The Vampire & Her Witch

Underneath the arena, a short, horned merchant paced back and forth nervously in one of the many preparatory chambers reserved for champions of the arena. In the ten days since Yotsun’s unintentional feud with the Willow Witch had begun, his salt and pepper hair had turned even more gray and he swore that the bald spot at the crown of his head had doubled in size from all the stress that piled up on him is the pressure mounted.

At first, he’d thought little of the diminutive witch’s claim that she could do as the Blood Princess had done, standing for ten days in the arena and fighting at least ten men a day. He had never expected that High Lady Erna would be standing near enough to overhear their increasingly boastful spat or that she would step up to act as a witness to their wager.

The morning after the banquet, though he quickly assembled a team of arena regulars, Yotsun was prepared to laugh the whole thing off as a joke once he taught the little girl from the Vale of Mists why his ancestors had never once considered returning to a place filled with weaklings and cowards that sheltered under the wings of the Blood Princess.

While the men he hired were by no means famous champions in High Fen City, they were capable enough to fight in the largest arena in the entire High Fen rather than being relegated to the smaller venues within the city or worse, the much smaller dueling grounds that were common in the outlying towns and villages. They should have been more than sufficient to put the newly born ’Willow Witch’ in her place.

After that, Yotsun intended to make a great show of being the bigger man. He would disregard their wager or perhaps ask for a single favor. Either way, he would remind everyone watching that both he and the young witch had consumed a great deal of alcohol and that he, as the older and wiser party, wouldn’t hold the rash words of youth against a promising young witch.

The old merchant expected that such a grand display of magnanimity would raise his stature in the eyes of many of his peers and his act of mercy might even earn him additional rewards from the new Mother of Trees. In the end, it should have taken a single day in the arena to conclude this entire affair.

Yet now, ten days later, he’d pulled his hair in frustration so often that he knew he would be bald within a year from the stress of this disaster alone. If the first defeat could be forgiven for using a random collection of common fighters, then everything that happened from the second day on could only be considered an exercise in throwing good money after bad.

Now, ten men in dark crimson and black robes stood before him as they awaited the signal that they could enter the arena. The sounds of battle had faded long ago, yet for some reason, they had yet to be allowed to take to the sands, leaving Yotsun to fret about what might be happening on the floors above.

”Sit, little man,” a slender figure in dark robes growled. The man’s voice was hoarse and rough, and when he spoke, he sounded like each word had been pulled through a throat that refused to let more words escape than was absolutely necessary.

”I hired you, Ropati,” Yotsun snapped, glaring at the leader of the strange cult he’d brought here at considerable expense. ”Don’t tell me what to do!”

”Then calm yourself,” the robed man said with a shrug. Reaching into one of the pockets in his robes, he withdrew a long, slender cigar the thickness of his first finger and twice as long before biting off one end and spitting it onto the stone floor. Pursing lips together that had long been scarred by horrific burns, the man blew gently on the opposite end of the cigar until a brilliant, glowing ember formed and the room began to smell of pungent tobacco smoke.

”Try one,” Ropati said, pulling out a second cigar and holding it out toward the fretting merchant. ”Calmer that way,” he added as he placed his own cigar between his burned lips and drew a deep breath until he filled his lungs with the pungent smoke.

For a moment, he held his breath, savoring the feeling of warmth that suffused him along with the gentle, calming sensation that permeated through his body as the smoke clung to his lungs before finally exhaling in a long stream of smoke that coiled around his head and seeped into the fibers of his robes. For a moment, he felt a deep kinship with the smoldering crater he called home but that sensation faded all too quickly.

Standing just a few feet away from him, Yotsun hesitated to step close enough to the dangerous man to retrieve the offering but... given the choice between coming close enough to touch Ropati’s burned, scarred flesh and the possibility of offending his temporary employee, the balding merchant crossed the gap in two quick strides to retrieve the offered cigar.

