A rat scurried up to Forsynthia’s feet, sniffing her toes. This was what she was reduced to. After centuries of alaracite being forced down her throat, the most she could do was convince a rat to come die so she could keep on living. Why did she even bother anymore? The “paladins” didn’t care about her these days. Nor did their master. No one had come to dose her or feed her in…decades?
But still something in her prevented her from letting herself die. And so stuck alone in the cell of her dungeon, nearly powerless, she crushed the rat’s neck with the heel of her foot. It would provide enough moisture and food for…maybe another day as she saved up what little power she could muster to lure another one to her. Her resilient witch anatomy was the only thing that kept her from dying long ago.
The days continued to go by. The weeks. Months. Years. Until one day she finally didn’t reach out with her power to bring a rat to her. And then another. A few more and she would likely be free of this torment.
But of course, hope decided to rear its ugly head. She heard a voice. It was the first time she had heard anyone speak in hundreds of years. Maybe thousands. She couldn’t make out any words, but there was definitely two distinct voices. A conversation.
She tried to remember what that was even like. Could she still speak herself? She had stopped talking to herself long ago. She had no idea if her own voice still worked.
The sounds grew closer, and a few muffled words became audible.
“…church—”
“…there’s…chance…”
A few moments passed, and the voices began to fade. Forsynthia used every bit of the minuscule stored power that she had saved after not eating for days to project a single word.
Come.
She didn’t care who they were, even if they decided to kill her, it would be better than starving to death. Somehow, the suggestion had worked, and the voices grew louder again.
“Let’s try…”
“Down here?”
“Y…yyeh,” Forsynthia’s voice came out in a dry, wheezing whisper. So it did still work. “Y-yes. Here.”
“Did you hear something?” one of the voices said.
“Stop trying to scare me!” A female voice said, followed by a smack.
“H-help me,” Forsynthia said.
“No, that was definitely a voice!”
“I heard it too! What is that? I’m starting to get creeped out, Loren.”
She cleared her throat and forced more power into her voice.
“Help me,” she said, “I’m here!”
“I…I don’t like this, Loren! This isn’t one of your friends is it? You better not be playing a trick on me!”
“No! I swear! I doubt anyone’s even been down here in twenty years. This place is in ruins.”
“Then what is that?”
“I don’t know, but we should probably find out.”
“Do we have to?”
“Come on. That’s why we came here!”
Forsynthia sat in her cell waiting for the couple to arrive. She saw their torchlight round a nearby corner, and her face cracked into a smile. She had forgotten what that felt like. One way or another, her suffering would come to an end.
“Oh my god! It stinks!” the woman said.
“Of course it does, we’re in an old church dungeon. There’s probably witch corpses in here.”
Though apparently she would have to wait. The couple moved at a snail’s pace, yapping and jumping at every small sound. Eventually, they arrived at her cell, and the man held his torch high, peering inside. Forsynthia could see little past the fire.
“Whoa!” he said jumping back, and the woman let out a little shriek.
“What is it?! What is it?!”
“There’s something in there!”
“Something?”
“A woman, I think. Or maybe a ghost of a woman.”
“A ghost?”
Forsynthia could only take so much.
“I am not a ghost,” she said, her voice still little more than a rasp.
Both of her would-be rescuers jumped.
“That’s the voice! It’s her! Someone’s in there!”
“Yes, and I would appreciate it if you let me out.”
“Huh?” the man said.
“There should be a set of keys hung nearby.”
“Ah, right. Yeah. Let me—”
Forsynthia still couldn’t see past the torch light, but there was a pause.
“Loren…” the voice was barely a whisper. “We don’t know who this is what if…”
“Oh come on she’s a little old lady.”
“But…”
“Okay, fine.”
The voice came louder this time.
“So, uh, miss prisoner? Why are you in here?”
According to what she had heard from the couple so far, it would be hard to claim she was put here under normal circumstances. If the city above had been reduced to ruins.
“A political rival brought me here long ago,” she said, “at first they kept me fed, but eventually stopped coming. I believe they simply left me to die. I don’t know how long I’ve actually been down here.”
Everything she said had actually been true, and possibly believable.
“Oh!” the woman said, “That’s so horrible! Loren we have to help her! What are you doing? Start looking for the keys!”
Huh. Well that changed pretty quickly.
“Thank you,” Forsynthia said, “fortune must be smiling on me today for you two to venture down here. I do not know how much longer I would have lasted. The rats only provide so much.”
The woman gasped.
“Hurry, Loren!”
Only a few minutes later and the man was turning the keys in the lock. It took a bit of effort with both the lock, and the door itself after so much disuse, but Forsynthia was freed. She took one look at the open door, and lost consciousness.
