“Come in, Come in. You are letting all the warm out with that door open.” The elderly woman waved them into what looked like a beautiful country kitchen. A fire was glowing in the stone fireplace, and a few potted plants lined the window ledge. There was a pot of something cooking on the stove. The place seemed welcoming after the stressful travel; however, the travellers knew something was amiss but didn’t know what.

“Why, thank you, my dear, and may I say you have a lovely home,” the old man took the lead, not wanting the others to ask too rashly. He knew this was a trap in his very bones but best not press their luck. He led the way into the home.

“Take a seat by the fire, dinner will be ready soon, and the rest should be making their way in from the fields. My name is Grandma, at least that is what they call me; my true name is Rose,” she smiled sweetly at the Storyteller.

“A lovely name in truth,” he smiled back.

They strolled in, “Alright, where is the trap? I know you are going to do something evil, old lady. Are those human eyes boiling in that pot?” Jeremy snapped, starting to loosen the sword.

The little old lady was around the same size as Jeremy, and she had lived a long time up here and was not shaken by a young brat like him. She marched right up to him and whacked him on the forehead with a spoon. “Now see here, young boy,” she stressed the word boy with a poke to his chest, “I do not know how things are done down in your little village, but here we speak concerning each other. No matter what is happening.”

Jeremy was shocked, the sword slipped back into its place, but Ulrok was not going to stand for it and pushed his way between the boy and the older woman. “Look here, where we are from; people keep their hands off other children. Leave my boy alone.”

“Where you are from must be an odd place in truth for a dwarf to have a human child,” She laughed, “Well, my children can be just as odd—enough fighting. Love is love. Take a seat, and relax a little. It is almost night.”

“How many of you live up here, madam?”

“Aren’t you a handsome man? Are you from the port city? It has been so long since the last time I travelled there. These bones do not do much adventuring these days.”

“How have you built such a home in a place others do not travel,” Kalven muttered.

“I still feel like she is going to eat us or something.”

“Jeremy, don’t be crude,” Rebecca scored, “but you are right; this is odd.” The rest of the adventures moved into the house. Spreading themselves around the fireplace, but Drovic was having none of it.

******

As the others argued with the older woman and entered the house, Drovic wanted to see what he could find. He moved between the house and the barn. They were both built close enough together; he began to climb the round stone walls and used the barn as a support as he rose. He reached the roof of the house without making a sound and managed to make his way towards the boarded-up window.

He could hear Ulrok yell at the older woman for hitting Jeremy. He smiled. Good, he just wanted, no, needed the dwarf to keep making more than enough noise to cover activities. Drovic used his enchanted ring to use all his strength, pulled free two of the boards and waited. Another shout came from the living room, and with that, he pulled open the window and slipped in.

Sitting there the whole time sat a beautiful woman dressed in red. She stole Drovic’s breath away. His smile seemed to reach deep down inside of him and stop his heart in place. This feeling of warmth and peace waved over him. Drovic knew this must be some magic, a simple farm girl could never make him feel this way, but he had this rushing urge to help her. Keep her safe from all harm. With that, the last rays of the sun dropped away, leaving the room in a soft white glow from a lantern. The woman in red rose from her chair and seemed to float on a cloud of air towards the lantern and picked it up.

“We watched you travel up the mountain yesterday. Very few people brave the trials, and never any of the locals. Very odd. Very wonderful. You are a handsome man, but I feel you are hiding something from yourself and your friends downstairs.” She spoke softly, almost as if singing a song to a sleeping baby. Each word was a dagger at some feeling within Drovic’s heart.

“By the gods, where is he now!” Drovic heard the rage in Ulrok’s voice from below. His words hit Drovic hard. Ulrok was talking about him, and the damn fool just gave away that someone was missing from the party. That last point did not seem to matter.

“Dam,” Drovic began to shake his head.

“What is this? No man has refused my siren’s song before, love me,” as she blew a kiss towards Drovic.