Every time Yotsun looked at Ropati or any of the men he’d brought with him, he wished he knew which clan they’d come from so he could understand how he should treat them. For a businessman who prided himself on knowing the customs and rituals of more than fifty clans, it was unnerving to confront men who hid most of their features behind robes, gloves, and even dark leather masks.

Only Ropati revealed his mutilated, burned visage, showing the world proof that he had seared away his affiliations to his nation and clan when he joined the Cauldron of Flame.

Yotsun knew little about the reclusive cult who dwelled near the summit of a broken, hollowed-out mountain to the north other than that they worshiped the Volcano Witch as a near deity and that they had been searching for the successor to their god for more than two hundred years.

Most people considered them lunatics who mutilated themselves in search of understanding the ’primordial flames of the earth.’ But those who dismissed them as mere madmen overlooked an uncomfortable truth about the origin of their power. These weren’t ordinary sorcerers, rather, they were the last remnants of an order who once served the Father of Calamities, a witch whose connection to nature’s destructive forces rivaled the power that witches like the Mother of Trees held over nature’s growth.

Even after two centuries without their master, the cult’s magic retained a smoldering ember of that terrifying, cataclysmic power. Yotsun had thought that the only way to stop a witch might be to send another witch after her, but witches were far too rare and the closest ones all seemed to be her allies. Without the ability to call on the children of the Mother of Storms or the even more distant Mother of Tides, Yotsun had turned to the next best thing; the deranged worshipers of the Volcano Witch.

”Mast- COUGH - Master Ropati,” Yotsun said, nearly choking after taking a single puff from the cigar the cultist handed him. ”Master Ropati, about your terms of payment,” the balding merchant said as sweat broke out on his brow. ”The Harbinger of Death has arrived, so, it may be, may be difficult to send her away with you when you leave. If, if I could retain her until, until the vampires have left then...”

”Do not change our deal, little man,” Ropati said roughly, his gravely voice growing stern as he blew a stream of smoke in Yotsun’s face. ”Your wager is that the Willow Witch serves you for two years if we defeat her.”

”Yes, that’s it exactly,” Yotsun said. ”She’s expected to serve me, so sending her away with you as soon as she’s entered my service. It may be, may be a bit unexpected, and...” And how could he say that he worried that the diminutive Willow Witch might not survive a visit to the harsh, broken mountain these men called home? It was said that molten rock spilled from the crater where the mountain’s top once stood, searing anything that stood in its path. To bring a Child of Trees there... ”It, it may appear to them that I’ve sold off one of the important servants of the Mother of Trees, and...”

”Not my problem,” the cultist interrupted, directing a dark, smoldering look at the short, horned merchant. ”She serves you. You send her with us. This is our deal.”

”Then, then how long will it be before you send her back to me?” Yotsun worked up the courage to ask. Dealing with these men, he was afraid that the Willow Witch would be traumatized from her stay with them. If he had to leave her with them for the entire two years, then by the time he sent her back to the Mother of Trees, the powerful witch and her even more powerful vampire lover might return for his head.

”The Child of Trees is nothing but kindling before the Primordial Flames of the Earth,” Ropati said after taking a deep drag on his cigar. Smoke curled around his lips as he spoke, filling the air with not only the pungent aroma of tobacco but a sharper, more acrid scent of burning flesh when he spoke. ”If there is any kindling left after two years, we will return what remains to you.”

”But do not hold your breath, little man,” the cultist said. A dark, eager gleam flickered across his eyes as his scarred lips pulled into a tight smile. ”This ’Willow Witch’ will be an offering for the return of an even greater witch. It is an insult to the divine to ask for an offering back once it’s been given, don’t you think?”

All around him, the other men in dark red and black robes chuckled, filling the room with the sounds of their twisted, distorted voices and the oppressive heat of their eagerness to obtain a worthy sacrifice.

Soon, they thought. Soon they would shake their long-dormant volcano back to life, calling forth the Father of Calamaty and proving that this time, one of them was worthy of bathing in the Primordial Flames to become the first Volcano Witch in hundreds of years.

All they lacked was a bit of kindling to stoke the flames....