The cage was large, clearly meant for multiple people, but there was only one prisoner within it. One intact prisoner, that was. Because while I saw it as some sort of holding cell, the hag saw it as a pantry.

There we were, a collection of ingredients that could be grabbed with a knife or strong pinching hands. There were about four and a quarter people total, including myself. I sat there wide-eyed at first, looking forward to sitting in the theater on the other side of the mountain. All I could hear was a ringing sound in my ears. It was hard to process.

She looked like a human, like an old, withered woman with a hunchback and puffy face. Yet as I watched her, I became convinced that she was no more a woman than I was a caterpillar. Her body was a form, a sculpture of flesh whose true nature could only be revealed if you watched the way she moved.

She walked on all fours when she wanted to, especially when she was turning corners, and she only stood on her hind legs when she wanted to tower over her cauldron and toss ingredients inside or take a peek.

If she needed to look over at me because I was making too much noise or thinking too many thoughts, she didn’t turn her head. She just turned her eyes, and while they were in the correct place on her face, they bulged out just enough that she could look all the way toward me and make direct eye contact, something she did often.

When she had picked me up and put me in the cage, there was no fighting it. She was absolute in her strength. There was no give, there was no wavering. Her arms, which looked like a frail woman’s arms, only looked that way. There was a soft, mushy exterior, but underneath that, her bones must have been enormous, if they were bones at all.

She was human in form, but not in function. My mind knew to fear her deep down in a dark part of my subconscious.

She hummed like a cheery old lady as she did her work.

All I could do was watch her and watch my friends while I sat on Deathwatch. They were only walking. My Cutaway Death trope had worked as intended. The moment I was dragged underwater, I had the Dead status, and she must have known it on some level, too, because she looked at me so curiously. She poked and prodded and pinched until I moved.

It was as if she were afraid to use me as an ingredient because I was a dead thing that was still alive, and that fascinated her. She was surprisingly easy to read that way. Her movements and facial expressions spoke an ancient language that anyone would understand. She would mutter to herself, but it sounded like a squirrel chittering more than a human talking.

Ol’ Nonnie would roll her lips and her tongue, making high-pitched sounds and a pitter-patter as she poked my ribs right where my heart was, and then she would look up at me, like, how does this dead thing have a beating heart?

She knew about my Dead status, but she didn’t understand it. I got the impression Carousel was trying desperately to keep her from being meta-aware, but she was breaking through.

She grabbed me by the back of my neck and held me up to watch my legs dangle. And then she threw me in the cage and ever since glanced over at me to watch my eyes moving, as if I was the weird one.

She needed to keep an eye on the living dead thing.

She didn’t need to speak to tell me her thoughts. I was innately connected to her the moment we made contact. My psychic powers, as minute as they were, were blaring signals to me that I couldn’t put into words, but still understood innately.

She was fascinated by me, like she had never seen anything like me before. Had she never been in a storyline before? Was this her first time?

What was left of Camden was over in the corner. It looked like he had bled out before he was harvested, or at least I hoped that was true. Looking around at the other bodies, several of whom were wearing the same exact jumpsuit I was, I wasn’t looking forward to when it was time for me to go into the stew.

She was really big on that.

“Clever boys go in the stew,” she had said, in a way. She was capable of something beyond words, a form of communication that felt like a spider running down my spine.

So when she told me, “clever boys go in the stew,” it was actually my mouth that said it. I wasn’t forced to do it. It was a reflex. I immediately understood what she was trying to tell me, and I was so shocked at it that the words just came out.

“Clever boys go in the stew,” she had told me with nothing but the stroke of her finger on the side of my neck, and then she closed the cage and went back to work.

Eventually, she got over her hangups about me being dead and alive at the same time.

She was brewing a new potion this time. The one that she had made in order to pull me through the water had gotten poured down a drain. This one was all new. It used human ears as a main ingredient. You could ask me how I knew that, but you would have to speak loudly.

I stared at her tropes again, looking for the information I needed to help the others.

Ol’ Nonnie

Crone of the Bayou

Plot Armor: 70

__________

Tropes

Domain of the Unknown

This entity can only exist in places that have not been mapped, charted, or widely known.

Invitation Only

This entity cannot pursue targets who do not cross the threshold willingly.

Formless Shadows

Players will struggle to control their imaginations, altering their perception.

Whispers in the Dark

This creature can sense a player or NPC’s vulnerabilities and manipulate them via impulsive thoughts.

Certainty is Dangerous

This entity targets those who speak in absolute terms about its nature, its weaknesses, or the plot before the truth is revealed.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

Patient Hunter

This villain avoids attacking the entire group at once until Second Blood, choosing instead to pick off members one by one.

Dark Aura

This being has an aura with wide-ranging effects, from fear to some combination of status ailments. Aura will bypass all stats on first exposure.

Bottomless Bag of Tricks

The villain has so many different in-universe abilities that they can employ new abilities in the Finale without needing to establish them in the narrative.

Fairy Land

This entity has a home world, realm, or dimension relevant to the plot.

