Witch’s Tale pt. 3

Any man on Earth I could have slept with and it just had to be your father. Looking back, I should have made the connection earlier. It really must have been a powerful spark for me to not notice something so obvious.

“It definitely explains the resemblance,” I said. “Explains the snark too.”

The cultivator shook his head. “Embarrassing. You didn’t even realize you made yourself a bed wench for the Hero of Five Realms’ father.”

“Look, I didn’t know he was Morgan’s father until you pointed it out to me, okay? Get off my… Wait. Only five realms?”

“What?”

“You said the Hero of Five Realms? Don’t you mean Eight Realms?”

“Eight? What has Morgan Moon done across three more of Validar’s Nine Realms?”

“Defeating the Demon Empress of An Shan? Exorcising the Lich Magister of the Forbidden Library? Any of these ringing some bells?”

The cultivator’s eyes widened as I rolled off your accomplishments.

“He defeated people like that?!”

“The only one of the Great Tyrants he had yet to beat before I died was Raikō, Dragon King of the Golden Palace. Morgan was planning to fight Raikō personally, last I recall.”

The cultivator’s jaw dropped.

“…To think he got that powerful that he dared to face the Dragon King in single combat… Our Great Sect Leader, Master Zhenkang, always bowed his head and gave tribute to King Raikō when he would visit our White Tiger Temple. How could Moon, someone who barely managed to defeat Master Zhenkang, make such a dramatic leap in strength like that?”

I laughed a little while recalling Zhenkang. I had almost forgotten about the ‘indomitable’ White Tiger King who claimed to fear no man but quivered like a little boy whenever Raikō graced his temple with his presence. I actually saw that emasculation in person once. I never forgot the sight of the mighty Zhenkang lowering his head just so Raikō could literally ruffle his hair like he was a little boy.

“You’re laughing? You dare laugh at how Master Zhenkang sacrificed his pride to spare the sect the fate of those who went to war with the Dragon King of the Golden Palace?”

I shrugged. “It’s just funny how you White Tiger Sect guys always talk so tough, even by Quintessence cultivator standards, but even your senior members bent the knee the moment a bigger fish showed up in your pond.”

The sect member’s Quintessence began to intensify. It caused some windows on the floor below us to rattle. He held up his right hand once again channeling the power of the Ashen Fang.

“I don’t know who you are, nor do I particularly care. However, that was the last time you will disrespect my sect and master. I am Gao Bao, an Upper Third Golden Soul Disciple of the White Tiger Sect! Nothing will stop me from killing Christopher Moon before sunrise, but first, you will pay dearly for looking down on my sect’s White Tiger style!”

I yawned. Gods, I hated dealing with cultivators. They just couldn’t shut up. They always had to make big pronouncements about their rank, style, and power level that nobody asked for as if hearing how much meditation they’ve done and mystical herbs they’ve eaten will somehow disarm their opponent.

“If you want to fight, then let’s get on with it. I can go without the dramatic cultivator speeches, thanks,” I told him.

He scowled before taking a stance. After a moment of focus, he pounced at me. I’ve got to admit – he was fast. Any Earthling that made the mistake of challenging him would be dead before they knew it. Unlike them, however, I could teleport. And that’s what I did right before his Ashen Fang could land. I teleported a short distance away and sat upon an air conditioning unit. Gao Bao closed the again, but his blow once again missed its target as I teleported once more a few feet away. The air conditioning unit I was sitting on was completely gored with Gao Bao’s arm elbow-deep through it. He clicked his tongue, pried his arm free, and dashed after me once more. Our game of almost-hit-and-run continued like that for a moment, with Gao Bao sometimes dashing from one side of the roof to the other in two or three steps just to miss me by another hair.

I snickered. “I’ll give you one thing: You’re definitely persistent. Dashing from place to place just to hit air is impressive in its own way.

Gao Bao’s rage began to boil over.