Snap of his wrist without thinking, reflex, a dagger was out and flying into the chest of the woman coming towards him. She seemed to freeze in place as if time had stopped for her, but time stopped for her a long time ago. “Dam,” Drovic whispered again, “These fools are making me soft, but the dwarf gave me a minute to think. Silly witches,” his eyes turned hateful, “you are foolish just like the rest of mankind.”

He stepped over her and began to walk for the door. When his hand touched the doorknob, he heard the soft sound of a floorboard bend. He ducked and spun towards the left. There she stood facing him. The glamour spell that she adorned herself with when he first entered was gone.

“That hurt, right in the lung. I have to say; you have a good aim for a man.” She cracked her head left to right. “Shall we dance, my love?” Her skin was a pale blue, and her long black hair began to float up behind her. Her dress stayed the same beautiful red. She reached out for him, her fingers grew into wicked talons, and her arms seemed to increase twice their regular length.

Drovic stood up, “Wait,” was all he spoke. She paused. In her past, when she entered her proper form, all manner of beings froze in terror. Does this man dare defy her? Puzzlement crossed her face and then flashed anger. “If you stop now, I will not have to kill you.” He flipped his cloak open. “Our fight is with the one looking for the Iron Forge. Tell me what you know, and I will leave you at peace,” flashing her a white smile.

“You little bastard, who in the nine hells do you think you are? You are out…” Before she finished, Drovic dropped into a squat and flipped two of his enchanted daggers into her shoulders. He followed up the daggers with him, launching himself into the woman in red. His weight caused them to crash to the floor. His hands grabbed the blades implanted into the slimy flesh of the siren witch. Blood began to spray out for each of her heartbeats, covering the floor a deep crimson red.

“The path you have chosen to travel will lead to your death,” he begins to twist the daggers, and she screams in pain. In the back of his mind, he registers the sound of boots coming from blows and an older woman yelling. “If you do not tell me what I want to know, then you are no use to me and are dead flesh yet to realize it has nowhere to go but in the ground.”

She began to cough up blood, “Stupid man, I didn’t even.” With that, Drovic pulled free the blades and cut her throat. Blood covered his leather chest piece, a dark oily red.

“Stupid, look who is dead,” flipping the dagger, “Let us make sure you do not get up again.” He drove his blade into her chest, snapped a few ribs and pulled out her heart. “That should do it. Let me see what else it is about.” He walks to the door and begins to head down the stairs. Covered in blood, he reaches the main living floor; he can hear the voices of the party yelling at the older woman, demanding to know what the stairs are up. She was screaming out the door for her boys, but nothing was coming. It seemed that Drovic’s comrades had lost their cool. Drovic laughed to himself, and the old hag must be another witch.

Jeremy was starting to lose his clue, the mountain had claimed Drovic without anyone noticing, and he slipped in behind Ulrok. Rebecca and the Storyteller tried to talk with the old hag and find out what was happening. She was starting to head out the door. Kalven found a spot beside the fire and began to juggle his flasks, thinking to himself, “What strange travellers he has found himself on the road with.” Finally, the old hag lost her cool. She cast out a force spell, pushing Rebecca and the Storyteller out of her way and began to head towards the stairs.

Jeremy panicked; wanting to save Rebecca pulled an arrow but forgot that his bow was still strapped over his back. Drovic was ready for the witch; as she neared the stairs, he cast forth a darkness spell. He had hoped to save this trick; he did not want the party to realize he had a few spells under his command. All the light in the room went out, casting the room in complete darkness. At the same time, Drovic flipped out two daggers where the witch was last standing. He heard loud thuds as the daggers slammed into the wooden walls.

Rebecca and the Storyteller were released from the wall, and Kalven noticed that the darkness had filled the room and tossed one of his flasks into the fireplace, causing a massive bright white light to blind everyone. As the light died, a fire was burning bright again in the fireplace. The shadows flicker; Ulrok charges the woman and pins her to the way, a sizeable crackling sound as the old woman lets go of her glamour to show the same pale blue skin and black hair.

