“She pulled back the string of the bow as hard as she possibly could. Her muscles bulged out of her arm as she poured all her strength into this one shot. All around us the baron and his soldiers were laughing at her for being so serious; but I wasn’t laughing. I held my breath and watched her every move. Then Boom!”

The storyteller darted her hands out to the belly of her young listener. The girl clenched and gasped before letting out a giggle. “She let go and the arrow thundered up into the sky, disappearing through the clouds. It took three whole days and nights of walking for the scouts to reach and return the target.”

The little listener's eyes grew wide as they breathed in disbelief “No!? Three whole days?”

“Yes, It’s true! And when they brought back the target, they gave it to the baron, and you know what he saw?”

The young girl just sat in silent wide-eyed anticipation.

“Not only did she hit the target, she hit the bullseye! Oh, the baron was so mad, his face was red like a tomato. But he couldn’t break a promise in front of the crowd, so they let the two of us go free. Since that day your mom was called the greatest marksman alive.”

The woman with the flaming red hair leaned over the young girl, tightly tucked into her bed, and gingerly pecked her forehead. The woman took a moment to absorb the purity of the young child’s face, a face full of wonder and joy. It was so nostalgic.

The wondrous face of the child didn’t last long as she sank into contemplation. The young girl covered in her thick layers of quilted comfort questioned. “So now… does that make you the greatest marksman alive?”

The woman paused for a moment. One is never prepared for questions that should never have to be asked. The woman let out a sad chuckle. “I guess it does.”

“does that make you happy?”

The two locked eyes in silence, taking in each other’s soul. They gave time for each other’s feelings to mix, to let their melancholy, for a brief moment, slip through the cracks.

“No.”

The woman remained motionless in the darkness of the bedroom, unsure how to respond anymore. After a moment, she rose for the door but was stopped by a light tug on her shirt. “Are you happy?”

The woman looked down to the girl entrapped in her quilts. In the still shadow of night, she could see wet streaks flowing down the girl’s eyes. Her grip on the shirt was weak. it trembled slightly. “It’s okay to be sad, you’re allowed to cry if you want.”

The woman sat back down on the bed next to the girl. She stroked her hand through the girl’s hair, lifting it out of the way of her face. The girl dropped her head onto the woman’s lap, her sobbing was muffled against the woman’s pants which slowly becoming wet from the child’s tears.

The two stayed that way until the girl, drained of energy and physically unable to cry anymore, fell asleep. The woman tucked her in once more and after a few moments to ensure that she was in fact asleep, she left the room.

The house was quiet; it was also small. A quaint farming house on the outskirts of some no name hamlet within the country of Aegis. The house was originally meant for just the girl and her parents. It was nice. With the introduction of the red-haired woman, things were lively for a while. Now the house was back down to just three: the wrong three. The woman made her way to the guest room where she had been staying. She sat down at her small desk and began dismantling her guns for cleaning.

She wasn’t like Schlemiel, she knew she was never going to settle, never have a family. She could only stay in this place for so long because it was Schlemiel. She would never put away her weapons, plus, she was the only one who knew how to use them. If she didn’t take care of them, they would be lost to history once again. Her concentration was eventually interrupted by a knock on the door.

“I already said that you can’t do that here.” His voice was rough and slurred. The man was tall and heavily built, he was still partially covered in the metal of his guard uniform.

The woman replied apathetically without sharing a glance. "Biddy is asleep.”

“That’s not the point.”

She placed the dissected gun down onto the desk and turned to face the man. She raised an eyebrow as if to entice his next question.

“Is she okay?”

“She cried again.”

He just nodded his head in response. “You didn’t tell her anymore stories, did you?”

“It was a nice one.”

The man straightened up from his slumped posture. In a hushed but angered voice he retorted. “None of the stories are nice. She doesn’t need to know that stuff.”

The woman was tired of always arguing the same points continuously with the man but she did not let such annoyances seep though to her calm voice as she responded. “As much as you like to think that Schlemiel’s past didn’t exist, it did. And regardless of if I tell Biddy, she’ll find out eventually.”

“I want Biddy to remember a mother, not a killer. Look, I really appreciate all the help you’ve given us over the past two years with everything, and you helped Schlemiel a lot, and for that I thank you. But, your reason for being here is gone now. I just want my daughter to live a normal happy life.”

“You want me to leave?”

“I’m still supposed to be on shift at the west gate, so you could sneak by there now without getting noticed. We were all aware that you weren’t permanent. You almost left on your own a few times”

“You noticed that huh.”

“We’re just different. You’re a criminal, you can’t help yourself. You stayed in this house as Schlemiel’s friend, but now you’re staying here as a fugitive. I can’t have that for my daughter, and I can’t have that for my job.”

“Just let me pack my stuff.”

The man gave a curt nod and walked away down the hall. The woman was left alone in the guest room. The room in which she had been the guest for the past two years. The home that belonged to her closest friend, her partner. The home where that friend had a family, where she lived peacefully, where she died.

There wasn’t much to pack, she always wandered light. She quickly reassembled her guns, packed a few sets of clothes and a small poorly carved figurine given to her by Biddy. It was a figurine of her holding her two revolvers. She held onto it hesitantly a while before adding it to her small bag.

