“How did you convince me to do this?” asked Averick as he steadily walked by her side. Apparently he’d learned his lesson the last time they’d come here and he’d tried to outrun her. He’d also gained a new Skill out of the ordeal: [Enhanced Stamina].
Now he could’ve probably run an extra two kilometers on these rises before he had to stop and take a breather.
On the other hand, Alice had a much more fitting Skill for the situation: [Expert Climber]. In truth, it didn’t seem to be doing much for her: oh, her footing was surer, and the times when she encountered rocks hidden under the soft layer of snow she didn’t even have to slow down to make sure she wouldn’t fall, but other than that? It felt like only a minor upgrade, instead of an Uncommon Skill. She supposed that’s what she got by a Skill being upgraded based on her abilities.
“Because I asked you nicely. And because I reminded you that they have great food.”
He groaned exaggeratedly and forlornly looked down the road they’d been steadily climbing on, his eyes flitting through the trees as if expecting to find an opening through which to look at the distant landscape, where maybe he’d manage to see Gunsee, or lacking that, the carriage that had brought them at the base of the mountains.
The climb itself wasn’t that harsh: they were following a well beaten trail, after all, one that they’d been told to use by the inhabitants of that village up in the mountains. They’d said that not even the [Witches] remembered it, although that wasn’t a surprise since they were pretty self sufficient and rarely needed to leave the mountains.
No, what really made the climb hard was the amount of gear they’d brought this time at Alice’s insistence, together with the very warm clothes they were wearing, which made moving a bit more complex. Alice was used to it: she’d spent her youth climbing through the Alps with her grandma both in the warmer and the colder seasons (she’d always preferred doing it during summer though. It allowed her to escape the hot days). Averick though? This was basically the second climb of his entire life, and he was doing it with the added difficulty of extra gear. That was why she’d decided to do her good action for the week and was carrying most of it, to Av’s express displeasure.
‘I’m supposed to be carrying the heavy stuff!’
‘No, you’re supposed to climb by my side at a good pace. If you carry all of this alone you’ll just fall to the ground in half an hour.’
That was how that conversation had gone, and he’d quickly given in: he’d come to learn that there were arguments he would’ve had better chances at winning with a talking wall… speaking another language.
“Come on, it shouldn’t take too long!” she said with a smile as she trudged on at a steady pace, a lilt in her voice.
“You said that an hour ago.”
She chuckled, and he couldn’t help but smile. For all he was complaining he was enjoying this. He also couldn’t wait to try those [Mountaineers]’s food again.
“Can’t you do some strange thing like, I don’t know, talk to the forest, make the trees come alive and bring us up? Something like that?”
Alice laughed out loud, scaring a few birds with white and gray feathers that had been merrily chirping in the trees nearby. She had to stop and take a breath, before she answered: “What do you take me for? A Level 50? Maybe a 60? Or some kind of [Druid]. Nah, I wouldn’t be able to do any of that.”
She stopped, furrowing her brows: “Probably.”
Averick immediately turned towards her, his neck creaking as he heard a loud pop, staring with wide eyes: “What do you mean ‘probably’?”
She waved dismissively: “Don’t worry about it. I wouldn’t be willing to pay the price. For that matter, I don’t think the ones who could ask for such a price exist here.”
She was referring to a leshi, the spirits of forests in old russian folklore. Of all the different forest spirits she knew of, they were the ones who’d have the power and willingness to do something like that. Dryads were a close second, but they had a bad tendency to play tricks or to break your kneecaps if they were in the wrong mood.
Leshis on the other hand? For the right price they could do pretty much anything. Why, she’d probably only have to give up a month of her life for a thing as simple as getting the forest to carry them to their destination in comfort. Maybe even less if the leshi in question was an old one, although those ones tended to ramp up their prices, especially for frivolous things like that.
Sighing, she walked on, Averick looking strangely at her by her side.
“What is it?” she asked.
