The Vampire & Her Witch

Jacques, in hindsight, had been the perfect partner to learn how to wrestle a man in armor. By the time Ashlynn had begun training with Sybyll and Thane, there’d been no need for either of her vampiric mentors to teach her the basics of grappling; she already knew. Instead, they’d been able to focus on the methods of defeating the armor itself; how to wedge a blade between plates, twisting the point of a blade between links of mail, and other, more advanced techniques.

But she didn’t need to peel Owain out of his armor just yet, nor was she ready to attempt to deliver a killing blow. Instead, she needed to knock him on the ground so she could see things up close, and for that, the Sandbox Witch’s lessons were the greatest of all.

Jacques was more than a foot taller than Owain, and his frame was every bit as broad and bulky as an armored knight’s, with a thick, scaly hide that might be even more durable than even Owain’s armor. The Ancient Clan hadn’t survived through every catastrophe to wrack the Eldritch world by being easy to kill, after all.

”You shorter dan me, yeah?” Jacques made a point of telling her then, and it was as true of Owain as it was of the larger, reptilian witch. ”So you get low. Get close inside, use dem hips, den de whole of your body. You get your shoulder up under my arm, den you just point wit’ your hand, right dere, cher, right where you want me to fall, an’ you touch dat spot wit’ your finger. Let de earth do de rest.”

When Owain’s next attack arrived, Aslynn beat hard against Fallen Claw, forcing him to give her the opening she needed to step inside his reach.

-TIING!-

The point of Water’s Edge skipped off the rounded dome of Owain’s breastplate, but Ashlynn didn’t care; the thrust’s purpose had always been to drive past him, not to stagger him, and once she was inside his reach, her left hand shot out to capture his right wrist as she drove her armored right shoulder up under his armpit.

”Aaarrggg!” Owain cried out as sudden pain flared in his right arm. The injury he’d sustained just days ago from the antlers of the Imperial Bull Elk, the one he’d been certain wouldn’t trouble him, and that had faded to a dull background ache that could be easily ignored, sent a sharp, hot wave of pain through his arm as Ashlynn wrenched him off balance.

The combination of Ashlnn’s sudden change in tactics and the unexpected pain in his arm caught Owain off guard enough that she was able to press her body close against his, pivoting on the heels of her feet, just like Jacques had taught her and popping her hips against Owain’s to lever the larger, heavier man completely off the ground.

It wasn’t the cleanest throw Ashlynn had ever managed. She had hoped to slam him flat on his back so the impact with the stone floor would knock the wind out of his body and give her time to study the sword while she grappled with him. But holding on to her own blade while throwing someone else added enough complications that she was grateful the move worked at all.

-CLACK- - CLACK- -CLATTER!-

Owain landed on the ground in a heap at her feet, just where she’d pointed him to, and the sounds of dozens of finely articulated armor plates crashing into the floor of the Great Hall filled the air. Ashlynn kept her grip on Owain’s arm, twisting sharply and dropping a knee on his shoulder to prevent him from standing as her eyes were finally able to sweep over the entire length of the blade and the hilt, to see where the energy flowed and a piece of what it was doing.

”Why are you helping him?” Ashlynn whispered, pleading that the piece of Ancient Oak in the weapon’s hilt would answer her. Her hand shifted on his wrist, bringing the back of her gauntlet close enough to the wooden hilt of Fallen Claw to touch it, and in that moment, Ashlynn’s eyes went wide in amazement as she received her answer...

For a moment, time seemed to slow as though the entire Great Hall were encased in thick tree sap. Sounds were muffled and distant, and the fabric of Owain’s tabard was still fluttering mid-air before Ashlynn’s vision swam, and she felt like she was suddenly in several places all at once.

An ache filled her body, as if she’d been hacked into hundreds of pieces before being scraped, carved, and shaped into a hundred times a hundred different things, but in her mind, two different scenes drew her attention the way a flame captivated a moth.

The first was a polished wooden bed with a canopy that had been carved to resemble the branches and leaves of the mighty Ancient Oak it had been carved from. On that bed lay a woman with soft chestnut hair, slick with sweat and plastered to her brow. Her features were refined and delicate, and even without a trace of makeup or jewelry, Ashlynn could tell she must have been an exceptional beauty.

It wasn’t the woman in the bed, however, who drew most of Ashlynn’s attention. Rather, it was the small infant cradled in her arms that took her breath away because she knew, knew to the depths of her bones, that she was looking at Owain the day he’d been born.

As she watched the tender scene of Owain’s late mother nursing her newborn son, she watched in horror as a soft, greenish-gold energy enveloped the infant’s body, drifting down from the canopy above him like tiny leaves piling up on him one by one...

”It’s not the sword that’s giving him power,” Ashlynn whispered as she stared at the scene of the Ancient Oak’s remains nurturing the infant who had been born underneath it’s mutilated boughs... ”The power has been part of him since the day he was born, or, or even longer than that,” she realized as she looked at a tangle of energy that burrowed into the body of Owain’s mother the way roots burrowed into the earth.

”But this isn’t witchcraft,” Ashlynn said as she watched the shape the energy took as it flowed into Owain’s body. Witchcraft would have nurtured him in ways that left him free to grow into a thousand different things. If the Ancient Oak had been coaxed into nurturing an infant with witchcraft, that child could have become extraordinary as an artist, a scholar, or a tradesman as easily as they became a warrior.

Yet when Ashlynn looked at the energy nurturing baby Owain, she saw a singular, predestined purpose and the strict, rigid structures of an Oracle’s magic.

”The Church,” Ashlynn whispered. ”What have you done to him? And what did you make him into?”