Chapter 30: The Witch of the Coven

The creatures moved through Frostvale like a plague of locusts, leaving nothing but death and destruction in their wake.

They seemed to take a perverse pleasure in the terror they inspired, prolonging the agony of their victims rather than granting them quick deaths.

But in the midst of all this chaos and horror, none of the combatants—neither human nor fiend—noticed the two figures who emerged from the forest at the village’s edge.

They moved with the natural grace of those accustomed to walking between worlds, their presence somehow both reassuring and ominous.

The woman was tall and elegant, her midnight-blue robes seeming to absorb the light around her. Her hair was black, and her eyes held the depth of centuries. Around her fingers, blue flames danced without heat, and the very air seemed to shimmer with barely contained power.

Beside her strode a figure clad in armor so black it seemed to drink in the darkness itself.

His helmet was crafted in the shape of a wolf’s head, and the great sword at his side hummed with its own inner light. He moved like a predator, but there was something noble in his bearing that spoke of honor as well as deadly skill.

“Shouldn’t we help them?” The armored figure asked, his voice carrying the weight of command. He was Darian, the Black Knight of the Northern Marches.

The woman—Morgana—studied the chaos with eyes that seemed to pierce through flesh and bone to the soul beneath.

“We will,” she said, her voice like the whisper of wind through autumn leaves. “But first, I must find the one who led them here. This is no random attack.”

Her gaze swept across the battlefield, searching for something that only she could see.

The fiends were creatures of the dark realms, but they did not venture into the mortal world without purpose.

Someone—or something—had called them here, and they came here for the very same purpose she had come.

Darian needed no further encouragement.

His great sword cleared its sheath with a sound like distant thunder, and he strode into the battle with the confidence of a man who had never known defeat.

The nearest fiend turned to face him, its multiple arms weaving their deadly patterns, but Darian’s blade took its head off with a single, perfectly executed stroke.

Morgana remained at the forest’s edge, her consciousness expanding as she sought the source of the summoning.

She was a Crimson Witch, a member of the Illumariti Coven of witches. Her power was vast, but she used it carefully.

But as the screams of the dying reached her ears, her caution wavered.

She could feel the terror of the villagers and could taste their despair in the night air.

These were innocent people, guilty of nothing more than celebrating a wedding, and they were being butchered like sheep.

Very well, she thought, her eyes beginning to glow with an inner light that matched the blue flames dancing around her fingers.

If subtlety will not serve, then let them face the full fury of the old powers.

Morgana raised her hands, and the very air around her began to burn with cold fire.

This was her Origin power, the raw essence of creation and destruction that flowed through the veins of all who had been touched by the primal forces of the universe.

It was magic in its purest form, unbounded by the rules and limitations that governed lesser sorceries.

The blue flames leaped from her fingers like living things, racing across the battlefield with impossible speed.

Where they touched the fiends, the creatures simply ceased to exist, their iron-gray flesh dissolving into motes of light that drifted away on the wind.

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