Chương 9: The Wicked Witch

Asgar ran in the grip of the blood rage, and the world felt right. Branches whipped past on either side, and every now and then, something would leap out at him. But he was stronger, faster, too fucking powerful for the witch's familiars to touch. His axe cleaved through limbs and chopped torsos. Acidic blood splashed, but he was wise to that danger now and avoided any serious wounds.

His chainmail was in tatters and his gloves were more hole than fabric at this point, but his axe was fresh and clean, courtesy of the sizzling corona of energy hallowed strike bathed it in, and that was what mattered. They'd made it another mile up the goat track, and the valley was narrowing as they climbed towards a col. Talia had voiced her worry—between pinpoint accurate shots from her bow—that the witch would hide from them.

Maybe hole up in a cave somewhere or skip down a scree slope to stay perpetually beyond view as they searched fruitlessly for the wilds woman. Tarkin and Asgar knew better though. Tarkin because of his experience facing witches in the past—something Asgar was very much interested in hearing about later—and Asgar because he could now feel the witch.

She was a pulsing sore of corruption in his senses; a hum beneath the sounds of thrashing bracken and crunching gravel, an infected ache that throbbed in his mind, a buzzing that he couldn't ignore. She was nearby, and she wasn't moving. That same instinct that warned him of the witch's foul presence also allowed him to gauge his soul reserves. He'd used hallowed strike twice so far in their push to the col, and he knew he didn't have much left.

It was an energy-intensive ability, and it drained him in a way that hours spent running through the hills could not. The exhaustion it left in him was bone-deep, akin to the retreat of the blood rage, though Asgar was confident he still had enough power left in his soul to end this farce. He'd had nobody to learn from when it came to the mechanics of his class. Avarron had shared only his power and approval, and Asgar didn't have anyone he trusted to confide in yet. Thankfully, his class was intuitive.

He had a single reserve that he used to power his class skills. It seemed dependent on his level, since he'd noticed a deepening of that reserve, the cost of his skills reducing as the days had gone by—he could maintain the blood rage for many minutes now, where before it was a matter of seconds. That reserve also refilled naturally over time. He suspected there were certain factors that could affect both the depth of his pool and the speed at which it refilled.

Enchanted gear he could acquire, further blessings he could earn and greater understanding of his own soul would all hopefully increase both measures, but that was based purely on stories of the Knights and their quests that he'd heard growing up. Nothing firm there—he'd have to find out for himself one day. It didn't matter now anyway. Asgar grew stronger by fighting in his God's name, and here was an enemy whose slaughter Avarron would certainly sanction.

A part of him suspected he'd been selected for this mission not purely based on his combat prowess, but also because Sergeant Orson wanted him to acquire certain skills. To learn from Tarkin and Talia, to become a soldier in truth, able to adapt to many situations and be useful beyond simple brute bloodshed. Asgar didn't care. He was learning now, wasn't he? His axe whistled as it cut through the air, then squelched as it sliced through a vine that whipped from the canopy above to harass them as they ran.

Black ichor sprayed from the severed end, though thankfully this wasn't of the acidic kind. The sense of corruption was growing stronger, its putrid stink making his lip curl. Tarkin and Talia were falling behind now, their mortal bodies unable to keep up with his enhanced one, even with him slowed by constant harrying attacks from the forest. He wanted nothing more than to sprint ahead, to get to the killing and right the wrong that the witch's existence so clearly was. But he couldn't leave his companions.

Asgar's newly discovered bloodlust couldn't match the compassion he'd inherited from two decades spent surrounded by community, no matter how overwhelming it might seem sometimes. He growled in frustration, but slowed his headlong sprint and took stock of his surroundings while he waited. When they arrived a few moments later, he gave them time to recover their breath, and then he turned back to the path. It ended soon—he could feel it.

The ridgelines on either side of the valley converged only a few hundred yards ahead, such that it felt like they were at the end of a funnel. Like some ancient architect had carved this valley from the earth as simply a backdrop for the coming clash. When they reached their destination, Asgar was burning with frustration.

He could smell the taint on the air, could hear it in the panicked calls of birds twisted from their sweet and gentle nature into terrors of the dark, could feel it in the arrhythmic thumping beneath his feet as the world pulsed with fell magic. The forest had darkened with the sun's descent, and now the pale light of the moon illuminated the eerie scene. A cave crouched at the top of the valley, where the ridgelines met beneath a shelf of solid stone some twenty yards tall.

Around it were arranged many stakes—some bearing severed heads, some tongues or feet. All of it was profane, with blood strewn about. Not haphazardly though. No, even to Asgar's inexperienced eyes, there was a very clear purpose to the flecks of viscera painting the ground outside the cave. This was a ritual, and in its centre danced the witch. Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"Welcome, welcome!" she giggled.

"New friends come to join my coven?" Her voice was sickly sweet, almost childlike with its delight and whimsy. But the hunched woman was midway through filleting a snake with a single long talon, and there could be no doubt about her guilt.

"Stay back," he said to his companions, stepping forwards and preparing for the coming confrontation. He still had one or two hallowed strikes left in him, and the rage still pulsed rhythmically within his blood; strong and clear. There would be no sudden failure in this fight. Either Asgar would tear the witch's life from her gnarled body, or she'd do the same to him. The witch saw him—truly saw him, right down to his soul.

She cackled then, high and long, throwing the remains of the gutted snake into the cauldron bubbling happily away behind her.

