Chương 32: Witches

On the second day, after camping in the wilderness for a brief period, the tangled roadways led us to a roadside inn. It was unremarkable, at a glance, but there were an assortment of horses and cassowarys housed in the stables, so clearly the place saw some use. I would have ignored it entirely but a strong meaty scent was wafting from the chimney, and the scent of it was enough to really catch my attention. Just because I never got hungry didn't mean I wasn't occasionally tempted.

And so, motioning for Smoke to follow, I led the way inside. A few men looked up from their meals as we entered. Road weary travellers in robes and straw hats. The sight of the hell cat got some measure of unease from them, but the fact that Smoke was docile was enough for them to calm. The man behind the counter was nearly as broad as I was, his face shrouded by a thick beard and brows to bushy they seemed to swallow his eyes.

He watched me with a cold gaze as we pressed for the bar, and even the presence of a hellcat didn't seem to bother him too much. On the way over I saw what the locals were eating. To my shock, it wasn't the rice and fish I saw the people of Tiode usually eat. It was a brown broth of noodles, within which rested a half an egg and slices of... pork? I swallowed, the taste filtering up into my nostrils.

"What's... what are these people eating?" I asked, stealing a glance to the burly owner.

"Ramen," he said, his voice blunter than a hammer.

"Ra-men..." I repeated the word. Strange, but... it sounded pleasant.

"Two bowls," I said, tossing a few gin across the bar. It was a bit of a wait before the grunting man returned from the kitchen, the wooden bowls steaming in his grasp.

"We don't get many foreigners out this way," he said. I peered up at him, my hand briefly gripping the sides of my bowl. Smoke was already up on the counter, munching and slurping on his ramen like a hungry dog. Though my hood was up, that didn't do enough to disguise me up close.

"Not a problem, is it?" I asked.

"So long as you and that creature of yours don't cause trouble." He slid something across the table to me: A pair of those slender wooden sticks the locals liked to use when it came to food. I gripped mine awkwardly, clutching the two together in one fist, while I watched the locals handle theirs with practised ease. I sighed and reached into my travelling cloak, pretending to be searching for something. In reality I was thinking 'small' thoughts, power coalescing in my hidden palm, creating a tiny ember of magic.

I had made tridents before, so all I had to do now was try to do the same thing... on a much smaller scale. When I withdrew my hand I was clasping a fork of glossy black steel. I was willing t learn some new things, but others... others were a bridge too far. I got to eating, scooping up a batch of noodles on my fork and slurping them down. Damnation, but it did taste as good as it smelled... There were many names for what they were. The southlanders used terms like madwives, devil brides, and mchawi.

The westerners universally liked to use the term 'witch.' And in Tsukio and Cathaya they were called majo. But if Sakura were to try and find a term that referred exclusively to her mentor, Lady Daji, she would be inclined to simply call her a mad cunt as opposed to anything witch-related. The heady scent of burning herbs filled the hut, growing stronger as Lady Daji poured more and more ingredients into the cauldron. Sakura sat on a stool to watch her all the while, making notes on a small scroll she'd been given.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

"What are you even brewing, Lady Da-" Her mistress raised a slim finger to silence her, a wicked smile on her face. Sakura sighed and fell silent, a flat look on her face. Daji liked to be coy, it was her attempt at 'humour' at times. One would not think to look at her, because she looked to only be in her thirties, or from how she acted, that she was over 200 years old. Around her wrists were an assortment of bangles and charms, clinking together as she picked through her mason jars.

She grabbed pinches of this and that, each inclusion in the bubbling cauldron either kicking up puffs of smoke or shifting the colours in the cauldron. This was important, Sakura told herself. Daji was a madwoman, but not a fraud.

"Now then," she said, her voice a low and husky sound. An amber glow shone from the contents of the cauldron, bathing the rounded walls of her hut in that ominous glow. She reached into the broth with a steely ladel and raised up a portion of the frothy contents. A strong earthy scent came from it, and Sakura's eyes watered as she sniffed it.

