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“I want to be a dragon,” she said.
There were smoother ways that could have been phrased. Something casual, something suave, something that led up to a subtle request like, “That’s a nice trick you have there. I’d love to learn a trick like that.” Well, something better than that, actually, but if Marian could come up with better things – as she’d been telling everyone her whole life it seemed – she would say them.
She meant it as a joke, breathless with flippancy and fear, except… she didn’t, really. On one hand, she was happy as she was and she had better things to get on with than that sort of chaos. But, on the other hand – oh, on that tempting and tingling hand – there was a hunger, so striking and so sudden. How could someone not know they were starving? She hadn’t known until she had laid eyes on the sharp snap of scale and had her heartbeat seized by a roar that shook the world.
Marian had felt her skin blister under flames spewed too close, hot and undeniably magical, and the force of great wings battering the sky into flight. The dragon had swooped and so had Marian’s stomach and heart and breath, because oh, they had been fucked in that moment.
How was anyone supposed to survive a dragon?
But then, darkspawn dead, the dragon had turned and, upon fixing them in great yellow eyes, had melted in on itself. Golden light had twisted and churned the air, which had turned hot and cold in chaotic, uneven bellows. It had lasted little more than seconds, and then the air had seethed away from a tall woman sheathed in black and crimson, who had straightened to a regal height, but done it as though her spine were clicking into place.
Marian had nearly dropped her staff once the woman’s neck had settled and she turned to fix them in great yellow eyes again. It had felt no less predatory despite the change. In fact, it had felt even more predatory, because dragons couldn’t smile half as wickedly as a witch.
The woman hadn’t even lost her grip on the darkspawn she was dragging effortlessly on her claws. No, the old woman had just stridden languidly through the lingering flames as though they didn’t even tickle. She was crowned and clawed in iron, decked in feathers and leather, with four horns that stretched seamlessly from pure white hair and ended apparently dyed in blood. Her face was pale, her features sharp, and she wore age as though every year had only served to make her stronger.
“Well, well,” she had said. “What have we here?”
Marian had moved forward then, staff still in hand and heart in her throat, to step between the witch and her family. She was weak still – her side ached like a living flame and she had added a limp to her collection of injuries, so getting through this Blighted waste seemed hellish already if not impossible – but instinct demanded she play protector even now.
Just before, a well-timed ice spell gasped from the ground had knocked the now-dead ogre back a step. It had kept that foul thing from grabbing Bethany and given Carver time enough to pull his twin and their mother away. While it could be kindly said that Marian’s good fortune and forethought in battle had not proceeded well from there, it could also be more plainly said that charging an ogre had been a fucking stupid idea.
Marian would take that thing dead and them all alive, though, even if she’d screwed herself over in the slaying of the thing. Better her injured than one of the twins dead, in her mind.
Her thoughts when she had stepped between her family and a wild-looking witch? She couldn’t rightly say. She had been glad and terrified to have Carver at her back, while Bethany stood protectively in front of their mother. She had been horrified to see Aveline have to set Wesley down, the Templar too weak to even stand for a draconian woman.
“It used to be we never got visitors to the Wilds, but now it seems they arrive in hordes!” the woman had declared, a smile tugging at her dark lips. She looked no more unfriendly than a bemused grandmother having caught children tripping over her garden.
All Marian had known was that they had to live. She wanted to live. She had consoled herself with being at least armed with a smile and no small amount of charm, though not as much wits as she’d like if she was to beg the mercy of a witch.
“Impressive!” Marian had replied playfully, conversationally, ignoring Carver’s startled look of ‘What the fuck are you doing, Mary?’
She’d seen it so many times that looking at it was superfluous. C’mon, Carver, how are compliments going to hurt us now?
“Where’d you learn to turn into a dragon?”
“Perhaps I am a dragon,” the woman had answered, hardly as charmed as Marian might have hoped. “If so, count yourself lucky.” A cruel twist had briefly turned her lips. “The smell of burning darkspawn does nothing for the appetite.”