“Contemptible witch! You’re just like that bastard Moon – not taking me seriously even though I am one of the most talented disciples of my sect. I have slain knights, mercenaries, wizards, and even some of my fellow cultivators in single combat! And my Ashen Fang technique was nearly perfected. It just needed more refinement to reach the next level. Had it not been for that bastard destroying our sect with his comrades, I would be on my way to reaching the level of Master Zhenkang himself! If only I had---“

“Gods, is there anything more obnoxious than a self-important cultivator overestimating his own talent? You cultivators often aren’t even necessarily stronger than other martial artists. Most of what you do is just aesthetic nonsense that wastes time you could have spent training like a regular Quintessence user. Even your own master lost to a teenager who only started training in martial arts a few years prior and barely knew anything about cultivation. As far as I’m concerned, cultivation is and always has been a pseudo-discipline for martial artists who wish they were wizards but lack the talent. Enough of the speeches?”

I could tell from his expression that those words, more than anything else, had touched a very precious nerve. As I’m sure you’re aware, nothing burns a cultivator worse than telling them that most of their training is worthless waffling; which it absolutely is. Zhenkang was powerful by cultivator standards for sure, but after nearly three centuries of training, you saw through his ‘amazing’ technique after witnessing it a few times. Regardless of your status as Chosen One, that you could defeat a man who had been practicing the same techniques for several times your own lifetimes says much about the diminishing returns that come with the cultivator’s method of training. From what I’ve heard of some older elves who knew Zhenkang in his youth, he was roughly as powerful in his 30s and 40s as he was when he fought you over two centuries later.

Gao Bao, absolutely fuming, let his Quintessence swell up like never before. It generated a flow that even caused my hair and outfit to flutter. When he, at last, made his move, his speed was so blinding it was as though he had learned teleportation himself. By the time I realized he was in striking distance, it was already too late. He finally found the chance he was looking for and drove his Ashen Fang straight through my chest. My pain, gnarled expression brought a satisfied smile across his face.

That smile left as soon as it came when I smiled back at him. A sigil appeared above my shoulder. From it, a dragon’s head manifested that lunged and crunched Gao Bao’s Ashen Fang arm in between its fangs.

The cultivator cringed in pain. “What the hells?!”

When he tried to beat off the dragon with his free hand, two more sigils appeared that produced the heads of two more dragons who crunched either leg of the cultivator in their teeth. This prevented him from doing any more dashing or jumping. Gao Bao was now completely immobilized. The doppelgänger blew him a kiss before dematerializing into magic particles, leaving the martial artist hapless on top on helpless.

“Falling for a basic illusion once: that’s shame on the spellcaster. Falling for the same basic illusion twice: that’s shame on you,” I said from behind him.

When Gao Bao whipped back his head to look at me, his face was completely mortified. I just smiled back at him pleasantly.

“But I can’t believe you can only use Ashen Fang with one hand. And here I thought the Golden Souls at your sect could use them with either,” I said. “I guess you weren’t quite as advanced as you said you were. I doubt Morgan had much trouble with you either.”

“What’s going on? W-where did these dragons come from?”

“Normally, they’re asleep in a place I call Dragon’s Keep. It’s a personal pocket dimension of mine where all the dragons I’ve bound as familiars over the years are kept. It has limitations on Earth, though. There are some dragons that I can’t summon in their totality because there just isn’t enough magical energy in this world for me to conjure them with. Hells, I can’t conjure Ranava at all.”

Gao Bao’s lip began to quiver. “Did… Did you just say Ranava?”

That name was what finally clued him into what he had foolishly gotten himself into. Ranava was one of the Ten High Dragons of Validar whose power was known and feared throughout all the realms. Ranava, among the most feared of the ten, had been made the familiar of one of the Witches of the Oblivion. That witch who had defeated and bound one of the most powerful dragons in Validar to her soul was thenceforth known by an awesome new title.

“You’re the Dragon Witch of the Oblivion?!”

I gave him a small clap. “It took a while, but you finally pieced it all together!”

