The wrinkled hands of the grey-haired man trembled as he shut the doors of the wardrobe in his quaint study. He shifted nervously around the room, studying if there was anything in sight that could condemn him too obviously. His many books of forbidden lore had been hidden under the floorboards, his desk was cleared of all suspicious drawings, and the open cupboard contained no more than the remedies and natural ingredients of an apothecary’s trade.
But the heavy, muffled knocking on the door signalled the arrival of something unwanted in the atelier. He had been forewarned of its presence, in the gravelly hissing of a spelled crow’s tongue: a company of witch hunters.
The house wasn’t spacious enough to warrant more than a short sweep, a step or two into the adjacent rooms, and only if this visitor decided to take a look around. But he needed to prevent that from happening. The man rubbed his trembling hands, inhaled deeply to still his breath, adjusted his waist sash, and cautiously reached for the door handle.
But his pretence of composure fell apart as soon as he opened. His head tilted backwards to meet the stoic eyes of the man on the other side, standing as tall as the threshold between them. It didn’t help that the old man was rather short himself, and his posture slightly bent forwards.
‘Greetings, sire. How may I help?’ said the old witch. But the hunter did not answer. He stared at him in silent judgment, studying his features: the pale, cowardly eyes, the ash-grey robes a mere shade darker than his beard. The dark fingertips, half-hidden under his trembling fists. And when the old man’s smile started to quiver, the towering hunter gestured towards the interior of the house, at a pair of chairs and a small dinner table, before letting himself in.
The two men sat across from one another, the old man’s eyes darting from one point to another on the silent hunter’s enormous figure. A man with a stern gaze and the features of the northern rangers, his dark, rugged beard only faintly specked in grey. He wore heavy layers of fur over his hunting surcoat, and carried the emblem of the Free Companies on his necklace—a horned wyrm biting its own tail, impaled twice by a downwards blade. His belt had many tools and trinkets, but it was the hilt of a large dagger that caught the old man’s eye, reminding him of how cautious he needed to be.
‘I can brew us some coffee, if you’d like,’ he said.
‘I will not stay for long,’ replied the man, looking straight into his eyes, urging him to sit back down. And when he did, he continued. ‘Have you always lived here, master Ciaran?’
‘No, sire. This atelier is a recent venture. I wished to still the murmurs of the large towns and hubs,’ replied Ciaran.
‘Atelier,’ repeated the hunter.
‘Aye, sire. A lone station to study peacefully, to keep distractions at bay while I work. I am a herbalist by trade.’
‘Too far a ride for merchants and care-seekers, is it not? A healer should be closer to his people.’
‘My profession requires the use of many herbs that only grow on sylvan grounds. I am a supplier to the local healers, not a healer myself, I’m afraid to correct.’
The hunter looked around as he listened, fixing his eyes on small details, and Ciaran grew nervous. He’d made dangerous oversights in the hasty response to the warning of his lookout. More than half the contents were missing from the bookcase. The writing desk was too tidy to be in use. He needed to catch the hunter’s attention again, and quickly.
‘S-say, master hunter. What brings a man of your line of work to my doorstep?’
‘I seek the trail of an old monster... something that lurks these woods,’ said the hunter, focused on something else, and stood to approach the cupboard. He picked up a small, fogged-up flask between his thumb and index finger, staring at the dark purple liquid that rested inside. A thick, viscous substance that seemed to twitch on its own accord at the hunter’s touch, as if slithering away from him.
The old man swallowed in a dry throat, cursing his idiocy inside his head, hoping that the hunter’s intimidating aura was no more than a hollow act, a deception to hide away what was ultimately an ignorant brute. The hunter sat back down, placing the flask between them, and staring into Ciaran’s eyes before leaning back cross-armed into the chair.
‘Alchemy escapes me, I regret,’ he said, inviting the old man to explain of the contents of the flask.
‘It’s a kind of oil,’ explained Ciaran. ‘A simple extract used as a baseline for various salves and remedies.’
‘An extract of... what, exactly?’ asked the hunter. He leaned closer to the table, supporting himself on one elbow. And with his free hand, he started reaching for his dagger.
