Chapter 7
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Mentor?
Something was wrong. Reithe had seen it coming a mile away but Eoin was only now realising. With his bell well and truly rung, and with him too dizzy to get up, Eoin was, ironically, able to see things more clearly.
Eoin wasn’t as sharp as Reithe but, with the ram in question guarding his sprawled out body, he had the time to think. Reithe had charged after Eoin but once the man was sent flying, he spun and followed after, ignoring the supposed Witch.
She did much the same, her attention locked on the young man, Dorcha, who was over and again charging at the woman. He would get knocked down only to run at her once more, all the time unarmed and far worse at fighting than this Witch.
Speaking of the ‘Witch’, Eoin thought she looked like nothing of the sort. Now that he no longer saw red, the young man could make out that the middle aged woman was wearing a frilly green dress with yellow flowers embroidered on it. The garment hugged her form and was of exquisite quality, the sort of thing a noble lady may wear - or at least that’s what Eoin assumed.
This woman might have been a foreign noble, her posture was impeccable and her face, which Eoin had first thought looked cruel and cold, was, in fact, completely impassive. If not for her broken nose and clear penchant for brawling, she could definitely be of noble blood. Dorcha was again sent tumbling through the air and again not so much as one of the lady’s eyebrow hairs was moved by his screaming assault.
No, for just a moment, when the man in black collided with a flowering hedge, whose flowers were small and yellow, her face twisted. It was so slight and brief that Eoin thought he may have imagined it. But no, when Dorcha fell once more into the hedge it was there again, the fleeting expression of… Annoyance? Disappointment? Eoin couldn’t tell.
Looking more closely at the battered foliage, a revelation struck the young man. It was winter, how could it be flowering? There was snow everywhere… wait, how hadn’t he noticed? It wasn’t. Inside the borders of this quaint cottage’s garden, spring was in bloom.
Honeysuckle climbed up one side of the one-story brick house and Ivey the other. The two contracting shades of green were pleasing to the eye. Neatly kept rows of flowers bordered the trimmed grass, save for the east area, which was filled with herbs - some of which Eoin had never seen before.
Something clicked in the young man's head with the sensation of cracking one’s knuckles. The feeling that had been suffusing his body and forcing him to walk the razor’s edge between fight and flight disappeared. Colours, more saturated and vibrant than ever before, tugged at his eyes.
Eoin cried, out holding his seeing spheres in pain as water leaked from the tight-shut orbs. Reithe, who had been watching the fight wearily and putting his body between it and Eoin, turned back with concern. He nuzzled his friend's hand, trying to understand what had happened.
Unlike the two humans, Reithe had not experienced the same rush of adrenaline that caused Eoin to attack this strange woman without hesitation and Dorcha to freeze like a buck in the lantern light. He didn’t know what was affecting the pair and he hated the feeling of being useless.
Between cries, Eoin pointed and said, bush. Reithe looked at the bush with yellow flowers. Besides the obvious magic that hid this spring time paradise, he saw nothing special about it but as Eoin continued to point he knew what he must do.
By this point, Dorcha was foaming at the mouth with anger. His face was beat red and tears leaked from his eyes as he cursed the impassive woman who still had not said a word. Despite the fact she was fending off the rabid young man, she had spent a full minute studying Eoin after his fit began. In the end, she sighed and turned back to her attacker.
Reithe assumed this bush with brambly thorns, star shaped leaves, and small yellow flowers to be what was causing Eoin so much pain and forcing him to keep his streaming eyes shut. Looking around, he sought a solution.
When the woman had exited the house, she had left the door wide open and Reithe could see inside. He charged in, passing scattered paper, vellum, and bookshelves overflowing with leatherbound knowledge, he made his way to the roaring fire.
Singeing his nose slightly, he retrieved a partially burned log from the flames and charged back out. Emberes dripped from his still burning torch and caught on the flammable scholarly tools, turning meticulously written notes into flames.