“Wait! I… I didn’t know you! I would have never disrespected you if I knew whom I was addressing! P-please, I just…”

“So predictable,” I said, shaking my head. “Just like with your precious Zhenkang when he was confronted by Raikō, you proud cultivator-types buckle like scared children when someone stronger shows up. I’m sorry Gao Bao… but you’re food now.”

Gao Bao tried to escape. Sadly, he no longer had the Quintessence to possibly break free and also lacked the ability to use Ashen Fang with his free hand. His demise was tragically a foregone conclusion. I opened up another gate from Dragon’s Keep. Out from it, the large horned head of a crimson dragon emerged. The hunger in her eyes matched my own as he opened up his maw.

“N-no! Please! Not like this! Not like---“

The lesser dragons binding Gao Bao dematerialized the half-second before the larger one clamped him up in her maws. She crunched and munched on the cultivator for a short while before devouring him whole save for a single sneaker that fell off his foot. She gave a satisfied growl after she finished swallowing.

“Good girl,” I praised while giving her a rub in-between her scales. “That was a nice clean meal, wasn’t it?”

She growled again before returning to Dragon’s Keep as the others had. My work done, I did a brief stretch, conjured my broom, and headed back to my suite. None of the other guests knew what had taken place on the hotel’s roof that early morning. No camera had caught the affair, and they couldn’t identify what had damaged the AC unit. They only found a single sneaker that posed further questions rather than answers.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

“You sure you didn’t do anything to me in my sleep? I woke up with a headache for some reason,” Chris said.

We walked out of the hotel together. By that time in the morning, the sun was out and Chris was dressed in his office clothes again. The spell I had used to keep him asleep had left him with a pseudo-hangover. It was a common trait I realized Earthlings all shared after experiencing spells that targeted their minds. The lack of any magical immune system was truly a harsh handicap.

“Not even going to ask for my number?” I asked only half-jokingly.

“I’ll take it, but would you really want me to call? I might mess up what you’ve got going on with your rich boyfriend, or whatever it is you call that guy.”

“Aren’t you sweet, worrying about another man’s feelings? Most hookups don’t show that much consideration.”

“Well, I wasn’t planning on being anyone’s hookup. What happened last night only did because you caught me in an… I’ll just call it an awkward headspace.”

“You mean because of that plane crash?”

Chris’s eyes widened. “…So, you finally figured it out, huh?”

“I only figured it out this morning, believe it or not. I’m guessing somebody you knew on that plane?”

“Yeah. It was my son, Morgan. He had just turned fourteen a few days before. He was the only family I had after his mother left us a few years ago.”

An image of Himiko immediately surfaced in my mind. I don’t consider myself the ‘softest’ woman in the world, but even I could have a bit of sympathy for someone who lost both his wife and only child merely a few years apart. The two of us talked a few moments longer in front of his car. Actually, it’s more apt to say, I listened to him spill a bit of his soul out to me for a few minutes. It wasn’t that long, but it was long enough for Chris to catch himself and say: “Jesus, I’m just stealing daylight from you, aren’t I?”

“It’s only been a couple minutes. I have the time.”

“I appreciate it, but… I really have to go. I don’t have work, but I have other things to take care of today. Thank you, Veronica. It was only for one night, but a few hours with you was something I really feel I needed.”

With that, Chris got in his car and drove home. What a guy, leaving a girl with final words like those. I can tell your father must have been a problem for the ladies before he met your mother. I’m sure that, considering the past I had with you, I would have been fitting for me to have done something to him. If not outright kill him or have him devoured, at least set his car on fire, but I just let him go in the end. Maybe if he had been bad in bed I wouldn’t have been so merciful, but I honestly didn’t feel like seeking any retribution against you through your father. Unlike any other Validaran that might have been on Earth, my ties with the Chosen One were over so far as I was concerned.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

I headed for the shower as soon as I returned to my suite. I had showered the night before, but that spat with Gao Bao had actually caused me to sweat more than I imagined it would. I became surprisingly rusty in such a short amount of time.

