With Curious on her back, Marvela led her friends into the woods.
The deeper the band of animals trekked into the forest, the more the air began to pulsate. A low, deep hum vibrated in Marvela's ears. There was a slight quaking in the soil beneath her paws. A mist in a poisonous shade of green hung in the air, purveying the woods. It was the color of sickness. Yet the creatures pressed on, sticking to the shadows cast by the light of the full moon and slinking between trees on silent feet.
Until they found her.
Asra stood alone in a crater in the woods amongst the corpses of many felled trees. With a raise of her hand, she instantly reduced all the fallen trunks to ashes that drifted away into the sky. With a smirk, the witch slashed the air with her fingernails, resulting in a spray of gleaming green sparks that settled onto the now barren terrain. From the sparks, a ring of unlit candles materialized around the witch. Their wicks awaited the kiss of fire.
The sorceress's crow familiar was nowhere to be seen.
Marvela and her fellow animals sheltered amongst the roots of the trees that surrounded the witch. So far, they had gone unnoticed by the busy witch. "Slight is coming to drag Asra away to repay her debts," the kitten whispered to her friends at her side. "I think it's best if we don't let her avoid that. We can restrain her until Slight arrives and let him take care of her."
"Good riddance," purred Lolly in agreement.
Curious gave Marvela's star a reassuring little pat.
Down in the gulley, the witch raised her hands once more. A rush of wind swept over the candles, lighting every wick with a malevolent green flame. Asra's eyes gleamed in the viridian light as she turned her beautiful, vile face upward to face the wide, pupilless eye of the moon.
"Soon..." Marvela heard the witch whisper. "After tonight, there will never again be another witch as powerful as I. I will be a queen amongst mortals! I will be respected! I will be feared! I will be—!"
And Marvela found herself leaving behind the safety of the shadows. The kitten marched down into the gulley, her tail raised in a challenge. "Not just yet, Asra!" the black cat said to Asra's back, surprised that her voice didn't waver one bit. "I think there's something in your path."
The witch's shoulders slumped. She turned around to face the kitten with an exasperated sigh. "You. Again," she growled, rubbing her temples. "I was in the middle of a speech. Now I've lost my train of thought. Didn't I warn you not to stand in my way?"
Something small and white scampered to stand beside Marvela. "Yeah, but we're both bad listeners," Curious retorted, scratching at one of his ears with a hind paw.
Marvela cleared her throat. "Listen up, Asra," she said. "This is your last chance to set things right—"
The witch clucked her tongue. "Oh, let me guess, you want me to return the witches I've destroyed and give them back their magic. Hm?"
Marvela felt hope flicker in her chest like one of the candles that surrounded them. "Well, yes," she said. "That is possible, right?"
The corner of the witch's red lips drew up in the ghost of a smile. She tossed her fiery ringlets over her shoulder. "Kitten, when you're as powerful as me, anything is possible." Her smile faded. Her eyes grew dark. "Not that you will ever understand that. You're just a familiar!"
The kitten just laughed at that. "Wrong! We're just familiars!"
With a flick of her tail as a signal, the witch-less familiars of Vigilance and their allies descended from the woods to encircle Asra. Each familiar was aglow with the last traces of their fading magic and each one released that magic in a beam directed at the green-eyed witch.
Asra gasped as she found herself restrained by a multitude of shimmering coils of every color. Overhead, the bats dropped loops of chains over her and pulled them taught. On the ground, the rats wound ribbons weaved from spider silk around her legs. The two dogs had the hem of her dress in their jaws, drooling all over her.
The witch was immobilized. And fuming. "Get off me, you animals!" screeched Asra. "I need to be ready for Slight!"
Marvela stood tall before her. "If you return the witches and leave Vigilance for good, we'll even let you leave before Slight shows up so you can live to haunt the shadows another day," the kitten meowed.
And hopefully, learn your lesson from all this, Marvela thought, licking her lips.
