Witches, toads, and serpents galore!

"The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window."

Years was an understatement to how long the cabin was abandoned but was it truly abandoned...? Has it ever been truly abandoned? The scent still lingers, the timbers still creak, observe closely and you too will hear HER SONG...

Long, long ago, before humans ruled the continent, the land was a ruthless place full of darkness, death, and destruction. Villages burned, human meat sizzled within the straw huts like fatty bacon over an open fire, the smells wafting into the nostrils of the serpents, the screams piercing the air, creating the most wondrous harmony to the ears of the bog witches who preyed upon human flesh and blood, and had their powers increased fourfold during the bloodmoons. Some humans would run out of their homes to no avail. They would be cornered, by the giant toads. A simple gesture of them licking their eyeballs caused the humans to literally freeze in their tracks, a tasty treat in the middle of Sommer... human popsicles. The human's flesh would crack and break apart, creating pockets of blood within the ice they were entrapped in, leaving only the spinal column in the ice, serving as the stick to the human popsicle and the pockets of blood giving bursts of flavor to the bloodgreedy toads.

Ah, what a time this was. The dark time, the good time, the time where there was only one side of things and there weren't governments, laws, or rules to govern these creatures. There was simply the hierarchy of food and the food chain, of which humans were at the very bottom. Loathsome, vile creatures. All they know is to take, take, and take some more. Throw two of the males in a pen and tell them to fight to the death and they will do it. The only prize is the lives of their family members and even then, we get to eat the youngest three. They have to be over ten suns old so technically we won't exactly be eating the youngest ones, those haven't developed enough to have good amounts of meat on those bones, but those ones in the middle, ohhh, how succulent, so succulent, the image of them in my mind's eye, prepared to me over Sommer's feast, is the best gift there is in the world. This is exactly the words that were resounding inside of Ybaagaab's brain-that wonderful treasure trove of intricacies and knowledge.

Potions. The amount of life-healing potions that she created for her and her coven was beyond imagination. Living for centuries, some millennia even, feasting upon the land, all the while living a respectable relationship with Maether Natur's creations. The flora and fauna was only used when necessary and nothing was ever wasted. But perhaps the witches knew, they always knew about the wickedness of man, of humankind. The cruelty that they showed against each other as they scavenged for the last potato to feed their family, beating the other man senseless with a blackened eye and the loss of two fingers on their right hand. People trampling over each other, shoving each other into the brick walls of the town's church, trying to escape the volcanic eruption that was raining down meteors that seemed like an omen that spelled that humans' doom. And so, out of the creatures of the land, none would bat an eye at the methods that the witches used to experiment on the humans as long as they produced good results.

Led by Ybaagaab, bones were crushed into fine powder, blood was spun around in strange looking vials and poured into the cauldron with a mesh of other fine ingredients, including nettle, maple leaves, a blanket of moss, cool creek water, and the right hand of the human mayor's son. Simmering over the fire for twenty long days, creating such a brew would add twenty more years at a time to the head witch and her coven. Long had they ruled the lands, long had they been the caretakers of it. However... however powerful they seemed, they were not Gods. Far from it, they were also mortal as are all things on Earthe. And all that remains of them is a single candle. Burning in the window. Of a cabin in the woods.