The King of Raellyn pushed himself up slowly and looked around, still dazed. The two hundred men he'd brought to raze the witches' village and burn them all lay on the ground around and behind him, some groaning, some twitching, and a few even forcing themselves up, or trying to. The green fire that had bathed them all was gone, but the woman in front of the village gates was standing, with her hands on her hips, regarding them.
"Have you had enough, self-styled King of this land?" the woman asked. "We do not wish you ill, have harmed none of you, even after you threatened our lives. Do not force us to show you what true power is, King. Your God did not defend you against the Goddess' warning any more than he will defend you against Her wrath, should you provoke it."
"My God commands me to work your deaths, witch," the King said as he staggered to his feet. "We cannot suffer your kind to live."
"Did your God tell you that in person? Did he tell you that we truly have Power to wield, unlike those poor men and women in your city that you put to the flame?" The woman shook her head, and smiled sadly at the King. "We fear not your flame," the woman said, and the King gasped as fire roared up around her! She smiled at him as she paced forward, leaving a charred path in the grass under her as she walked toward the King.
"Halt!" he choked as the heat of the flames surrounding the smiling woman washed over him. "As King I command you!"
"But I do not recognize you as my King, you threw away your supposed right to command me when you threatened my life, and the lives of all my friends," the woman said, and smiled as the King retreated hastily, and those of his men who could move again with him. She gestured, and the armor of those who wore it became unbearably hot, so the men accoutered in it had to rip it from their bodies and discard it!
The flame around her flickered out, and she looked sternly at the King. "Leave us in peace, as we leave you in peace. You cannot stand against us, we are children of the Mother of All, and She would visit doom on all of you if we asked it. Be thankful, most humbly thankful to Her that we are not like you."
She turned and walked back to the village, and the grass that had been charred by the flames sprang up green and lush around her feet as she strode over it. The woman stopped just short of the village gate, turned, and said, "Come not to this place again, herder of sad, deceived sheep. An you do, you will rue that day for the rest of your miserable lives, you and all the sheep who follow you."
The gate opened behind her, and two other women walked out to stand on either side of the one who had blasted the King and his men. They gestured, spoke three Words that echoed oddly, and lightning crashed down from the sky onto every discarded piece of armor, frying it to scraps of leather and bubbling liquid. The King's men shuddered as they scrambled farther away from the armor, some of his dazed army even throwing down their weapons as they fled.
"I will bring priests you cannot frighten, and a host of men whose footsteps will shake your village to the ground," the King shouted, and was close enough to see all three women smile at him. "You will all die," he promised, mounting a shying, nearly panicked horse and wheeling it around. "This I vow!" he shouted, and spurred the horse away from the quiet little village.
The King spent the next six years traveling from one Kingdom to another with a small band of his men, those who had seen the witches' power and were willing to tell others of it. The rulers of the various Kingdoms appeared to be much impressed, and each promised to support the King's aim with soldiers, supplies and weapons.
Six years after he had first ridden against the witches' village he came back with an army whose footsteps shook the ground, a force that could not be denied, nearly a hundred thousand men. They'd moved through his Kingdom like locusts, stripping the land bare and making play, much of it lewd and cruel, with the peasants they encountered. The King had brushed aside the complaints his people had lodged against the soldiers under his command, and the four weeks it had taken to reach the witches' village had spawned ugly talk amongst his peasants.
The same woman was standing outside of the gates of the village, and her expression was sad. "And you call yourself King," she called, and the King flushed with anger.
"I
am
King of this land, and you will learn the fate of those who defy me," he blustered, wondering if the smelly concoction the priests had painted their armor with would actually defend them against the witch's power?
"You are nothing but a bully, surrounded and supported by other bullies, who has prospered in a Kingdom based on lies and brutality," the woman said, shaking her head. "King of Lies, King of Cruelty, King of Butchery and Blood," she called, and the King was amazed that she sounded as if she was sad, not fearful!