The Vampire & Her Witch

"Virve," Ollie called as he opened the door of the carriage. His voice was tinged with relief and the tension between his shoulders lessened by half when he saw her waiting for them at the gate.

While it was clear from the set of her ears and her lowered brows that she wasn't entirely happy to receive their guests, there was nothing about her bearing that suggested danger or disaster. Whatever had happened to Ashlynn that Ollie could feel it from leagues away, it wasn't serious enough to distress Virve.

"Welcome home Ollie," Virve said, making her way to the carriage and climbing inside. For a moment, the entire carriage tipped on its springs and both Sir Rain and Sir Hugo gripped at the sides of the carriage, fighting every instinct in their bodies that screamed at them to open the opposite door and flee before it was too late.

"So these are Owain's knights," Virve said, taking a seat next to Ollie and filling the carriage with her sizable figure. Unlike Ashlynn's carriage which had been designed with the Eldritch in mind, Ollie was using the same carriage that Marcel had used to bring Isabell and everyone else to the meeting. Virve had to hunch her shoulders and lean forward to avoid crushing the tip of her hat against the roof of the carriage and there was barely room for Ollie to sit next to her on the same bench seat. "They aren't very impressive, are they?"

"I wouldn't say that," Ollie offered politely. "This is Sir Hugo Hanrahan, and next to him, Sir Rain Aleese," he said, gesturing at the knights opposite them who still clung to the sides of the carriage, looking like they would rush for the doors if they were given the slightest opportunity.

"P-pl-pleased t-to meet you, Lady Virve," Hugo said in a voice that trembled in fear. His complexion had gone ghostly pale and his heart thundered in his chest like the hooves of a racehorse but he did his best to make a polite greeting. Was it correct to address a witch as 'lady?' Had he just insulted her? He didn't know, but years of experience had taught him that it was better to over praise and flatter a stranger than to underestimate their status.

"It speaks," Rain said, staring wide eyed at the demon witch who had just climbed into their carriage as if it was the most normal thing in the world. And then, as if joining them in a carriage wasn't enough of a shock, it spoke in the king's common tongue! Like it was normal.

"Is that, is that witchcraft?" Rain asked, turning his wide eyed gaze to Ollie. "Is it reading my mind in order to speak properly with us?"

"Careful, little man," Virve said sharply, raising a clawed hand while her lips pulled back enough to bare her sharp teeth. "Even if you were wearing your armor, I could still peel you like a boiled egg."

"Virve!" Ollie said, frowning in disapproval. "They agreed to be our guests. Even if they've lost their manners, we shouldn't lose ours," he said before rounding on the portly knight. "And Sir Rain, you can think of Virve as my sister. Insulting her is little different from insulting me, and Lady Ashlynn won't look favorably on either."

"I don't need Mother Ashlynn to help me deal with trash," Virve snapped, frowning at her coven-sibling. "She has enough to deal with right now. It may be a few days before Mother Ashlynn can spare any time for these two or the other captives. So you two," she said, making a grabbing gesture at the two knights, as though she was sinking her claws into something to tear it open. "You two better not make any trouble for Ollie, or I'll be the one who comes to settle you."

Faced with the ferocity of the claw demon witch, Rain froze, too terrified to even breathe. He'd faced demons in the Southern Steppe at the border of Aleese barony, and he'd fought demons at Owain's side when they burned the flat tail demon village to the ground. He thought that he was a brave man who would never back down in fear before a demon threat.

But without his armor and with nothing but a dagger at his hip for a weapon, he felt completely naked before the witch's fury. Fight? Before he could even draw his dagger, this 'Virve' demon would tear his heart from his chest or his head from his shoulders. There was no fighting this. Flee? As if he could move past the giant demon who filled half the carriage all by herself! There was nowhere in the carriage he could move that would be out of reach of her claws.

And so, for the first time in his life, fear completely overwhelmed the courageous knight. His eyes rolled back in his head and his body slumped as he fainted dead away before the oppressive aura and menacing claws of the demon witch.

Next to him, however, Hugo found himself falling back on the one thing that had always served him in moments of overwhelming fear, the discipline that his teachers and tutors had drilled into his mind over years of study in one of the best schools available to commoners in Keating Duchy.

When faced with the incomprehensible, break the problem down into smaller pieces and analyze each one. When confronted with the impossible, list out the facts and separate them from the guesses and assumptions before drawing any conclusions.

The demon spoke perfect King's Common, without even a trace of accent. Sir Ollie showed no fear of her, calling her sister. She referred to Lady Ashlynn as 'Mother' despite being clearly older than the young noblewoman. These were pieces of a puzzle, and puzzles could be solved, even when the situation seemed to contradict everything he'd been taught about demons and witchcraft.

Hugo's scholarly mind latched onto these puzzle pieces like a drowning man grasping floating branches in the rapids of a river, using logic and analysis to keep the paralyzing terror at bay.

"Ex-excuse me," he said, swallowing heavily as he scraped up what little courage he had left to ask a question. "Lady, Lady Ashlynn isn't old enough to be a mother to anyone, but, but you address her as 'Mother' and Sir Ollie calls you a 'sister'," Hugo said. "Just what kind of relationship do you have with Lady Ashlynn?"

"Ha, you mean Ollie hasn't told you?" Virve said, snorting in laughter at the 'brave' knight who had begun to drool after fainting before she turned her full attention to the trembling steward. It took a great deal of effort for her to restrain her hostility toward men who had pledged their service to Owain Lothian, especially after she'd learned everything that Owain had done to Ashlynn, but seeing one of those knights pass out in fear was like a calming balm on her ragged nerves, calming her enough that she was able to restrain herself from finding out if she could make the other knight faint the same way the first one had.

"I'm the Oak Witch, the same way that Ollie is the Cypress Witch," she said, much to the horror of Sir Hugo who hadn't realized that he'd been in a carriage with a witch this entire time. "But neither of us would be witches if not for Mother Ashlynn," she explained with a grin that showed several of her sharp teeth.

"I would have told you once we reached the fortress," Ollie said as the carriage passed beneath the large gate in the massive stone wall, definitively crossing the border into the Vale of Mists as the heavy gate slammed shut behind them. "Lady Ashlynn is one of the great witches of the Eldritch world," Ollie said calmly. "She's called the Mother of Trees, and Virve and I are members of her coven."

"A, a, a c-coven," Hugo said, slumping helplessly in his seat and wishing that he could faint the way Sir Rain had. Anything, anything would be better than facing the reality he found himself in as the implications of what Sir Ollie had just said swept over him.

"Lady Ashlynn is the head of a coven of witches," he muttered. "And Lord Owain tried to murder her," he whispered before his head snapped upright and his eyes went wide. "She'll kill him," he said, not believing for an instant that Owain, even with all of his skill at swordsmanship, could defend himself against one of the great witches of the Eldritch world.

"She'll destroy the whole of Lothian March," Hugo continued as his breathing grew rapid and his heart beat faster and faster. "We're all doomed!"