The Candlewax Witch
Valyrdonn.
“From the skull of a ram to the song of a whale. Valyrdonn.” Grifftec murmured to herself, hands shoved into her white coat. The city of Valyrdonn didn’t stop for a moment, not even to glance at the curious warrior standing on the footpath, staring at the two-story cottage across the street. She was dressed more or less the same as the other women of Valyrdonn, a twist of light and dark colours, hair down and free to sway in the soft touch of the Spring breeze, similar to that of the cherry blossom petals dancing about. Yet instead of the soft kiss of pink, Griff’s hair was a fire-kissed orange, sunset trapped in the threads tucked behind her ears. No one had actually stopped to stare, but most had taken the time to glance at her twice, even thrice. It was no her hair, white cloak or even pretty black, floral boots. It was the two indicators that separated Griff from every other human that called Valyrdonn. The glassy yellow that was her eyes and the two black, ashen patterns that fell from her eyes down to her jaw. It was their mark. Not a soul Mark, that every human had been blessed with at birth, but something that was entirely their own. The thing that differentiated the Order of the Blue Rose.
But it wasn’t the city she was here for. No. It was the witch across the road. The tip off the Blue Rose had received was vague to say the least, but any mention of Wiccan activity was something they had no choice but to take interest in. Before any mission, surveillance was a given. Thankfully, the cottage was on the corner of the block, isolated from any of the other houses on the cherry-blossom dotted street. People and sprits alike milled about their day, some even playing chess against one another in the park behind Griff.
I’ll go in low and quiet. Enter in from the wooden foundations so I don’t draw too much attention.
With a half grin she failed to stifle, Griff made her way across the street and to the bushes surrounding the wooden panes protecting the crawl space. There, she took off her white coat and folded it. The day was a fine one, one that didn’t call for a jacket let alone a coat like the one she tucked into the shrubs. Yet the shirt Griff wore beneath wasn’t one that should be worn openly. It was a grey tank, the back essentially revealing most of her back into a V shape. Like most things the Order wore, it served a purpose. Every person’s Soul Mark was different, from what the weapon was to where the tattoo on their body lay. She crouched and reached behind her back, the short-sword forming in her hand. The mark itself was a series of geometric shapes that formed to resemble Archeus. With the short-sword, Griff pried off the wooden planks and entered the crawl space on her belly. With slivers of rectangular strips of light as her guide, she shuffled her way in, far in enough that Griff could waddle her way on her haunches. In the faint light the huntress made out a small wooden hatch.
Slow and silent. Strange though that there’d be another space below the first floor. In all likeliness it’d be a place to store an illegal ingredients they wouldn’t want any of their clients accidently stumbling upon and reporting.
With a light bump of her shoulder, Griff raised the hatch and climbed up and into the storage space. It was a stuffy, with dust mites flying about in the single sliver of orange light creeping through. The stiff-aired was so dark in fact, Griff almost missed him. She almost missed the poor, shirtless man tied to the wall. Both his wrists were bound with white rope against the wooden planks behind him, his chest riddled with blood-caked scratches and what appeared to be white-paint markings, sigils dotted around almost every inch of his brown skin, the largest a giant circular one resting in the very centre of his abdomen.
“Oh. Uh…hi there?” Griff said, when they made eye contact. She sat crouched there, silence baring down on her shoulder worse than the ache of her squat.
“Help…would be…appreci-ated,” The poor man managed to croak. With her yellow eyes, Griff managed to make out his own grey ones, black hair tied back, stubble covering most of his jaw and some of his neck.
“Oh of course. Right, sorry. I’ll go ahead and assume you’re a prisoner of hers?” Griff said, using Archeus to cut the rope binding him. Weakly, he nodded.
“What’re these sigils?” Griff asked, absent-mindedly tracing the largest one. Massaging his sore wrists that had been bit into by the rope, the prisoner took a moment.
“She uses them to control her playthings. They keep us here, but also allow us to move around the house when she wishes and not set off any of here Monkeys,” He wearily explained.
Interesting. Most Wiccan use hair dolls or crystals to bind spirits or humans, but these sigils are something else.
Griff placed a curious thumb on the centre of his abdomen, puzzled as to what they could all do. He noticeably flinched at her touch, pushing back against the wall.
Shit. What did she do to him?
She withdrew her hand, curling back against her chest.
“Sorry,” Griff murmured.
“There’s a herb wash she uses to wash the markings away and redraws them with candle wax…but…it’s a special candle. A – uh – white one with golden glyphs,” He said, breath coming in shallow gulps.
