The Witchling

Secreth's eye shone from the thick overgrowth as she watched the Wanderers abandon the witchling. The tallest Wanderer wrapped the witchling child in a lavender robe and placed her in a basket under a cluster of weathered pines. The Wanderer knelt. Whispered words escaped from his mouth and were lost in the wake of an underlying breeze, but for one word that carried itself upon the wind: Neith.

The Wanderer eased a glass jar from beneath his robes and unclasped the lid, and Secreth watched as a stream of emerald wisp orbs escaped from the container. The wisps gathered around the child, bobbing lazily. Neith, the witchling, giggled at the sight of the wisps. A distant memory crept to the edge of Secreth’s mind but was drowned beneath her muddled thoughts.

The curtain of Secreth's eyelids fell as a wave of exhaustion passed through her body and down to the tip of her curled tail. Secreth had been hunted for weeks, from the deep desert to the faenym forest. The holes in her wings could fit boulders between them, though it was only the wind that passed through them now, fluttering the torn appendages like a ragged flag. She drifted her gaze again to the basket with the child, struggling to see through the clearing as the evening fell and dappled light shifted across the undergrowth. The Wanderers were gone. Sleep enveloped her tired mind.

. . .

Secreth awoke deep in the heart of the night, enwreathed in a blaze of red. Plumes of smoke clogged her nostrils. Pines groaned and crackled as they fell, and the boughs of their branches were consumed by an inferno that devoured the forest. A fire. The dragon hunters were near, and they were trying to burn out her cover.

The resilience of the hunters frightened her. They had tracked her path from the Boneyard through the deep desert and into the forest of the faenym. Her grave injuries made it difficult to conceal her path, especially with wings so tattered and useless. Secreth could do nothing but flee.

As the pines collapsed, her four legs rose with a shudder. Secreth had to move deeper into the forest. The nymphs were out there somewhere and they could keep her safe, if only she could make it to their territory before the dragon hunters made it to her. She knew of a sanctuary that was nearby called the Waypoint, though did not know of its exact location. Perhaps there was still a way to find it.

Secreth sought the nearest wisplight with her dragonsight. In an instant, her mind was connected to a cluster of wisps, as if she had been removed from her body and gained their perspective of the world. The little orbs of emerald light flew in frantic circles within the clearing where the witchling had been abandoned. The witchling!

The child—Neith was it?—sat in silent observation still wrapped in her lavender robes. Had the child been so silent for hours? Or had Secreth been awash in such deep exhaustion that even a thunder snail could not have awakened her? The child’s eyes reflected the firelight that surrounded the clearing and her irises glowed with the same brilliant green as the wisplight, like scattered stars across a desert sky.

The wisps began to slow in their tempest, gathering above the face of the witchling child. Neith fixated her gaze upon a singular orb of wisplight, the one Secreth was controlling, though she could not physically see the hulking mass of the dragon that lurked nearby. And the child giggled. With outstretched hands she grasped at the orb in a cheerful greeting.

The presence of another being pressed itself upon the wisps with the force of a tidal wave, and Neith’s face contorted in distress. A spike of mortal fear pierced Secreth as a vision forced its way into her mind. She tried to resist, but the vision latched to her thoughts like a vise.

Blackened husks of trees twisted into the night sky as smoke and smolder clogged the air. Leagues of soil were buried in great mounds of ash and hundreds of hunters stood in the dark at the forest's edge like phantoms, each wielding a relic javelin, an armament of blades and relic armor. At their front stood a cloaked figure bound in glowing gauntlets that grasped a blade of fire. The figure’s eyes glowed green with the same color as the wisps’. The same color as the eyes of the witchling.

Another, stronger wave of fear blasted forward, and Secreth sensed the presence of thousands of wisps throughout the forest fleeing northward, deeper into faenym lands. At that moment Secreth knew what she faced, though she had suspected it since the ambush that had rendered her wings useless. She had suspected it during the weeks of violent pursuit from unshakeable adversaries. The hunt was being led by a Warden with dragonsight. And by the greed and malice that radiated from the Warden she knew they had noticed the witchling Neith as well.