Ciaran stammered for a moment, mindful of the hunter’s quiet drawing of the dagger from his belt. The slow and subtle scraping of sharp metal on a hard leather sheath.
‘Oil of wispleaf root,’ he quivered. ‘Quite hard to come by.’
‘I see,’ said the hunter, unconvinced by his lie.
The hunter held the dagger in front of him—an elegant blade made from pitch black steel—and carefully retrieved the flask. He took off the cork stopper with his thumb, openly displaying his next move to Ciaran’s puzzled gaze, and inclined the flask so that a single drop would fall onto the blade. And in the split second that the oil started its descent, time seemed to slow down before Ciaran’s eyes. He suddenly understood the hunter’s plan, far too late to stop it, and he could only watch as the drop fell.
The liquid touched the dark metal of the dagger and made a shrill sound, expanding and clotting into viscous, squirming lumps that fell on the wooden table, burning into a mist. The telltale sign of a hunter’s blade touching corrupted blood.
The hunter flipped the table away from him as he twisted his dagger and righted his stance, building up momentum to lunge at the old witch.
Ciaran dodged with a finesse uncharacteristic for his age, his brow furrowed while he tried to cast spells of protection. But he could not weave them fast enough, not between strike after another of the agile titan in front of him. Given quarter, he cast a simple burst of wind to knock his enemy back into the writing desk. It was no more a weak diversion, but it gave him enough time to conjure a volley of green-flame quarrels that shot in all directions, scattering across the room and searing through the furniture.
But the hunter moved too swiftly for such a spell, and was well prepared to face a witch in close quarters. The arcane bolts only grazed him on the shoulder as he rolled aside, knocking down the desk and sending the pages of the loosely bound tomes flying across the room. In a swift motion, still on the floor, the hunter picked one of the heavy tomes and hurled it at Ciaran’s head, hitting him square on his left temple and knocking him down with a sonorous thud before righting himself and advancing towards him.
Ciaran retrieved a blade of his own, hidden under his waist sash, and bid his time. When the hunter reached to grab him by the neck, Ciaran stabbed at his arm with all the strength he could gather. The towering man lurched backwards, hurt, tracing a messy stroke of crimson blood on the floor away from Ciaran.
But in his moment of blind pride at such accurate a strike, Ciaran failed to notice that his curved dagger remained stuck in his opponents forearm. Unarmed, weary an desperate, he tried to cast a spell anew. But the spell was cut short by the black blade that pierced his chest, rending his flesh outwards as the hunter ripped the dagger out of him.
Breath escaped his lungs, and a pitiful grunt was all he could muster in response to the attack, viscous clots writhing out of his fatal wound onto the floor. As he fell, he stared at the closed wardrobe and gritted his teeth. He needed to get away. He needed more time.
He couldn’t let the hunter find her.
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The overflowing blood of Nadja’s master formed a dark crimson puddle across the floor of the atelier, littered with dark lumps of something vile. He fought and twitched in a desperate attempt to crawl away from his assailant, gasping for air, clawing at the floorboards towards the open door.
But Nadja watched through the slit of the wardrobe as the enormous man clad in heavy furs grabbed her master’s leg, dragging the old man back towards the bloodied dagger in his right hand. Ciaran started muttering something in a language long forgotten, before the towering man hit his stomach with such force that air, blood, and unfinished spell alike choked in his throat before he could finish. Tears trailed across Nadja’s face as she stifled an anguished cry, for she knew that making a sound would only lead to her own violent death.
The old man coughed, trying his hardest to stay conscious and breathing as he reached for the door, when the man in the fur attire spoke:
‘Had I known that witches plagued these woods, I would’ve come sooner,’ said the hunter. His voice invoked images of an old, burning oak in Nadja’s mind. ‘Are you done scurrying away, old man?’
He grabbed Ciaran by his robe’s collar, resting the tip of the pitch black dagger straight on his throat.
‘W-witchburner... f-filth...’ sputtered the old man through a bruised and bloodied mouth.
‘I am no burner, blightworm,’ scoffed the man. ‘The pyre-men are outside of your hovel, waiting for us to be done. I am a hunter. Have the old ways been forgotten so that you no longer tell your enemies apart?’