“Is my body still adjusting to rebirth on Earth? Or maybe it’s just the lack of magical energy in the air?” I asked myself while applying shampoo.

There were quite a few things requiring my consideration now, your father aside. I now knew for certain that I was not the only Validaran on Earth. I also knew that many if not all of them had some connection to you. Those pieces of information added a lot of much-needed spice to this new world I found myself in.

“Looks like I won’t be so bored after all,” I said while exiting the shower.

I barely finished drying my hair when I heard a crash happen throughout the suite. My mind immediately conjured the idea of another Validaran having broken in. It could have even been one of Gao Bao White Tiger Sect friends. After throwing on a bathrobe I teleported from the bathroom to the main room of my suite. There I found no Validaran, only a sniveling lovesick investor surrounded by broken furniture. He wasn’t facing me, but I could still see the device he was clutching in his hand. It was Chris’s phone.

“Nathan? How did you get into my room? Did you get a key card to my suite without telling me?”

Nathan looked my way. Long streaks from fallen tears were on his face as he quivered and sniffled.

“Veronica… That man you were within the parking lot… Who was he?”

“You were watching us?”

“Who was he?!” Nathan snapped. “And why did he leave your suite this morning? I came to give you money because I thought you might want to go shopping, and then I caught you walking out with that bastard! Who is he? What firm does he work for? Does he make more money than me? There’s no way he does with the type of car he drives!”

I blinked. It seems that my love potion was finally starting to wear off but in a really dramatic way. Nathan was still madly in love with me, but enough of the potion had worn off for his affection to be compounded with other passions like envy and wrath.

“Well, this is annoying. Money or no money, I can’t put up with this type of nonsense on a regular basis,” I said.

“You what? A-are you breaking up with me?”

“Nathan, have we ever truly been together? You haven’t touched me in a non-casual way since the first night we met. We’ve never slept together. We’ve never kissed. We never even shared a room together before. Our relationship was about my own personal convenience. Nothing else.”

Honestly, I didn’t care for Nathan anymore. The lavish lifestyle was fun while it lasted, but I had grown jaded by it and with Nathan especially. I expected my words to break Nathan down and allow me to get on with my day in peace. I accomplished half of that. Nathan definitely broke down. He ran his hand through his hair, nearly tearing out his perfect locks while he muttered some cryptic nonsense under his breath. He didn’t remain like that for long, however. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a switchblade.

“Tell me you love me, Veronica…”

I blinked. “…Excuse me?”

“Say you love me! Just say it and I’ll forgive you! If you don’t… I’ll… I’ll…”

I let out a heavy sigh. This was just getting exhausting now. He was entering full-on lover mania. He began to step forward, his blade pointed directly at me. I was in the middle of wondering what spell I should use to subdue him without causing too much damage when a familiar face blindsided Nathan and tackled him to the floor. They quickly disarmed him of his knife and then knocked him with a well-placed blow.

“Jesus Christ… What the hell was that guy’s problem?” Chris said while getting to his feet. “It’s one thing to be upset about cheating, but that’s no reason to pull a goddamn blade out on somebody.”

“Chris? Why’d you come back?”

“Forgot my phone,” your father said while picking it up from the floor. “When I came back up, I saw the door to your suite was open, so I came in and saw this guy coming at you with a knife. He’s that investor you were talking about, right?”

“Yeah, that’s him. He saw you and I leave my suite together and didn’t take it well.”

“Bit of an understatement, isn’t it?”

I shrugged. It wasn’t long until hotel security showed up with all the commotion. Real cops were called after that, and Nathan was arrested. As we watched from the hotel lounge as the police took him away, your father popped a question to me.

“Are you going to have a place to stay after leaving this hotel?”

“Probably not. I was, for lack of a better word, a vagrant before I met Nathan.”