The woman had turned away then, and continued, “If you wish to flee the darkspawn, you should know you are heading in the wrong direction.” She had stepped away as she said it, as though leaving, and Marian’s response had died as a too-quick inhale, caught in her injured side in her panic.
“So you’re just going to leave us here?” Darling Carver, always stepping up where she couldn’t manage, his outrage and terror bleeding through a voice staying strong.
But Marian could have struck him for drawing the witch’s attention in her place, terrified and grateful as the woman had paused, amidst the flames and darkspawn. Oh, darling, darling, foolish Carver. Marian had stepped slightly in front of her brother then, and ignored any scowl he might have sent her. She wanted to live; more importantly, however, she wanted them all to live and he was not helping her protect him.
“And why not?” the woman had drawled. Then she had turned, sharply, and stepped back towards them with gleaming eyes and a walk that deserved a long tail moving back and forth in her wake.
“I spotted a most curious sight: a mighty ogre, vanquished. Who could perform such a feat?”
The woman had shrugged, or made some movement similar. If it had been supposed to appear casual, it had fallen terrifyingly short, as did the amusement in her voice of comforting. Marian Hawke knew shrugs and, in her book, they were not supposed to be languidly calculating. At least, Marian had never managed to make them so.
“But now my curiosity is sated, and you are safe… for the moment. Is that not enough?”
What more do you want?
The witch had let the question hang in the air.
Never let it be said that Marian Hawke reacted poorly under pressure, for her next words did save their lives in the end. It might have been meant as a joke, it might have been the wistful envy of a fool, it might have been the hungry naivety or terrified desire, but it also might have gone a lot worse and let that be remembered too.
I want to be safe. I want to be free. I want to be powerful. I want to be indomitable.
“I want to be a dragon,” she said.
~
If there is one subject where old witches are wise, it’s wanting. They know that want is different from need. They know that wants make the world spin. They know how to hold wants out and dangle them like the worst demons could only hope to emulate. Old witches savor wanting like other people savor wine, and serve it up with the slyest of smiles.
For manipulation is a craft as much as magic, and witches are nothing if not crafty. Witches are dangerous, provoking, and enthralling. A witch brings out wants like flames call to moths, with all the same potential – sometimes certainty – of burning.
The witch laughs at Marian Hawke’s wanting, a bright and arcing cackle, because of course she does. They’re in the middle of a Blight and here comes yet another wanting and would-be hero, charming and blithe, hungry for her power and fire. Naivety knows no bounds.
“A grand dream, indeed,” the witch declares.
Behind the girl who wants to be a dragon, the brother looks at her aghast and frustrated, her worried sister stands firm in front of their terrified mother, and the soldier woman’s focus is torn by her dying husband. None of the girl’s family look truly surprised by the admission – by the timing, certainly, but not by the blunt desire. If anything, it is the girl herself most surprised by her own tongue, though she hides it well as she grins, as though it were her that wasted the land around them and purposefully.
“Does that mean you’ll consider it?” the girl asks, all clumsy charm and youthful humor. She manages her pain and fear well, also, but not the wanting still in her gaze. That, she cannot hide. “We won’t be able to make it through the darkspawn as we are, unfortunately. Not on our own.”
The witch steps into the girl’s space, comfortable and certain. The girl is taller and broader that she, a warrior and laborer of a mage, humorous and courageous, with sweat on her brow and blood splatter across her, yet her heartbeat quickens to look down upon sharp yellow eyes still dancing with amusement. As it should.
A want can catch a witch’s attention like a predator scenting prey.
“They are everywhere,” the witch muses of the darkspawn, laughter lingering on her breath. “Or soon will be.”
The girl’s want – the girl’s question – the girl’s plea is left to hang noticeably in the air.
“Where is it you plan to run to, hmm?”
There is opportunity here… the scent of it is in the air, alongside death. Not simply for advantage, for another safeguard, but for advancement. A bold move, a dangerous and uncertain action, but at the very least… hmm…
The sweet smell of new chaos beckons, just out of taste.
The witch licks her lips, quickly, just a flick of the tongue, and waits for one of them to speak.