"Have a sip, my girl." Sakura gave her a flat look, her gaze shifting slowly from the older woman's face to the steaming broth of... something. She had been keeping a tally of everything added to the mix and couldn't make heads or tails of what the end result was meant to be. She frowned, pulling her feathered cloak tight around herself.

"Didn't you tell me not to drink things without knowing what they were?"

"Wise words!" Daji grinned, a golden tooth gleaming in her mouth.

"But you can always trust dear Aunt Daji, as you know."

"Can I? I distinctly recall you gave me a drought that turned my skin purple for a week."

"Ah. But it did cure that nasty fever you had been suffering from." Sighing, Sakura leaned in and took a sip from the offered ladel. The taste was... unpleasant. An oily texture that slid down her throat, leaving behind an aftertaste like herbs and mould. Sakura frowned bitterly, the taste lingering on her tongue like a bad itch. She waited, expecting to throw up at any moment. But, instead, nothing happened.

"Alright," she said, "now what was that, Lady Daji?"

"Well... it is supposed to be a cure-all. Purge impurities from your blood, the bowels, the heart... Though I would have thought there'd be more of a kick to it." She hummed, lifting the ladel to her thin lips, and took a sip for herself. She scrunched her face up, "Feh. No wonder. Clearly I'm missing something. Ah, some yaga mushrooms. You know what they look like, yes?"

Sakura's gaze shifted to a shelf off to one side of the hut, laden with an assortment of medical and herbal scrolls that went into great detail about all manner of alchemical goods to be found in this stretch of Tsukio. She'd been reading them for years, part of the studies Lady Daji gave to her. A witch, she liked to say, needed to be wise in all the ways of the natural world. And to know what herbs were smokable.

"I'm familiar," she eventually said.

"Well," Daji chuckled, light gleaming in her emerald eyes, "be a dear and fetch me some?" Sakura breathed out a long, irritable sigh.

"Lady Daji you didn't forget about all the tales of bandits scouring the wilderness these days, did you?" she asked.

"Of course not. But you're a damned majo, girl! And I didn't teach you to be a bad one after all these years!"

"But I'm still an apprentice," Sakura murmured under her breath. Still, she knew how these things tended to go. When Daji wanted something, Sakura always had to acquiesce eventually. And she had a point, loathe as Sakura was to admit it. Normal bandits posed no threat to her, such was the level of her cultivation. So, sighing, she pushed herself from her stool and made for the door, one hand scratching her wild mane of her hair.

Warm afternoon fanned at her as she left through the hut's creaking door, into the swathe of rugged wilderness that surrounded Daji's hut. And then she was off, walking in search of the damn mushrooms. She stood by, alone in a copse of crooked trees, and drew qi toward her nose to sharpen her senses. She sniffed the air... and paused. A foul scent was on the air, distant but distinct enough to wrinkle her nose.

"What in the world...?" Sakura muttered. That scent was foreign, foul, unlike any she had smelled before. Certainly not around here. It was qi, mired in a miasma of wicked karma. Sakura followed the scent, a terrible chill rising in her body. The mushrooms could wait, this presence was a far greater priority. For as much of a pain as Lady Daji could be, this was her home. And so it fell to her to keep this place safe. And the malevolence she sensed in that qi...

it was something mired in an abyss of sin and hared, of bloodshed she never could have imagined before now. Lady Daji had said a yokai was leading the bandits in the region, and now it seemed that same yokai was finding his way to them. She neared the edge of the woodland, the winding road just beyond, and that was when she saw them. A looming and broad-shouldered man in a flowing hooded cloak, a hellcat padding along at his side.

Even at a glance she could sense a volume of carnage radiating off of him, a walking cauldron of bad karma. To a witch's sharpened eyes she could see how that darkness radiated off of him like black smoke from the top of a volcano, high into the sky. And, even casual as he was, she could feel the boiling qi that circulated through him. Terror ran through her body like a great tremor, and she had never known a threat of this scale to come so close to her home. Sakura swallowed hard, setting her jaw tight.

This man, whoever he was, she needed to kill him.