While the storm raged and the rain painted Verweald in its darkening influence, Saule Ozlin sat behind the counter in Baba Yaga's Inkwell and was none the wiser to what was happening in the rest of the city. She was content to have her headphones on, to turn up her music, and to forget everything else as she stapled labels to different pouches of herbs and hummed the techno beat.
The parlor was warm and pungent with the aroma of tropical plants and the perfume of far too many witches crammed into a small space. The storm had them all on edge, and some of the enchantresses couldn't help but throw sparks of animation into everything they touched—which meant half the store's stock was now floating toward the ceiling or winging through the air like an unleashed flock of birds.
Saule grumbled under her breath at the thought of the mess they'd leave behind once morning came—but, for now, she ignored the inevitable disaster and hoped the coven Mistress wouldn't blame her for whatever was damaged.
She slipped from her stool when a potted rhododendron flew by and collided with the back wall.
"Oh, twist my twig—Saule!" The girl responsible for the plant's wayward journey crawled part way over the counter to find Saule sprawled on the floor in a puddle of fertilizer and pot fragments. The girl was only fifteen and had almost no control over her own spark. "I'm sorry!"
"You're cleaning this up, Tanya," Saule grumbled as she got to her feet and fixed her headphones. The rhododendron's roots flailed when they found purchase on her leg and tried to scale the short witch's body. Saule yelped and beat at the aggressive plant. "What did you even do to this thing?!"
From the other end of the counter came Yavanna's ill-mannered tsk. She sat upon a stool like Saule's, her wizened legs bent at the knees and crossed beneath her diminutive weight. The old witch was hunched over a basket of withered roots balanced on her lap and was working the dirty strands into a series of complicated knots.
"Like a spooked cat, this one," Yavanna said with a glance in Saule's direction. "Riled up as much as the others, say one word to her and she'll scratch your eyes out."
Saule's face turned a delicate shade of pink. "I'm not riled." She whacked at the bush and ripped out handfuls of fleshy mauve flowers, pulping them in her hands. Her sisters watched with blatant amusement as their coven healer succeeded in decapitating a plant.
"Riled. The whole mess of you!" Yavanna directed her glare out over the other witches as they returned to either their conversations or ruining Saule's store. "Ill omens abound, I say."
"Ill omens, Grandma Yavanna?" Tanya asked as she adjusted her glasses and tossed a sympathetic glance Saule's way. "What do you mean?"
"I mean the feeling of ice drippin' down your spine, girl," Yavanna snapped. "Like a Lich's breath pouring over your skin. Spring should be outside our door—and we wake to this calamity, this storm ragin'. Nataliya needs to initiate a viewing with the other sorceresses of the coven and scry for changes in the world's weaving."
"I'm sure Mistress Voronin's busy enough without starting up a scrying scare," Saule said as she pulled the last of the sharp leaves from about her thigh. An orange mana pot zoomed by and clipped the side of her head. "Oi! That is expensive! Put it back!"
Muttering muddled witch swears, Yavanna tossed the root she'd been manipulating to the floor. The hulking malamute below scarfed it up, leaving behind a wet stain on the hardwood from his incessant drooling. His coat, once a mixture of soft white and black fur, had been replaced by glossy navy feathers. The poor beast appeared like a grounded, wingless crow with a pair of bright blue eyes.
"Don't feed Bram that," Saule complained as the beast panted and went back to lazing on the rug. "He keeps getting into my herb storage now, thinking its food."
"How else am I to cure him, eh?" Yavanna retorted as she ignored Saule's exasperation and again dropped one of her knots for the dog to eat. Bram burped and caused several of the gathered witches to wrinkle their noses in disgust. "After your blunder with the tossed potion?"
"It was his own damn fault for getting in the trash." She slammed her hand down on the stapler with a bit too much heat and tore the label.
Perhaps Saule was more riled than she thought. The tenseness in her shoulders wouldn't dissipate, and no matter how loud she cranked her music or how many herb pouches she labeled, Saule's eye was drawn to the front window, all but covered by the shelves and potted plants, and the rain that battled beyond it.
