Witch Doctors Inc: SEASON TWO (Ongoing)

Part 4.11

LARAN VALLEY, KADREA
LILY

Through a wash of fire, I see her. Purple eyes, like a violent dream. Hands chained together with fingers too long to be human. Every tear that slips from her cheek burns the earth.

*

I awake, sweating heavily. Everything is on fire. It takes two minutes of blinking for the flames to recede into my mind. I'm in the illyrite cave, lying on my makeshift bed of shasha cushions. Bob snores by my side.

The First Witch is calling me, but she isn't as connected as she once was. Without magic, I'm stronger. She can't follow a rope of darkness back to me. I've cut the rope clean through. All she has now are her thinning veils.

It isn't a sudden thing, her calling me. It's been happening for a while. It's a wordless call usually, a sort of tugging or pulling. She lures me in with images, memories. But she can't just pull me to her like she did after I used the dark power.

I don't want to hear a chorus of 'I-told-you-so's, which is why I don't share the experience with the others. I never thought the First Witch would just disappear. I knew she'd keep trying to break though, especially as All Hallows Eve draws nearer. I also knew I could resist her, now that our connection is weaker.

I never thought it would be easy, and it isn't. But I made the right choice.

Unfortunately, the others won't see it that way. They'll think I'm slipping.

Maybe you are slipping, something at the back of my mind nags. I'm not sure if it's the First Witch or my paranoia talking. Whoever it is needs to shut up. I have enough stacked against me without having to doubt myself too.

I'm not slipping, I know I'm not, but I'm not a hundred percent immune to the First Witch's taunts either. She floods my mind with memories. Me, as Amarat, playing with the acanthines in Arti and Marta's little garden. Teaching the village children how to conduct scientific experiments. Plucking pebbles from their clothes when they forget to heed my warning about the stones' sudden bouts of stickiness. Watching the eggshell blue of the village sky, and dreaming of home.

Home.

She shows me that too. Phaedra, the planet where my story began. Its shining moons and multicoloured mist, unbothered by the fate that awaited it. She shows me bits and pieces of it, with the answers always just out of reach. Secrets that I'm not supposed to know, flicked out of my range of vision.

Sometimes I feel her laugh hanging in the shadows. She's the predator and I'm the prey. And I'm forever running.

Because she has something I want.

My memories.

*

1,000 YEARS IN THE PAST
BEFORE THE DEATH OF LAZARUS
PROMETHEUS, PHAEDRA

Amarat put her head in her hands. "Sorry, Scion. Not tonight. I wish I could, but I'm not up to it."

Scion glanced out the window into the Phaedrean night. Rosy-pink mist drifted through the shadows of non-quartz buildings, wrapping around them like ephemeral wreaths.

"You see?" Amarat raged, headache apparently forgotten. "Why can't we build everything like that? It doesn't have to be fire quartz, fire quartz, fire quartz. There are other materials. And what's wrong with those buildings? They're not as nice-looking, and you can't fortify them with magic, but they're still standing aren't they? Look at those people out there, whirring around them in mist form. They don't seem to mind the material."

"You are correct," Scion agreed. "Fire quartz is not to be wasted. On Ariadne, we would not dream on mining emerquartz at the rate you Phaedreans do your stone." He raised an eyebrow. "But why the sudden interest? Is this part of some new pet theory of yours?"