“We’re going to Kirkwall – in the Free Marches,” the brother volunteers, his grip tight on his mighty blade. He hides his fear and impatience nearly as well as his elder, who does not well hide her annoyance at his bringing about the assessment of a witch.
Jealousy thrums between them, an old string between youths and a simple one to pluck should a witch so desire. Whether weak or brought on by stress, it is there. Yet the way the girl shifts yet again reveals a thread of loyalty as well, long and strongly grown, perhaps intertwined and… perhaps also to be played. There are many tunes that an old witch can play, after all.
The girl leans between her brother and the witch, worry in her bloody brow. She stands taller, despite the injuries of her battle with the ogre. There is grit in her widening grin. All as though to draw the attention to her – and her alone.
This one could serve well for several purposes.
“Kirkwall?” The witch muses. “My, but that is quite the voyage you plan.”
Challenge seeps clear and purposeful into her voice, into her smile, into her eyes. Heroes can rarely resist a challenge. Spite, pride, and glory call passionately to them, enough to make mute a subtle purpose, or to make fair and insignificant a favor.
“So far… simply to flee the darkspawn.”
The girl shrugs and raises her brows, despite her grit and blood. “Any better suggestions? I hear the Deep Roads are vacant now, but I’m not keen to meet the last residents on their way out. And I hear it’s murder to air out the smell.”
The witch laughs again, a sharp and shining cackle. The familiarity of a scared and clever girl’s wit is a balm to a fresh-cut hole that she will not acknowledge. Oh, the world should and shall never be spared the wit of girls too charming and cunning for their own good.
“Oh, you I like!”
If the group before her shifts uneased at that statement, it is only wise. The witch sighs away the last of her laughter, sharp yellow eyes still dancing with amusement, flames and corpses still seeping at her hem. She looks at the group – at the girl – before her.
She looks…
…and then… She Looks Again.
What the witch Sees in that moment, she will not share. For Knowledge is Power, after all. She would be a fool of a witch indeed to share all she Knows and Sees. And she is no fool.
What a curious thing, to look at a young woman and know the terrible path that awaits her. What a curious thing, to come across the great heroes, especially before their legends have begun to spread and to see their humble beginnings. There is greatness waiting for this young woman, should she live; should she find it; should she suffer it. A greatness that marks precious few in every age.
And yet the heroes… like witches… much like magisters and prophets and kings… are always people. People are weak. People have wants. People are people, and always have been.
“Hurtled into the chaos, you fight…” she muses, with neither humor nor glee, for the secret rarely shared of greatness and glory is their price in life and blood, “…and the world will shake before you.”
A would-be hero headed to a seat of chaos… like the first stone down a mountain…
The girl, of course, returns her solemn pronouncement with the polite confusion of ignorant youth. It is almost amusing, to see her raise her brows and smile with bewilderment. She does not Know. She cannot See. It is almost amusing, but not quite. Perhaps it is the opposite.
The witch turns away, hips rolling with purposeful carelessness as she takes several steps towards the distance. Long-stewed hells will not wait much longer. The sweet possibility of new chaos, among the fire, still lingers. She stops, her hips clicking into place, as she brings up her glinting arms and holds her claws with consideration under her chin. She tilts her horns at the Blight before her.
“Is it fate or chance?” she murmurs. “I can never decide.”
She has a would-be hero before her with a heartful, horrific want. Whatever shall she do with her?
…It is the prerogative of a witch to be unpredictable, is it not?
The witch unfolds her claws and straightens her iron spine. She looks down and breathes in the waste and the smoke and the death. Then she turns around again, and in doing so makes up her mind.
Because as she turns to face the girl again, for a thin second, out of the corner of her eye, she sees a different girl. The similarity is striking. For but a moment, the witch remembers another raven-haired girl, with pale skin and ragged bangs, with a staff in hand and the bright eyes of clever youth.
That is where the similarity ends, however. This would-be hero is too tall and tan and broad in face and physique, missing a true sharpness to the tongue and a reigning wildness to her edges. There is blood splashed about her, but her naivety is too much and her magic untested. Protectiveness is her stance, rather than lonely pride. This is a young warrior, not a witch.
Her eyes are blue, not bright gold.