The strength in the old man’s body slipped away, and soon after, he was no more than a grisly husk. When his prey went limp, the hunter let go of the collar and sheathed his blade.
The grey-haired head thumped lifeless onto the floor, and a whimper betrayed Nadja’s resolve. A low, almost silent cry, a sound that would be imperceptible to a lesser man.
But the hunter was not a lesser man. He stood and righted his footing, reaching for his hunting dagger once again. His head held high, his eyes narrowed. He trod carefully across the floor, mindful to avoid the cut-up furniture, the sprawled pages of the old books, the spilled ink and the metal censer, all the debris from his duel with the grey old witch.
The stillness of the air and the furtive finesse of the man’s movements despite his size awed and frightened Nadja as he got closer to her hiding spot. Her heart pounded faster and faster, and each step the hunter made towards the wardrobe filled her with fear. Then panic overcame caution, and she burst out of the wardrobe, darting blindly towards the exit.
The man backed away and braced for battle against the cloth-covered mound that lunged at him, only to realise a moment later that it was trying to flee.
Nadja cried and screamed and ran with such abandon that she didn’t react fast enough to dodge the chairs or the censer, nor she was mindful to go around the pool of ink and blood.
She slipped and tumbled onto the wooden boards, where she kicked and screamed and desperately tried to escape, a mess of tears and snot whimpering on the floor. In one last gambit to survive, she tried to do what her master couldn’t, and with her eyes closed tight, she tried to recite a spell—any spell that could save her.
«Sh-sha... S-shayat–» she stammered, but a bloodied leather glove covered her mouth before she could finish.
‘Shhh-sh-sh-sh-sh...’ hissed the hunter.
He reached for a black cloth that hung from his belt and wrapped it around her head. The first two loops would silence her, and the third would leave her blind.
Nadja felt the man lifting her and carrying her in his arms through the threshold of the atelier and out into the clearing, holding her hands tightly. She felt helpless. She’d be hanged and set alight in a nearby tree, and her name would be forgotten once her ashes were swept by the autumn wind.
‘Pyre-men, burn the worm’s corpse,’ ordered the hunter to unseen companions. ‘And be quick with it.’
‘What’s that you’re carrying, Haunden?’ asked a man with a rat-like voice. ‘A little prize? You wouldn’t dare.’
‘An apprentice, it seems. I’ll take care of it.’
To Nadja, it sounded distinctly like her death sentence had been declared. What her master had gone through would pale next to whatever awaited her.
She heard the crackle of torches, oil flasks breaking and flames spreading across the atelier, orders and chatter shouted back and forth behind her as they got farther away from the cottage. But despite the man’s decisive stride, she could still hear her home burning down board by board.
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She heard a horse whinnying at their approach, and how it huffed as the man lifted and placed her on the saddle shortly before climbing himself. Without a word, he tied her hands, and held onto her tightly as they rode.
The sounds of the burning cottage became muffled and distant, until the man’s laboured breath could be heard quite clearly. He sounded exhausted, almost spent. The fight with her master had been short-lived, but quite intense.
Not an hour had passed since she had been told to hide and keep quiet, shortly before the man arrived. The hunter asked many questions, and her master’s act as an old apothecary quickly fell apart. Steel and spells clashed in the confines of the study when no more words could prevent it. But Magic is slow to cast, and the blade of a witch hunter is swifter than even the sharpest tongue.
And now, Nadja thought, master Ciaran was dead. And she was at the mercy of this towering assassin of mages. Panic had been building up rapidly inside her head, and at some point during their silent ride, exhausted and crying, Nadja fainted, slipping into a cold and restless slumber.
She slowly woke up to the murmurs of people—too many people, more than she had heard in years, and a light that slipped through the slightly unravelled blindfold. She still felt the cloth in her wrists and on her lips, but at least she was no longer completely in the dark.