A herb wash and a white candle. Poor guy, I’ve got to help him.
“What’s your name?” Griff asked, her voice gentle for once.
It took him a moment. A moment in which he sighed and met her eyes.
“Beau. My name is Beau…you’re…you’re one of them aren’t you?” He asked, the silver in his eyes finally gleaming with a hint of life.
“I am a huntress of the Order of the Blue Rose. Which means I will do whatever is within my power to help you get out of here,” Griff promised. And to bring down the witch-bitch.
“My name is Griff, by the way,” She mentioned with a nervous smile.
“There’s ah, a lift she uses to move me around the floors…I think…I heard some of her clients come in. They’ll probably be in the lobby waiting, so, try and avoid them I guess,” Beau said, leaning his head back against the wall.
“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” Griff promised, refraining from giving him a light pat on the shoulder.
Using the dummy lift, Griff crammed her long limbs in and rode it up to the first level. When the doors opened, she was greeted with the glare of sunlight and the scent of garlic and freshly baked bread. The kitchen. Quiet as she could, Griff crept out into the hallway flooded with murmurings from the lobby to the left. Got to find the bathroom and use the candlewax, or her Monkey Totems could prove to be a problem. At first glance, a Monkey Totem wouldn’t seem to be a threat in the least. They were small, lime-stone carvings of monkeys, a necklace of beads around their neck. But when the totem spots an intruder, the little decorative piece takes on a slightly murderous side.
“What a surprise to see you here, little rose,” A familiar voice purred from the kitchen. Oh, boy.
“I know you’re one for kissing butts Ryon, but I never really took you for a familiar?” Griff smirked. Cats are a fickle thing. They aren’t sly as foxes, but not trustworthy as the silent wolves. As a whole, they aren’t one for conflict, preferring to watch and wait to see who arose victorious.
The cat that sat upon the kitchen bench smirked in turn. Ginger, with an identifying scar running through his left eye with a twin set of tails lazily twining around themselves. Leader of the Von’her Clan himself.
“Oh please, who do you think sent that tip off? I can’t leave this place myself, thanks to the lovely wax markings her lady melted onto my belly, but I managed to slip a word in with one of her guests that owed me a favour,” Ryon explained with a lazy flick of his tails.
“Appreciated. Now, if you could point me to the bathroom, I’d ever be so thankful,” Griff said, every letter dripping with sarcasm towards the gang leader.
It seemed Ryon took a moment to consider. Sly little shit. With his tails, Ryon threw her a box of matches.
“Use this, mark yourself so you don’t get a monkey ripping your head off, eh?” The cat suggested. “Oh and do remember to bring me some of that herb wash for me, I’ll be sure to pay you handsomely for an escort out of this damned place.”
“Hmm. Deal, if she doesn’t kill me that is. Go help the boy beneath the floorboards and be ready for me to come back with the wash and to go in the same heartbeat. Things might get ah, a little hectic,” Griff said, pocketing the matches in her pants.
Quiet as she could, the warrior made her way through the hallway and past the lobby where a number of masked socialites sat, politely drinking sips of wine as they waited for a moment with the Witch. As though it’s nothing. As if a simple deal with a simple witch will do nothing to antagonize the fragile balance of this place. Of our home. Bastards. The door to the bathroom seemed almost too mundane to contain a witch’s arsenal. It was painted white, like a normal door. It had a doorknob, like a normal door. What was strange, were the multitude of eyes coating the door, each yellow, slitted, blinking eyes that held an endless vigil. Ryon didn’t remember that little detail, it seems…but, it makes sense. Not even cats can see the things the Order can see. But it is an entity all of its own. Griff struck a match and without daring to take a deep breath, approached the eyes.
“Ah…what’s up?” She greeted, hands on her hips. The eyes collectively looked to her.
“WHO ARE YOU? CONFIRM IDENTITY OR BE DESTROYED.” A lovely, pleasant, demonic voice from the depths of hell hissed.
“My um, name’s Grifftec. And I’ve come to you with a business proposition. One I think you’ll be very interested in,” Griff said in the best infomercial voice she could muster in the current circumstance.
“I AM HEREVEC. I HAVE A VERY SECURE, WELL-PAYING JOB HERE. WHAT KIND OF OPPORTUNITY COULD YOU POSSIBLY OFFER?”
“Uh…a day off?” Griff suggested with a shrug. The demonic eye monster took a minute to consider. She had sincere doubts that the witch gave her subordinates any days off. But she also had sincere doubts that this particular subordinate would take the new job offer, considering the fact he was a door.