She cleaned her room, tidied the bed sheets and cleared the desk. She stopped at the door and gave the dark room one last glance. It was now someone else’s room: it was not her bed. She made her way down the empty hallway where the man was waiting. It seemed like he wanted to say something, but whatever it was, his guilt prevented him from speaking it. She walked straight to the door and opened it.

“Thank you.”

The door closed and she was left alone with the silent breeze and peaceful night sky. The full moon brightly shining a cold blue hue through the darkness. She walked west across the field of crops; the small farmhouse appeared smaller and smaller as it was lost to the horizon. It had been two years since she last felt this feeling, a bittersweet nostalgia mixed with so many emotions, she wasn’t sure which she should be feeling.

“Wait!”

The woman turned around to see a young girl, her head barely able to peak above the crops. Her loose nightgown dirtied with muddy stains. The girl was out of breath, breathing heavily to make up for her exertion. “Are you leaving me too?”

Those words pierced into the woman’s heart.

“When will I see you again?”

The woman walked up to the quivering girl. She dropped her bag and knelt down onto the mud so that she met with the girl’s eyes. “Throughout your life you are going to hear a lot of things about your mom… and about me. Some of it is true... most of it probably will be. Always remember that no matter what, she did love you, more than anything in the world. She changed for you… so did I in a way. You have a choice now. You can ignore those parts of your history, live your life as a normal girl doing normal things, find a good person, and have your own kids one day. Or… or you can follow her, practice as she and I taught, strive to be a powerful person, a great person, just like we were. It will be difficult, and you won’t always be happy, but you will learn a lot and discover things about the world that you could never imagine. And if you do that, get stronger, get better, in eleven years I will meet you again at The Tournament. And I would love to see you take back your family title of greatest marksman alive.”

The woman wrapped her arms around Biddy and pulled her in closely, hugging her as tightly as possible, getting all eleven years of hugs down in one instance. There was some crying, but this time she wasn’t sure if they were Biddy’s or hers. “You were and will always be loved, remember that.”

Picking up her now muddied bag, she wiped away Biddy’s tears and walked back into the night. Approaching the west gate, she made sure to carefully scan all of the posts. He was not lying; he had left it clear for her. She easily managed to slip through and out into the greater wilds. She spent the larger part of the night walking down the dirt road. She wanted to make as much distance as she could. She was used to avoiding civilization when unprepared, it seemed that she hadn’t lost any of her instincts.

“Ah yes, Arcanal jackal Germination and unsuppressed accelerated essence metamorphosis. Such a tragic disease, as rare as it is deadly. Usually it is a painfully quick death lasting only a few weeks at most. Those infected nearly never live long enough to bear children, so it is not commonly known that the disease is hereditary.”

The red-haired woman worriedly scanned around but could not find the source of the voice. The voice was soft and feminine but at the same time felt heavy, almost toxic. What worried the woman more than the disembodied voice was the contents of the words spoken.

“You and that woman did an admirable job at slowing down the infection. Seventeen years is definitely a record. Such a shame that the poor child will have to suffer for your incomplete work. For the girl’s sake I hope she takes your second option and trains to get stronger. Although her inherited case is significantly weaker, if she doesn’t build up her constitution, she won’t live such a happy and long life like you said she would.”

The woman pulled out her two revolvers and was desperately searching for her conversationalist. “Have you been watching me!?”

“No need for the weapons, I am here to offer you my aid.”

Mist was beginning to collect and gather a few feet in front of the woman. She poised her guns at the ready towards the collection. The mist began to take on the shape of two humanoids. Dense cloudy air made way to long slender frames, one unnaturally tall while the other was relatively short. The tall humanoid mist had a cloud shaped like an impossibly wide brimmed hat with a pointy center sleeve that slumped over. The hat was like the ones that those self-proclaimed great wizards wore, but it was many times larger, comically so. The other humanoid shape had its head covered in a bushy uncontrolled cloud whose spherical shape was worn like a helmet. The mist finally fully formed the two bodies. The shorter one turned out to be a woman with very bushy and curly hair, she wore a yellow headband over her forehead to keep her hair from falling over her disgustingly blue eyes. The other woman was extremely tall and beautiful, if not a little inhuman in appearance. Her distinct appearance unlike any other living being immediately revealed who it was. Her white eye-patch covering her right eye, the hat, the strange body proportions. Her ears were long and pointed, and her fingers were nearly twice the length of that of a normal human. Her entire body as well as everything she wore was a pure white, as if there was no blood coursing through her veins. Her hair was also whiter than snow itself. The most terrifying part was the creature’s one eye. It was unlike anything she had ever seen before, it was a clouded red color and the eye was unfocused as if it wasn’t looking at any one thing in particular. The red-haired woman immediately dropped her revolvers as she recognized the creature. Her legs buckled under her and she fell to the ground trembling in fear.

“How would you like to cure that child?”

The red-haired woman was petrified, too filled with fear to even grab her weapons. She recognized this terrifying legend.

“The White Witch.”