They were riding through what Nadja assumed to be a semi-permanent encampment in a low valley, with tents and wooden huts built haphazardly past a large wooden gate, and the sound of a river that flowed somewhere beyond it. Men and women young and old clad in patchwork armours of rough steel, patterned cloth and thick leather turned their heads to see the new arrivals. The towering man wearing layers of fur known as Haunden, and an unknown young woman with messy brown hair, dressed in brown-grey tatters and restrained with black cloth. Some looked away as they saw her, Nadja noticed, perhaps aware of her ilk. Others stared right at her instead, as if attempting to meet her gaze. It did not bode well, and the thought of their intentions frightened her deeply.
They rode past the bonfires and the stands, the tables full of tankards and the weapon racks, towards a quiet corner of the encampment. A dark wooden hut adorned with furs and banners, hiding in the grim shade of an elder tree. Haunden climbed down from the horse, and guided it closer to the hut.
‘Rowan! Your services are required!’ called out Haunden.
Nadja’s heart started racing again. What were Rowan’s services? Was he a torturer, tasked to punish her for her misdeeds? Perhaps he was the camp’s executioner, and she’d be beheaded for all to see. Maybe it was the butcher of the encampment, and she’d be chopped up, turned into minced meat for the hound wolves to feast upon. She shut her eyes and instinctively leaned onto the horse’s neck, whimpering, again fearing for her life. But then she felt something she could not have foreseen. A heavy hand laid gently onto her head, comforting her and rustling her hair.
‘Easy, lass,’ said Haunden. ‘Rowan will help you.’
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The interior of Rowan’s house was lit dimly by the myriad candles that rested atop every surface of the workroom. The ceiling reached far above it, and the nooks underneath it were brimming with jars of extracts and salves, herbs and minerals, scrolls and tomes of medicine and alchemy befit to a healer’s home. Nadja rested on the soft wool quilt where Haunden had laid her, atop a table that stood at the centre of it all, observing her surroundings and wondering how such a fascinating place could remain hidden behind the haunting appearance she had glimpsed from outside.
An enormous shadow lumbered beside her, followed by the creaking of the floorboards and the tableside chair. She gave it a shaky, teary-eyed stare, and instinctively cowered away from Haunden, who sighed, righted himself, and spoke.
‘Collect yourself and breathe, lass. It’s not my task to bring you any harm. But no more spells for now, understood?’
Nadja nodded with visible hesitation, and he carefully unwrapped the black cloth. She coughed and gasped for air, trying her best to still her breathing and her heartbeat.
‘Y-yes, sir,’ she croaked, and coughed again.
Something in her voice sounded strange, as if it wasn’t her own. Her tongue felt coarse, and just the effort of that single word felt like flames on the back of her throat.
‘I would try to stay quiet, if I were in your place,’ said a soothing voice behind Nadja. It was soft and silk-like, and spoke with the cadence of a noble.
Rowan was too focused on the ingredients for a remedy to turn around, but when she finished, she handed it to Nadja with a caring smile. A bronze goblet half-filled with what looked very much like wine, but far thicker.
‘Drink this. It’ll soothe your throat, at least for a while.’
Nadja drank from the goblet, and the sweet, warm taste of fruits and honey made her eyes heavy with relief.
‘Thank you,’ whispered Nadja. ‘How’d you—’
‘Hush, now. It’s a common sign of blightburn.’
She fell silent shortly after emptying the goblet, and took a moment to wipe away her tears. Haunden broke the silence by clearing his throat.
‘I...’ he began. ‘I am not sure of... what comes next.’
‘Haunden,’ said Rowan, giving him a glare. ‘Let her rest.’
He gave Nadja a concerned stare for a moment, nodding to himself, and then looked back at Rowan.
‘Will she be safe here?’ he said.
‘Do not worry. She’s in good hands,’ she remarked.
Rowan sighed and met his stoic eyes, and saw that he had far too many things to say to the quiet young woman. Too many for her already frightened mind to handle.
‘You can brief her in the morning,’ she said, and caressed Nadja’s hair. ‘She’ll need some time to recover.’
Haunden sighed in agreement, and looked back at Nadja one last time as he grabbed his trappings to take his leave. She followed him with her eyes as he walked away, and sat in silence, staring blankly at the closed the door behind him.