For a moment, the ram, charging out of her house with fire in his mouth, caught the Witch’s attention but when she looked back and saw that her house was on fire her perfectly controlled mask shattered. Anger overtook her and, for a moment, all three, Reithe, Dorcha, and Eoin’s hearts stopped.
It passed and she got control of herself as the chaos of the scene resumed. Now, however, she wasn’t simply content to wait for it all to just play out. She stamped her brown leather riding boot on the ground and a shock wave spread through the earth.
Eoin howled in pain and grabbed at everything when the wave reached him. Dorcha stumbled, prepared to charge, and fell waist deep into dirt that closed around him - holding the raging lad in place. Reithe wasn’t even slowed in his rush towards the bush that had hurt his friend. He was a Caorah sheep, raised in the mountains, his footing was more sure than death and taxes.
The Witch, having detained what used to be her biggest headache, headed straight into the burning building. As she marched, dark storm clouds coalesced above her head, reflecting the stormy anger which she had suppressed.
Reithe lobbed the burning log in front of him at the bush. Before he could impact with the human height and lengthy treelets, Reithe curled up into a ball like an armadillo and instead bounced off the bush, right as it was starting to catch.
As soon as the magical flower realised it was on fire, it exploded. For a brief moment, a fireball in the shape of a shapely woman with fiery red hair and a grin that was both innocent and malevolent, burst out from the combusting plant.
The humanoid went up in smoke, leaving behind nothing but a joyous tinkle of violent laughter. Reithe had been stunned. His eyes now also watered from the blast of heat. He peered through the blurry haze at where the bush used to be, only to find there was nothing of it remaining, except a blackened root in the center of a crater.
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Good, he thought, turning back to his companion to see if vanquishing whatever that was had cured him. Eoin was not moving. Reithe stumbled over, his legs shaky from the woman-shaped explosion.
Was Eoin alright?
Reithe slumped his head onto the man’s chest. He waited. Finally, he found it. His heart was beating regularly. Eoin was fine, he was just asleep.
Reithe relaxed, letting out a “Baa,” of relief. Now that concern no longer drove him, the sheep collapsed beside his friend - that blast had taken more out of him than he realised. He needed a nap, surely a short one couldn’t hurt.
As it transpired, seconds before the inciting bush caught ablaze, Dorcha had worked himself into such a frenzy that he fainted, leaving the three failed Witch hunter’s to be claimed by darkness as they fell into unconsciousness on the Witch’s lawn.
✯
I chuckled to myself, the purring laughter somehow echoing in the vacuum of space. I hadn’t before seen such a display of ineptitude. My humour was tempered however when I remembered that Eoin and I were a part of the same whole, his mistakes could be said to be my own. Slightly stymied, I turned my attention to the Witch as she got the flames under control. I was curious what she might do to the three idiots who had intruded on her domain.
Celyn Cailleach, or Cel as she was known by her friends… if she had any… was a Witch. It was not something she had chosen, it was something she had been born as. That said, the pursuit of magic was her choice.
It was one thing to have the talent, but one must first be awakened before they can be taught in the ways of the arcane. As a Witch, her teacher was mother nature though she was helped out by an older, more experienced Witch.
She had learned to call down the water of the heavens, which she now used to extinguish her house but soaked what books remained. She had learned to command the earth, as she had done to trap the overzealous black-haired boy. She had even learned how to use the power of the gods. Lightning crackled between her fingertips as she debated whether or not to use it on those two morons and their sheep.
Cel did not kill them as they slept. Instead, she let out a breath through cracked lips and allowed the electricity to harmlessly return to the earth. She was angry, really angry, but there was no one to blame but herself. As the fires of the house died down, so did the fires of her heart and, bit by bit, she released her anger.
She had planted the flower of Athæ - goddess of war. It was an exceptional plant with a number of miraculous qualities. The spiky leaves could cure most infections, though they would give someone an incredible fever.
It was impossibly flammable. The root could be used for its rich and spicy flavour and had the effect of raising one’s libido. The tiny yellow blooms were the most precious however as they could heal someone from nearly any wound, increase someone’s strength ten fold, and make them nearly impossible to kill for a short time.