There is no love in them for the witch. Nor hate.
So, it is here that the witch makes her decision. Why exactly she makes her choice, she cannot say, beyond that this corner-of-the-eye moment is the last straw. There are wants to grant and strings to pluck, here, and few know why a witch dares as she does, after all. Even, sometimes, the witch herself.
Maybe this final straw is brought on by sentimentality… and maybe by bitter spite.
The witch steps towards the young, unknowing mage, who returns her stare with pain and uncertainty and the remaining edge of terrified desire. No understanding of the power in her or pain before her, or the nebulous purpose fate will see her play in what is to come. Afloat on little more than desperation and determination to survive.
Sentimentality? Spite? Perhaps it’s both.
“It appears fortune smiles on us both today,” the witch says, smiling as wide and wicked as she is wont to do in the face of a foolish want like this. “I may be able to help you yet.”
~
“Just like that?” Marian says, surprised, before she can stop herself. She quickly forces herself to grin – hopefully knowingly and charmingly – as though this is nothing more than bargaining with that extortionist merchant what’s-his-name back in Lothering. As though she’s not in horrible physical pain, burning with envy, sweated through, and bewildered.
As though the stakes are nothing – less than nothing, even – instead of being her heart beating raw on a silver fucking plate in this woman’s magnificently clawed hand.
“There must be a catch,” Marian prompts.
The draconian woman smiles back, taking a languid step forward, as though just because she can. “There is always a catch,” she drawls back, far more effortlessly than Marian. “Life is a catch!” She gestures towards them and Marian could swear there’s a laugh in the glint of her eye. “I suggest you catch it while you can.”
A hand grabs at Marian’s wrist. She looks, startled, towards Carver just behind her. He’s wide-eyed, sweated through, and apparently can’t decide who to keep his glare on. “Should we even trust her? We don’t even know what she is!” he hisses.
Marian can’t resist the frown that tugs at her lips – of pain, of exhaustion, of does Carver really fucking think that I’m not taking this seriously because I’m acting friendly-ish to the woman who can turn into a fucking dragon. She doesn’t want to yank her hand out of his grip. It’s her staff-hand and she’s using it to stand. She’ll need it to cast. He needs to let go and back off.
She can handle this. She has to. She doesn’t want to fall on her face in front of… whoever this scary, scaled bitch is. Like, make ‘em laugh, and all that, but if Marian lets herself go down she’s not fucking getting back up again. Then what are they going to do?
Maker, she has no idea what she’s doing.
“I know what she is,” a low voice says accusingly.
Marian and Carver both turn towards Aveline, the soldier woman, still hovering over her injured Templar husband. Marian takes advantage of the slight distraction and pulls her arm from Carver’s callused grip. Then she keeps herself from falling over and looks over again.
Aveline’s expression is like a storm over mountains. Her husband, Wesley, has a hand over one at hers, and it’s hard to tell which one of them is comforting the other. Aveline’s knuckles are white on her shield. Wesley’s veins are black under his paled skin.
“The Witch of the Wilds,” Aveline says.
There is no uncertainty in her.
The woman, when Marian looks back at her, makes a shrug-like motion that rolls through her. She smiles bemusedly. “Some call me that,” she says. “Also Flemeth.” Then she drawls, “Asha’bellanar.” Another smile, wider, as she looks them all over. “An ‘old hag who talks too much’.”
Marian smiles back, reflexively. It might be more of a pained grimace, though.
“Does it matter?” Flemeth asks her. Her eyes are so sharp; her voice smooth and tinged with challenge. “I offer you this: I will get your group past the horde in exchange for a simple delivery to a place not far out of your way.” She looks directly at Marian, still smiling, with polite danger. “Would you do this for a ‘Witch of the Wilds’?”
There’s a saying that Marian’s always hated: Beggars can’t be choosers.
“Well, we could use more fire!” Marian says, because she has nothing left but bravado and it burns to admit it even to herself. It’s not a fun feeling on top of all her other injuries. “Roast a few more darkspawn,” she jokes, “and I’ll do anything you want!”
Ba-THUMP.
