Witch Clan: Matriarchs, John Stormm [great reads txt] 📗

protective circle, but that had no effect on the large tree branch wrapped in his tail as he spun back around to face the forest trail he came out from, whipping his tail about. It effectively knocked Elvyra out of her circle and into the raging river below. With her last breath, she choked out her prayer to the skies before the waters claimed her life.


Deja Vu, Sort Of

The night had fallen quickly. In a moment of panic, Emma's old eyes struggled to become accustomed to the profound darkness of the benighted woods. Was someone tracking her in the darkness? Did something just brush against her ankle? She berated herself for acting like a frightened child. She straightened up, set her shoulders back, placed her feet about shoulder's width apart, closed her eyes and breathed in the night air. Her staff stood on the trail before her in her left hand and in her right hand was her atheme, with which she tapped a rhythm on the top of her staff. Breathing in through her nose, deeply of the forest air that was privy to all its secrets and expelling it out of her mouth, she blew upon the top of the staff as if to kindle a fire. Calm and purposeful, she tapped her rhythm and stirred a foxfire flame into existence on the top of her walking stick.

Opening her eyes and looking around, she could now see clearly. The night time forest revealed its dark secrets to her in a new light. The Nature of Annwn worked here as Mother Nature ruled in her own world. Nocturnal creatures came out and carried on their duties removing carrion and decay and maintaining an order and balance in the scheme of life. Creatures adapted perfectly to their environment and its particular demands lived their singular and collective existences feeding in stunning efficiency on such bounty as the Nature of this dark world provided for her own. Emma saluted the Mother of this world and continued down the trail, looking for means with which to defeat Behir.

It was nearly midnight when she came to her last campsite. The rainwater still filled the gazing bowl she had scooped out of the rock. Now would be a good time to find out where she stood as she searched the bowl for Elvyra. She had a momentary glimpse of the woman wearing a shining headpiece in the moonlight, holding a wand over her head but a tree appeared out of nowhere and swatted her off a fifty foot cliff in to a raging river. Though it looked different in the limited moonlight, it was not hard to guess what had taken place and where. She choked back a sob. She was really beginning to like the darkling witch. It seemed they had so much in common to share. Her tears dropped into the gazing bowl and another vague image appeared of a huge, dark, serpentine figure fighting its way in the faint moonlight across the swift current to her side of the woods. Behir was coming.

Realization jolted her and roused her like a splash of icy water. She pulled herself out of her grief and looked about for some kind of trap she might lay for the monster. She had no rope to make a snare, nor any means to dig a pit, so she settled for sharpening wooden stakes and bracing them in along the trail and its sides. Any tree branch along the trail that pointed in the direction of the flooded valley was sharpened to a finely barbed point. Moving farther back along the trail, she found a decent ambush point where a large, cool, stone outcropping would block her from the creature’s fae sight. She wasn’t sure how tough its hide was, but she could probably stuff a barbed spear or two in his eyes.

Using her witch blade, she cut and sharpened a twelve foot sapling into a formidable lance. As a decoy, she propped her staff a few feet past her hiding spot on the opposite side of the trail. Its glow would draw Behir’s attention, and still give her light to see by. When he came close enough, she could pounce on him with her makeshift lance and drive it into his eye. It wasn’t the best sort of plan but it was her only hope. She climbed into the cleft of a large rocky outcropping along the left side of the trail. Both hands gripped her lance in a white knuckled, death grip as she peered down the trail through a small gap between the rocks. The illumination from her staff lit the trail for a good distance in either direction. The sound of wood snapping and a voice roaring in pain that sounded like a cougar screaming from within a large empty box gave its testimony that Behir was on the trail near her campsite and the sharpened stakes had had some effect on him. It seemed like endless minutes of waiting as he seemed to hit nearly every barb on his way up the trail before he came into sight.

What an ugly sight indeed. At first appearance, he appeared to be a six foot tall, scaly black human head, with round black eyes larger than pie plates. From within the depths of those awful orbs came a dull red glow. His mouth was a grimacing gash that cut across the full width of his face. As his hide took another barbed branch, he opened his mouth wider than his body to reveal row upon row of sharp teeth in a cavernous maw that tapered nearly forty feet behind him, as near as she could tell from her perch. He roared out his rage and bit down on the offending branch and tore it out of his hide and spat out the point into the darkened woods off the trail. Then when he caught sight of her staff along the trail ahead, a crafty smile twisted his features as he advanced towards the prize.

Emma leapt out of her stone perch, driving her lance about two feet into Behir’s right eye. She held on tightly, trying to use her weight to drive it deeper into the creature’s foul head. He raised up his head, about twenty feet into the branches above the trail, taking her with him and trying for all his might to dislodge the spear and the vengeful witch on the end of it. She held on as long as she could, but this wood was not capable of holding the weight a good stout oak of her world might. The pole snapped in her hands and she crashed through the branches to the trail below. It took her a moment to recover her breath after hitting the hard packed clay forest floor. She was fortunate that Behir was currently occupied with his own pain right now, but certainly not for long.

She scrambled to her feet, grabbed her staff and ran up the trail for the tower. The monster had ceased his thrashing and came in pursuit with a vengeance. Branches whipped at her face and her skirt and slip clung to her legs as they pumped like pistons to carry her from danger. As the creature closed on her, his fetid breath bore on her back. Rounding the next bend in the trail, she wheeled around and drove the glowing tip of her staff in the wounded eye socket. She didn’t stick around to hold on to it this time. She took off through the darkness down the trail. Her heart pounding fiercely in her breast, lungs heaving like bellows and her legs pumping away to a mad rhythm. A familiar weight slapped on her thigh as she caught sight of a moonlit clearing ahead at the trail’s end.

Bursting out from the trees and underbrush into the clean light of the full moon, she came skidding to a halt. The ground dropped away into a yawning precipice and the dark tower was off to her left. Her heart hammered its exertion in her breast and the sweet metallic taste of adrenalin coated her mouth as she drew her witch blade and turned to face the horror that was hot on her heels through those haunted woods. The moonlight gleamed along the length of its rune carved blade like a living thing and extended itself into the gaping maw that crashed through the brush to occupy her clearing.

Behir writhed in hideous agony as arcs of silvery white light danced along his scaly torso. He looked as if he was trying to beat himself senseless as he thrashed about the clearing at the cliff’s edge and finally hurled himself over it. His rasping scream echoed until it faded into the distance to be heard no more. Emma fell to her knees in exhaustion in the clearing, and looked up at the moon.

“You know something, sister?” She panted. “You are every bit as beautiful here as you are in my home world.”

“I’ve always thought so too,” said an achingly familiar voice to her right. The image of Elvyra looked to be made entirely of moonbeams. She was still wearing her silver headpiece and medallion that shined like liquid starlight.

“I’m sorry, sister,” Emma said, still gasping heavily. “I’m sorry this has cost you so much. I was hoping we’d get to be better friends someday.”

“What I paid, I get back threefold,” the specter said as she slowly vanished in the moonlight. “And we were always the best of friends. Look after my woods.”

The words hung in the air a moment longer as Emma prayed for the strength to finish the job, collect her grandchildren and go home. She dragged herself to her feet. Her staff lay, still glowing, on the ground near the forest trail where the monster had dislodged it from his eye when he had thrashed about. She collected her walking stick and walked stiffly to the tower door. There was the raised plate that Elvyra had told her about and she traced the Rune of Opening