“Ah. Well then…” He took my phone and added his number to my contacts. “If you need a place to stay, call me. We can figure out an arrangement for you or something.”

With that, he left for a second time. He would return to the hotel every day until it was time for me to check out. After that, I called him as he advised. We did indeed figure out an arrangement – I was just going to be his roommate from now on. It worked out well enough. I received a place to stay with a man I didn’t find disgusting, and he received a reason to come home after work rather than go to the beach and stare at the sea until midnight – a win-win.

Marriage wasn’t in the cards yet and probably wouldn’t have been for a while had I not gotten pregnant almost immediately. I was shocked that an Earthling would get a Validaran who was only half-human pregnant so easily, but I suppose he did conceive a child with a fae fourteen years earlier. Agnes wasn’t born when I received a ring, but she was two months old when the ceremony was held.

In fact…

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

“Here’s a photo of Chris and I, still dressed as bride and groom, holding your sister while she’s still an infant.”

Veronica conjured the photo from another room and levitated it into Morgan’s grasp. The Chosen One had seen Veronica’s smile countless times, and often it unnerved him. But that wasn’t the case with the photo he held. The smile on the witch’s face was that of a happy wife and mother. If you had shown this to any soul in Validar who knew of Veronica, especially her fellow Witches of the Oblivion, they would have thought it was fraud or that it was just a woman with the Dragon Witch’s likeness.

“So, wasn’t that a romantic story?” Veronica asked, eagerly awaiting Morgan’s review.

“I guess? The romantic aspect was nice, but it made up barely half the story. The rest was you messing around in Canada and killing some cultivator dude. Was stuff like that common?”

“What, drugging Earthling men love potions?”

“No, killing Validarans who came after my dad.”

“Ah. Yes, I’ve had to do that a few times over the years. Since every Validaran on Earth’s death is related directly or indirectly to your actions, a good chunk of them keep a grudge and have the intention of getting back at you any way they can, so as soon as they learn you have a father, they come looking for him. Unfortunately, they find me, which is actually quite fortunate for my dragons. They love a good meal. The amount of Validarans hunting your dad has tapered down after word spread about who his new wife was.”

Morgan felt half-sorry for those Validarans who had come for his father. On one hand, he was grateful that they were taken care of and his father remained safe and none the wiser to all the craziness that was going on around him. On the other, being flayed or eaten alive by Veronica and her dragons was a very rough way to go out. The anguish screams of Veronica’s victims flew through Morgan’s mind until the sound of a car pulling into the garage broke that depressing train of thought.

“Now that’s good timing. They came back just as we finished talking about everything,” said Veronica. “The food’s all done too.”

Morgan concurred as he stood from his chair. There was nothing left him to answer; at least nothing Veronica was willing to give answers to. Anything further concerning the Hero Slayers or how the Validarans were arriving on Earth at all would have to be learned at another time. For now, he planned on doing something he hadn’t done since the night before his mother was kidnapped by Raikō – he was going to have dinner at home with his family. He still wasn’t that keen on whom his stepmother was, but at least she seemed to genuinely love his dad. That was good enough for Morgan at the moment.

“Ooh! One more thing,” said Morgan.

“What is it?”

“What happened to that Nathan guy?”

“Ah. I nearly forgot. After he was charged with attempted murder in the States, he paid bail and headed back to Canada, probably planning to not return to the States. What he didn’t know was that I had all the footage he had recorded of him messing with girls he had drugged mailed anonymously to the Vancouver Police Department some days before, so he was arrested the moment he made it back to British Columbia and hit with way worse charges than he was facing in the US. I don’t know whether what was left of the love potion was still making him manic, or maybe being charged with serious felonies in two countries and having his reputation permanently devastated was too much, but he hurled himself from his condo and…”

Veronica made a ‘splat’ noise that made Tito and Morgan flinch at the same time. Their reaction earned a giggle from the witch before she went to greet her husband and daughter. Morgan shook his head. She may have been a happily married mother, but a witch was still a witch.