Marian’s hand startles for her chest. The first rule of bargaining is not to let them see how much you want what they have, but that’s easier said than done when your heart suddenly decides to kick hard against your sternum and then go ba-bumping about at breakneck speed.
Marian glances up from her pause, only a few seconds, to meet the witch’s stare. Flemeth’s voice is yet amused, but her expression is tinged with something terribly not.
“Sadly,” Flemeth says, “my charity is at an end.”
The pain tingles out from Marian’s chest and prickles over her arms.
“There is a clan of Dalish elves near the city of Kirkwall.”
Goosebumps growing sharp enough to cut at her own damn skin, it feels like.
Flemeth takes three pointed steps towards Hawke, her hem and boots trailing blood and smoke, and leans in, looking up. She smells like too-sweet ashes. Her eyes seem to have caught the sun. Being so close makes Marian’s eyes and nose burn, but she daren’t look away. Her heart is racing like it's running from something.
“Deliver this amulet to their Keeper, Marethari.” Flemeth’s bloody, metal claws press an equally bloody amulet into Hawke’s bare palm, and pulls back slowly. Only one step. “Do as she asks with it and any debt between us is paid in full.”
Then the witch pulls away entirely, another step, and Marian nearly falls over leaning after her, barely catching herself on her staff. The pain is dancing down her unsteady legs, cutting up and down. Carver, beside her, looks ready to leap out of his skin to hold her up.
“Before I send you anywhere, however,” Flemeth drawls. “There is another matter…”
In a slow, clicking turn, Flemeth’s sharp gaze lands on the man fallen and gasping on the wasted ground. If Marian’s heart weren’t busy alternating between burning speed and icy crawl, it’d skip a beat in sorry knowing as they all lay eyes on Wesley.
Ba-thump.
Aveline meets the stare and leaps to her feet. “NO!” She points a shaking finger at the Witch of the Wilds she’d named herself and she snarls. “You leave him alone.”
“What has been done to your man is within his blood already,” Flemeth says evenly.
There’s a twisting rush, hot and cold, that leaves echoing heartbeats all over Marian’s body. A second, painful heart is throbbing inside Marian’s neck, pushing at her tired, drowning lungs. Third, fourth, more – fires, beating, all up her shaking arms. It sounds like a drum. Blood, blood, blood.
Yeah, that’s not terrifying.
She can’t faint yet. Not yet. It’ll pass. It’ll pass. It’ll pass. It has to. It always does.
Flemeth almost looks sad, or at least sorrowful on Aveline’s behalf. Aveline is having none of it.
“YOU LIE!”
Bethany makes an aborted sound and Carver jolts forward slightly, as though to throw himself between them all and the calm witch. Marian must wonder, hysterically, if the steadfast soldier woman they’ve been battling their way out beside is going to punch Flemeth in the face.
That’s only going to be a hell of a story if they actually live afterwards.
But Aveline, all stark freckles and red temper, doesn’t get a step towards Flemeth before a hand catches her shin. She stops immediately.
“She’s right, Aveline.” Wesley’s voice is barely more than a whisper. “I can feel the corruption inside me.”
Ba-thump.
Never mind feel, they can all see the corruption inside Wesley. Black veins pulsing under whitened skin, reddened eyes shot with black, and pale lips slick with spit like pitch. The man has no grip on his wife’s foot, no blood left to lose to his armor and the ground, and no strength to hold up his head.
“Sounds bad,” Marian mumbles to herself, before she looks to the witch.
Maybe there’s no charity left in Flemeth, but if there is a price to be paid here to have the Templar live too… well, in for a copper, in for a crown. Aveline has saved Hawke’s siblings and mother several times now, on this wasted road, and there must be something that the Witch of the Wilds can do.
“This corruption is the permanent sort, I take it?”
Flemeth meets Marian’s pain and hope with unreadable calm. “The only cure I know of is to become a Grey Warden,” she says.
Easily, as though it’s not a miracle there’s a cure for the Blight at all. Which is fair enough, watching the faint hope die as quickly as it had come onto Aveline’s darkening face.
“…And they all died at Ostagar,” she says.
