5. ITALIA/RUTHENIA 15th Century #13
Baba Yaga was momentarily shocked into stillness; only her eyes moved as she followed the living smoke swirling around her abode. She was impressed that another’s magic was mighty enough to work within her place of power. Amused but not awed.
“Beloved, get out!” Damek shouted, spitting out blood. He was surprised to discover that he was completely unaffected by the smoke and could speak and breathe within it, although he could not see. “Run! Save yourself! Please, I am begging you, go now!”
The Romani witch was profoundly moved by the intense love emanating from Damek.
It was a devotion filled with ardent concern and fear, not for himself, but for another.
Damek was prepared to be left behind, willing to make the ultimate sacrifice if it meant ensuring the safety of the man he loved more than anything else, even his own life.
“You will not die today, my love,” the Romani witch exclaimed confidently, still concealed by the cloak of smoke. “Nor shall I.”
Staring directly at Baba Yaga through the haze, he enacted his first magical attack.
“I call you out, monster! Strangulare! [Strangle!] Occidere eam! [Kill her!]”
Obeying its master’s command, the black cloud altered its form into a massive funnel and assailed the Cannibal Hag. The smoke targeted her open mouth, forcing the gaping maw wider as it drove down her throat into her gullet.
The Romani witch understood the beast was immortal and did not need to breathe air to survive; that was not his intent.
He wished to fill her with the partially solid smoke creature, desiring her body to painfully expand beyond its limits.
He wanted her organs and flesh to crack and fissure until she burst from the inside out.
But Baba Yaga was having none of that.
Even though her eyes bulged and her throat and belly expanded to inhuman proportions, the Cannibal Hag showed no signs of distress or discomfort.
She leisurely moved her arms, hands, and fingers in a pattern of symbols unfamiliar to her assailant.
Within moments, the smoke lost all shape and fell to the floor like hundreds of raindrops.
Baba Yaga expelled the intrusive brackish mass within her in one giant, vomitous eruption; the plume of smoke, including everything that coated her kitchen floor, evaporated into nothingness.
Before his enemy could regain her footing, the Romani witch quickly reached for a knife attached to his belt and hurled it at Baba Yaga with astonishing speed. He aimed for the space between her dark, cruel eyes, demonstrating remarkable accuracy.
The Cannibal Hag caught the blade before it struck her as easily as if she were plucking a floating feather out of the air.
“How trite, how mundane,” the Cannibal Hag chastised, insulted by the use of such a basic weapon against her.
But this was no ordinary knife.
“Krúos.” [“Ice.”]
Upon the Romani witch’s utterance of the ancient Greek word, the metal object became intensely cold; it was an enchanted blade.
Baba Yaga shrieked in pain, but before she could drop the offending instrument, the air around her erupted in a cloud of frosty mist, which quickly solidified, encasing her in a hard, frigid block of ice.
“Misdirection, hag,” the Romani witch sneered as he walked haughtily toward the ice boulder.
“I knew you would be insulted by my audacity to use such a rudimentary weapon against you, the mighty Baba Yaga!
The need to mock, to ridicule me for my effrontery, my insult to you, was too much for you to resist. Trick you with a knife attack, and then use magic against you while you stand there, arrogant and unimpressed.
“And now you are trapped. No voice to speak, no hands to conjure, a mind too cold to think. I win, and I barely got—”
All of a sudden, the ice block shattered, exploding with great force and scattering sharp shards of various sizes throughout the room.
Several large chunks of ice struck the Romani witch in the stomach, leg, and face with tremendous impact, abruptly silencing his bravado, his praise toward his own cleverness, now not so warranted.
The violent collisions sent him flying across the room, first slamming hard into a wall and then crashing to the floor, his face cut and bleeding, his stomach, right thigh, and knee on fire.
The pain was terrible.
As he lifted his head, the Romani witch saw Baba Yaga staring at him with a wicked smile, her broom firmly held in her left hand.
The grin almost appeared pitying to the Romani witch; only the row of iron teeth and the black, hairy tongue that licked them told him that the grimace was most sinister and taunting.
Damek reached out for his love, but he was too far away and too brutalized to move; both his legs were broken. “My love, please get up—run,” he pleaded, tears streaming down his face.
“That was—interesting,” the Cannibal Hag snickered as she began to sweep ice away from her feet. She showed no signs of physical damage whatsoever. It was as if the spell had never happened, despite the frozen residue all around her showing otherwise.