While Rowan returned to prepare another remedy, she laid there, thinking. Everything was happening too quickly for her to keep up. She felt confused, frightened, and a knot started forming in her stomach. She absentmindedly looked around the room, until something shiny caught her eye: a tall mirror with an elaborate wooden frame, roots tied together into an elegant braid holding the edges of the silvery surface in place. A fairy gate to an otherworldly vision, she thought to herself. But something about that musing became somewhat true, and she paid close attention to the image in the mirror.
Her reflection looked similar enough to what she pictured about herself, but somehow... wrong. Her hair was dark and dull, far from the rich, reddish bronze that she once knew. Her skin was sickly pale, and felt cold to the touch. Her eyes were sunken, and there was something off about their colour. She was certain that they were green, and not the piercing, owl-like amber that she saw staring back at her. Some of her teeth looked crooked and decayed, and as she noticed that her lips and tongue had taken a purple tinge, she became far too aware of the metallic taste in her mouth.
Too focused on her face, she had failed to notice her arms for several seconds, and stopped to inspect them closely. Her hands and forearms were covered in a myriad of small white scars, and her fingertips were blackened, dry, and rough.
She turned to look away, struck by a sudden onset of nausea, and tried to collect her thoughts. Flashes of what she had been through pierced her head, as if memories were trying to claw their way out of it. Her entire world, the years of her short life she had spent with master Ciaran in the atelier, had crumbled into dust in a matter of minutes.
And yet... Something about it felt out of place, like an incomplete painting, as if pages of her life’s journal had been torn out and shuffled senselessly, unable to rearrange them back together. She couldn’t remember much more than her lessons with Ciaran, and she wasn’t sure of when she arrived at the atelier in the first place. She knew she had lived a quaint life, and had loving parents that looked after her. Was she cast out of her house? No, that didn’t sound right, but she struggled to remember. What was her age? She couldn’t be older than thirteen or fourteen, based on her reflection.
Fear had given way to confusion, but it in turn left behind something that felt distinctly like anger. Questions started rising in her head, one after another, but she knew only one of them could be answered at the moment.
She righted herself on the table, shook her head to clear her thoughts, and turned to face Rowan.
‘What is... a blightworm?’ she asked.
Rowan stopped crushing leaves on her mortar, and looked over her shoulder. After a few seconds of hesitation, she replied without turning towards Nadja.
‘It’s a kind of monster,’ she said. ‘One that wields Magic.’
Nadja pondered for a moment, assessing Rowan’s answer.
‘Am I a blightworm?’ she asked in response.
‘What? No. No, no, my sweet girl. I... Look–’ she left her wooden pestle on the countertop and turned around.
‘I wield Magic too. Doesn’t that make me a monster?’ continued Nadja, giving her a hurt, frightened stare.
‘You are not a monster,’ said Rowan, hands raised in a bewildered attempt to explain herself. ‘It’s not as simple as it seems. It would be best if Haunden spoke with you about this.’
Nadja hugged her knees and rested her head in them, looking away from Rowan and into the mirror.
‘Then why was I brought here?’ she asked, tears welling up in her eyes yet again, but stopping herself from wholly giving into her profound sadness. ‘Why did he kill master Ciaran but not me? What made him a monster?’
Rowan let out an empathetic sigh. She hesitated for a moment, trying her hardest to choose words that wouldn’t break the poor girl’s heart.
‘Magic is a forceful and corrupting force. It grants power, but it slowly eats away at your spirit, making you want more and more of it. The further that desire is recklessly indulged, the more it takes away from you, and eventually, making use of it at all can harm you... physically.’
She looked at the girl’s scars, far too deep for one her age.
‘When a witch can no longer sate that gnawing hunger, they become something else. Something different. Blightworm is what hunters call witches that have gone past that threshold, creatures so deeply blighted by Magic that they seek to bind other beings, using them as conduits of their own power, slowly consuming them over time...’
Both sat there, saying nothing for a few moments. Rowan bit her lip, and returned to the mortar behind her.
Nadja kept staring at her reflection, lost in thought.
‘Beings such as I,’ she whispered to herself.