The figure—the Warden—raised their blade above their head. Their gauntlets shone a brief flash of green and the blade of flame exploded into a pillar of raging fire that climbed into the sky, far beyond the tallest trees. And they swung. The column of descending hellfire devoured the husks of trees, melted rocks to their core, vaporized grass and all moisture from the air. The line of phantoms advanced.

Secreth severed her connection to the Warden and returned to her body which had once again collapsed in fatigue. The vision of the Warden had sent her mind racing, and the memory Secreth had suppressed in the evening before clawed its way forward.

Half a century ago, Secreth had been only a hatchling when she was saved by Layla’s parents. Layla’s parents, a pair of human doctors, had accompanied an archeology team led by The Keeper, leader of the Wardens. He was unlike the Warden that chased her now in almost every way. The Keeper was kind, and lacking in malice.

The expedition team had found her deep in a valley of dunes at the edge of the Boneyard next to the corpse of an adult dragon that had once been her mother. Secreth was starving, her skin and scales plastered to her bones. They had taken her to the metropolis and nursed her back to health as any doctor should, and it was in the metropolis where Secreth had met Layla, a wondrous child who was so full of life. Oh the hours in the gardens in which they played! The joy of witnessing their first thundersnail migration together, and of playing hide and seek beneath the rock mounds of the oasis gardens. Warm mornings of honey and biscuits and fish and spices that a dragon did not often taste!

But Secreth was one of the last hatchlings in the world, and those days with Layla did not last. The hunters of the black market were ruthless in their greed. It was on the eve of a new cycle, when the wisplight went out and the magic of the Aurorum lay dormant, that a group of thieves had demolished Layla’s home to try and capture Secreth. She was forced to flee and return to the Boneyard, a land many humans dared not venture without a Warden’s protection.

Another pine tree crashed to the ground nearby, jolting Secreth out of the memory. The inferno had advanced to an oppressive level of heat, and Secreth knew she had to come to a decision. The witchling Neith, with her cheerful laugh and wisp-green eyes, reminded her of Layla. Secreth had to save her.

Secreth launched her scaled body through the burning brush and into the clearing that held the witchling, making sure to press her tattered wings against her body lest they catch the turbulent whirlwind that circulated from the firestorm. Somehow the clearing had remained unmarred by smoke and flame, though that luck would surely not last. Neith twisted up from her basket to peer over its edge as the hulking mass of the dragon crashed into the ground beside her.

“Lizard!” Neith said. She toppled out of the basket and coughed as plumes of smoke reached into the clearing. Secreth lowered her head and nudged Neith softly to her feet. Neith stumbled and gripped the smooth side of a spike that protruded from the dragon’s jaw, wobbling unsteadily on her feet. She stared in wonder at the glinting scales of the behemoth that dwarfed her.

The cluster of wisps from earlier had remained with Neith despite the Warden’s mental onslaught of the region and they moved to carry the lavender robe from Neith’s shoulders, draping it across Secreth’s scaled neck. Once done, they hovered nearby in wait. Secreth stretched out a wing, keeping it low above the blackened soil. Come child, let us escape.

Neith seemed to understand Secreth’s intentions and with assistance from the wisps she scrambled onto the stable part of the appendage, using it as a ramp before making it to the robe on the dragon’s neck. At Secreth’s command, the wisps shot northward, racing between the trunks of pines as they sought a path to safety away from the fires and the hunters. The dragon and the child followed swiftly in their wake.

. . .

The dragon, the witchling and the wisps had long since escaped the fire when they came upon faenym lands. They were on a dirt path in an abandoned faenym farmland surrounded by pines and birches, and tufts of grass waved softly with the cadence of the wind, silvered by the moonlight. Neith exclaimed softly and pointed to a patch of flowers nearby. A wisp dove into the flower patch, its glow radiating upwards from beneath the petals. After a short moment, it burst outward, scattering flowers into the air.