Flemeth hums. “Not all,” the witch says lightly, “but yes, the last are now beyond your reach.”
They’ll never make it to any Grey Wardens in time; they’d be hard pressed to make it back to Ostagar with Wesley alive, if there was sanctuary there instead of death. They’d never make it to the Grey Wardens of Orlais or the Anderfels.
Aveline buckles, then falls to her knees beside her husband again. She takes his outstretched hands in hers and holds them like a lifeline, tears streaking paths through the blood and grim of her cheeks.
“Aveline. Listen to me.”
“You can’t ask me that! I won’t!’
Listening to this, watching this, burns as sharp as all shame and horror. It’s intimate and invasive and strikes too close to home. This could’ve been any of them. This could’ve been Marian’s mother over one of the twins.
It also, for several seconds, leaves Marian stuck in her own skin rather than acting in the moment. The heartbeats in her burning, freezing veins, all banging and echoing off each other, are easier to ignore when she’s talking and walking and pretending like she doesn’t suddenly feel like she’s about to shake apart. There a pressure in her chest and lesser over her limbs.
There’s a sharpness, a something, in her heart and it’s spreading. It grates. It wants out.
“Please,” Wesley is saying. “The corruption is a slow death.”
Marian moves limply forward to stand just behind Aveline, turning her back to Carver and the witch. If she stands still any longer, she might crack. She gets a good look at Mother and Bethany as she goes: the both of them pale but alive. Tired but not in pain. Good. Good.
“I can’t…” Wesley says.
Aveline makes a soft, wounded sob, and Marian crouches slowly down beside her.
“He’s your husband, Aveline. I can’t make this call.”
The man’s dead no matter what they do. Marian can make other calls, has made questionable calls, like whether to leave this poor woman behind if Aveline won’t leave her husband it means saving Marian’s family, but not this one.
The call to crouch down beside Aveline was absolutely a mistake. Marian’s middle hurts so badly that she’s convinced for a moment that she’s actually dying – invisibly claws are tearing their way towards the agonizing false hearts in her sides.
Marian would shriek if she thought that might do anything.
Aveline, crying freely, clutching at Wesley, nods. Wesley doesn’t look sorry so much as relieved. He looks terrified and sorry, but more than both of those: so terribly glad the pain will stop.
Marian would feel pity for him if she didn’t feel too close to him. The pain is all over and dancing, and her anxious, exhausted mind won’t stop coming up with absurd, too-possible waking nightmares. What if we don’t make it? What if I die? Who will look after Mum and the twins? What if I’m Blighted too?
Wesley hands Aveline his own knife and she takes it with trembling hands. Marian looks away, partly out of respect and mostly not to let the physical pain show on her face.
Pressure in her chest, crushing in on her, pushing out in an approaching drum of hot and cold and blood, blood, blood. Spears and knives shred at her skin from the inside and out. A thousand hearts, one in every nerve, beat endlessly and wild and unstoppable, and Marian feels like she’s dying.
Ba-thump.
There’s a sound, the only interruption and lonely anchor, as Aveline gives her love his sharp mercy – a gasp that doesn’t breathe out again.
There’s a war machine, marching in her ears.
Marian can barely breathe – can barely stand. She manages, because Marian always manages, but every bend feels like she took Wesley’s knife herself. Out of the corner of her eye, she can see Aveline sobbing over the Blighted corpse that used to be her husband. It feels kinder, more bearable, to turn away.
Back to the witch.
Flemeth hasn’t approached them, but stands away amongst the smoke and blood of the Blighted wastes, tall and proud and waiting. Her blood-stained crown of horns is tilted ahead, her iron claws click patiently against the sheath of her armor, and she has them all fixed in those great yellow eyes.
Ba-thump.
Marian steps towards her, limping, leaning hard on her staff. She wants to keep her head high, but the wide grin on her face is gritted and the pain beats behind her teeth. She wants answers. She wants help.
She wants it to stop. She wants to be safe.
(To be free.)
Ba- thump.
