The stench of smoke and charred flesh clouded the damp forest air. It burned the inside of Oralia’s nose and throat, causing her eyes to water. She ignored the swell of hot tears, knowing any movement, even to quickly wipe away the moisture clouding her vision, would be enough to give up her position. She remained perfectly still, crouched low amongst a tangle of overgrown bracken, catching only glimpses of the witch that paced restlessly between the trees looking for her.

“Always have to do it the hard way,” Grettie muttered as she shuffled along, twisting and turning her hands in a manner that did not appear nervous, but compulsive. There was a noticeable twitch in her fingers as well. “You accidentally burn one acquaintance to a crisp and suddenly you’re labeled ‘untrustworthy’.”

The witch’s muttered grumblings grew faster and more frantic, working herself into a rage. The twitch in her fingers worsened with her souring mood until the building impulse was simply too strong to ignore. With an infuriated yell, Grettie whipped around and threw her hands into the air, channeling a surge of flame skyward. The spell incinerated the lower boughs of a black cottonwood in a volatile flash of red and black.

More smoke filled the air as Grettie turned back around, scanning the dim forest floor for her troublesome quarry. “How’s that for untrustworthy, huh? Now you get on out here before I’m forced to do something we both regret!”

Oralia kept painfully still, forcing slow breaths through her irritated nose as her thoughts raced behind her eyes. Of all the types of witches, why did it have to be a fire elemental? Those were the worst of the worst! Fire elements were often hot headed, temperamental bastards who, against all odds, managed to survive a childhood rife with accidental fires. Only the most successful survived into adulthood for grim reasons.

The challenge often left its mark, resulting in highly unstable individuals with a perverse sense of conscience. Grettie was clearly no exception, considering she’s incinerated her orc companion without a second thought.

A disembodied voice slipped amongst Oralia’s panicking thoughts. If you don’t move, you’ll end up in the same way. An unrecognizable, charred corpse.

“I’m thinking,” Oralia hissed under her breath.

I see, drawing the witch right to us then. An excellent plan if you wish to die!

This was, admittedly, a most unusual situation. As Oralia was playing the part of the unwilling host, the dark magic could not afford to let her die. If she perished before it had a chance to infect another vessel, it too would go belly up–or something like that. Truth be told, Oralia wasn’t too keen on the exact details. What she did know was that no matter how much it detested her, it was in the entity’s best interest to keep her alive. For the meantime, anyway.

Oralia grimaced as the skin on her right arm crawled, as if swarming with insects. A quick glance assured her there was nothing there.

You’re sensing magic, you fool, the entity hissed. Dodge to the left, now!

Ignoring every instinct screaming at her to do the exact opposite of what the entity said, Oralia obeyed. She threw her body sideways in an awkward roll, crashing through a tangle of barbed vines as she did so. The thorns dug into her wool clothing and marred the exposed flesh on her arms with deep red scratches. The pain was preferable to the alternative, however. A quick glance over her shoulder confirmed that the bracken was now nothing more than a smoldering pile of burnt ash.

Fucking witches, Oralia cursed within her head. If she allowed that to happen to her, Sascha would resurrect her from the dead just so he could kill her all over again.

Are you going to allow your beloved to bury you, as you did for Curly?

Oralia tensed. Amidst the fear and fury stirring within her mind, she couldn’t help but wonder how the spirit had learned which vulnerabilities were best used against her.

I am one with your thoughts and dreams. I see what Curly’s death did to you. Poor Sascha isn’t as resilient as you, I’m afraid. Poor fool wouldn’t survive the heartache.

What made Oralia even more furious was the fact that the spirit’s motivation was working. Ignoring the lancing pain within her legs, she gathered her knees beneath her and took off between the trees. The green and black shapes of the forest turned into an undistinguishable blur as she slammed her feet against the slippery ground, doubling her speed.

“Looks like the rabbit’s been flushed from hiding!” The craggily voice rang out behind her. “Run, run, little rabbit. You’re not getting away from me.”