“How did you know? My magic did not show a glamour spell,” the Storyteller stammered.

“I may have,” he paused sheepishly with a shrug, “broken in upstairs and ran into another one.”

“You are covered in blood!” Jeremy slowly regains, “Goblins and monsters are one thing, but ugly witches are another.”

“Look who is calling ugly, little boy!” The witch raged behind UIrok’s shield, and the clawed hands, trying to rank at his face.

“Look, our fight is not with you or your kin. We can let this all go if you answer some questions,” Rebecca stated as she made a calming gesture with her hands, “no one else needs to be hurt.”

“Kalven, can you relight the candles? I do not want to trap her in the dark when and if her family returns,” the Storyteller requested. Kalven nodded his head and went skipping about the room lighting the candles.

“Hey, old man, while ordering others to do work, can you see about casting a spell of true seeing upon that food? I would wager you are in for a treat,” Drovic smiled.

The Storyteller walked over to the kitchen and waved his fingers in a motion of circles. Jeremy watched with eager glee as Ulrok and Drovic kept close tabs on the witch. Drovic moved a dagger under her chin. Once the Storyteller finished the spell, Rebecca almost screamed. There were legs and large parts of meat covering every free space on the countertops. The smell was of rooting and burning flesh. Jeremy began to empty his stomach before he could take hold of himself. Kalven walked over and rubbed his back.

There were also strange runes carved into the oak. The Storyteller could tell they were rooted in black creation magic. He could also mean that these bodies had long been dead, and the flesh was rotted but had stopped its spread. Ulrok screamed in rage, “Witch! She has been killing people and eating them,” he pressed his shield deeper into her body, so much so that the wood wall behind her began to break inwards.

“Rest easier, my friend; that does not seem to be the case. Be believed they were making things from the dead. If you look closely, the rot has stopped, and the blood is not pooling like fresh. If you look at these runes, they are linked to black magic, yes. But black magic is made.”

“Does that mean these are the evil ones we are looking for?”

“What are you talking about? Let me breathe, and I will tell you everything,” the old hag whispered against the cold iron shield.

“Very well.” Rebecca pulled free a length of iron chains from the pack mules, and they went about tying the witch to a support post in the house.

Jeremy removed the rotted parts from the kitchen and brought in the mules. Once inside, they went about sealing the entrances, “I suggest in the morning, we inspect the rest of this farm? I do not care to be trapped outside in the night.”

“Good thinking, me boy. Has anyone else checked the rest of the house?”

“I did not see anyone, or anything, else upstairs,” Drovic stated coldly.

Kalven took his seat next to the fire and looked at the witch chained across from him, “Now tell me,” as he raised his leg over his knee, “did you send that pig monster to the village?” He smiled and turned his head to the side as he watched her reaction.

Rebbeca giggled, “Hey, did you know that when pigs work together, they call it a colla-boar-ation?”

“Rebecca is right. It wasn’t a pig but a boar. A big difference between the two,” Jeremy chimed in.

“We did not send anything. That is not our objective. We do not attack villages. You didn't even know we were here until you came looking. We have been here for hundreds of years, silly man,” ending her sentence with a glob of bloody spit.

“That does not answer his question,” Jeremy remarked.

“Doesn’t it, boy,” she hissed from under her bonds, “We had lived peacefully in these mountains from before you were even on fate's path.”

“Where do you get the bodies then?”

“Where do you think, boy!”

Ulrok punched her in the stomach with a resounding metal crunch, “Speak that way to my boy again, and I will cut off your head with your teeth!”

“What my young comrade and friend are trying to ask; where did you and your sister get your parts? Why did you need them?” Drovic could hear that the Storyteller's tone was kindly: as if addressing a grandchild.

“You saw what we did with them when you walked in, the scarecrows are one use, and they were simple. The graveyard was one source, but we could be caught.”

It was quiet for a moment, and the witch smiled and spoke clearly.

“Have you heard the tale of the Red Queen?”