“You have that look on your face,” he answered.
“You’ll have to be more specific, my face makes a lot of looks.”
Av chuckled, his frown disappearing: “The look when you remember something interesting.”
“I have a look for that?”
“You have a look for everything Alice, even for when you’re hungry and angry.”
“Hey, everyone has a ‘hangry’ face!”
They stopped and laughed, Alice clutching at her knees as she doubled over. Truth be told, it wasn’t that funny, but… just being able to be herself with Av, with her stupid jokes, it was enough to make her genuinely laugh. When had been the last time she’d actually been able to be herself, without hiding anything? Back on earth? Yes, back on earth, with a friend who’d had to move states when her parents had broken up. They’d stayed in contact, but it had never been the same.
In this world though? Nobody batted an eye (mostly) to her weirdness. They just liked to joke about how, ‘since high Level people always become weird, she’ll be the weirdest of them all when she gets there’. She liked the idea.
On they walked, and she could sense that the forest was sleeping, waiting for winter to pass. There weren’t as many birds in the trees chirping away merrily, nor could she hear the constant sounds of crickets and other insects. Sometimes the wind would rustle some branches high up, but other than that? There were many moments of actual silence. Not hostile silence, like that first time back a few months prior, just… calm. The silence of the sleepers. Did trees dream? If yes, what would their dreams look like? And their nightmares?
A branch cracked in the distance. Somehow, it hadn’t been softened by the snow.
Looking that way, Alice saw a figure approach them.
The figure wore dark brown robes that covered its whole body from head to toe, a dark green cape over it moving slightly in the wind. A brown scarf covered most of its face as it approached them, but the thing that tipped them off was the hat. The figure, no, she wore a crooked, pointy, hat the color of autumn’s falling leaves, with a new addition of a green leaf seemingly growing out of it.
They stopped, letting the old woman, [Witch] Aria, approach them.
When she was well within earshot, Alice bowed: “I bow to you, Witch Aria, an occultist to one with craft.”
The woman stopped herself not five paces away, tipping her hat: “And I tip my hat to you, Alice, hatless witch. Rise, you’re more than welcome in these woods.”
Alice rose from her deep bow, a sign of respect towards an elder and someone who knew more than she did (at least, in the matters of this world). Her grandma had always said that this greeting was as old as the times of shamans back on earth and that, in the last two millennia, it had been nothing more than a memory, no longer practiced for fear of being hunted down and burned. At the time she’d been taught though, at the death of magic, grandma hadn’t feared such things, for the people no longer believed.
To be able to use this ancient way of greeting again felt like an honor.
The old, no, positively ancient, [Witch], crossed the distance between them and, with a grandmotherly smile on her extremely wrinkled face, she opened her arms to give Alice a hug.
A hug that was swiftly given back.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
“Ah, it is a pleasure to see you again, young Alice. I feared you wouldn’t accept our invitation after what happened the last time.”
She smiled: “The crow I sent was also quite happy about how you ‘greeted him right’. I didn’t think you’d know of the crows’ ways.”
Alice smiled back: “People always forget how intelligent they are, am I right? They’ve got a culture of their own!” she crossed her arms in indignation for a species’ traditions that weren’t respected simply because they were small, cuddly and liked shiny things. She had been like them once! That is, small, cuddly and with a love for shiny stuff. She still was, although without the small part.
The old witch laughed, a sound like a creaking tree in the wind, and smiled up at her: “You’d fit perfectly with that new, young, fellow that popped up in Irevia, the King of Crows. Apparently he understood the same thing you and I do.”
Throughout all this Averick just looked transfixed at the woman, probably wondering how in all the torture devices of Airm she could just be so… jovial and active, while also being probably older than the two oldest people in Gunsee put together.
Finally, he broke through his surprise and bowed: “Witch Aria, it is a pleasure to see you again.”
