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Squib Ep.26 - The Witch's Decree

ButonflyFeb 10, 2019, 9:55:54 AM

(Start at the beginning here)

Bandana watched with interest, dragging herself up off the ground and moving sorely back over her log seat. She knew Squib and the Witch had dealings and that those dealing had to do with her, but the extent and purpose were still a mystery. The two eyed one another, hard wheedling stares full of threat and question, a standoff that appeared as confusing as it was strange. Then the Witch shrugged. “Fine!” She announced before reaching into her cloak and rummaging.

“I don’t understand,” Bandana said as she looked back to the distant clouds where the pool of green radiance now spread out over the swamp. “What is that? What has this to do with me?”

The Witch stopped in her rummaging, her mind distracted at the question. “That, like the breaking of a new dawn, is an old soul come to rise.”

The Witch raised a bony finger to point at Bandana, which felt oddly unnerving, the look of which marked her face. “You bare a gift, yes?” The Witches eyes flared wild with interest, “You were lead here by a map. I saw it, you cannot deny.”

Another reason to pull a face. Her ‘gift’ as the Witch called it wasn't something she’d shared openly and yet lately everyone she came across seemed to tell her about it. As far as she was concerned it was more of a curse. For one it was the reason she’d been chased halfway across the world, for two it had brought her no shortage of trouble. As fun and exciting a life as that had been, with nowhere left to run but a smelly wet swamp, and having lead her into what seemed her biggest trouble yet, she’d had her guts full.

“I feel it more a curse, honestly. I’d be rid of it if I knew how. I thought by following it there might be some chance. But instead,” and she held her hands out at all that lay around her, shrugging her disappointment.

The Witch looked anything but, a devilish smile working a crease across her face and her eyes sparkling with opportunity. “Oh really?” She crooned.

“What? Why are you looking at me like that?”

“A solution I propose,” the Witch grinned.

Squib growled.

“Oh yes, yes,” The Witch recalled her prior business, leaving Bandana to wonder for the moment as the old swamp creature produced a pouch that she held aloft in the air before Squib. Squib smiled gleefully, looking the happiest Bandana had seen the little green skinned fiend. It was the only time in fact. Then the Lizardman reached out and swiped the happiness away along with the pouch in one of his huge hands.

Squib barked, steel appearing. Herule leveled his spear in a defensive pose between them.

“Give back or I swear I’ll make blue scaled armor of your hide and slaughter every blue tinted lizard in this swamp!” Squib threatened. Bandana didn't understand a word of it but she had seen spit fly from someone's mouth on the promise of death before. This was not so dissimilar.

“What foul manner of business is this, Goblin?”

“Not yours, Big Dummy!”

“Enough, you squabbling children of the swamp.” The Witch tapped the butt of her staff on the soft earth and the surrounding nature came suddenly to life. Vines and tree roots, branches of the nearby trees, and a sudden surge of water and mud where the Witches Island had been resting idly, all suddenly rose, moved forward, and loomed imposingly.

Bandana shrunk, feeling hemmed in from all sides by the formerly placid features of nature. The Witch looked at the two disapprovingly, a gaze Bandana felt fortunate not to be under. Squib and Herule seemed less threatened, but neither moved nor said another word which seemed to suggest the Witch had a handle on their situation, at least for now.

“You want to involve yourself in the Goblin’s business, so be it.” The Witch bunted her staff again, “So it has been decreed that the Green Goblin be free to go about his business, so I decree that Herule of the Blue Scale Tribe be forced to finally serve some decent purpose in his pathetic life, and see Squib to the end of his business with the purple powder.” She spat on the grass and ground the spit into the earth with the ball of her foot. “How do you like that, hmm?” She goaded.

Herule made an angry gurgling noise in the back of his throat, throwing his arms in the air in protest. “Gah! Curse your decrees, Sswamp Witch!” Then he too spat on the grass, and the Witch ground that into the earth too.

“Good,” The Witch agreed.

“Not good!” Squib protested, stomping the earth and waving his knife in the air.

“Um, what’s going on?” Bandana edged meekly into the conversation, her brow raised.

The Witch turned, “Oh, of course. Your ignorance will not do. We can’t proceed with such a barrier, come here,” She stepped over Bandana, bending forward and reaching toward the woman with wiggling fingers.

Bandana arched, caught off guard but too slow and too sore to avoid being molested. The Witch took her by the head forcefully.

“Ahh, what are you doing!?” Bandana cried, raising her hands to break the Witch’s grip. Instead she found arms dry and callus as bark, heavy as willow branches, and every bit as thick and unmoving. The Witch ignored her protests, turning Bandana’s head sideways, forcing her to fight to the limits of where the pain in her ribs began to flare. Bandana peeped an ungainly noise, made through lost breath, but dared not protest any farther. Meanwhile the Witch leaned in close, extended her tongue, and began running it around the inside of Bandana’s ear. Despite the Witches dry woody arms, the sensation of her tongue was warm and moist, noisy from the contact, and every bit as displeasing as one might imagine it to be. Then she whispered some foreign syllables that resulted in an unnerving popping sound at the base of her drum, and Bandana was released, kicking and flailing as she went.

“Gods! What the hell was that!” Bandana yelled hot with anger, her sleeve already in hand wiping out the wet that now spoiled what was left of her good move.

“I can’t do anything to help the tongue, but you should be able to comprehend well enough.” The Witch mused, her mind split between that and another thought as she ran whatever taste coated her tongue around the inside of her mouth.

“Urgh! Understand what?” Bandana asked.

“Herule stays, I go alone!” Squib continued, the strange sounds and syllables suddenly registering with meaning in Bandana’s ear. She blinked, stopping to listen with the realisation.

“If the Sswamp Mother decrees it, then it is sso.” Herule replied.

“Yes,” The Witch nodded, “and there is more. So sit, serve me some lizard, and let us air all of our questions.”