I've no gift for scrying, Saule thought to herself as she worried her lip between her teeth and wondered when Mistress Voronin would finally show. She could admit to herself that she was inexplicably nervous, though she put on a brave face for the younger girls like Tanya. But even I can feel that chill in my veins. Something's not right out there.
"You've got that worried look on your face again," Tanya said as she leaned on the counter with amusement lighting her dark eyes. "I can always tell."
"How so?"
Yavanna cackled. "You look like you've got a stick rammed up your rear."
Saule glowered as Tanya did her best not to laugh at her grandmother's crude humor. "Oh, that's nice. I invite you lot into my shop, and this is what I get." Saule frowned as she swept a few stray twigs to the floor and shooed Bram away before he could get his jaws on them. It was growing later. Too late. "All joking aside, Yavanna...but you spoke to Mistress Voronin earlier this evening, right? Wasn't she supposed to be here by now?"
The old woman shrugged, though Saule noted the way her milky eyes roved over the door and her charges. "Nataliya does what Nataliya wants. I did speak to her, but...." Again, her thin shoulders rose and fell beneath her bulky sweater. "She'll be along. We just need to wait."
Saule caught one of her own brown curls between two fingers and drew it taut, then let the coil spring back into place. Thunder boomed and shook through the city like a herald's bellow through a crowded hall. The witches drew silent, their bodies stilling.
Something...wasn't right.
Something...was here.
The thunder was followed by another bolt of light and another clap of sound—but these had nothing to do with the weather. Every charm Saule had hung from the ceiling and every talisman carefully pasted to the walls went up in a puff of smoke and sparks. The front of the store seemed to sway as lines of heat upon a desert do, undulating forward and back as the bricks let out a pained shout and the mortar turned to liquid fire. Saule didn't have a chance to take a breath before the explosion tore the building's face off.
The witches screamed. Those nearest the entrance were miraculously spared the brunt of the explosion's force while those clustered nearest the counter and the back were pelted with bits of brick and stone. Something struck Saule hard in the face and she again fell from her stool, and this time didn't get up.
She must have blacked out for a minute, because next she knew she was gasping in a lungful of concrete dust, lying prone next to her stool in a smattering of debris and strewn plants, and Yavanna was screeching with indignity as someone hauled her over the countertop.
Saule's dazed eyes focused on the hands that so cruelly grasped Yavanna's arms as she blinked in the rain that fell upon her.
Male hands. Male...?
It hit her then, the sudden tang of schooled arcane magic, like aluminum drawn along her tongue and down her throat. Flash-bangs. Mages!
She could hear their voices now, the varying baritones of masculine tones combined with the heavy thump of boots upon her ruined floors. Too many to count. Her sisters yelled and cried out in shock or surprise—but Saule didn't hear screams of pain, at least not yet.
What in the hell are they doing?!
Bram was on his feet and was growling, all the feathers on his body standing straight like the flared hood of a pissed off lizard. He was blocking access to the little aisle between the counter and back wall—to the area where Saule lay in a puddle of muck with her heart racing unchecked.
One of the mages cast a spell at Bram. Saule wasn't sure what kind it was, as she couldn't see the bastard, but she felt the magic dart toward the dog—then glance off his mutated coat.
"What did they do to this dog?!" a nasally, outraged voice demand. He was answered by Bram's snapping teeth.
"Never mind that. Get the rest." A deeper, more commanding mage sniped at the other man as Saule felt his footsteps reverberate on the other side of the counter. Wide-eyed and trembling, she crawled on her belly until she could peer around the corner through Bram's stocky legs.
There were more than a dozen mages inside and outside what remained of the tattoo parlor, all dressed in ironed slacks with black boots and coats of colorless gray with cerulean lining. On their breasts glittered badges of interlocking circles with three glowing blue stones apiece.
Shit. They're from Blue Fire Syndicate!
The one who had given orders to the flash-bang who'd attacked Bram wasn't known to Saule. She didn't know any of them, though she'd been the unlucky recipient of several Blue Fire inspections over the years. Typically it was always enacted by their local liaison, Mik Millian—but Saule didn't see the fat twitch-finger anywhere.