The old woman, for her part, looked unperturbed at the man’s surprise: “Young Averick, it is a pleasure to see you again too. The woods tell me you chose not to try and outrun your beloved.”
And at that, both Alice and Averick became red as apples drawn by a child and spluttered something unintelligible to the extreme amusement of the older woman, who simply raised a hand and said: “I am happy for both of you.”
They both asked her how she knew they were together: could the woods somehow sense it? Could she see something?
For an answer, the witch simply said that it was an old woman’s insight that had made her understand. She’d bring with herself to the grave the fact that she’d found out about them because she’d cast a scrying charm on Alice and seen the two going at it like rabbits.
----------------------------------------
“So, what’s this celebration you’ve invited me to? You called it ‘The Festival of Stories’, but I’ll be honest, I have no clue about what it’s about.”
The old witch walked by their side, her steps sure in the snow, leaving behind only light footprints, as if she didn’t quite touch the ground. She could also, somehow, keep up with them without looking tired at all.
“It is an old tradition among our kind. A day to remember the last great [Witch] to ever appear in this forsaken world. A festival in honor of the things she loved most in this world, other than her fellow witches, things forbidden and delightful. A festival in honor of Jelaina Neverwhere, the [Wandering Witch of Stories].”
Alice’s mouth opened to say something, then her brain registered what she’d heard and she turned to stare at the witch, her eyes widening.
“Wait, her Class was actually [Witch of Stories]? What was her craft?”
Aria looked down at her and… her smile had already been there, nostalgic and old, but now? Now it was bigger, with a hint of mystery: “She had none. Her craft were stories.”
Alice stopped in place as she looked up at the [Witch], repeatedly opening and closing her mouth.
Then Av spoke: “Why do you look so shocked? Is that bad?”
Alice shook her head: “Bad? No. Extraordinary? Nearly impossible? Yes.”
Aria nodded in evident satisfaction.
Here’s the thing: witches always had a craft. What is a craft, you ask? To put it simply, witches work with emotions. Fear, anger, jealousy, happiness, nostalgia, sadness, wonder, you name it, they have it. Upon taking up their hat, they choose an emotion and stick to it, turning it into their craft, and they practice it by harvesting their emotion of choice from other humans (or monsters and the like). As you can well imagine, negative emotions are much easier to come by than positive ones, and the emotion used affects the things a witch can make, together with, in the long run, affecting the witch herself. That’s why witches are so disliked, because they usually choose to harvest, and cause, negative emotions to make their job easier.
As you can well imagine, a witch without craft is not a witch at all. And sure, some witches gain the ability to work beyond their craft, but being without one at all? That was rare. Some would say impossible even, but Alice knew better.
She knew of a story, a classical, famous even, story of a witch without craft: Baba Yaga.
A craftless witch with a wooden leg who lived between the world of the living and that of the dead, good friends with death and all of her forms, married to a leshi and living in a house that moved around on chicken legs.
A witch that could control nature and the world around her using ancient magics and rites.
A witch… who had once been a human woman.
Nobody knew that side of the story though. Only she, now. A story her grandma had told her when she was a child. The story went that, once upon a time, in a time in Russia where not even kalduns existed, nor witches (which in Russia were sometimes called babyiga, while other times snatka, or knower), an old woman, a grandmother, liked to collect berries. She liked the activity so much that she’d gained the nickname Babushka Yagada, which could be translated, quite literally, as ‘Grandma Berry’.
Her time spent in the forests though wasn’t for nothing: she met many of their inhabitants, from simple animals to changelings who just wanted to chat to, one day, an ancient, world weary, leshi. All those she met she befriended and, after some time, she even became a close confidant of the forest spirit.
And then, one day something went wrong. You see, for one to be a grandmother, one has to have grandchildren. Baba Yaga had four of them and they were the joy of her life. The youngest was six years old and, one day, he’d fallen ill. At the time there were no doctors near their village, or, for the matter, people worthy of the title of doctors. The village elder attempted to make a cure for the young boy’s malady, but they knew not of what affected him, and the cure-all didn’t work.
