"Commander Ivan Xavier Pestilence, I presume?"
The beautiful, radiant woman suddenly appeared from the stairway and stared frivolously at the tall, stocky, full moustached fellow who had carefully stepped into her lair only moments before. Immaculately dressed in his prestigious dark uniform he seemed so alien, so uncomfortable in this softly lit, lushly decorated boudoir. There was a hint of perfumed incense lingering teasingly in the air.
Commander Pestilence automatically froze and rose to his full six foot seven height and gazed upon this mysterious female with puzzled suspicion. "I am. But how – "
"Your arrival was inevitable." She answered. "Sooner or later you troubled souls find your way here, to seek solace. " She had a shock of long, curly raven hair, loosely tied with ringlets that fell over her face. She had the deepest green eyes, and spoke eloquently through full, red lips. She was clothed in only two long pieces of white silk which were fastened together at her shoulders by ornate broaches, so that her arms, outer thighs and most of her heavy breasts were bare.
"I know much about you, Pestilence," she began. "I know that you are Commander-In-Chief of the 4th Defence Strike Legion of the powerful Terran Empire. I know that you're respected by your peers and feared by your underlings. You've spent forty of your fifty-eight years in the Empire, you are a militarist of high status and noble rank and that you've worked and sweat hard to earn your position and respect yet, you seek ... more."
"How can you possibly know this, witch?" he demanded. This was insane! How the blazes did she know so much about him? Come to think of it, how could she have known that he was coming here? He told no one, he wouldn't have dared.
When he applied for three days leave they didn't ask question (high ranking officers of the Terran Empire were prone to long periods of privacy), he simply departed in a one man Strike Fighter and blasted into deep space, leaving no record of his destination nor maintaining sub-space communications. If any of his fellow officers, or worse still, the grunts, knew that he was using his leave to travel to the little-known moon of Clandestine to seek out a mythical wish-granting witch why, it doesn't bear thinking about! But this! How could she know? Unless she actually is who she claims, who he hopes she is ...
"You cannot hide from me what you want more than anything, Pestilence. The fact that you stand before me is proof of this, yes?"
"And am I standing before the Countess Vjestica Fleur?" he calmly asked.
"Do your eyes lie?"
"No, I was just expecting ..."
"A cackling old croon? With a black hat and a broomstick and an ugly wart at the end of my pointed nose? A man of your militarist experience should know better than to judge by appearances."
"Of course." He admitted.
"I take it you were sceptical about coming here?"
"Very."
"So, why did you?" She left him standing and sat down on a mesh-mash of cushions and pillows. The front part of her dress fell neatly across her left leg as she crossed them, revealing all of her right thigh and curved hip.
"To see if the rumours were true, to see for myself if it were possible to – "
"Grant you your wish?" she smiled.
He coughed and cleared his throat. "Can you?"
"These rumours," she continued, ignoring his question. "What else do they say?"
"It is said that you demand a price in return for favours ... granted."
"A price!" she beamed, clapping her hands together childishly. "How very exciting! What kind of 'price'? Your severed left hand? The fleshy tongue in your head? Your very soul?" she laughed, mockingly.
"No one knows, I cannot say." He replied.
"And so you should not!" she sneered, curling her lip aggressively at him. He backed two paces away, a feeling like fear, no, uneasiness creeping over him.
Bitterly long, quite moments dragged past. Pestilence stared at her, unsure what to do, whether to turn around and storm towards his ship where he landed alongside this foreboding castle-like structure and make a quick, embarrassing exit (and maybe dropping a couple Thermo-Nuclear Destroyers for good measure) or to wait her out and see what little tricks she'll come up with next.
It suddenly dawned on him that maybe she was psychic, a mind reader who had scanned his thoughts as soon as he had touched down on this desolate rock. And that she had created the illusion of this witches' den and this clever charade especially for him, waiting to suck him in with this ludicrous travesty.
And speaking of which, how ludicrous was he to have heeded such nonsense concerning this so-called Countess Vjestica Fleur and her wish-granting 'magic'? Whatever possessed him to listen to those mad shamans on Gurop III, who directed him here, halfway across the Galaxy in search of his Fountain of Youth?
Because it seemed like a good idea at the time.
"I know why you're here." She sincerely offered.
"You do? How novel! What else do you read, 'Countess'?" he snapped, tapping his skull with two fingers. Any fear or uneasiness he once felt was now banished by annoyance.
"You've gathered I'm psychic, Pestilence? Then you are correct. I am also telepathic, and telekinetic, but then again I am a witch, you know. And before you run out of here like a spoilt child I would ask you to bear in mind that I can give you what you seek."
"And if I don't believe you?"
"Then you will run out of here like a spoilt child and feel very foolish indeed."
Pestilence sighed. No matter how much he liked to cross-examine himself on this questionable decision to come here the fact remained that he was here now and that the witch who supposedly granted wishes was sitting in front of him reassuring him that she could indeed help him. If he left now he'd never know, he's always have the knowledge that the stories were half true, and for the rest of his life wouldn't it drive him insane wondering what if?
He sighed. "Will you ... " he began solemnly. " ... Help me?"
"But of course!" she beamed, and there and then he just knew that he had made the right decision.
* * *
Moments later the Countess had led Pestilence up the steep stairway and into her study where he now sat at a smooth, black marble table. The witch – looking at her he couldn't help but think that she wasn't a witch, such was her beauty – stood behind a large, dark green globe of a planet which Pestilence didn't recognise. She spun the globe with random flicks of her right hand, concentrating on the dazzling, spinning sphere.
Pestilence didn't have a clue what she was doing, but reckoned it was a better cliché than a crystal ball. He continued staring at his surroundings.
The study was a large, bleak, grey room cramped with wall-to-wall bookshelves, each stuffed with brown, dusty old volumes. Scattered here and there were ornaments fitting of a witch's lair, this looked nothing like the almost seedy boudoir downstairs. A stuffed bird of prey, its wings raised alarmingly, seemed to leer at Pestilence, boring holes into his head. Coloured clay models of anguished faces peered down at him from atop bookshelves, the facts that they were so lifelike made him shudder. Where there were gaps in the walls hung huge maps of long forgotten worlds, paintings of unmentionable horrors and ghastly portraits of sinister characters best left un-introduced, and a large, four handed clock, each hand bearing a horrific resemblance to human fingers. It was quite, quite eerie.
Pestilence scanned the study searching for a witch's familiar, a black cat, he hoped, and found himself slightly disappointed when he couldn't find one.
"You are blessed, Pestilence." The Countess said, looking up from her now still globe and approaching the opposite side of the table. Sitting down gracefully, she continued. "Zothogloth favours your request."
"Zothogloth?"
"The ancient and long dead Sorcerer's world, the origin and focal point of my magic. Though it no longer shines brightly in the dark sky it's immortal power still feeds us, nurtures us. It has been around eons before your Empire and will continue to do so long after it's demise.
"Now you must speak aloud your wish, Commander."