No, all she saw were tall, fit, and undoubtedly lethal men of the Blue Fire creed.
Most were encircled about her kinswomen, binding their hands together with scripts written upon their wrists in silver chalk. Other mages were out on the dismal street with sacks brimming with stolen enchantress gems to blank the memories of witnesses. The youngest witches were crying and trying to rid themselves of the scripts while the older women had been pacified with runes traced upon their slack brows.
Yavanna, as ancient and weak as she was, was kicking the blazes out of the mage who'd dared grab her. The mage commander finally snatched her from the outmatched fool—and Yavanna spat in his face.
"Stand down, witch," the man sneered as he wiped his cheek clean with a free hand. Saule got a glimpse of his pleasant but somewhat plain face and still didn't recognize him.
"How dare you!" Yavanna shouted. "We are coven women of Baba Yaga! How dare you attack our house, how dare you lay a hand upon any of us! The Mistress will hear of this! The Itherians will hear of this! You will burn, flash-bang!"
The man shook her hard enough to rattle the old witch, and Saule felt her anger chafe against her fear. "I was sent by Itheria, you damn twig-eater," the mage retorted, bringing his face nearer. "Your Mistress has already been caught. She's on her way to the Blue-Iron wardens."
Several of the other witches shouted in outrage—in confusion and fear. Saule slapped a hand over her own mouth to stifle her gasp.
How?! If they hurt Mistress Nataliya—!
"We've held our end of the treaty for decades," Yavanna seethed through yellowed teeth. "Peace was to be held between the covens and syndicates. We've bent knee to your rules—and this is how you answer our placation? You blow up one of our venues and bind our youths? If you mean to start a war with all the covens of the western seaboard, you have it!"
The man threw Yavanna to the floor, and she landed on her knees with a sour groan of pain. "None of you foul women understand what's going on," the mage yelled above the howling of the storm. He paced a length of floor and came to a halt by the mana pot cabinet, which had somewhat survived the onslaught thanks to Saule's many bartered enchantments. He snatched the solitary golden mana pot from the shelf and held it aloft in a quivering fist. "Have you even looked at the sky?! Have you not seen what those cretins from the Pit have brought down upon us?!"
The mage flung the pot from his person and it shattered upon the far wall in a hailstorm of golden, burning effulgence.
Saule knew what he spoke of. Hell, everyone knew what the mage spoke of. They'd all seen the newscast over and over, in which the one named Envy broke a woman's neck and vanished into nothing for all humanity to see. The covens and syndicates had done their damnedest to cover up the incident—spelling the minds of people who'd directly seen Envy, destroying the footage, taking it down from the internet whenever it popped up while every government in Terrestria passed it off as a hoax—but it wasn't enough.
Mistress Voronin had warned the coven that something much deadlier than a pack of mages might descend to this plane soon. It would explain the ill feeling that had been plaguing the coven all day and night.
"You witches flaunt places like this—." He gestured at the ruined merchandise with clear revulsion. "—to the humans. You laugh and don't care a wit for the problems you make for us. Our end very well may've just dropped out of the sky, and you all sit in your coven charming your shit and selling it like it's gold!"
The mage reeled and backhanded Yavanna. The old witch crumpled, and one of the youngest girls began to wail. "The Blue Fire Syndicate won't stand for it any longer," the mage stated loud enough for them all to hear. "There are no more covens. No more fucking witches. You twig-biters will be assigned to a local syndicate who can check your idiocy. We're going into lockdown. Terrestria's others will survive this incursion, whether you want to or not."
They're serious, aren't they? Saule could barely believe what she was hearing—but the words were coming from the flash-bang's mouth, and she could hear them clear as a bell. The mages meant to destroy the covens, to dismantle their society all in the name of anonymity. Anonymity for the witches would be easy—if they no longer existed.
They want one less reason to draw that creature to them. They want the Absolian to go after Envy, so they're forcing us all to bury ourselves neck deep in sand.