----------------------------------------
Forsynthia awoke assaulted by a brightness that should not exist in this world of darkness and solitude. The sun had no place in the dungeon, and—
She shot up from her…bed? And looked around the…room? The blinding light was far too bright to discern much by. It gave her a headache to just keep her eyes open. What was this place? She remembered having a dream of being rescued by some witless couple, but similar things had come to her many times over the centuries. They were usually just fever induced nonsense brought on by malnutrition.
But this? It felt…more real. She was covered by sheets of the finest silk. She rubbed the smooth fabric between her fingers. Even after a thousands years sleeping against cold stone, she recognized what she had once lost.
Did she dare hope her rescue had been real? In the darkness of the dungeon it had been hard to discern imagination from reality. Her grasp on her sanity had faded long, long ago. But right now? She felt…normal.
A door on the far side of the room flung open, just as Forsynthia’s eyes began to adjust to a light they had not seen in eons.
“Oh!” a pretty young thing bounced into the room with a wide smile on her face. “You’re awake!”
“Am I?” Forsynthia asked.
The woman shut the door behind her and pranced over to Forsynthia’s bedside. Up close, there was no mistaking the woman being a witch. Forsynthia had lived several lifetimes surrounded by that same ageless beauty of the woman’s face. She still suspected the woman to be quite young, but seeing a sister first thing after being rescued boded well for her.
“This must be quite disorienting for you,” the woman said, pulling up a nearby high-backed wooden chair.
Forsynthia blinked a few times, still adjusting to the sun’s piercing light.
“Y-yes,” she said, her voice still more croak than the smoothness she remembered centuries ago, “where am I?”
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The woman smiled.
“We are in the independent city of Rhune,” she paused, placing a slender hand upon her chest, “and I am Daphne, first crown princess of Rhune.”
None of that meant anything to Forsynthia. She had been removed from the world for far too long.
“I…see,” she said. Daphne stared for a moment, pouting.
“It’s common courtesy to introduce yourself, you know?”
“Forsynthia,” she said, rolling her eyes. Definitely young.
“Huh.”
“Huh?”
“It’s just…well, you know,” Daphne said, looking up at the ceiling.
“I’m afraid I do not.”
“Your name. It’s…uhm…nevermind. It was a long time ago. Most people don’t even remember anymore. Its gotten harder to find any record of that era with every passing year.”
Forsynthia laughed in her head. No one would possibly believe anyone from her era was still alive. She hardly believed it herself. Or that she had not gone mad in the dungeon after so much time alone. If not for her already lengthy life and a stubbornness without rival, she would have lost herself so long ago.
“You can call me ‘Synthia’ if that helps. My…friends used to do the same.”
Daphne clapped her hands.
“Synthia! I like it.” One moment her expression was light and bubbly, but then a shadow fell over her face. “So, Synthia. Do you mind telling me your story?”
Forsynthia groaned as she struggled to push herself up to a seated position, her bones creaking with the effort. What the? When had she gotten so feeble? Of course, she knew the answer, but in the darkness and isolation of the dungeon she hadn’t noticed her decline. Her power brought the rats to her, and she had hardly needed to move herself.
Finally with her back against the headboard, she took a moment to study her benefactor. How much should she reveal to this stranger? Forsynthia had no idea what the world was like anymore. For all she knew, this woman had no idea that Forynthia—or herself—were witches. The purge of the empire that Forsynthia had built surely had echoed down through the centuries. So then, what did Daphne want to hear?
Instead of answering, she looked past the young witch to a vanity against the wall holding a mirror and basin of fresh water.
“Do you mind?” she asked, nodding in that direction.
Daphne briefly glanced backward and put her smile back on.
“Of course,” she said, and began to rise, but Forsynthia put up a hand to forestall her.
“I think it’d be best to stretch my legs a bit.”
Again, it was a titanic effort just to swing her bottom half off of the bed. When the soles of her feet touched the ground, she wasn’t confident they could actually hold her weight. Worse than that, her bare feet looked…off. The skin was loose and…wrinkled. It was impossible. Forsynthia had lived a very long time and had never experienced a single sign of aging. She needed to get to that mirror.
On wobbly legs, aided in large part by Daphne’s shoulder, she half stumbled over to the vanity that was maybe a few steps away, but felt like a mile. She flopped forward, both hands down against the edge of the vanity to stop herself from hitting the floor and looked up.
The gasp that escaped her mouth surprised herself more than Daphne. The woman looking back at her through the glass was no one she recognized. She raised a hand and touched the lined skin of forehead, eyes, and cheeks. It didn’t feel real. It didn’t feel like her. Her once full lips had thinned to a razors edge. Her hair had turned white as snow, hanging down in sheets well past her waist. It was like looking at a ghost of her former self.
