Quick Author Note! This series is going to get pretty weird so it might not be everyone's cup of tea. I'll put specific warnings at the beginning of each chapter.
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"You really are a bother, you know that?" she murmured. The witch glanced back over her shoulder at him. Her hand was in front of her, lightly tapping along a series of jars and pouches searching through them. "Everything would have been much simpler and gone so much easier if you adventurers just kept to yourself."
From across the room, Leoric glared at her. "Do you really think you kidnapping and murdering women from Fendrel would go unnoticed? And I take being a pain in the ass to monsters like you a compliment." His cockiness returned slightly towards the end. It rang hollow though, things weren't looking good for him. Leoric had found himself in plenty of troublesome circumstances before, but this was up there for the worst, right next to the time he had fallen into the crypt with the ghouls. "You still have time to make this easy, Yenel and Winry will be here any moment, we already found you once, how long do you think it will take to find you again?"
"Your companions might very well find this location, but it won't be soon enough." The witch began selecting out several different ingredients and carrying them over to a rugged table in the center of the cave. "You may have slowed my plans, but you have failed to stop them. I will merely have to improvise." She looked back up to him, her dark lips curling into a smile. "You don't really think I went through all of that trouble of kidnapping them to just kill those girls, do you? They were a very important part of my plan and you three denied me them, but I at least managed to get you." She moved across the cave, her tattered black robes dragging along the rock floor as she retrieved mortar and pestle and began combining ingredients.
That struck a blow to Leoric's confidence. The three of them had gotten out of plenty of dire situations together and he had thought that they had already foiled the witch's plan. If it was still in motion then things were worse than he had thought. The motivation of witches was rarely of concern for the adventures sent out to dispose of them. They were usually reclusive and kept to themselves and their magic, wondering the places between villages for ingredients and reagents for their potions and spells. If that was all they did they wouldn't need to be hunted down, the 'ingredients' they required often ended up being humans, alive or dead.
Leoric, and his guild-mates Yenel and Winry had all been dispatched to find this witch and kill her after a trio of women had vanished from Fendrel over the last two weeks. They had managed to track the witch down after a few days, finding the sunken mill that she had repurposed as her home. The witch had been nowhere to be found when they arrived, but they managed to find the three women, bruised but as of yet unharmed. With the women rescued they just had to deal with the witch, no easy task but they confident they could handle her. Unfortunately, she had gotten the drop of them when she had returned. The fight had barely lasted a moment before he had been hit by a spell. The last thing Leoric remembered was being consumed by a cloud of black smoke and then waking up here.
He had regained his senses quick enough but found himself bound upright to a log wedge between the cave's roof and floor. His armor and weapons had been stripped off of him and were thrown in a pile to the side. That left him in just his trousers, boots, belt and undershirt. Leoric had been an adventurer for a few years, and a member of Brightthorn, a guild with about thirty members for the past two. Combating monsters and fighting evil was routine for him, although that didn't stop it from being dangerous. An adventurer's life was a short one, and one mistake, like him getting captured by a witch, was often deadly. Without his weapons and armor, he was practically helpless before her, all he could do was hope that his companions reached him in time.
The witch set a bowl to the side and began mixing something else, before going and retrieving a heavy pouch from alongside one cave wall. Leoric had little idea of what she was preparing, spell work was complicated and those not versed in the rules of it had little chance to follow it. Witchcraft was especially difficult to decipher given how closely the sisterhoods kept their secrets.
"So what is your plan then, hag? Why haven't you killed me yet?" Leoric said, trying to stall her if he could. Winry was also saying how annoying he was, perhaps he could distract her.
She dropped the heavy sack onto the table, looking up at him for a moment but it didn't stop her from continuing her work. "You will see soon enough, adventurer. The time is almost right, and I can begin the ritual soon." She pulled back the hood of her tattered robes, giving him another look, her dark lips curling into a smirk. "You have made a difficult task more bothersome, but I merely need one more ingredient and everything will be ready."
Having now seen her face, calling her a hag was a bit of a stretch. From what Leoric could tell she wasn't actually that old, perhaps half a decade older than him. He had faced witches who were nothing but skin and bones, their flesh seemingly melting off of their frames. This witch was nothing like that, her skin was pale, and her eyes and lips both dark. Her short white hair was messy but not unreasonably maintained. She was actually quite pretty and under different circumstances, Leoric would have been attempting and likely failing to charm her. The layered tattered robes still hid most of her from view as she came around the table, walking slowly towards him.