Above them, soilstalks sat overgrown and unattended with vines extending and connecting in a network in all directions. The soilstalk farm plots were like the trunks of moss covered trees. The trunks were thick and green and at their peaks they supported a platform that held soil, similar to the shape of a lily pad. Leechvine strangled the soilstalks. From between the leechvine spikes, hundreds of nightbloom flowers with their purple-black petals released glowing green, blue and pink pollen into the night sky.

Secreth raised her head to examine the cliff at the edge of the farmland that blocked their path. This is the Warden’s intention? The Warden had used the forest fires to drive them into a dead end, forcing Secreth to make a choice. She could only go eastward or westward and she had to choose fast, lest the hunters surround them on all sides to cut off their escape.

Her dragonsight sought the nearest wisp for guidance. They had to reach the Waypoint, but which way should they turn? The four wisps that had guided them thus far gathered before Secreth in a tight cluster, and what they told her was a grave disappointment. This wisp cluster was from the metropolis and knew little of these lands, but they shared with her a small hope.

Three of the wisps shot westward, into the night. The one wisp that remained flew up to Neith and expanded its glow, releasing heat like a lantern unshuttered to warm the surrounding air. Secreth followed the three wisps with her dragonsight as they raced across the landscape, zipping between soilstalks and pine trunks, diving under fallen logs and through patches of thick undergrowth that clogged the forest floor.

And they came upon another collection of wisps. Twenty odd orbs spun joyously in a clearing before splitting apart to bounce across the rocks or dive beneath the surface of the shallow brook that burbled across rocks and a bed of soil. The three orbs that Secreth was connected to greeted the other wisplight by forming a large group. They excitedly relayed information of their travels.

Neith giggled from atop Secreth’s neck, pawing at the empty air in front of her. Though Secreth had suspected it already, it seemed the witchling had some dragonsight of her own.

Secreth focused her attention back on the wisps to notice that they had gotten a little off track in their communications. So much so that the topic between the group of wisps had shifted from deadly forest-burning hunters to faenym gossip? With effort, Secreth impressed urgency upon the three wisps to inquire about the location of the Waypoint sanctuary. Hurry!

The vision of a wisp appeared in Secreth’s mind. Neith gasped. Stars in the sky spun as if time had been accelerated and the wisp graced the tops of the trees like a dart, heading eastward. It followed the light of a golden star whose brilliance outshone all others. The wisp crested the top of a tree that towered above the forest and looked down upon a small town of wooden shacks and huts that were consumed by plants and vines. The Waypoint.

Neith and Secreth had to travel eastward. She sent out a mental command to the three wisps to return to her, but they gave no response. Secreth focused on the cluster with her dragonsight and noticed that they remained rigid, hardly moving from their position in the air as if frozen in fear. She watched in horror as a figure wielding a flaming sword and clad in relic armor stepped into view. The Warden.

The Warden stretched their arm out to the side and closed their fist, their gauntlet flashing green. All of the wisps in the clearing dissipated, particles of green light scattering into the sky like grains of sand swept from the crests of a dune. Secreth’s dragonsight was severed. She had little choice now.

If the Warden was westward, she had to move to the east. But if the Warden had already cut off their path in one direction, what danger awaited them in the other? Fighting through an army of a hundred hunters with javelins was better than fighting off one Warden in almost every circumstance.

Neith whimpered, sensing the danger that was upon them. Though she could not have been older than two years, the child was a witchling and more connected to the world than even the Wanderers hoped to be. Secreth wrapped Neith’s mind in a wave of calm to comfort the child, and Neith immediately wrapped her arms tightly around the dragon’s neck and fell asleep, pressing her head against Secreth’s scales. The lone wisp that accompanied them hovered near Neith in an attempt to keep her glued to Secreth.

Eastward, to the sanctuary!

. . .

