The Vampire & Her Witch

”Every time I tried to solve a problem, the vision moved forward in time by years or decades, showing me what would happen when people came to depend on my work,” Isabell explained as she gazed into the flames of the hearth in Ashlynn’s tower.

The warmth of the room and the smell of the fish soup simmering in the hearth helped to ground her in the present as she processed her memories of the visions, sifting through them to extract the nuggets of wisdom as best she could without clinging to much to pain that wasn’t real, no matter how real everything had felt at the time.

The things she’d seen and done... they hadn’t really happened, and as long as she reminded herself of that, she could treat them as lessons rather than nightmares that would haunt her just as much as her memories of the Emerald Kingdom’s Civil War did.

”At first, I thought it was teaching me that my solutions weren’t good enough, but that wasn’t the lesson at all. No solution is ever good enough to last forever,” Isabell said, shaking her head at the foolishness of the notion.

”Even the power of witchcraft can’t create something that will survive the trials of time. That was one of the first things I had to learn,” Isabell confessed. ”Sometimes, I could create prosperity that lasted for twenty, thirty, even fifty years. Long enough for generations to be born never knowing the troubles of the world I’d started with, but new troubles seemed to crop up as soon as I’d solved the familiar ones.”

In her second attempt at the vision, Isabell abandoned the notion of taming the mighty river with just three dams and vast reservoirs. Instead, she took a page from the Dunn’s book and sent her villagers higher up the steep sides of the river valley to establish dozens of smaller hamlets.

She didn’t choose locations for those hamlets at random. Instead, she sought out the sources of the streams that fed the mighty river, and when she found them, she built smaller dams that created dozens of giant ponds that were deeper than a man was tall and further across than a man could throw a stone.

It was painstaking work that took years longer to produce results, but Isabell didn’t stop at establishing hamlets or creating small ponds. She still placed an upper and lower dam above the town where the most fertile soil lay, so the people could irrigate their farms and power their water wheels.

Then, she turned her attention to the threads that bound her scattered people together. Her powers of earth were weak compared to the strength of her wood magic, but they were more than enough to help her people lay down a series of roads and retaining walls that allowed them to traverse the river valley with ease.

As the hamlets grew into proper villages and the village transformed into a town, Isabell went further, terracing entire hillsides for crops, stocking the ponds with fish that thrived in the shallow waters of the ponds, and countless other things.

After fifty years of shaping the river valley, leaping forward through time five or ten years at a time as the vision of Ashlynn pulled her along, showing her the results of her plans and giving her time to take the next steps, she felt like she’d discovered the right way to help her people thrive. But she’d significantly underestimated the depth of the trial she faced.

”You’ve done well so far,” the vision of Ashlynn said. ”Would you like to see how they speak of your river valley in the lands beyond your borders?”

”Do I have a choice?” Isabell asked flatly. ”You wouldn’t make the offer if there wasn’t anything for me to learn from it.”

”True,” the vision of Ashlynn said before the scenery around them twisted and changed until the two women were standing near the front of a large congregation of worshipers in a gilded temple that resembled the great temple in Lothian City.

”It’s true!” a golden-robed priest cried from the pulpit. ”I have been there myself, and I have seen the truth of the Sacred Valley. There are more than a hundred lakes, filled with fish as large as a housewife’s best pan, and soil so fertile that a person need only walk behind a plow and scatter seeds to reap a bountiful harvest!”

”While you struggle and toil, facing famine and drought, the Hemlock Witch has stolen away the Sacred Valley that the Holy Lord of Light prepared for His chosen children,” the priest shouted. ”You slog along rough roads of broken stones and baked earth while they stroll upon paths paved with gold that glitter in the rays of the Holy Lord’s Light.”

”All of this bounty is yours by right!” the priest yelled, thumping the gilded pulpit he stood before while pointing at the crowd. ”The Holy Lord of Light promises rich rewards for those who meet their struggle, and who has struggled more than you, His Chosen People who have come to this strange new land to follow His decree, seeking the Heavenly Shores in the west? But now, a witch has taken your reward and hoarded it for Her chosen people. She is denying you your birthright!”

”Can you accept that? Will you accept that?”

”No!”

”Never!”

”We have struggled! Give us what is ours!”

The crowd grew angrier and angrier every time the priest spoke, as the reverence in their hearts for the Holy Lord of Light mixed with something darker and more sinister that lurked in the hearts of men, consuming them with righteous fury and a voracious desire to reclaim the birthright that had been stolen from them by the evil Hemlock Witch.

”Rise up with me, my brothers!” the priest shouted. ”Rise up and reclaim what is yours!”

”Rise up, and reclaim what is yours!”

”Rise up...”

The words echoed again and again through Isabell’s mind before the scene of the temple faded into darkness. Moments later, she and the vision of Ashlynn stood once again in her river valley, staring at the land of plenty that she had painstakingly tended for the past fifty years.

When she’d arrived, the village had been all but impoverished, plagued by floods, famine, and sickness. It had been anything but a promised land! Only decades of work had transformed it into a place that people traveled from far and wide to settle in. But now, it had somehow become a ’Sacred Valley’, meant for the chosen people of the Holy Lord of Light? What complete and utter nonsense!

”How long do I have before they bring their armies and their Holy War?” Isabell asked flatly as she looked at the vision of Ashlynn. ”You showed me that scene so I could do something before they arrived, didn’t you? So how long do I have to prepare?”

”Even the angriest of mobs won’t transform into a successful army overnight,” the vision of Ashlynn told her. ”It will take years before they can convince their lords that there is profit to be had in waging war, and longer still to train an army that could threaten a witch. You have some time at least, but no one ever knows for certain how long they have to make preparations.”

”So long as it isn’t too late,” Isabell said as her silvery eyes flashed with determination. ”Then I’ll find a way to keep my people safe.”