She nearly staggers toward Flemeth, standing away in that pool of blood and Blight, ignoring the alarmed voices of her family behind her. The air breathes in around the witch like a tide and Marian feels as though she cannot help but fall in. She is fixated. She aches, she hates, like a living flame.
“Without an end,” Flemeth says, in a voice tempered by the ages, “there can be no peace.”
Ba-thu mp.
Marian’s legs can carry her no farther. The pain in them is too much. So much that a cry of agony nearly slips through a heavy teeth and heavier tongue. She’s shaking all to pieces, upright by only her weapon.
Flemeth comes to meet her, with a regal posture and a stride that clicks warningly into place, carrying a golden, wild glow around her like she had swallowed the dawn. It must be the blood, then, of the sun, that’s caught in her unnaturally bright, blistering eyes.
Ba-thump.
“It gets no easier.”
A clawed gauntlet raises to be pressed against Marian’s cheek, the ends sharp and cold against boiling skin. Flemeth is a tall woman. Marian may be taller, but Flemeth wears her height marvelous and unbearable. She smells of smoke and glows with gold, and Marian is burning. Engulfed at a touch.
Oh, that tempting and tingling hand.
Ba-THUMP.
“What- what are you doing?” Marian says hoarsely, inflamed, starving.
That striking roar.
“Keeping my word,” Flemeth says. She almost sounds amused.
Ba-thump.
The amusement is gone, suddenly, in favor of an expression sorrowful but not sorry. The old witch’s gaze is unyielding, unrepentant, unstoppable, and her next words have the fall of a promise.
“Your struggles have only just begun.”
Ba-thu-
Flemeth leans in and up, and takes Marian’s mouth in a hard, biting kiss.
That unbearable hunger.
All the hearts under Marian’s skin burst.
~
She knows nothing else but fire.
~
The girl shoves the witch away, but not in time – the golden glow is stuck to her now. She staggers away from the witch on broken legs, away from her family, her staff and everything else besides pain forgotten. The girl falls down the slope and screams, a high and horrifying sound that slices through the wastes.
It already barely sounds human, but the scream is the first thing to change. It swoops up, and then down and deep and loud. A roar so low and loud – ancient and bestial and from a convulsing girl – that it takes the world by the throat and shakes it.
The girl’s brother, the warrior, raises his sword and turns on the witch. There is no fear on the witch’s face for the boy. She looks at him evenly through the thunderous scream. She looks at him with great yellow eyes and licks her bloody lips.
The shaking air begins to churn with the terrible sound, hot and cold in chaotic, uneven bellows – in, out, boiling, freezing – as the girl on the ground howls. Golden light seethes from her chest, twists out from her back, and unfurls up through the bellows and out with a snap.
And then the girl melts. She burns and twists and melts.
And then the air, brilliant and magical and hot, takes hold of her.
It rips her apart.
She grows.
It lasts little more than seconds, but there’s so much blood. Sharp scales unfurl like feathers through the molten gore, heavy wings tear into the waste dust with their webs dripping red, and a beast tears itself out of the golden, churning girl. It spits out black and drips red. It throws back rows of bloody teeth and roars so deeply that the boiling quake is soundless.
The impossible size of it changed too quickly to compare. First, the size of a dog, then a horse, then a druffalo, then a bronto, then a giant, then… Maker… bigger than a house… than a tower. The beast is bigger than even the witch had been. It tosses its great sets of horns and spits black and sparks, and its head alone is at least twice the height of a grown human man. It could snatch two bodies each in its claws, which are each long as swords and look infinitely sharper as they rip with effortless agony into the waste and rock.
The wings shred out of the scales and the ground, and they flex into the sky. Farther. No, farther. And farther still. They block out the sun, dripping black dust and red heat. They smash against each other, against a writhing neck, against a long, whip of a tail that smacks the ground hard enough to crack it open.
The golden light has turned to fading glints, threatening to catch. The beast’s teeth trail smoke and sparks through its long shadow.
The brother, the sister, the mother, the soldier woman… they stumble and stare. They stagger back in fear. The brother can barely keep a grip on his sword, much less swing it against the immoveable witch.