Secreth reached the edge of the soilstalk farmland when the first wave of hunters began their attack. Relic javelins rained down from every direction, from the tops of the soilstalks, pine trees, and from behind rocks. Secreth launched towards a soilstalk to dodge the javelins and slammed her body into the thick stem, toppling it and throwing off the three hunters that were crouched on its platform. They let out a cry that was silenced by the fall as their relic plate armor caved in with a crunch. Secreth’s head ringed from the impact.

Neith continued her slumber, wrapped safely in the crevice between the top of Secreth’s neck and her head spikes. The same thought repeated in Secreth’s mind on a loop.

Make it to the Waypoint. Keep Neith safe.

Make it to the Waypoint. Keep Neith safe.

Make it to the Waypoint. Keep Layla safe.

Layla? Secreth shook her head to clear it. Ten hunters advanced from the forest's edge, their faces covered in masks and gauntleted hands grasping more relic javelins. Secreth knew how they hunted. She witnessed it half a century ago when they killed her mother. But her limbs felt weak.

The hunters would attack her flank first at whichever side was more exposed to disable her ability to move. Then, they would descend from all sides at angles and hiding places that she could not reach or see and continue their assault with the javelins. The hunters would seek to shear off a scale from her underbelly or throat, exposing the skin beneath for an easy shot at piercing one of her three hearts. By then, she assumed she would be too damaged and exhausted to move and the Warden would arrive to deliver the killing blow. What would happen to Neith after that? Secreth would not let them find out.

Instead of charging the ten hunters like they expected her to, Secreth swerved to the left. Her claws gouged the earth beneath her and she exploded forward, scraping her underbelly across the ground and kicking up tufts of grass and mounds of soil into the air behind her. Her target was the rock, straight ahead. She roared in fury as a group of hunters scrambled out from the cover of the rock and froze at the sight of the raging dragon that charged their position.

One of the hunters removed his javelin from its sheath at his back and tossed it in her direction in a feeble attempt at self defense. It deflected harmlessly off of Secreth’s shoulder and within seconds, the hunter was pierced beneath her descending claws. She spun to the side and whipped her tail into three more hunters and watched as their bodies were flung into the forest.

She shrieked in pain as a javelin pierced her right shoulder. Warm blood spurted from the wound as the barbed tip of the javelin wedged itself under a scale and its mechanism released, prying the scale from her body in a violent motion. She struggled to uphold her weight on her injured side and dove into cover behind a cluster of boulders, pressing her body against the largest rock to keep herself from collapsing. The wisp that accompanied Neith flew high into the sky and Secreth used her dragonsight to connect to the wisp and survey the area.

The original ten hunters were sprinting to her position, and fifty more advanced slowly from all directions. They descended from the soilstalks like spiders and advanced from the surrounding overgrowth like wolves. Secreth cried out in anguish. She had nowhere to flee. I’m sorry, Neith. Neith stirred from within the hollow crevice at Secreth’s head.

The ten hunters rounded the boulders and came into view and halted when they saw the dragon. Secreth snarled and pressed harder into the rock as if trying to merge into the safety of its shell, her claws scrabbling at the dirt beneath her. Pain spread through her body from the open wound on her shoulder like a cancer, causing limb after limb and every bodily function to crumple in sequence. The javelins were poisoned?

The dragons of old could lay waste to many leagues of land with their bellowing fire, but Neith was the last of that dying race and had inherited no such ability. The poison from the javelin spread to the final lengths of her body and her senses dulled. Secreth could hardly hear the heavy footfalls as the hunters advanced, laden with their relic gear. She could hardly hear as Neith awoke from atop her neck, finally released from the mental blanket of calm that Secreth had imposed upon the child.

There was a shock and a twist. A torrent of pain circulated from her shoulder. Clarity coursed through Secreth’s body from her snout to the tip of her tail and she jerked upwards, shattering the boulder at her side with a violent impact. She swung her head to the side and her eye locked onto Neith. Neith?

