Asmodeus Grimm, or Mo to his friends, eyed the interior of the tent doubtfully as he sat opposite of the Witch and answered her question. His contacts in The Dark had assured him she was the real deal, but it still felt strange to be meeting with her in what amounted to little more than a backpacking tent set up amid a tent city on Lower Wacker.
““I seek to baragin with an entity for the power of my ancestors.” He said to the Witch, trying to move past the cognitive dissonance from reconciling the powerful entity in front of him with the modern setting they found themselve in.
He knew from his own childhood experiences that the members of the supernatural community of Chicago commonly referred to as The Dark had adapted to the modern world far more than fiction would make people think. Still, it felt strange to have a discussion such as this while the sound of traffic filtered through the nylon walls of the tent.
The Witch was a dimunitive woman. She was ageless, not in a youthful way, but rather was so wrinkled and grayed that it was impossible to guess how elderly she was exactly. Her gray hair was gnarled and disorganized, as disheveled as the rest of her. She looked every bit the homeless woman, which didn’t help the cognitive dissonance he was experiencing.
She snapped her fingers, bringing his attention back to her and triggering a spark of anxiety within him. He was not unfamiliar with the sort of powerful beings that inhabited the Dark, and generally did not afford them particular respect, perhaps because he’d had ample first hand experience with the fact that they are just as flawed as the rest of humanity. However, his contacts had warned him to be carefully respectful in front of the Witch.
The title of Witch was a common enough moniker for female magic practictioners in fiction, but in the supernatural community it was anything but. It’s not that female magic practitioners were uncommon, at least no less so than other magic practitioners. Whether shapechangers, vampires, or any other flavor of supernatural, the law of averages still applied and women were as prone to the supernatural as men.
Instead it had more to do with the fact that the word “Witch” didn’t even refer to a real class of entity or existence. Those who were naturally gifted with the ability to perform magic, and could pass it down through their family lines, were known as sorcerers. They generally viewed themselves as the chosen few and were known to be some of the most arrogant members of the Dark, which was saying something when you considered some of the entities belonging to the community were literal royalty a few centuries ago.
Meanwhile, those who made pacts with entities beyond our realm of existence to obtain that ability, like he was currently trying to do, were referred to as warlocks. They were generally distrusted by the community. Sorcerers viewed them as heretics, usurping the natural order. Even for those less arrogant, there was a general distrust of them, as who could really trust someone who was bound to the will of an entity that existed on a different realm of existence. It made them very unreliable trade partners. After all, how could you even begin to guess their motivations when their very existence was unfathomable? And if you couldn’t understand their motivations, it was impossible to predict how they would act. It didn’t help that there were plenty of records of warlocks committing the most heinous and confusing acts under the compulsions inflicted upon them by the entities to which they were bound.
Yet even in light of such existences, the Witch inspired a unique sort of fear. Some claimed she was the origin of the stories of witches, of the being that made deals and consumed children on dark nights best forgotten in woods uncharted. Others said she was just a very powerful sorcerer who veild herself in mystery and ritual to discourage any who would form enmity. Still others said she was a warlock who had made a bad deal and ended up possessed by the very entity to which she’d contracted.
Regardless of what they thought she was, all agreed that it was best to be polite and cautious in any and all dealings with her. Any being capable of brokering agreements between our reality and those from other realms of existence was a being that existed at the pinnacle of power, like the progenitors of old.
Mo put on a rueful smile as he recovered from his distraction.
“My apologies for my distraction. No disrespect intended.”
He bowed his head slightly in contrition.
The Witch snorted.
“Save your false humility boy. It won’t serve you well here. Your bloodline’s arrogance shines through.”
He stiffened and raised his head to stare at her.
“You know who I am?”
Again she snorted. “Of course I know boy. You’re hardly the first Grimm I’ve had dealings with. Your ancestor was no better at hiding their arrogance than you, though he was powerful enough to somewhat justify his heightened opinion of himself, at least in this Realm.”
His ancestor? He dearly hoped she was referring to some grandparent, but with the mystique surrounding her he couldn’t discount the fact she might be referring to his namesake, Asmodeus Grimm, the progenitor of the Grimm family.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Unnerved, and wary of any further deception however polite the intent, Mo took on a genuine wry tone as he shook his head. “I really am sorry for getting distracted. There’s just a bit of cognitive dissonance between our current surroundings and, well, the stories around you.”
She grinned and he took that as a good sign.
“About my request…” he prompted her.
