and trapped, its body responds like any other being and suffocates and panics. Their fire keeps them alive.”