Neith had grasped onto a fragment of the javelin that was embedded in Secreth’s shoulder and twisted it to shock the dragon awake. The witchling twisted again, and Secreth’s roar drowned out the world. Neith fell off of the dragon, clutching her ears and scraping her body as she crashed into the soil.

The nearest of the hunters toppled to the ground in agony and their eyes rolled to the back of their head, blood spurting from their burst eardrums. Thousands of wisps rose slowly from the ground, from the fields and from the forest's edge. They rose high above the heads of the remaining hunters, who covered their ears in a futile attempt to remain conscious. As Secreth screamed, the forms of the wisps distorted violently, their shape altering into sharp slivers of light. They formed around each of the hunters like arrows poised to strike.

Half of a century ago, Secreth was forced to depart from her best friend. She could only hope that the child had grown to live a long life, one filled with many happy days in the oasis, filled with the biscuits and honey they once shared together. She hoped she was not the last of her kind. She hoped Neith would be safe.

Secreth released her cry. Neith. Layla. I hope that I have done enough. The slivers of light shot forward with a flash, illuminating the land for a mile in every direction. Secreth fell for the last time.

. . .

Vraal the Warden arrived at the edge of the soilstalk farms to see a man knelt over the corpse of the dragon. He lit his relic sword ablaze and approached, drawing back the hood of his cloak to breathe the smoldering air. On all sides, the bodies of the Warden’s subordinates lay scattered. Their limbs were contorted and their armor melted, and the fields around them had been set ablaze or charred to a crisp.

The man at the dragon’s side rose and turned to face the Warden. The man carried the witchling in his arms, bundled in a lavender robe with edges that were torn and tattered. The child’s emerald eyes shone unblinking in silent fury and she clutched a dragon scale between her palms so hard that they bled.

Vraal chuckled. Words choked in his throat as he looked into the face of the man that stood before him. The Keeper.

Vraal’s knees weakened and he dropped his sword, its flame extinguishing with a hiss. It was over. The Keeper would not forgive his betrayal, for leading the hunt against the beast. Vraal knew he would be executed. It did not matter to the Keeper if the child was there to witness his death, especially after she had witnessed the brutal deaths of the hunters and remained unfazed. Vraal knew the nature of those things, those witchlings. If the child could speak, she would likely call for Vraal’s execution herself. But Vraal the Warden was not known to back down.

He snatched his sword from the ground and steeled himself, lighting it ablaze again.

“Will you face me in silence?” Vraal shouted to the Keeper.

“I have no words to speak. You are a Warden no longer,” the Keeper said. He set the witchling down next to the head of the dragon, and drew a relic sword of his own.

“I will not allow that thing to live,” Vraal spat. “And I will leave with the head of that beast.”

He unclasped a jar at his belt and a cluster of wisps released from the container. He extended his arm to the right and closed his fist, his gauntlet flashing green. The wisps distorted into spears of light and launched towards the Keeper in a swift barrage, but the Keeper deflected them with the face of his sword.

Vraal grinned and flicked two of his fingers, veering three spears of light past the Keeper and towards the head of the witchling that sat behind him. Thud.

Vraal’s eyes shot wide as blood gurgled from the back of his throat and cascaded down his chin. The three spears of light had been redirected to his throat, and his corpse fell to the ground in an instant. The witchling’s eyes pierced his own with murderous intent as Vraal’s soul was lost to the void.

. . .

Neith sobbed uncontrollably and the Keeper embraced her tightly.

“Do not worry child, you are safe. The Waypoint and the witches await you nearby,” the Keeper said. “As for your scaled companion, she did well to deliver you to these lands. Though I am quite certain this is not what the Wanderers would have expected to happen when they left you here.”

“Hush child, all hope is not lost. See?” The Keeper tapped Neith’s forehead and pointed to the belly of the dragon. It bulged slightly with the shape of an egg.

“It seems you will have yet another companion to grow old with.”