Chapter 244: Burn Them!
The witch laughed sarcastically as she looked at Ristel as if he was a fool. Her voice was twisted with fury and pleasure.
"Oh, you poor, arrogant thing," she said, stepping forward through the circle of fire. "You speak of freedom and safety as if you could take them from me. You speak of killing my coven as if you even have the means."
Rhistel didn’t flinch, he held his sword steady, even as the ground trembled faintly beneath their feet.
"You do not have the power to stand against us," she said, her voice rising, her hands lifting as if drawing energy from the very flames around her. "Much less harm to us."
In the blink of an eye, she swept her hand in an arc, and the flames followed, whipping through the air like serpents of fire. They surged toward Rhistel, who barely managed to dive aside. The wave of heat singed his cloak and curled the edges of the grass beneath him to ash.
Behind him, his knights charged in with swords in their hands. They shout battle cries. But they never reached her.
The second witch raised her hand, with a single gesture, the wind howled and twisted into a sharp gale. It lifted the men off their feet and sent them crashing against the burning remains of a house. Their armor clanged like broken bells as they fell in twisted heaps.
"No swords, no steel, no oaths will save you today," the first witch said, advancing toward Rhistel. "This is our war now."
A third witch murmured something in a tongue no man should have spoken, and the ground cracked. Black vines, thorned and smoking, burst from the earth and wrapped around the legs of the remaining villagers who had come running, with tools of agriculture and pitches and forks anything to save their homes.