“It has been some time since I have experienced one of Circe’s enchantments.
” Baba Yaga stuck her tongue out and licked the air, the cold still tangible.
“An interesting flavour. You improved upon the spell’s potency, the intensity of the cold, even the hardness of the ice.
You have talent. Your distinctive magic is delicious. I will enjoy feasting upon it.”
“Feast on this, immortal,” the Romani witch whispered through bloodstained teeth. The wind was still somewhat knocked out of him, but not enough to keep him down. Staggering to his feet, he summoned the fire within. As his eyes turned white, he set his sights on the Cannibal Hag.
“Burn, crone!” Using all his remaining strength, the Romani witch shouted, “Ignis, veni ad me! Ignis, veni ad me! Ignis, veni ad me!”
The fire from Baba Yaga’s great oven burst forth and encircled the Romani witch, whipping about like a serpent, crackling and hissing. Then, the air itself ignited around him; he had taken the fire and enriched it with his own life force, expanding it. It was a blaze totally under his control.
With a level of finesse surprising even to him, considering his physical state, the Romani witch orchestrated a symphony of intricate movements with his hands and fingers.
As he always did with his fire magic, he traced ethereal sigils in the air, creating an elaborate, luminous pattern of latent power poised for a remarkable release.
In less time than a cock’s crow, a giant fire serpent, one reaching the hut’s ceiling and wide enough to envelop much of the room, stood between the Romani witch, Damek, and the wildly incensed Cannibal Hag.
“You seek to destroy me?!” Baba Yaga wailed. “I was there when men constructed the great ziggurats of Uruk. I have been one with magic since this land was known as Talianki. I was born before the first pyramid appeared in Kemet. I will show you what true power is, foolish child!”
In a deep, guttural tone, the Cannibal Hag began to speak in a language unknown to the Romani witch. Her misshapen body swayed back and forth as she held the broom tightly; it acted as a powerful talisman through which she could focus her dark sorcery.
The walls of Baba Yaga’s hut trembled violently as if the Carpathian Mountains themselves had erupted, unleashing a deafening roar from their depths.
Chairs, benches, and even a heavy oak table were violently overturned.
Grimoires and other rare tomes of dark sorcery, black magic, and malevolent witchcraft, thought to be lost to time but in truth hoarded by the Cannibal Hag, flew maniacally off shelves.
Glass jars, clay jugs, ceramics and pottery—adorned with both Hutsul and Kosiv designs and filled with all sorts of foul substances—shattered, spilling their contents everywhere.
The hut reeked of decay and putrefaction.
The Romani witch watched in astonishment as Baba Yaga stood firm, utterly unfazed by the chaos that consumed her home, a chaos of her own creation. She has gone mad! She would destroy the Temnyi Lis forest to teach me humility! I must stop her!
“Draco ignis—impetum fac!” [“Fire dragon—attack!”]
At the Romani witch’s quick, panicked command, the enormous fire serpent lunged toward Baba Yaga to incinerate her.
“ú?,” [“Block”] Baba Yaga muttered, still in her swaying trance.
The attacking fire creature was met with an invisible barrier, one that it could not penetrate, no matter how many times it struck.
The Romani witch gasped; he recognized that word as the language of ancient Sumer. This was magic older than any he or Abriana had studied, a magic he feared he had no counter for.
“im.” [“Wind.”] Accompanying the strange word, Baba Yaga twisted her long fingers into arcane, inhuman shapes.
The mighty gale she brought forth, created from naught but her own will and the conjuration and control of the elements, magic learned long ago in ancient Sumer, consumed the fire serpent whole, extinguishing the Romani witch’s final chance to defeat the beastly hag.
“ki hedun!” [“Come here!”]
The Romani witch suddenly felt himself being lifted into the air and pulled in a direction not his choosing, utterly against his will.
It was like that night in éire when the Horned God had yanked him from his spot near the great bonfire; this invisible and unstoppable force was bringing him before another powerful immortal—a beastly creature.
Not only were his arms pinned to his sides and immovable, but his mouth was also sealed shut and could not be opened.
He understood all too clearly that Baba Yaga wanted her prey working no more spells or conjurations, no more battle magic to attack with, though all she had faced so far appeared to have more or less simply annoyed he