I watched Nemon leave the laboratory with a smile, one that turned bitter when he left. Grena and Pyl were both continued on in their discussion of the mirror, questions that the wizard had brought up to push them in a new direction. I almost allowed myself to be baited into it as well, the artifact we had created was as interesting as it was novel. I snorted and shook my head.

He was so arrogant and self-centered. I spent weeks working from dawn to dusk on altering that curse and he hadn’t even bothered to ask me about it! It was ungrateful. I left the others behind as I walked the halls of the tower to my laboratory, a den of witchcraft more furnished than I had ever used before.

Shelves and tables stocked full with all I could ask for and more. Grimoires of other witches, borrowed from the wizard’s library, held rituals that opened my eyes to many things. In the center of the room, a pedestal holding up the artifact that Nemon had asked for. I had gone beyond his request, to adapt the hex to work with his tower. I had made it an artifact that anyone with the knowledge and the mana could use. Eight small copper pipes, no bigger than twigs, came together to form a pyramid. The panels between them were hardened gemstones, each painstakingly cut with the needed runes to activate it.

I huffed and swiped my hand knocking it to the floor. The ungrateful ass. I did it at his request, and he hadn’t even thanked me for it! Did he think it was easy? Witchcraft isn’t like magecraft, our spells are almost entirely rituals! What other woman would curse a king without asking for payment? Did he think the soft mattress in my room, and the shelter within a side tower were enough for my work?!

Well, it wasn’t. He might be half my age, but he was not a human that didn’t know better. I left the artifact on the floor as I went to sit at a table to read more from one of the grimoires that I found. A [Shadow Witch], who had a large number of small hexes and curses that only worked during the night. While her spells were interesting, the little passages she wrote about her life on the back of each page were more.

She lived for a long time as a slave of Mirktal before escaping into the sewers beneath their city. She lived underneath them for longer than she was a slave before she was eventually found and fled to Sena. A silly thing to want to read, but it presented a lifestyle I was both familiar with and one that was completely unknown to me. Rather than sewers, I had retreated to the wilderness, a [Forest Witch].

I read for the rest of the evening, under candlelight, and then on into the next day with heavy eyes. Nemon was departing again today, and that meant the bath in his tower would be free to use, something that I relished. Yet, even with that promised comfort, I continued to read. The witch’s story spoke to me in a way that I hadn’t realized I needed.

I was so engrossed in the woman’s story that I didn’t notice the next day had slipped by until a servant arrived to deliver the evening meal. It was odd, as normally they knocked before entering, but when I looked the woman who carried the platter wasn’t the normal serving girl. I greeted her with a smile, something so that the peasant wouldn’t feel as scared of the old witch, and reached for a glass of fine wine.

The wooden cup was halfway to my mouth when I felt the sharp pain of a knife. Knives. One stabbing and the other a circular cut that would have sliced my throat open. Instead, they stabbed into the back of my thigh and cut my leg open.

With horror, I looked back at the servant and slid off the chair away. The woman looked at her knives in puzzlement and then back at me, as if to ask how I was still alive. I had few spells to cast to defend myself with, not if I wasn’t in a forest. I cast the first that came to my mind, a poison bolt. Its green light flashed from my hand and flew the few feet between us to strike the woman in her chest.

I saw her stagger back, and then smile at me. The poison had no effect, and it wouldn’t surprise her again. I cast another spell, Withering Limb. The killer jumped to the side out of the way, and it splashed uselessly against the wall. I wasn’t prepared for a fight. Not here. Instead, I scrambled out of my laboratory and down the stairs. In my mind, I could only think of Pyl’s laboratory and the wards the wizard had set up. If I could make it, I would be safe.

The woman, this killer, didn’t let that happen. I was at the doorway to the room when I felt the knife enter the back of my thigh again. This time I screamed as she twisted it before pulling it out. I stumbled forward and fell. Yet, I wasn’t dead, not yet. I crawled forwards, inching away.

That was when Pyl and Grena turned the corner, looking down at me in shock. Pyl was the first to react, throwing a bolt of some kind of dark energy towards the woman. Grena leaped forward and grabbed my arms to pull me back, but I knew it was too late. The last knife used had been poisoned, and I felt it working as my legs and back grew numb and cold.

“Run you fools!” I screamed at them. Or tried to. The words became a gurgle in my mouth, the poison tightening my throat.