“I…” her hand began to tremble in front of her face and she dropped it, grasping it with the other, “I’ve gotten…old.”
Daphne’s ageless frown reflected behind her only served as a mockery of who Forsynthia once was. Of who she still should be.
“How long were you down there?” Daphne asked, her face scrunched up with concern.
“Too long. Far too long.”
Suddenly the weight of the last thousand plus years came crashing down on Forsynthia. Though it was not despair that overtook her. Her fingers clenched around the wood of the vanity. Even if it took another thousand years, she would get her revenge. If nothing else, she knew she was patient.
“Are there any other sisters in…Rhune?” Forsynthia asked.
“Sisters?”
Before Forsynthia had a second to explain, the door to the room opened again and a rather handsome, tall young man entered. Such a fine specimen would have been worthy of entertaining Forsynthia back in the day. He saw Forsynthia and raised an eyebrow, but that was it. His eyes were only for Daphne, who smiled brightly at the entrance. The two met in the center of the room and embraced.
After much too long wrapped in each other’s arms, the couple returned their attention to Forsynthia.
“Synthia,” Daphne said, “this is my prince consort, Loren.”
“I see,” Forsynthia said.
The man was nice to look at, but largely irrelevant. Especially considering the way Daphne was latched onto him, she seemed to be the possessive type.
“Uhm, what was it you were saying again?” Daphne asked.
“I wanted to know if there are any other witches besides you in the city.”
Loren jumped in front of Daphne, one arm out in front of her as though he expected Forsynthia to try and assault her or something. So far it had been the most telling thing that had happened since Forsynthia had woken. It seemed people were afraid of being called a witch.
“What did you just say?” Loren asked.
“So they’ve got us all scared, do they?” Forsynthia said, attempting to sound unafraid herself, though she knew better than any alive the strength of their enemy.
“You had better start talking if you want to ever leave this room alive,” Loren said, his hand resting on a sword pommel belted to his hip. Behind him, Daphne had gripped her own, unsheathed blade. The metal gleamed dark in the morning sun and Forsynthia almost laughed aloud.
She reached for the smallest bit of her power, but it slid off her fingertips as though it had never been there to begin with. With a sigh, she fell back against the bed and closed her eyes. Things would be so much easier if she wasn’t so powerless.
“Is it common practice in your city to dole out death sentences for asking a simple question?” she asked.
“Is that what you call it? A ‘simple question’ when you accuse my beloved of something that would warrant her own death?”
Forsynthia didn’t bother opening her eyes.
“You execute witches here despite being one? I suppose you might as well get on with it then, since I’m guilty of the same ‘accusation’.”
At those words, she heard a shuffle of feet and some harsh whispering.
“I knew it!” Came Daphne’s soft voice.
“Did you? You were the one scared to rescue her in the first place!”
“It all fits, darling. You said it yourself just yesterday.”
“Yes…but—”
Forsynthia sat up and opened her eyes to find both of her young hosts staring at her.
“I was imprisoned where you found me for longer than you can imagine. I know little of what the world has become in my absence, and less still of you, my benefactors. I know you have no reason to trust me, but right now I really only care for one thing. And this is to somehow get back at those who stole my life from me. Those who tortured and crippled me. And I suspect those are the same people of whom you two are so frightened of.”
She took in a long breath and watched the couple staring at her with wide open eyes, though remaining silent.
“So know that when I say you are a witch, it is not an accusation. It is a fact. I know what you are, and my intent is not to hurt you. Quite the opposite. I need allies, and quite frankly, you would do well to have me in your service, princess.”
Her speech ended, Daphne and Loren were still gawking at her. But seeing as they had done little else, Forsynthia knew she had already won them over. She needed no power to understand that, or to persuade the jumpy couple. She suspected Daphne’s secret was known only by here paramour, and they were both terrified of what might happen if it got out. It had been a gamble, but Daphne seemed to be yearning for a connection to who she was more than she was afraid of being caught. Why else would she have been exploring Forsynthia’s dungeon?
And for Forsynthia’s part in all this? She could use this “independent city” for her own purposes. At the very least she intended to retrieve Calanthe’s dagger from the young witch if nothing else worked out.
“So,” she said, “am I going to be executed or can I lay back down?” Her back was stiff and sore despite not having done anything. “Getting old seems to have its hardships without you two threatening to off me the moment I wake.”
The two were still silent, and Forsynthia grinned at them. They would be useful indeed.