The witch snapped her green gaze to the black kitten at her feet. "Never! You are all servants! Tools! Just slaves!"
Marvela shook her head. "Wrong again! We're a family! That's our strength." She met Asra's emerald green eyes. She stared down the witch who had heartlessly struck down her own flesh and blood in pursuit of power. "And that's something you'll never understand. Now give up, Asra. Please."
The witch stopped fighting against her restraints. Instead, trembles rocked her body as she began chuckling to herself. Then she threw her head back and cackled loud enough that her voice rang from every branch and bough in the woods. All the animals instinctively ducked at the sharp, cracking whip of sound.
"You really do think yourself a witch, huh?" the witch teased. "Well, do you know what magic-less people did to witches here in this very spot centuries ago? What they did to me?" Asra guffawed at Marvela. Her eyes were wide and crazed. Her mouth stretched into a grin that displayed every one of her perfect teeth. Slowly, her laughter stopped. But her smile never slackened. "Do you know what witches fear most, Marvela?"
Marvela's ears went flat against her head as the air began to pulsate once more. Pebbles on the ground started to rattle and rise into the air. The trees around them rocked back and forth even though there was no wind. All the animals that held Asra in place squirmed at the ominous tinge in the atmosphere. Some even began to back away from the witch, heads bowed and tails lowered. Fear glistened in the whites of their eyes.
Asra ignored every other creature except for the star-spotted cat in front of her. "They fear fire," she told the cat.
Marvela clapped her paws together, forcing all the other animals safely out of the clearing with her magic just as a tornado of starving flames erupted from Asra. With a yell, Marvela found her rat familiar, held him close, and ducked beneath a shield of shimmering orange light she had summoned just as the flames flew over her. Memories of her cottage's destruction washed over her, and again, Marvela felt that seething anger rekindle within her. The heat singed her fur, scorched her whiskers, and sucked the air from her lungs for a brief moment. But the fire soon dissipated.
Marvela withdrew her paws from her face as her shield vanished in a glittering cloud.
Asra stood in the center of the clearing, now free of any bonds. Her eyes scanned the now-barren crater for any lingering creatures. "Looks like it's just the three of us, cat," said the sneering witch at the remaining cat and the rat.
But the earth wasn't done trembling. Even Asra yelped in surprise as the ground between her and Marvela split apart with a thunderous crack, revealing a void overflowing with pale blue light. The kitten and the rat dug their claws into the ground as the tremors continued, and the maw of the void widened.
Then everything went still.
Deathly still.
No wind stirred the dry leaves in the trees. Every pebble remained where it had fallen. Marvela, Curious, and Asra were all motionless, too, as they gazed down into the bright portal between them. Ghostly blue moths escaped from the void, dissolving into shimmering dust shortly after leaving their realm. Then from the blueish-white light came a monstrous sigh. Two enormous gnarled and clawed hands reached out from the void.
Marvela and Curious stood rooted in terror. Asra just kept grinning. "Make that the four of us..." she said.
The entire woods shook with such severity that Marvela was certain that the citizens in the town below could feel the tremors. The clawed hands continued to grasp and grapple at the terrain surrounding the void, and slowly the furred and hunched back of a huge beast rose into view, followed by the fanged visage of Slight.
Marvela could not tear her eyes away from the enormous spirit as he dragged himself free from the glowing blue realm below. Twisting from side to side on a long sinewy neck as he surveyed the woods around him, his head was little more than a bleached white and fanged deer skull complete with a proud pronged rack of antlers, each tine capped with a little blue flame. There were no eyes in those empty black sockets of his, just floating blue globes of whitish-blue flames that fixated on the smirking green-eyed witch he towered over. Blue ethereal moths escaped from the creature's gaping maw as he sighed once more, crouching in front of Asra so that they were eye level.
The portal Slight had climbed forth from began shrinking. And in the dimming blue light, Asra stepped toward the spirit. She raised a hand and gently traced a finger along the intricate swirling shapes carved into his skull-face. "Ah... My old friend," she said. "The only one who saved me all those years ago."