That said, the golden flowers weren’t without their flaws. When consumed, they would make someone completely blind with rage until the effect ran its course - about a day or so. During that time nothing could calm the person who had consumed it; they would attack anyone indiscriminately.
The fragrance alone had been enough to send these boys mad with rage, though strangely not the sheep. Even she had to keep a strict control on her emotions whenever the flower of Athæ was in bloom. Cel walked over to the blackened stump that once was a very rare and very expensive plant and sighed - letting the last of her anger leave.
Looking back at the interlopers without malice in her tired eyes, she examined them. She was too old for petty grudges, that said, they would have to be taught a lesson. The one that had a ram sleeping on his chest was perhaps the most interesting.
He had a talent for magic, more than that he had awakened when he tried to see the power that surfused the flower of Athæ. It wasn’t all that surprising, when Celyn had awakened, it had required mother nature to send the biggest storm she could - one completely saturated in mana.
Someone had to be completely surrounded by dense mana in order to stand a chance of awakening. If the process didn’t kill you, you would then be able to see the flows of mana that passed through all living things. The density and amount of mana possessed by a plant blessed by the goddess of war would be more than enough.
At least, seeing mana flows had been what happened in Cel’s case. There were so few people that were born with enough talent for magic to awaken that Cel couldn’t say if that was the case for everyone.
Those who did possess an ability for magic - and Cel had only met five in her over two hundred years of life - never talked about the process. If this kid managed to survive and wake up, he may just live long enough to pay off the debt he had incurred.
Turning her attention to the other boy, the one dressed in black, Cel rubbed a boney finger against her temple. What to do with him? This one had been here before and like last time had first frozen then attacked her - screaming something about a plague.
He clearly blamed her for something but she knew not what. It was something important however as after she had thrown him out of her garden, when he was on the edge of having a rage induced aneurysm - thanks to the flower of Athæ’s pollen, she had not expected to see him again. And yet he was back, this time with backup.
The silver lining was that, now that the plant was gone, she could try and actually talk to him about it. For some reason these backwater islanders were exceptionally superstitious of Witches - despite, to her knowledge - there never having been a witch born on Caorah. Still they would happily blame anything on a Witch.
Crop harvest failed, cursed by a Witch. Sheep have The Rot, Witch’s hex. Baby dies in childbirth, Witch offered its soul to some demon or dark god - it was ridiculous. Despite all this, the people in the surrounding villages would still come to Cel, asking for help curing a disease or bolstering a harvest. Not that doing so would garner her any good will, the second the next travesty happened it would be her fault and she would have idiots like these come and try and kick down her door.
She should have known she was expecting guests. The flower of Athæ only ever bloomed when there was violence or death nearby. When Celyn used to live in the highland kingdoms, that was nearly constant. But here, it no doubt marked some great catastrophe that was somehow her fault.
Sometimes Celyn missed the mainland. Wistfully, she recalled how her and her teacher - an even older witch who went by the title, Granny Crone - would be praised by the highlanders. She missed the celebrations the city would throw in her mistress’s honour. She missed her husband. She wondered what her two boys would have been like had they survived—
Celyn cut off that line of thought before it could become too much for her to bear. She looked down at the two boys and briefly wondered if her own sons would have been just as stupid as these two. Knowing her husband, they would have been twice as reckless and thrice as brave.
With fondness, she plucked the unconscious boy from the earth like a weed and slung him over one shoulder before scooping up the second and putting him over the other. The sheep stirred slightly as his head struck the ground, bereft of its human pillow. Celyn plucked it up by the back of the neck and walked with ease to her house; as if they were as light as feathers - the strength of an oak bolstering her muscles.
The interior had been burned and blackened but the fire hadn’t lasted long enough to damage the structure and hadn’t spread far enough to make it to the beds. Celyn dumped the sleeping trio on the bed before making her way over to her alchemy desk. She would need to make some potions to insure these two rapscallions would be compliant when they finally woke up.