Heavier footsteps encroached through the rapid pounding of the rain. Saule started when she recognized the obnoxious drawl of Mik Millian, and the man himself came stomping in through what remained of the door.
"Gods, you've made a mess of the place, haven't you?" he said to the commander as he pinched his nose to block the stench of spilt fertilizer and broken leaves.
"It was necessary." The commander's tone was snide, his eyes like naked steel as he took in the fat mage's appearance. "You must be Ambassador Millian. The forward advance stated you were told to arrive with us, not after us."
"Yeah, well—." The twitch-finger did nothing but wave an unworked hand at the man as he stepped over a split book and came to a stop at Yavanna's side. "I thought orders were to take them unharmed? The council doesn't want to incite rioting from the holdouts, not while the Absolian's here."
Again, all the man replied with was, "It was necessary."
Mik's dispassionate eyes looked over Yavanna, then the girls and women being herded like cattle by his brethren. Some of them were as furious as Saule felt. Their eyes were glassy with hatred, and some wore their terror on their faces like funeral veils. Saule was terrified, too. She'd never been very brave.
"Where's the shopkeeper?" Mik asked, his wet lips tipping into a frown.
The commander jabbed a thumb at Yavanna.
"That isn't her."
Saule stopped breathing.
The commander looked at Yavanna, then at Mik. "Then she's at her home. We'll send a retinue."
"The shopkeeper never leaves here. If you knew anything about witches, you'd know that. In the Baba Yaga coven she is their sayqu-'iskik."
"Their what? I don't speak their stupid language."
"Their line holder." Mik wasn't an impressive man and Saule had always thought little of him, but as the Blue Fire Syndicate's ambassador, he'd learned far too much about their coven over the years. "She's the descendent of Baba Yaga. She's a bit like their mascot, really. This is her home. Find her."
Saule ducked completely behind the counter before she could be spotted. Damn it all to hell!
She heard the commander give the order to search the wreckage and the street as Bram continued to growl in earnest. What could she do? She was the only one who hadn't been found, but she only had a minute—maybe seconds—before one of the flash-bangs stuck his head over the counter or found a way to kill Bram and got by.
Bless my blood--think! Saule pleaded with herself as she swept a hand over her brow in agitation. The touch burned and she winced, drawing away bloody fingers from where she'd been struck in the explosion. She stared at the red fouling her skin and watched the entirety of her small arm shake with adrenaline and fear.
Saule was a blood witch, yes, but she was a priestess, not a sorceress. For both, their power resided in the physical manifestation of magic and mana within their veins, but her skillset was only healing mantras, talismans, a few cheap spells. Sorceresses turned their blood into a weapon, augmented their very bodies and minds into things of great power and triumph—but Saule wasn't capable of that.
Bram's growling grew more intense and Saule knew her time was up. She couldn't get passed the mages, but maybe—just maybe—she could figure out a way to dash up the stairs to the second level. If it wasn't blocked by rubble, there was a wide window there that she could jump from. It wouldn't be a pretty landing, but she could handle a broken bone or two. She was a priestess, after all.
The floor shook beneath her as one of the men came closer still. "Check behind the counter and upstairs. Get that mongrel out of the way."
Saule began to recite one of the few sorceress spells she knew in the witch tongue, the Esoterica. "Shsok ic kray shuxku, shsok ic kray xreequt, tetgh cayik ghai kray etquetkrut."
The words flew from her parted lips like small boats setting sail on the current of her breath, and Saule was surprised by the ease with which she spoke. Like all the witches who yet followed the old ways, Saule had grown up speaking the Esoterica, but she'd never used the language in combination with her magic before. She used simple commands, like "mend!" or "heal" or "stitch," but those were all brief, one-word statements. Child's play.
This was a spell. This wasn't child's play. She knitted the dangerous words into a sentence, and that sentence settled upon her brow like a crown of thorns as the crimson blood on her little hands began to burn.
"Shsok ic kray shuxku, shsok ic kray xreequt—."
A shadow fell over her, causing Saule to stutter. "Hey! I found her!"