Oralia ducked and weaved as she sprinted, attempting to lose her psychotic tail. A white oak burst into flames to her left, confirming that the witch was in hot pursuit. Over the ragged in and out of her own smoke-infused lungs, she could hear Grettie’s fast footsteps gaining on her.

Foolish orc. You cannot outrun the human. Use your smarts. The only way out of this is to best her in battle.

Fuck. That.

Oralia might have been an accomplished fighter, but that meant nothing next to a fire elemental. The moment she stopped running was the same moment her body was rendered into an unrecognizable pile of ash. No, there was another way. Her years on the battlefield had taught that all species, humans included, had shortcomings. Humans were fast on their feet, yes, but they lacked the finely tuned senses of an orc. Their sense of smell and hearing, in particular, were poor in comparison. If Oralia could put enough space between her and Grettie, she’d be able to give her the slip and bunker down somewhere out of sight. And then, come nightfall, she could pick her way back to camp under the cloak of darkness.

It wasn’t the best plan, granted, but it was still miles ahead of taking on a witch head-to-head by herself! Of all the ludicrous ideas Oralia had ever heard, the spirit’s suggestion was by far the absolute wo–

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

A wall of flame erupted across the ground in front of her. Oralia changed directions, only to find herself running parallel with the growing fire barricade. She whipped around, dark eyes taking in the flickering expanse of fire, desperately searching for a way out. It was too late. She was fully encircled now. The dancing tongues of red and orange flames fused together, allowing a small figure to slip through seconds before the ring sealed shut.

Grettie shuffled closer, appearing entirely too at ease for being in the middle of a raging inferno of fire. She was average size for a human woman, which was substantially smaller than Oralia. Unfortunately, a thing like size didn’t matter much when your adversary possessed the ability to incinerate you with a snap of their fingers. Grettie’s hair was a wild tangle of dirty brown curls nearly the same color of the matted furs she wore on her back. Other than a small knife tucked into her belt, she wore no weapon–not a great sign when dealing with elementals.

The scruffy human tilted her head, her nose curled in disdain as she studied her prey. “There’s something off about you, orc.”

Whatever magic was holding the fire together was keeping the worst of the smoke at bay as well, allowing Oralia both the ability to not only breathe, but talk as well. While she had never been one for talking her way out of these sorts of situations, Oralia supposed there was no time like the present to put her serious lack of skills to the test. She stood straighter, mimicking the way Grettie tilted her head. “You do not know who I am?”

Grettie raised one dirt encrusted finger to scratch the inside of her left nostril. “Should I?”

“You chased me all this way, went through the trouble of trapping me within a ring of fire, and you do not even recognize me? Me? With my face plastered on every wanted poster from here to Castle Bay?” Oralia threw her arms wide and spun around in the sort of overdramatic display that would normally make her shudder. She dragged the toe of her right boot into the muck as she did so. The results weren’t a perfect ring, but she didn’t think a seer’s trap required perfection in order to work.

Oralia pinched the bridge of her nose with a sigh. “What is the point of being infamous if no one recognizes you?”

The confusion angle was working. The sneer slipped from Grettie’s curled lips as she attempted to piece together what was going on. “Am I supposed to know who you are?”

“Yes! I thought that was why you and your gang were chasing me.”

“We was chasing you to kill you and steal your things.”

Oralia neatly stepped free of the seer’s trap before sealing it with a final smudge of her foot. She didn’t know whether the dark magic in her veins meant that she too could get caught within the rune, and held no desire to use this as an opportunity to find out. “Are you telling me you do not recognize your own Protector of the Realm?”

Grettie removed her finger from her nose and studied the contents trapped beneath her filthy fingernail.

“Former protector, I suppose.” Oralia folded her arms over her chest in the same manner she had seen Daana do countless times in the past. She had always found it a bit snobbish and hoped the bandit would think so as well. “Before the whole traitor to the realm thing came into the light, of course.”

