Chapter 53
In Which the Mongrel Witch Has Shifted from Her Dragon Form, Which Is Hard to Maintain, and a Bit Embarrassing Too, with Its Missing Wing Leather, and In Which She Has Straightened Out Her Floral-Patterned Dress a Few More Times than Necessary, and Cleared Her Throat, and Re-Adjusted a Shoe, but Cannot Afford to Procrastinate Any Further.
In Which, if She’s Honest with Herself, She Dearly Wants to Turn Around and Go.
Domitia was not having a good time.
She stood in an underwater city, in a bedroom defaced by pentacles and cluttered with devious little notes, staring at the wall into which the two men had vanished.
Why, to begin with, had she left her comfortable cottage that swayed with its gentle passage through the swamp, and left her job—or her hobby, as her father liked to call it—where she could channel the deviation that had cursed her from birth into something beneficial, something that took suffering from the world?
All it had taken was a pretty little elf with wet eyes, and she’d been off, barely pausing to pack.
And now what? Now she found herself in pursuit of a malnourished man who appeared to be down multiple limbs, and a basket-case of a knight who had all the defensive power of a wet kitten.
They had ‘help me’ written all over them, and here she was, intending to do the opposite.
But the sorcerer threatened to do something terrible.
All the magic, all around the world; he wanted it destroyed, and said so proudly.
He had already turned back time—what a day that had been, starting with a miserable, lightly pregnant elf rapping at her door, covered in the swamp mud she’d slipped and fallen into more than once, asking to be relieved of her condition.
Of course, Domitia provided that service.
How could she be cold enough not to? But the elf had believed it necessary to disclose the long, wretched circumstances of the conception.
She’d cried a bit, and Domitia had made cup after cup of herbal tea while desperately offering biscuits.
Then—with the deed finally done, and the elf back on her way, refusing to stay the night—something had wrenched in the air with the sharp smell of magic, and Domitia found herself back at her front door, standing before the mud-covered and thoroughly baffled elf, sunlight streaming down upon them.
That day, having to put that poor woman through the ordeal a second time, Domitia had trembled with a rage she attributed to her dragon half. It had burned through her like a fever.
It was that anger, paired with the soft vulnerability in Glenda’s face, that convinced her to bring down the sorcerer.
Ah, Glenda. As much as Domitia resented it, she had a weakness for beauty. For beautiful women, more precisely. Tall women, short women, women with full lips and rounded bodies, women with bird-like angularity and chiseled cheeks. All sorts of women! And look how that turned out.
For a while, she’d excused away every stinging remark that left Glenda’s lips. She’s been educated differently, Domitia told herself. She doesn’t know. She just needs gentle argument, and a slow introduction to new ideas.
But still it had built up, and still she had snapped, that dragon fury surging in her again.
Even if they hadn’t gotten on, Glenda’s absence now left Domitia quite alone. But that was alright. She’d always been alone, even in the company of other people. Even with her elven family—especially with her elven family. She could wear her solitude as a cape and take strength from it.
She could do what needed to be done.
She could . . . “Kill an anemic double-amputee,” she said, and clapped a hand over her face. “God, what am I doing. What am I doing?”
She drew breath deep into her chest and straightened.
“I’m doing the right thing. That’s what.
” And the right thing didn’t always feel clean, or good, or leave her warm and glowing.
Like with that poor elf woman, the right thing sometimes left her with sleeves stained with tears and the snuffing of a tiny life.
The right thing was something you had to be strong enough and sure enough to commit to; the right thing was what was necessary.
And so, she walked to a desk laden with notes, selected a quill and a pot of ink, and returned to the wall to add symbols of her own.
For as much as she believed in the necessity of doing good, she believed twice-fold in the power of her own magic.
She stepped through the wall, tearing open the wound left by the previous portal, and found herself in a jungle, heat pressing around her like a blanket. Monstrous trees crowded her, their distant canopy letting through only slivers of the brilliant blue sky.
The sorcerer’s second portal took her longer to find. Domitia retained the quill and ink, but with nothing to sketch on, she soon threw these aside and traced her symbols directly into the rich red soil.
Finally, she located the shimmering wound of the recent portal. It was good timing—even as she watched, its edges faded, healing. Regretfully, she drew a pentacle to rip apart space again, and (muttering an apology to the fabric of reality) stepped through.
Freezing cold. A bitter wind knifed into her single eye, the glass one being blissfully numb. She squinted, speaking a small flame into existence to warm her hands. Her next symbols, she carved into snow.
“Where are you, come on . . . there you are! Thank you, sweetheart.” Domitia felt a bit silly, speaking to the after-traces of a portal with such affection, but her legs were numb with cold, and the prospect of escape made her giddy. “Let’s get going.”
This last jump brought her to a desert, an environment she knew from illuminated manuscripts and fairy tales.
The sun hung low in the sky, the sand rippling in its fading heat, and—Domitia tried not to laugh—not far from where she stood, both Sir Cameron and Merulo lay prone.
She could see the rise and fall of their chests. Not dead, then, but unconscious.
Beside the men lay a bedsheet, weighed at its edges with sand and painted with symbols that Domitia knew all too well.
“So that’s what you’re after,” she said, a little sadly. “You wanted to see Him. Well, I hope it was worth the price of admission.” Domitia could see it on the bedsheet, now that she knew to look: the flaking remains of a burnt eye.
She considered rolling the men into a more comfortable position, as they looked to have fallen where they stood, lying as they did in a ridiculous tangle of limbs.
In the end, she simply chose a spot in the sand and sat with crossed legs.
There she waited for them to wake, so that she might continue this painfully imbalanced game of cat and mouse.