One could have said that the witch looked satisfied. Perhaps she was. Witches were rarely satisfied, and never for long, but for now the Witch of the Wilds’ eyes gleamed. She pulled a finger across her mouth, then raised an iron gauntlet glowing with magic high above her horns, and whistled like a knife through the thunderous roar.
The dragon’s head whips around. It fixes her in fierce blue eyes.
Flemeth smiles and clicks her tongue.
Slowly, the dragon’s wings lower, its great neck and tail unfurl, and it moves slowly forward towards the raised claws of the witch. The sparks dance away and the black smoke fades off, but there’s a stream of dark liquid beneath it that echoes the gauntlet's glow.
Under the light again, it becomes clear that it’s not gore - at least, not just gore - that colors the beast. The dragon’s scales are the same red underneath the dripping shreds of itself.
A snout in all the shades of fresh blood, several times the size of the witch, presses forward against her iron hand and heaves great breaths over her. Its pupils leave only a thin rim of blue as it comes to heel. It rumbles at the witch, the sound like thunder over distant mountains.
The witch opens her free hand, to reveal again the amulet she had given the girl. It might be the same one, recalled, or a second one.
“A bargain is a bargain,” Flemeth says. “To Keeper Marethari of Clan Sabrae, and heed how she bids you, and any debt between us is paid in full.”
The witch knocks against the dragon’s snout with her iron claws. Its mouth opens and the witch places the bauble between its teeth, seemingly unbothered by the fangs as long as her arm. The dragon rumbles again and exhales a hot, heavy breath. The witch withdraws, satisfied.
Then she digs her claws into the snout and pulls the dragon’s eyes down to hers.
“Fly,” Flemeth says.
You foolish girl.
The dragon’s pupils turn to slits through fierce blue, it pulls itself away from the witch’s claws and turns on the horrified witnesses. First its great horned head, then its neck swings around, its long limbs and bulk and wings, and then its tail, swishing, as it advances.
The brother raises his blade higher, the soldier woman throws herself towards her blade and her husband’s shield, the sister swings her staff high- but none fast enough. The dragon pounces and rears, reaching for the its stumbling companions. It snatches the brother and the sister up in one forefoot, and then the soldier woman and the mother in the other, unheeding of the screams or the way the soldier woman attempts to stab into its toes.
Then, prizes caught, the dragon lifts its great head and the wings rise. They flex into the sky, webs dripping, smoke trailing, casting a long shadow over the waste. Higher. Then higher still.
Through the struggles and the screams, the sister’s eyes catch the witch’s. The witch hadn’t been much interested in the sister before, too soft-faced and quiet, but here she can have some admiration for the cold hatred in the other girl’s eyes. In the middle of the shock and chaos, the sister stares at the witch and snarls like a wolf.
The witch runs her clawed fingers over her mouth once again, still dripping with the dragon’s red and the magic with it. She smiles a wicked challenge towards the little mage. Perhaps there is a second hope for the stone down the mountainside, if the first hero falls. The similarities in appearance are truly striking, the witch muses again. Perhaps like recognizes like, time and time again. Let the world never be spared the wit and teeth of girls too fierce and faithful for their own good.
Down comes the wild magic – the force of great wings battering the sky apart. The bloody beast is unbalanced and unpracticed. It strains up – falling, dripping, trying again. Down and high. Snarling like a feral thing. Each beat strong enough to stir a storm until… it throws itself into the air without a care to anything but reaching the sky and doesn’t fall.
It roars in victory, in warning, and keeps going. It flies. It gains height with every strike down, every one stronger and surer, pulling a very unwilling and upset group of family and friends towards the sky with it.
It will be interesting to see if the girl can fly forward and make something of the given gift – or curse, depending on one’s point of view, as always – or if she will fall. If the bargain is kept, if the debt is paid, and the amulet performs its purpose… perhaps the girl will rise to meet her destiny and perform several purposes as well.
Perhaps she will be only another instrument of chaos, with her strings so easy to pluck, but there’s time yet to see what will become of this want and this whim.
The witch watches the beast rise, higher and higher, until it can spread its wings and soar northwards – away from the Blight and its marching horde of darkspawn.
As promised.
More or less.