It was immediately clear that defeating her could not come from a direct confrontation. She was a powerful magic user, and more than that, it wasn’t clear what her weakness would be, except for the one I saw, the Domain Of The Unknown. I would have to work with that.

Shadows were an important part of her magic. The door to exit her hovel or hole in the ground was literally just a shadowy alcove. Maybe it was a tunnel leading out of the ground, but I wasn’t certain. It just looked like a curtain of shadow that could lead anywhere.

After a while, she decided to leave through those shadows. Though I never completely felt like I was unwatched, I took the opportunity to look around.

It lasted for a while this way. She would leave, and I would desperately search for something that could help me escape, but I would fail. Eventually, though, I figured out some important things.

Just outside of the cage near Camden’s body was a stack of scrolls made out of a type of parchment that I recognized because I had dreamed about it. And as I stared at it, I saw that one of the scrolls had been torn.

I sat down and thought about my dream, about how a piece of paper had been torn in half, and half of it had been rolled into a ball and thrown, and the other half was folded up and hidden in stone.

It was clear that this was not just a metaphor. I had to move Camden’s body to find the stone tiles with the piece of paper shoved between them.

Camden, as he always was, was incredibly resourceful. Having the Eureka ability meant that he could search through those scrolls in an instant, theoretically. In his final moments, he had done as much research for us as he could.

The paper he had folded and tucked inside the crack in the tile contained a paragraph explaining exactly what we needed to do to defeat her, based entirely on his readings of the scrolls.

See, the scrolls were recipes that the hag had worked on for quite a while, a millennium or two. And from them, Camden had learned a few simple things.

“Spell sends out signals. Find map. Put in spell,” was all the note had written on it. He had used a bit of stone to write faint letters. The funny thing was, he might have written more because it looked like some was missing. Carousel must have redacted it just like it had in my dream.

Find a map and put it in the spell. I understood what he was trying to say. Whatever magic she was using to reach out to us was something we could manipulate. And I knew it because Camden had already done it. The crumpled-up piece of paper that I had seen in my dream… Camden must have thrown it into the cauldron. That’s why I dreamed it. The warning that she hates maps. He must have balled it up and thrown it in, sending it out into the world.

Camden had gotten the information. I had to spread the plan. That was trivial with my Insert Shot ability. Eventually, I might actually use that trope for its intended purpose of empowering objects, but mostly, I liked it for communication.

I spread the paper out, used my arm device to light it up, but I wasn’t ready to use the trope yet. The others must have been Off-Screen because I couldn’t see them from Deathwatch.

A simple image of a simple message. Find a map, and put it in the stew. Surely, my friends could do that. Camden had already sent out the original message with the paper ball. Cassie had dreamed about it.

But there was more. I needed to warn them about how to act. She targeted people who were too confident about what they would find at the end of the trail. The story encouraged people to keep an open mind.

I found a bit of rock and scribbled, “Don’t act certain about what is happening. Stay open-minded” onto the page next to Camden’s writing.

Then, I used the Insert Shot. Not only would they get the message, but they would also be given an idea of where I was. It couldn’t appear On-Screen.

I folded up the paper and put it back in the crack I found it in, trying not to look too closely at Camden as I did it.

The others were going to have to thread the needle to win here.

Eventually, the hag returned, this time with two rabbits that she had caught out in the wilderness. Those went in the stew.

A lot of things did, most of which I didn’t want to think about.

Finally, when the brew was complete, Ol’Nonnie stood over her cauldron and began, for the first time, to speak in plain human language. Well, near enough. It sounded like an animal’s ghostly cry in the forest, but there were words. She practically purred them into the bubbling waters of the pot. They went something like this:

Home home home.

Come home come home.

Warm waiting.

Soft bed soft hands soft voice.

Come home come home come home.

~

Lost thing.

Poor lost thing.

So tired.

So far.

Rest here.

Rest here.

Rest.

~

Mother misses.

Brother calls.

Sister weeps.

Come back come back.

Almost there.

Almost found.

~

Hungry belly.

Cold feet.

Warm soup.

Warm fire.

Come eat.

Come sleep.

Come home.

~

The road remembers.

The road knows.

Follow follow follow.

Good child.

Brave child.

Almost home.

~

Love love love.

Waiting love.

Open arms.

Open door.

Come in come in come in.

~

No more walking.

No more dark.

Here here here.

Safe safe safe.

~

Answers answers answers.

So many answers.

Waiting in the dark.

Truth buried.

Truth sleeping.

Come dig.

Come find.

Be the one.

Be the first.

Glory glory glory.

Your name remembered.

Your name forever.

~

Others failed.

Others weak.

Not you.

You see further.

You reach further.

Send them.

Send more.

Almost found.

Almost known.

~

I see you.

I see you.

Tired thing.

Wanting thing.

Come.

Come.

Come.

And in that strange incantation, contained every message, signal, or dream she had ever sent, all received by radio, psychic power, or whatever form she needed. Low tech, high tech, no tech, it was all the same to her as it had been for thousands of years.

Leave the place you know and come to Ol’ Nonnie, who waits at the end of your footfalls with everything you have ever wanted held out just for you.

How was any human supposed to resist?

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep