The name and the epithet sounded like something straight out of a fairytale.

Lucia visibly blanched, took a flustered step back and dropped the picnic basket that she was holding, all in a rapid succession, but not necessarily in that order. Maybe. Joe raised one fine eyebrow (she was doing that a lot these days), and looked at Nero in askance.

“Who?”

“The witch of the west.” Nero repeated patiently.

“The witch of the west!” Lucia blurted out as well, and then groaned. “Of course! Hey, hey! Why didn’t I think of her before? There may have been a lot of magicians who’d gone crazy in the past, but hey! She’s definitely the craziest of the bunch!”

Joe sifted through her memories of the original video game, but couldn’t remember any witches of that sort. A mysterious name like that would have surely stuck with her, but the fact that she couldn’t really recall it meant that this was a character that wasn’t relevant to the plot.

But then again, nothing was really relevant in the game unless it was meant to put the heroine on a pedestal.

“So who is this witch of the west?”

“She’s mad, hey!” Lucia blurted out again, her eyes as wide as saucers. “Absolutely mad, I tell you!”

“Maybe she’s the kind of mad my lady is looking for?” Nero asked serenely.

The maid rounded on him angrily.

“Nero! Don’t encourage my lady! I’ve heard all sorts of things about her from the townspeople; that no one has ever seen her face! She eats grass and sleeps in the hay! She lives all alone in a shabby little cottage and brews potions all day!”

Joe raised another eyebrow. “Sounds pretty harmless to me.”

“My lady!”

“Ah, but that’s not all.” Nero quipped, ignoring a red-faced Lucia fuming beside him. “The witch hates all nobles and commoners alike. It’s not easy to meet her either. No one has seen her face because no one has managed to return from her cottage alive.”

This is turning into quite the horror story, ain’t it?

“And, and, hey!” Lucia cut in hysterically. “The witch does not live alone! I have heard the villagefolks say that they smell strange, foul smells from the cottage sometimes. They say that every Thursday, the witch organizes a tea-party with a table full of rotting corpses for company!”

“----Rotting …. Corpses?” The lady asked her maid, her face a ghastly white.

“Rotting, animated corpses drinking tea, my lady!”

‘What the absolute hell!’ Joe thought wearily. ‘I did not sign up for a zombie apocalypse, dammit!’

Nero laughed gleefully, as if Lucia had cracked a particularly funny joke. “And my lady, you know what our elders would tell Nero in Nero’s childhood?”

Joe looked at his beaming face in apprehension. “What?”

Nero gave her a cryptic smile, full of gleaming teeth and twinkling eyes, his voice a warm baritone, and sang along.

“Deep in the moonless forest, dwells;

A crooked hut with the foulest smells;

There she lives, the shriveling shrew;

The witch of west and her nasty spells.

The witch comes calling in the night,

Wandering in and out of sight,

Over the vales and misty moors,

To give the folks a nasty fright.”

Joe stared at him with wide eyes, listening to the song in rapt attention. Lucia joined in, her somber voice mixing together with Nero’s baritone in a strangely alluring melody.

“Here's a forest, mellow and mild,

With hungry beasts, roaming wild.

And lives with them, a smelly shrew.

Beware of the Witch of West, my child.”

Joe blinked, shaking herself out of the daze. The lyrics were weirdly whimsical, but the melody of the song was soulful and euphoric. She never knew such a strange combination could coexist together.

“Lucia, you know the song as well?”

The maid nodded slowly. “When I was a wee little child, Gran used to sing it to me and my sisters on cloudy, moonless nights. She used to say the witch comes and goes with the moonlight, and she said that ‘Hey! Repeat this song after me, ya trots! It would keep that smelly hag away!’”

The story sounded awfully familiar to Joe; it reminded her of the times when her own grandma would wrap her snug in a blanket on winter nights and narrate all kinds of bizarre tales in her scratchy, old voice. The little Joanna Stuart would warmly cocoon herself against the woman and listen to the stories with childlike curiosity.

No matter the place or time, there was something strangely nostalgic about the old, childhood fairytales that were passed down from generations to generations. Joe found it difficult to picture Nero or Lucia as little snotty brats, hanging on to these stories with rapt attention and letting their imaginations run wild.

“Why the wild beasts?” Joe asked instead.

“The western forest, they say….” Nero answered “…is filled with all kinds of bizarre beasts. ”

Joe thought about his words carefully. The western forest would mean…..

“Ah! Nero, do you mean the ever-autumnal forest of Sandora?”

“That would be correct, my Lady.”

Joe didn’t think that the forest its resident witch could get any creepier, but she was clearly wrong. Lucia and Nero spilled the rumors in bits and pieces, of the strange goings-on in the shady forest that marked the western frontier of Triciella.

“There are wild beasts in the forest, my Lady! Bears, elephants and hyenas!” Lucia said, clasping her hands in utmost sincerity, as if daring Joe to disbelieve her.

“Nero has heard of wolves and wildcats as well.”

“Foxes! And don’t forget the snakes! Hey, hey hey! Snakes are the nastiest of the bunch!”

Joe gave the maid a funny look, wanting to say ‘Snakes aren’t wild animals, Lucia.’ But instead she scrunched up her face in confusion. This was getting more and more bizarre. Just what in the world is that place?

“And from deep inside the forest…” Lucia told her gravely, “Where no sunlight can touch the ground even on the hottest summer days, the village folks say that they have heard hungry growls of a beast on quiet summer nights. Some think it is a leopard. Some say it is a tiger.”

“And some say it is a gigantic, two-headed lion that guards the home of the Witch.” finished Nero.

“So, a witch and now a lion, huh?” Joe wondered out loud. “Might as well bring in a wardrobe into the tale and we’ll get the whole damn set.”

The maid cocked her head to a side.

“What’s in a wardrobe?” She asked innocently.

“Oh, plenty of things, apparently.” Joe drawled with bored sarcasm. “You never know. Sometimes, you can fit whole worlds inside it.”

Lucia blinked again, confusion evident in her eyes.

“Never mind.” Joe muttered.

She thought long and hard about the witch. It seemed more like an urban legend the more she dwelled on it. Nero looked absolutely unbothered about the strange stories, but then, Nero was unbothered by pretty much everything under the sky. Lucia looked particularly agitated, but Joe knew that the maid became agitated by the smallest of rumors that reached her ears. And in this case, there were so many rumors flying around that Joe couldn’t tell the right from wrong.

It seemed that everyone who knew of the witch of west came up with their own version of horror story. From corpses to tea-parties to weird sleeping habits to mythical lions, the common folks of Triciella sure had a vivid imagination for an old, harmless biddy that they have never seen in their lives.

Rumors were really scary things, whether in the real world or in a video game.

What really bothered her, was the absence of the witch from the original plot. Never mind the romantic subplots, a mysterious character like her would have surely been popular with the audience. It was curious; the witch of the west, which was an existence so deeply ingrained in the society of Triciella that children grew up hearing stories about her, was never even mentioned once in the game that laid out the foundations of the kingdom itself. But then again, Joe hadn’t quite thought of how the transitions from the game to reality even worked out.

It is strange indeed. Lady Joanna shook her head insistently. I have never heard of this Witch of the West in any of my previous lives before.

‘Maybe you never bothered to ask before?’ Joe tried.

The villainess merely hummed thoughtfully, and Joe figured that a sheltered noble lady like her would have no reason to ask around for the whereabouts of a suspicious witch in the outskirts of the kingdom. She turned her attention back to her companions.

“Does she use magic?”

Lucia and Nero exchanged awkward glances.

“About that…my lady.” Nero began, “It’s not quite that she uses magic of any sort.”

“She doesn’t really believe in magic, you see.” Lucia finished.

Joe blinked. Say what now?

“The witch of the west says the craziest things, my lady.” The maid continued. “She says that the magic of the nobles is fake! She says that humans shouldn’t be able freely use powers like that! She says that manipulating natural elements like that does not make any sense!”

Nero nodded along vigorously.

‘Oho! Now that’s interesting!’ Joe thought smugly. ‘The witch sounds just like my kind of person.’

Finally. Finally she’d found someone who was asking the important questions here!

Joe cleared her throat purposely.

“Nero, Lucia.” She began carefully. “Could you take me to the Witch of the West?”