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A thin layer of frost laid on the edges of the window, and the morning mist covered the houses beyond the glass with a faint golden light. Nadja had been watching it from the shelter of her bedchamber, a small room on the eastern wing of Rowan’s house reserved for those that required extended care and observation. She had spent hours shifting in and out of consciousness, receiving ointments, drinking remedies of all flavors and textures, and performing breathing exercises that would ease her pains. Aches and ailments that had taken root within her long ago, yet that only now she grew aware of.
‘Rest now, darling’, had requested Rowan, but instead she spent the night looking out into the starry black sky, waiting for the sun to rise above the grassy ridge that stood beyond the river. Everything felt distant and surreal, and she waited in the vain hope that this vivid dream would finally end.
The door opened behind her, and Rowan came in carrying a stack of clothes sewn from many earthy colours.
‘Good morrow, sweet girl.’ she said, bearing a bright smile that veiled all but a smidgen of visible concern. The bed sheets had been left untouched, save for a warm quilt that Nadja had wrapped around her, seated on the windowsill. ‘I hope you got some rest. I brought you something to change into, and made us some tea if you’d like.’
‘Thank you. I... I will join you in a moment,’ replied Nadja, looking back at her with a tired smile.
She watched her for a moment, leaving the clothes on the bed. Rowan was a young woman, perhaps ten years older than herself, with wavy chestnut hair that fell down to her shoulders. She had bright, lovely eyes, and the centre of her tan face was dotted with small freckles. There was something about her colours, both her own and on her garments, that felt fitting for a herbalist like her. They were earthy, natural, warm. Even her name evoked images of nature, and Nadja found those small, interwoven details to be lightly amusing.
‘Every aspect of a person mirrors their purpose,’ she thought, remembering a poem from her childhood, and smiled. Her first genuine smile caught Rowan’s eye, who returned it in kind before leaving the bedchamber.
It took many long minutes for Nadja to finally will herself to get up from her seat and away from the window. She was still shaken from the yesterday’s events, and she didn’t know what life had in store for her that day. An uncertain past, an uncertain present, and an uncertain future, she thought to herself. But she grew aware that indulging that fear and pity any further would consume her already dwindling strength.
She changed into a plain shirt worn beneath a red tunic, held by a broad belt slightly brighter than her trousers. Since the garments belonged to Rowan—who had a taller, curvier figure—the outfit was slightly too big for her, but it didn’t bother her. The only parts that really mismatched her new attire were the thin bandages wrapped around her hands all the way up to her elbows, her fingers left bare after “the blight” had been cleansed from them. Her hands needed time to recover more thoroughly, but Rowan had assured her it would take no more than a few weeks.
Outfitted anew, she set out for Rowan’s quarters. But a thought sparked in her mind, stopping her right on the doorway of her room. She needed to reassure herself about one last thing before she was no longer alone.
She swiftly closed the curtains and made sure the door was properly shut, before pushing back the furniture against the walls to create a space in the centre of the room. Immersed in the silent darkness of the bedchamber, she whispered words long forgotten to all but her kin.
She was mindful to choose something simple, something that wouldn’t tire her more than she could bear. In fact, it was her favourite spell, no matter how many more she had learned from her master. She pressed her hands close together, and exhaled a warm breath into the pocket between them. The faint sensation between her locked hands lingered and grew into a pleasant heat, and bright, fleeting embers began to slip through her fingers. When the spell was ready, she slowly opened her hands to unveil it.
She carefully held a wisp of fire, hovering over her cupped hands, feeling its comforting warmth. She stared into it as it trembled and flickered in the dark, casting dancing shadows into the walls and ceiling of the room.
Nadja remained there, kneeling, watching the spelled flame in her hands. It brought her peace, and courage, and its warmth made her feel at home. Whatever ‘home’ meant, she reckoned, since she knew nothing certain about her own.
She thought about what Rowan had told her about Magic, about blightworms and the many scars that she herself bore, and its corrupting influence over the spirits of all beings. But that could not possibly be all there was to it. There had to be more to it than that ceaseless hunger, something beyond a vicious cycle of power and greed.
A place where Magic was nothing worse than a benign wonder, much like the comfort of her warm, soothing flame.