“I–”

“Are in the presence of an outlaw legend,” Oralia finished, helpfully. She peered down her nose at the smaller human, lifting one eyebrow higher than the other skeptically. “Can you do something about the fire, by the way? It is getting unbearably hot in here.”

“That’s kinda the point, actually.”

“This much smoke exposure cannot be good for the lungs.”

“Now see here!” Grettie took a challenging step forward. “Stop trying to run this. I’m in charge. Me! Not you. Got it?”

“Fine, fine.” It was difficult to maintain her air of superiority when Oralia suddenly wanted to do nothing more than rip her clothes from her back. The temperature within the ring was bordering on sweltering. “Now, how do you want to do this? I would rather skip the threats and move on to the part where I pay you handsomely to look the other way, if you don’t mind.”

Grettie’s scrutinizing eyes looked Oralia up and down before coming to a fast conclusion. “You’re not carrying any money. Not enough, that is.”

“Yes, because that would be incredibly impractical. The money is back at my camp, obviously.” Oralia challenged the bandit’s stare with one of her own. After a moment of intense silence, she took things a step further. “I am getting the impression that you are not the one in charge. Where is your leader? Perhaps I will have better luck with someone less–” she withdrew the word ‘incompetent’ and selected the slightly less insulting “–fiery.”

“Or I could just kill you as planned and then go find your camp. The rest of the crew are probably already pillaging it as we speak.”

Oralia’s bait was working. Had Grettie truly wanted her dead, the witch would have done so already. This was a dance Oralia had witnessed her faithful use when pressing their victims for information in the least obvious way possible. It was strange to be on the receiving end, but she was fairly certain she knew the steps well enough not to end in a raging inferno. If Oralia’s hunch was correct, then Grettie was making sure there wasn’t any additional information she needed to know before disposing of Oralia once and for all.

“Sounds as though you have it all figured out then,” Oralia said. “Carry on.”

Grettie squinted at her, seemingly aware a trap had been set but was unsure of where or when it was going to snap shut on her foot.

“For your sake,” Oralia muttered at a volume barely loud enough for the witch to overhear, “I hope your leader is the merciful type.”

“Alright, enough whispering to yourself, orc. You either tell me whatever it is you’ve got to say or I’ll turn you to cinders right here.”

“You finding the money on your own would be quite a feat, considering I alone know where the chest is stashed. You do not just leave that sort of wealth sitting out in a saddlebag for all the world to see, after all. But if you are certain you can do it without me, all the best to you.”

“Fine. Tell me where it is then.” A slow smile spread across Grettie’s soot covered face as a plan slowly unfolded behind her glassy eyes. “And I’ll let you walk away.”

“As tempting as that sounds, you will need me to lead you to it.”

“This just sounds like an overcomplicated plan to force me to keep you alive.”

“Well of course it does. That is exactly what it is. This is not the first time I have run into trouble on the road. When traveling with large sums of money, the easiest way to ensure your life is to make sure no one else knows where it is hidden. That way you always have a bargaining chip in the event you are forced to barter for your survival.”

They stared at one another time for an unbearable stretch of silence. The broiling heat from the fire crackled and snapped at Oralia’s back, causing a sheen of sweat to drip down her forehead. The air was thick and smoky, stinging the insides of her nostrils as the irritation crawled down her throat, clogging her airways.

Finally, greed won over, lessening some of the fire raging behind Grettie’s wild eyes. “Fine! But we’re doing this my way. Understand? No funny business. You make one wrong move and I cremate you on the spot!”

And to think, just earlier that day, Oralia’s biggest concern had been ensuring she returned to camp with Sascha’s favorite pot. That seemed almost laughable now. Almost. Alas, the dark entity had been right about one thing. Sascha would not survive the heartache of losing both his favorite pot and his fuckmate on the same day. For both of their sakes, Oralia needed to do whatever it took to return to camp in one piece. Even if it meant playing prisoner to an unstable fire witch.

She lifted her hands in compliance. “Understood.”