So it was that Baba Yaga, in a moment of desperation, remembered about the leshi in the forest and about his great powers. She went and asked him to save her grandson and he, the old spirit… just looked at her. He was a great figure, taller than the trees, lying on his side, his head on a rock flattened by the winds, always seemingly half asleep. He looked down at her, the woman who spoke to him as if he was an old friend, and saw her desperation. But nothing could be done for free. Everything must have a price, and if one wasn’t decided before a deal such as this, it would be exacted later on by forces outside of it.
The leshi thought and thought silently for minutes. He would’ve thought for more, but he knew that time wasn’t on his side on this occasion, so instead he offered her the closest thing to a fair deal he could: he’d help save the woman’s grandson. In exchange, old Babushka Yagada would have to become one of them. A spirit.
The old woman, without hesitation, accepted.
The rest, as they say, is history. The leshi called upon death herself, asking that she let go of the boy, and death said she would do it if she received something of equal value. That something, as it turned out, was half of Baba Yaga’s soul. Something of equal value to the boy’s soul, and the only way to turn her into a spirit, as she’d agreed with the leshi, for spirits could never be alive.
As half her soul was harvested, Baba Yaga’s right leg withered and died, but the leshi was there to help her, making a wooden one to take its place, and when the process was over, death let go of the woman’s grandson’s soul and simply… sat there to chat. It had been a long time since someone had been brave enough to do something like what Baba Yaga had done and she was fascinated.
That is how the old Babushka Yagada became the witch she was better known as later, with powers obtained from the land of the dead and the spirits of the forest.
That is why, upon hearing Aria mention that the [Witch of Stories] had once been one such craftless witch, she’d been so surprised.
“Is this true? Or is it an exaggeration, an overly inflated story?”
The old witch smiled at that, a sincere gesture of understanding with a bit of bitterness behind. Alice was probably the first one who had known what she was talking about and hadn’t just taken it in stride.
“Old women don’t lie Alice, remember that. We’re too tired to care.”
And on they walked, a very confused Averick following them and asking Alice to explain.
She did, and, to make him understand, she began telling him stories of Baba Yaga from home.
It was another hour before they reached their destination, well into the evening, the sun having already disappeared. Alice proposed they camp for the night and continue in the daylight, remembering the Skinwalkers and having a feeling there were things worse than them lurking about. Aria had waved her fears off, taking out a strangely decorated lantern from a bag of holding and lighting it up, the light from within being somehow magnified to the point that it felt like walking in daylight.
When, finally, they reached the town, they were greeted by the light of warm fires and a smile that made her sweat under her heavy clothes.
“Welcome back miss Alice, mister Averick. We’d been waiting for you,” said the [Mountainous Village Leader of Cheer], Radis, as he waved them closer. His Skill, [Warming Smile] was in full effect and, soon, Alice and Averick found themselves shedding layers of clothes off as they found out that the area inside the village, where a bonfire burned merrily in the central plaza, was comfortably warm.
“Let me guess, [Witch] Aria sent you a crow or something?”
“Actually, no, it was [Witch] Commodora. Apparently one of her… pet wolves, scented you when you arrived at the foot of the mountain. We also saw the approaching light of [Witch] Aria’s Dawn Lantern.”
Dawn Lantern? She’d never heard of those.
She turned to the witch to ask her what that was, but was stopped before she could say anything: “It is late, Alice. I suggest you go to sleep and recuperate. After all, it was a long day. And in two days' time, when the Festival begins, you’ll have your answer.”
She turned around and started walking back to the darkness, taking out her lantern: “I hope you’ll have more stories like the ones you told Averick, young witch,” she finished, slowly but steadily walking away.
And all Alice could say, in the end, was: “I’m not a witch!”
Then they were led inside the village, fed and pointed to two bedrooms.
She and Av slept together.