SHE WILL MASTER TERRIFYING POWERS OF ENCHANTMENT...TO SAVE THE MAN SHE LOVES
In a land of sorcerers and elf warriors, powerful women weld magic--but the only things Elspeth wields are dirty pots and pans in a castle kitchen. That is, until she was...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
THE SORCERER RHINE FOUND EVIL SPELL BOOK HE HAD BEEN SEARCHING FOR IN A DECAYING CASTLE. After spending many days attempting to open the book, he succeeded only to discover it full of kitchen maids. Wart watched the sorcerer loose his temper as the kitchen maids expressed their outrage over been locked in a book for three decades.
"Tiresome wenches. I've released you from imprisonment—and do you thank me? Quiet!" the sorcerer shouted.
The rising screech of the kitchen maids snapped off, like a stick broken in two. Wart shrank further into their midst, doing her best amidst the breasts, aprons, and elbows to remain small and unnoticed. In the gloom, the sorcerer's face was a forbidding mask outlining his forehead, cheeks, and long aristocratic nose, but his eyes remained two shadowy pits of darkness. She held her breath transfixed.
"See his hair?" Kath said to her in a loud whisper that rang out in the silence. "It's fake, innit?"
"Don't do that," she breathed to Kath. "Don't make him mad."
She gulped, feeling the push of his magical power spread out over them, releasing an immense cascade of blue sparks across the vast hall. Spitting sparks popped and overflowed from the sconces, they crackled across the hall floor, illuminating the room all the way up to the vaulted ceiling, which had been scorched by magic fire until it was black like the inside of an old kettle.
Meanwhile, at the sorcerer's feet lay that horrid spell book. Smoke gently curled upwards from its greasy pages and she shuddered, chills crawling from her elbows up her arms. The castle apprentice had tried to burn the Rhymaeic spell book — but it would not burn. Instead the book sent shooting flames from the fireplace out into the room and slowly consumed the castle. Her last recollection was of running down the hall as two arms of blue flame snatched her. She screamed and writhed, dragged back into the flames, which were burned with cold. Dragged into the smoke and downwards, until she was in a strange place full of yellowish fog. The castle had disappeared, the other maids had disappeared. All she saw were writhing shapes in the distance, and everything stank of sulfur.
Through the yellowish putrid stink, she walked endlessly until suddenly a hand had grabbed her on the back of her neck and pulled her up. She struggled in vain, only to find herself right back in the same castle as before. Yet now every available surface was covered in the stinking smell of smoke, sulfur, and soot.
"I've warned you we must leave this place immediately," he said, with a glance up as another trickle of dust fell from the ceiling and the beams cracked in an ominous way. He turned his shadowed eyes upon them all. "Do you listen? You do not. You call me tyrant, and—and—now you dare to mock my hair." His voice took on a tone of menace.
"Be grateful I knew how to get you out of that damned spell book," he said, "For if I knew how to get you all backin again, I'd be sorely tempted."