----------------------------------------
The years passed by, and Forsynthia had made little progress. Save for procuring Calanthe’s dagger, she had nothing else to show for her time in Rhune. Her power had never returned. The “paladins” as they were called had essentially paralyzed her permanently. Too long she had been forced into drinking their alaricite cocktail. Those days she had felt empty, almost dead. Like a husk of who she was. Even after they had stopped paying any attention to her, she had felt a part of herself had been carved away by the poison. That part had never come back.
And the brat Daphne? What an insufferable little twat. The passing of Loren from old age had only made things worse. She gathered any witches she could find, collecting them, but doing nothing. Her “independent city” was more name than anything. Resting on the border of Altisseran and Portania, neither nation claimed it for their own. It did not stop the church from trying to butt its way in though. That was another point of contention between Forsynthia and Daphne.
Still, though, Forsynthia had to admit that there was likely no better place for a witch to live. Her enemies had taken over in the time she had been imprisoned to the point of even finding a sister to be near impossible. Witches were already rare, but now, in all the time she had been in Rhune, she and Daphne had gathered seven. The Qix’rymith had disappeared entirely. Even so, seven witches were enough to do something. Anything. But Daphne was just too timid.
Forsynthia rifled through a mess of reports strewn across her desk from scouts sent out in search of more allies. There was never anything useful. She had once believed herself to be a patient woman, but those bastards out there were only gaining more power. They would never be able to catch up at this rate. Something needed to change. Something had to—
A knock on her door brought her out of her musing and she looked up at the iron banded wooden portal to her office in Daphne’s palace. Who could that possibly be? Another courtier trying to gain favor with the queen? Forsynthia couldn’t even recall who was the queen currently. Some descendant of Daphne surely, but seeing as none of her offspring had turned out to be witches, Forsynthia paid them little heed. The rumor of the “Immortal Queen of Rhune” had become something of a legend, but few knew the truth of it.
Before Forsynthia could ward off the potential intruder with a rude remark, the door opened, and she prepared quite the rant to deliver to whatever unlucky soul dared to intrude. Yet in stepped an anomaly that stilled her tongue.
A beautiful woman with light brown hair that fell to her hips strode into the room like she owned not just the room but the entire palace. It had been many, many years since Forsynthia had seen such confidence. It reminded her of the old era. The witches in Rhune still walked on eggshells despite living in essentially a witch-run city-state. Always looking over their shoulder as though a paladin might run them through at any moment. But this woman? She closed the door behind her and scanned the room with a curious eye lingering on the numerous bookshelves packed with volumes, but not once did she ever seem on edge.
Finally, Forsynthia spoke, “Who are—”
“I’ve finally found you,” the woman said.
Forsynthia frowned.
“I wasn’t hiding.”
The woman tilted her head at Forsynthia and smiled wide.
“But you are living at the edge of nowhere aren’t you? And is that even really true? Who other than Queen Daphne knows who you really are, Forsynthia?”
Huh. How annoying. Forsynthia had not used her full name in decades, and a stranger would have no knowledge of who truly ruled Rhune. She had little patience to deal with such a power now, but also could not afford to be without it. Which of course, this woman already knew.
“So you inherited Senna’s power and that makes you think you can barge in here so rudely? You should show more respect if you know who I am.”
“Why don’t you make me?” The woman said, her smile broadening.
Forsynthia considered it for a moment, but wasting a century of stored power for the chance at such a small influence was hardly worth it.
“Oh? So you aren’t completely dried up like that wrinkled skin of yours?”
Forsynthia scowled at the mind-reader witch.
“This is why no one liked Senna. And no one will like you, either. What do you want?”
She knew her words were counter-productive to her ultimate goal antagonizing the newcomer, but some part of her still held a grudge against Senna, and they were both just so annoying.
“The same thing as you, of course. The church in ruins at our feet.”
Forsynthia scoffed.
“I’ve been at this for longer than you’ve been alive. You will no doubt be useful, but what can we possibly do at this point? It’s hopeless.”
Her own words shocked herself. She had never vocalized what had been gnawing at her for so long. Something about this woman bothered her. She reminded Forsynthia of a better time. Of a time that could never come again.
“Just get out,” she said, “find somewhere else to—”
“Zarynthal Qix’rymith, tlom versh ptlomeric.”
The alien syllables slid off of the woman’s tongue with an ease not unlike Calanthe’s mastery of the language. But it wasn’t the words that had Forsynthia out of her chair and gaping at the scene before her. A dark cloud of smoke flowed up from the stone floor of her office, giving way to a spindly, gray humanoid figure wrapped in countless tentacles. Black pits for eyes covered nearly every inch of the demon, and its oddly bulbous head cracked a fanged smile at Forsynthia.
The witch looked from her demon to Forsynthia and grinned.
“We have a lot of work to do,” she said, extending out one hand, “my name is Rose.”