"A noble knight come to slay me, is it? What a dreadfully predictable tale. I think we all know how it ends." Asgar wasted no time exchanging words. He rushed at her, covering the distance between them in heartbeats. She threw a vial at him, but he'd been prepared for the move and smacked it away. Where it slammed against the cave wall, the stone sizzled. Asgar was on her then, winding back his axe for a strike that would cleave her in twain.

The woman's eyes flashed yellow and she coughed with the voice of a crow, Asgar's axe suddenly flopping in his hand. Looking back in alarm, he found the haft now a hissing python, thick as his arm. He dropped the weapon but the snake twisted around his arm, diving for his neck and wrapping itself around him. The witch cackled again, throwing something into her cauldron that shot a plume of purple fire up into the sky, lighting up the forest around them. Asgar saw many, many eyes, and he heard Tarkin curse.

An arrow hissed past his ear, but the witch batted it from the air with a wave of her long black robes like it was nothing. She spun back towards Asgar, her smile mocking and full.

"Struggling to breathe?" she asked with a playful lilt to her voice.

"Shush now, dear. It won't take long." The snake writhed, growing in size and turning all of its considerable musculature to the goal of crushing his windpipe. Had he fought the creature, he surely would have perished. But Asgar was in the grip of the blood rage, and the witch's taunts had only strengthened it. Avarron's own outrage at the witch's profane ways now mixed with Asgar's pain and rage from months prior. With that potent cocktail surging through him, Asgar's goal was no longer survival.

Breath meant nothing, death even less. Ignoring the snake entirely, he slapped her. It was an open-handed strike with the back of his hand, but with all of his enhanced strength and the solid metal of his armoured gauntlet behind the blow, it sent the witch reeling. She was knocked to the ground and her concentration faltered. The black spots in his vision retreated as the snake stopped its squeeze, instead writhing in confusion as parts of its animated flesh began turning back into wood once more.

Asgar could hear the witch rolling on the ground spitting out her broken teeth and shrieking terrible curses at him, but the oaken-scaled abomination wrapping his neck obscured his vision. He strained, aiming to tear the thing in half—snake or wood, neither should be able to stand up to his enhanced strength—but Tarkin knocked him down.

"Hold still!" the veteran yelled in his ear, just before a hissing, flapping creature dove past where he'd been. Strong arms wrapped around his neck, he heard a curse of surprise, and then his head was free again, Tarkin rolling away with the half-ligneous python in his arms. The witch had stopped her litany of curses, now in a battle with Talia, if the whizz of arrows and outraged shouts of the ranger were anything to go by. Asgar rolled jerkily to his feet.

Talia was scanning a suddenly empty clearing in confusion. Their eyes met, and Asgar's widened as the witch appeared behind her in a swirl of black feathers. The witch grinned, talons extended, and Asgar knew what would come next. He was too far away to stop it. He thought suddenly of Tansel, sitting in the healer's wagon. Of her hazel eyes and freckles, her sweet smile and hopeful, open face. How it would crumple when he told her of her sister's death.

The tragic irony; that he had saved her only to fail her sister. All the power Avarron had blessed him with, and yet he was still helpless to save people. He would bring those responsible for his village's destruction to justice, but was he doomed to simply deliver vengeance on behalf of victims, forever unable to save them? Was this the gift Avarron had given him? His hallowed strike wouldn't reach, his blood rage couldn't help. Perhaps his next class skill would, or the next after that.

Maybe he'd have to wait until his evolution, 'till he grew beyond the ranks of squires and into the power of the legendary Knights themselves. But how many would he helplessly watch die in the meantime? No, Asgar wouldn't allow it. Avarron had given him the strength to fight, but the god hadn't raised him. He'd worked the fields without a class for twenty years. His strength was not built by Avarron alone, and if God couldn't help him stop this crime, then Asgar would do it himself.

Talia saw the panic in his face as the witch reached for her neck. She was experienced—far more so than Asgar—and where he would have whirled around, she dove forwards. He knew she couldn't win this fight, but she'd brought herself a single moment with her quick thinking. Couldn't he do the same? He turned, searching for the cauldron. It bubbled away merrily behind him, sick green sludge boiling and popping as it released noxious gases into the air above.

Asgar rushed forwards with a roar, putting his shoulder to the side of the squat thing and pushing with all his might. Ten levels had granted him strength in abundance, further amplified by his blood rage, and channelled through a body that had known hard labour since a toddler. Massive in scale, the cauldron was easily able to absorb a few corpses in its bulging iron body. From the profane experiments he had witnessed thus far, it was likely that it had, too.

It might have weighed as much as a cart, but that didn't matter in the face of Asgar's strength. It toppled, spilling its guts to the earth. The grass around it was scorched to blackness, and the witch screamed in anger. Asgar grinned and turned, seeing Talia's body fly through the air to thud—hard—against a thick tree. Her neck wasn't a gushing river though. Small mercies. Asgar jerked his gaze away from the ranger's limp form and back towards the witch, who threw her long arms out wide, yellow talons flexing.

Even as he watched, she grew. Arms cracking and lengthening, back hunching forwards and neck elongating, wings of shadow bursting from her spine and bare feet growing into splayed talons. Her mouth stretched into a cruel beak, though the rest of her features remained unchanged; fair, almost childlike beauty twisted into ugliness by her hideous corruption. Gone was the vicious glee, the sickening joy. Instead, her face shone apoplectic with anger. That was fine though.

Asgar stood tall and met her glare with his own. If she thought to match her wrath against his, she was a fool.