She waved her hand dismissively. “Yes, yes. I understand your request. You wish the power to be inducted into your family tradition. To be a ‘sorcerer’.” She sneered slightly as she said the word, and his pride prickled slightly at her scorn but he suppressed it and offered her a nod.
"Impossible,” she said as she shook her head. His heart fell as she continued. “The nature of the generational power of your ancestor is costly, and nothing you could offer would be valuable enough to afford the brokerage fee I would require to put you in touch with an entity capable of replicate it, let alone satisfy any entity capable of replicating it.”
He sagged in defeat even as part of his brain spun off a hundred tendrils of speculation about what she meant. What was the nature of his ancestor’s power, the ability to utilize magic, that she referenced? From what she said it sounded like something that was bargained for, and he wondered if that meant sorcerers were really just warlocks who were benefitting from the effects of deals that spanned generations.
His conscious mind remained focused on the Witch and it desperately sought for some path forward.
“Is there really no path forward? No way that…” He swallowed and forced himself to utter the next words. “That I can get the power that would earn my father’s respect.”
The Witch sighed. “Such small goals. Is the approval of your father so important? Do you really need it? There are paths that would let you achieve much, even operating in the gray between the Dark and the mortal world.”
He shook his head, denying it instinctively even as he tried to consider her words.
“Stop.” She commanded. “Look at me.” His eyes were drawn up to hers and he found myself unable to break away from her gaze. Her eyes were limpid pools of gray, and a tide drew him into them, rendering any attempt to escape her gaze pointless.
In a daze, half-aware, Mo found himself unable to resist her command.
“Why can you not accept this? What would drive you to seek out an entity such as myself? Do not just offer the half-truth that you want to get your father’s approval. Humanity is not driven by positive impulses, no matter what anyone would have you believe. It is fear, hatred, and anxiety that drive humanity. It is what you cannot accept, rather than what you would strive towards. It is what you lack, rather than what more you would want. It is what you are missing, rather than what you require.”
Her voice had taken on a hypnotic tone and cadence and Mo found himself lost in it.
“You are defined by your void, the whole at the center of your existence, which you desperately seek to fill. It is what drives you, what is central to your existence. And so I ask again, and demand a true answer this time: what do you seek?”
The answer came to his lips, unbidden.
“I seek fairness.”
The words surprised him, even as he continued.
“I seek equality. I seek balance. I seek fairness. I seek justice. I seek a world where people are judged by their deeds and words rather than their circumstances. Where I will be judged by who I am rather than who others wished I would be.”
Tears escaped unbidden as he uttered the words, the truth of them lancing a festering boil of emotions that had been building for the past 25 years of his life. Why couldn’t his father judge him by who he was? By what he’d achieved? Why did his lack of magic have to define him? Why did it disqualify him?
The Witch slowly nodded, eyes seeming to weigh him as he continued. “Hmm, I see. Yes, I think I understand. You speak of merit and worth, action and reaction, of cause and effect, yes?”
Again, he found himself nodding as the words the crone spoke resonated in the hollow space deep within the center of his being.
The Witch grinned, a dark twinkle in her eye that unnerved him as she spoke. “Well, I think I can help you after all then. But are you willing to pay the price I wonder?”
He hesitated but the hollow ache at the center of his being demanded to be filled. He’d tried to fill it with alcohol, with friendship, with love, but they all bled away in time, leaving him empty again.
“I will pay the price. What do you require?”
The Witch chortled. “I do not require anything. I am simply fulfilling a promise I made long ago. As to the one you will speak with, well, I cannot speak to what their price may be. Even I do not understand them to be honest with you. Do you still wish to proceed?”
The lack of price demanded by the Witch bothered him. Everything he’d heard insisted that she always required payment.
“You will not require anything further of me, in return for putting me in touch with this entity?” He asked, seeking to get her word. His contacts agreed that the Witch, for all that she was not benevolent, was true to her word in a way that few were in the supernatural community.
“Yes, yes,” she waved dismissively. “No additional price to you.”
“Not from me at least,” she added. That made it two times that she’d added a caveat to the sort of price the entity she would connect him to might require, and he found his anxiety renewed at the thought of it.
She clapped her hands, cutting his thoughts off from the descending spiral of concern they’d entered.
“Well, no time like the present.” With those words, she closed her eyes and muttered words he couldn’t make out.
Before he could consider otherwise his vision faded and his consciousness descended into darkness.
As the lingering tendrils of fear and anxiety fell away, a thought entered his mind, like a voice only its meaning was conveyed instantly and with no sound.
Greetings mortal.
Pain took him.