Death's Awakening

Chapter Nineteen: The Witch

The stone was cool against the witch's skin.

She sat at the kitchen table in the large farmhouse, turning it over in her fingers, studying each mark.

Before he died, Tobias had said there were five guardians. She'd heard of them before, but it was just a fairytale. Something parents told their children at bedtime to make them feel safe and proud. But in the secret meetings of the Council of Fire, the elders spoke of the guardians as traitors and villains.

The witch had never actually been invited to one of those meetings, but that hadn't kept her from sneaking in and listening from the shadows.

The guardians had lived over a thousand years ago. They lived in the time of the Dark One—a powerful sorceress who was said to wield both sides of the power. Fire and Ice. It was unheard of for a witch to have both of these abilities. Everyone else was born with either one or the other. Sometimes a child was born with neither gift. But never both. Not until her.

The elders spoke of her as if she was a God. She was mighty and powerful and had a vision for the world that no one had ever dreamed of. She had many followers, but as her powers grew, she became unsteady. Unbalanced. Greedy. She became more and more violent. A great war broke out. Many died.

That's when the five guardians came together to fight against her. They banished her to a foreign world where they were said to have buried her deep inside the ground. The story goes that she was stripped of all magic and would never cast again.

But as the witch looked at the mound of fresh dirt just outside the window of the farmhouse, she knew that some parts of the story were right while other parts had been very wrong.

The Dark One had been banished. She'd been sent here to this earth by the five guardians. She'd been trapped beneath the ground inside a block of ice. All of that was true. But the guardians hadn't been strong enough to completely strip her of her magic. They'd only suppressed it. The same way the Guardians' League had suppressed magic inside the cities in her own land. It was merely a seal, keeping the magic inside, giving it no way out.

But a seal was just another type of magic. And like all magic, it could be reversed or broken.

In her dreams, the Dark One had told her that by spilling Tobias' blood on the earth, she had made a crack in the seal. A small crack, but it was enough to allow the Dark One to cast a single spell. She'd created a flower. Beautiful and simple and red as blood.

Inside this flower, she'd placed the scent of death—an ancient necromancer's spell that took the power of life from one person and transferred it to another. The Dark One had cast it in such a way that once the first person was infected, the virus would pass from person to person, blanketing this world in a matter of days.

As the virus grew inside them, death sucked their life from them and pulled it deep into the earth, finding its way to the Dark One, giving her more power.

The death spell worked like a virus, infecting anyone who came near it. And the more infected there were, the more power the Dark One was able to drain from this world.

And she was becoming more powerful by the minute.

The witch could feel it. The dark presence grew stronger and her dreams became more vivid.

The witch set the purple stone down on the wooden table and leaned back against the chair. Her hands twisted in her lap.

Could she really do this?

The Dark One had explained it all to her so clearly. She wanted proof of loyalty. She wanted help creating a bigger crack in the seal. And that took sacrifices.

The witch looked over at the handsome man. He stood outside, at the edge of his mother's grave. The older woman had died just yesterday, her power siphoned from her body to become food for the Dark One.

He'd sent for the doctor, but no one had ever arrived to help and the woman had died.

Her son had shown no signs of infection. The Dark One had explained that those here who had the strongest spirits and the closest ties to magic would be immune from the effects of the virus. This young man must have been immune to still be so healthy. He must have had a strong spirit.

Which is why the Dark One wanted him for this task.

She needed to charge the stone. It would help her track the guardians, she said. The witch had been told to drain his life-force and place it inside the stone.

The witch closed her eyes and swallowed. She didn't want to do this. She liked the man. He'd been so nice to her and she liked the way he looked at her with such admiration. She didn't want to hurt him.

But if she didn't obey the Dark One, she would never find her way home. She would never get the recognition she deserved.

Her whole life, she'd been nothing. How many times had the elders reminded her she was a disappointment? That they'd wasted their best training on a witch who was weak? That she'd never become anything more than a maidservant?

Well, she would show them.

When she came back to her own world, she'd have the blessings and power of the Dark One—the strongest and most powerful witch their world had ever known. She'd be someone for the first time in her life. If she helped the Dark One now, she would be blessed with great power and would sit at her right hand when she took her rightful place as ruler in the Land of Fire and Ice.

The witch picked up the stone, closing it tight in her fist.

Yes, she would do this. No matter the cost.

She stood and walked out the front door, down the porch steps and around to the back of the house where the man stood. She stared at him for only the briefest moment. He'd been so kind to her. He'd taken her in when she would have died out there in the heat.

It was truly a shame he had to die.

The witch placed her hand inside the man's. He turned to her and gave a sad smile, then squeezed her hand as if they understood each other. As if they were sharing this moment of sadness and regret.

She pressed the purple stone tight against his skin. It became hot, then cold, then somehow both at the same time. The man tried to pull away, confusion in his eyes. He yanked his hand harder, but the witch had hold of him now. The magic of the stone was already tapped in to his soul, pulling it through his veins like metal to a magnet.

He opened his mouth to protest, but his voice caught in his throat. He fell to his knees in the fresh dirt, choking for air as his life was stolen from him.

The witch could barely bring herself to look at him. His skin shriveled and bruised, clinging tightly to his bones as the last of his life-force poured into the stone.

She wanted to tell him she was sorry, but it was too late for that. She had chosen her path and she was determined to see it through.

This man was only the beginning of the work that was to come.

She was certain there would be much harder sacrifices, but that in the end, it would all be worth it.

When he was gone, the witch released his hand and he fell face-first to the ground.

The stone hummed in her hand and she held it up to her heart, letting the power of the man's life buzz against her skin. When she looked down, she gasped as red flowers grew up from his corpse.

Proof that the Dark One was pleased.

Eek, Okay I was wrong! This is actually the end of Part I. As a bonus, I'm releasing an extra chapter tomorrowwww!!! Stay tuned!

Thank you so much for reading!