“AFTER THINKING IT OVER, HEREVEC HAS COME TO REALISE HESLSITA IS UNGRATEFUL FOR HEREVEC’S WORK. I WORK FOR YOU NOW, STRANGE, GINGER HUNTRESS.”
As it turned out, the eye monster was open to some new options. Thankfully so. The eyes began to dissipate, continuing to do so until it became one giant eye, that too, swirled in a puff of smoke out of existence. Well, shit. I’m gonna have to deal with that later. Or Rook will. Either way, it’ll be a shit storm when I get back to the church. Thankfully, inside the bathroom there were a lack of eye monsters. But, there was an abundance of candles. It seemed near every surface held a candle, wax at the base melted so that it latched on. In the sink and bath tub, bundles of herbs and straw sat, vines dotted with glowing purple flowers sprouting from every crack in the tile walls and floor. This looks about right. Griff took one of the candles and with a match, lit it and used the melted candle wax to form the same sigil that was on Beau’s chest on her arm. It tingled, almost bordering on pain. The wax became solid almost immediately, the lines near perfect. This’ll have to do.
Footsteps falling silent against the well-kept wooden stairs and hallway, Griff went along on her haunches upon the red velvet carpet runner. On decorative tables dotted about the place below haunting paintings of twisted silhouettes, the limestone monkeys sat, their glowing eyes following her as she crept past. Holding her breath without even realising it, the huntress pushed open the master bedroom door. It was almost…quiet. The witch spoke softly to herself, brushing out her long red curls, sitting before a mirror behind a wooden screen. A fox with a golden collar sat atop her bed noticed Griff’s approach and pricked his eyes in curiosity. Griff put a finger to her lips, and the fox rested his head on his paws in reply. Quiet now. Archeus formed in her hand, at the ready. The witch placed her comb down.
“Little huntress. Little bird, you think yourself a thief?” The witch asked, not bothering to look back from the mirror.
“I don’t call myself anything. I know what I am,” Griff shrugged, giving Archeus a twirl.
The witch gave her claws a tap against the table.
“Then…what are you?” She asked, a reptilian tongue snaking its way past her cherry-red lips to the corner of her mouth.
Griff tightened her grip around Archeus.
“Going to kill you,” And she swung, ice and the heart of winter itself lacing the air around the blade. Its strike sent pots, hanging herbs, instruments of the nefarious kind flying into the air, even out the window. Just before Griff could swing again, a force too fast and too strong to deflect slammed into her chest, pinning her against the wall. The Witch had stood and a single arm warped, almost detaching to push Griff against the wood tapestry. What…the…fuck…
The witch’s eyes had melted away (or maybe they’d never been there,) in place of a red glare, cracks forming in her neck right down to her chest.
“What are you, against the might of a storm?” The red bitch asked, her grin expanding past where he lips were once.
“No one told me that you guys had a short term memory. I told you. I’m here to kill you,” Griff hissed, shattering then rematerializing Archeus to stab it into her hideous arm. Feeling the cold bite of Archeus, the Witch took back her arm, leaving the huntress to crumple to the ground.
“I’ll remember your face, little bird,” She grumbled before unleashing her entire self – a mass of a red monstrosity that burst through the wall of the second floor and spilled out into the sky, clawing up into the deep blue, a creature of hatred and enslavement of the innocent. That’s all they are. Slavers of spirits. And humans, apparently.
Every muscle screaming, Griff pulled herself up. The little fox slithered its way out from the wreckage that was once the witch’s room and looked to Griff.
“Care…to explain…why something with that much power decided to run off with a single stab?” The huntress panted.
“Well, it wasn’t you that scared her off, I can tell you that,” The fox said with the flick of an ear.
“You clarity is one that could clear a thunderstorm,” She grumbled, holding a spot on her ribs that was more than certainly going to form into a bruise. What made that bitch run? She could’ve crushed me if she wanted. Griff stood at the very edge of the hole that had once been a wall, cradling her side.
“C’mon, little fox. We have others to go save from this…place. I’d leave it in ashes, but it’s not really my place to burn it to the ground. I’ll scrub out the sigils on the foundation and on the walls, shred the paintings and run out any straggling ‘guests,’ in the lobby. After that, I’ll leave it to the spirits to tear this place apart, brick by brick, plank by plank. Witches are merely slavers and spirits are the one that have to suffer their shackles, whether it’s wax, paint, ink or blood. Let them drink their fill of vengeance.”
ns 172.70.131.214da2