Arc 7: Chapter 30: Hexer’s Tale
For a terrifying minute, I thought we’d been saved from the servants of Hell just to drown.
I could see nothing, hear nothing but the roar of water and my own pounding heart. All sensation became a rushing, burbling, cascading nightmare of motion. My lungs ached. I hadn’t managed to take a breath before going under, and I could feel the edges of my vision hazing.
Don’t breathe don’t breathe don’t breathe—
And just when I knew I’d take a breath, I emerged from the water. No, that isn’t how I’d describe it — I was spat out like a piece of meat from a gorged throat, tumbling across a rough surface along with a wheat silo’s worth of water, dead bees, and some silty substance ripped out of the cavern we’d just left.
I lay there for a moment, too stunned to move and gasping like a dying fish. I tried to get up, vomited up foul tasting liquid, then spent a minute coughing. My armor and cape were soaked, and my hair clung to my scalp.
“Hm,” a voice said. “You’ll want to get that dried out. Such a waste of good work, letting all that steel rust.”
I lifted my head and saw a pair of avian feet flattened against rotted floorboards. Above them lay the tattered hem of badly worn skirts, and above that… impossibly green eyes with golden slivers shining at their cores.
“Urddha.” I got a knee under me and managed to lift myself into a crouch. “What the hell did you do to my axe?”
“Isn’t it obvious? And it’s not yours, it’s mine. Well, mine and the Choir’s, but I’m the one who planted the tree. It was a simple matter to link it to my hut.”
“Your hut?” I glanced around, and realized we were indeed inside some kind of small house or cottage. It looked very much like the classical witch’s den, dimly lit, with shelves full of a strange assortment of items. There was a fireplace, but it hadn’t been lit in a long time. Most of the light came from waxy candles spread by the dozen around the home’s interior, which did little more than give definition to the darkness. It reminded me of the inside of a cathedral. And like an altar inside that fane, a huge cauldron sat in the center of the space. Something bubbled ominously inside of it. More light came out of that, and it had a venomous tint.
I heard more coughs and splutters nearby. Donnelly and Delphine were here too. I stood shakily to my feet, the fingers of my right hand flexing for a weapon. I’d lost hold of my sword in the water, and my axe…
It was in Urddha’s hand. She stood more than eight feet tall, a giant inside the confines of the room, and the branch seemed little more than a wand in her hand.