Slight's mandible parted. "Asra of Grudgewood Forest," he spoke in a breathy voice that echoed from every tree despite being barely louder than a whisper. "Eight times, I have saved you from fire. And now I have come to collect from you. Come with me to the realm of spirits, as was our agreement."
Marvela had pressed herself low into the dirt, unable to move and speak. She had never seen a spirit before. Nor had she ever felt such raw and potent magic. All she could do was watch as Asra retracted her hand from Slight as if something had stung her. "Yes, of course," the witch murmured.
The spirit's fiery eyes seemed to shrink inside his sockets. He looked like he was narrowing his eyes at the witch. He tilted his boney head. "You seem... different," he said. More moths fluttered from his fanged mouth with every breath.
Asra laughed at that. "Yes... You might have noticed that I may have become a bit stronger since the last time we met."
The spirit's eye-flames continued to shrink. "No, that's not it. It's your eyes. The light in them has been extinguished." He shook his head from side to side. He extended a hand to the witch, elongated fingers outstretched and waiting. "No matter. Now come with me—"
The green-eyed witch's eyes darkened. She took a step away from Slight's waiting hand. "Just a moment," she snapped. "I won't be going anywhere, old friend. And neither will you." She flashed a grin and raised one of her hands. Pinched between two razor-sharp fingernails was a tuft of Slight's bluish-black fur. "Not unless I bid it."
Those two flames in the spirit's skull flared. "What are you—?"
Inky black fluid oozed forth from the ground, bubbling like hot tar. Dripping tendrils spurted from the boiling puddles, grasping onto the spirit and holding him firmly in place. Now Asra approached her beastly captive again. Gingerly she laid a lock of her red hair between the creature's wrathful eyes. Her rouge lips curled up in a smile. "I promise—"
Marvela's tiny heart beat against her ribs in time to the pulsations in the atmosphere. She shook her head hard enough to make her ears flop to regain her senses. She couldn't just sit there and watch. Leaving behind her petrified familiar, she bounded forth, leaping over the fading portal to land squarely between Asra and the spirit.
A wave of orange light splashed in her wake, leaving singe marks across Asra's dark, silken gown and forcing the witch to drop the spirit's fur. "Stop!" she meowed.
Asra's eyes flashed with a green light. She truly looked like a viper on the verge of striking. "You!" she spat at the intruding kitten.
Marvela whipped around to the spirit smothered under the writhing black coils. She clamped her jaws around one of the tendrils and tried to rip it away. "Slight!" she yelled as best she could with her jaws full. "Quick! Leave this place!"
The kitten's efforts were in vain. The spirit remained trapped under Asra's conjured restraints. "Ah... Cruel betraying witch..." he growled. "After all the times I came to your aid..."
Asra tapped a finger to her chin, looking amused by Marvela's futile efforts. "Don't look so down, Slight. Together, you and I will run this world. We'll steal the magic from every other witch out there. And we'll bring those without magic to their knees starting with this cute little town."
"No, Witch. I don't want that. Spirits are not monsters."
The witch shook her head and laughed. "Oh, but they will be. Once the mortal realm is under my control..." A grin. "The spirit realm is next. An untapped source of magic. All for me."
Marvela growled at Asra while still trying to tear away the spirit's restraints. So Midnight was right, she thought. Some humans really can't resist more power.
Marvela saw the light leave the witch's eyes again. "Now, where was I?" Asra pondered. "Oh, right." She waved a hand, and a spectral wind collided into Marvela, tossing her away from the spirit and lifting her in the air so that she was eye-level with the evil sorceress.
Marvela hissed and spat, struggling against the green smoke that enshrouded her. Asra's eyes flashed. "I need to get rid of a stray cat," the witch said, malevolent laughter darkening her voice.
And then Marvela was dropped from the air and into the dissolving void of light below.