Hands reached down as Saule ducked and breathlessly kept chanting. Bram lunged for the man trying to touch Saule and stood over her, protecting his owner with his body. In a sudden rush of idiocy, Saule felt sorry for teasing the dog about his feathery affliction. She swore she'd give him all the treats he wanted for the rest of his days if the mages didn't kill him first.
"Get out of the way—!" The commander leapt over the counter, scattering more dirt and dust over Bram and Saule. She stuttered as his weight hit the floor by her legs, and Bram barked when the man kicked him square in the chest. A hand landed on her ankle.
"Shsok ic kray shuxku—!"
"Oh, no you don't, witch!" The mage had hold of her legs, and Saule could feel the bitterness of his magic roiling just under her own, ready to slap a pacifying rune on her body. Bram lunged again—just missing the bastard's soft parts—and Saule rushed to finish the incantation.
"—shsok ic kray xreequt, tetgh cayik ghai kray etquetkrut!"
To be honest, Saule really didn't know what the incantation did—just that it was a sorceress's spell and it was meant for offense. She's read it in one of the Mistress's many books one afternoon while lazing about the shop, and had stored it away for future thought. Of course, being the idiot that she was, Saule hadn't thought to remember what it did.
It was the equivalent of chucking a bomb and not being totally sure what would happen when it went off.
Her magic tightened its lazy revolutions and Saule wailed when the thorns about her brow turned into a scarf of barbed wire. Through watering eyes, she turned her gaze to the mage attempting to haul her off the floor—and watched as the man melted without a sound.
For a moment, nothing but the storm and slosh of the commander's body collapsing into a dark puddle were heard—then the witches screamed. The mages screamed. Saule screamed. Her legs and feet were covered in viscus red slop and the liquid burned as if she'd boiled the mage's very blood in his veins and had turned him into soup.
She realized that was exactly what the spell had done.
"Saule, you idiot!" Her head snapped up as Yavanna's pained voice cut through the confusion like a well-honed blade. "Run!"
The priestess didn't need to be told twice. She would have done just about anything to get away from that steaming lake seeping into the floorboards—the steaming lake she had created. She'd thought the spell would work as a distraction, something to frighten or startle the mages to give her an opening, but the incantation had been far more than she'd expected. It'd been a black spell. Black as tar. As night.
Saule almost collided with the stairwell wall when she tripped over her own clumsy, wet feet and grab the railing. Bram was right behind her, yapping and hopping with urgency as the mages overcame their morbid astonishment and started after them.
"S-stop her! Stop that woman!"
The window waited at the head of the stairs, the glass already broken from its chipped frame. Tattered talismans smoldered along its sill, and they crumpled beneath Saule's fingertips as she popped her short legs through the busted window and jumped before she could talk herself out of it.
As expected, something in her knee popped when she landed in the byway behind the Inkwell and Saule grunted against the sharp pain. Bram came out after and collided with Saule, shoving her from the path of a mumbler's incantation before it could find purchase. She savored the cold brush of the rain on her heated skin as she glanced at the window and saw three mages there, all searching for a way down.
"We have to run, Bram!" she said to her dog, her voice warbling like an unsteady chair as she curled her fingers into the downy plumage at his neck. "Hurry!"
"Follow her!"
Saule Ozlin and the feathered malamute fled from the syndicate, but as their feet splashed through the bleak puddles and they roved ever deeper into the encroaching night, Saule had to ask, "But where do we run to?"
A/N: Forgive the long author's note <3
Some pronunciations:
Saule = Sow ("Ow"as in "ouch!") + lay. Not Sall.
Verweald = Ver (as in "very") + Wield. I've been asked about this a lot lately.
Cuxiel = Coo + z + el.
Amoroth = Aw + More + Oth (as in "moth").
Terrestrian other slang:
Flash-bang = witch slang for "mage."
mumbler = materialistic mage.
twitch-finger = dexterous mage.
scribbler = construct / runic mage.
twig-eater/biter = mage slang for "witch."
The Esoterica:
Shsok ic kray shuxku, shsok ic kray xreequt, tetgh cayik ghai kray etquetkrut.
"Blood of my body, blood of my veins, set fire to my enemies."