Pain came before ought else as Syn woke. She gasped, throat ablaze after hours of chanting the foulness of supernal. It was as if she was aflame again, arks of lightning shooting up her legs, her arms and back, like needles digging deeper, carving into her.

Syn looked down at herself and screamed. Dozens of red eyes with misty bodies clung to her like a swarm of insects, their small teeth drawing blood as they fed upon her.

Syn roared, her will and magin crashing into the Vaettir like a wave. There was no contest of who's will was stronger as each mist spirit vanished beyond the veil.

“Foolish girl,” the ash wife cackled in her mind. “Should have let them have you. Would have been a far better fate.”

Syn Ignored the bound spirit and looked up, finding horror.

Several women spasmed as the same mist spirits that had assaulted Syn crept inside them, taking root. Several more lay dead, skin ashen having been drained of magin while others screamed in defiance using what power they still had to fend the vaettir. But at the center of it all was Saxa holding that cursed dagger, the runes carved into it radiating purple light.

“She-she didn't,” Syn whispered.

“Oh, you know she did, Girl. Not enough power. Not enough slaves.”

It had taken hours of chanting to thin the veil between the worlds. More so to call on vaettir for such strength needed to unbind whatever the dagger held. One by one the slaves had been sacrificed. Some tortured to entice creatures of the other worlds with their pain, others killed, their memories and souls offered in exchange for power, but it hadn't been enough.

What dark force held the fanged dagger proved too much even for the Witch Queen so she's taken from her coven and even her daughter.

“Did you think she'd spare you,'” the ash wife cackled.

No, she wouldn't. Saxa would kill them all for power, Syn already knew that much but the betrayal still tasted like ash in her mount.

“You should kill her.”

Before Syn knew it, she was on her feet, a wooden stake in hand grown from her own flesh.

“She can only see the power to come, not you, never you.”

Syn inched forward. The ash wife had the right of it. Saxa's gaze was locked on that dagger while her back was turned to the death in her wake. She was too absorbed in the spell to see ought or the stake that rose high.

Just as Syn was about to plunge the stake into Saxa's back the Witch Queen moved first. Syn's breath caught, sure that death would have her in moments but Saxa thrust the dagger into the corpse in front of her wedging it deep in its chest.

“Speak your name vaettir!” Saxa screamed at the dead man.

Syn thought it mist madness until the corpse shuddered, blood oozing from its cut throat.

Saxa grasped its head with both hands, staring it in the eyes. "I command you, speak!"

A flash of green came to the dead man's eyes and soon after spurts of blood gushed from his ruined throat. His tongue fell from his mouth thrashing while his fingers scratched themselves raw on the floor.

“Speak!” Saxa roared again.

The vaettir seemed to hear that as his eyes focused on the Witch Queen's, a wet, gasping voice following. “Let, go.”

Syn fell to the floor as prescience crashed into her like a fist. She wanted to scream but fear choked her. They were dead. Mother, the coven, the whole tribe. This thing could kill them all. To even think to bind it was madness. Saxa seemed to agree, falling over as she tripped on a dead slave but not stopping until pressed against a wall, tears and panic in her eyes.

The dead man jerked, his bones snapping and blood spilling like a fountain from his mouth. “Need to get comfortable in this,” he said, nodding as if in apology.

Syn covered her ears as the corpse shrieked. More of its bones broke while its flesh moved like water over its growing frame. Its cut throat stitched together and grew dark with the rest of its skin. Its dirty blonde hair fell out in great clumps growing back right before Syn's eyes as a bushel of black curled locks.

Syn expected a monster to appear but this vaettir was becoming a man, a south realmer with dark-skinned Serkland features.

Now tall and lean with a short and tangled beard, he kneeled down running his hands on the runes carved into the floor. The symbols were meant to hold him and was the only hope left of surviving.

He looked up meeting Syn's eyes this time, inching closer without a hint of care for his bare manhood. “Is this supposed to hold me?” He shrugged, moving passed his imprisonment as if it wasn't there. “Doesn't matter. What does, is mead!” He shouted with a brimming smile.

The utter ridiculousness of his words took Syn out of her fear. “Mead?”

“Yes, mead! I need some right now. Do you know how gods damned long I've waited to taste it?” The man looked between his hands as if they held the answer. “I don't actually know. More than a 1000 years but less than three millennia I think. Hard to keep track when you're properly dead.”

Syn's mouth moved but not a word came out. What vaettir wanted mead and not blood?

“You-you want mead?” Syn stuttered.

“And a cloak,” he said then tilted his head reading the question on Syn's face without her needing to say it. "Because every wizard needs a cloak!" His hands came down to the middle of his thigh. "About this long with a hood. Can't be a wizard without a hood. No staff though. That would just be ridiculous. Like I would need one. I'm better than that, not that anyone would need one in this age. And enough with the screaming!"

Green flame burst to life in his eye illuminating his skull through his face. It should have filled Syn with terror but it was as if a weight lifted off of her. At the same time, those fending off mist spirits in the chamber went silent save for breaths of relief.

They were all gone, the spirits and even the ash wife borrowing so deep Syn couldn't feel a hint of its rage.

“Now will one of you witches bring some mead?” The man asked then walked past another circle of runes, the symbols burning to molten stone as he did.