farawaymuse

27 - Roman

Sable had showed her hand more than she’d have preferred during that negotiation, but the Wither Witch had been uniquely suited to brushing Sable off. Terminally ill, bad-tempered, and apparently knowledgeable on dragons, Sable had navigated the conversation only through great effort.

But navigated it she had.

Ultimately, the Wither Witch—Roman being her real name, she had learned shortly—had reluctantly agreed to help her. For all that the woman apparently ‘had nothing to...

26 - Tutor

The Wither Witch watched her, tapping skeletal fingers in a rhythmic clicking motion. Aylin tried not to stare at the blackened bone digits. It was almost hypnotic. But staring would be rude. Though, for how bizarre the injury was—if it was even really an injury—the human woman seemed perfectly at ease with presenting it.

Maybe she did so intentionally, even. To intimidate her. Which was kind of working. Skeletal hands weren’t something she’d seen much of. Combined with the stra...

25 - The Wither Witch

The city of Skatikk was, reasonably, not the only settlement in Bonecracker territory. While Skatikk was by far the largest—with the tallest walls and highest population—there were walled villages scattering the landscape, dirt roads branching here and there, headed for others. The Wither Witch was located an hour’s walk away from one such smaller settlement, or, in flight terms, barely a trip worth talking about.

Sable had found that, with high consistency, sapient populations in...

24 - Mage Seeking

Honestly, Sable couldn’t help but feel conquering Skatikk had been too easy. Of course, she’d accomplished it through the mythically horrible reputation of dragons, and the allusion she’d already razed one major city to the ground—which Skatikk would surely be looking into for confirmation, since they seemed ignorant to it thus far—but still.

Regardless, she was pleased things had worked out without many problems. What would she have done, if they had refused? Obvious...

23 - Ending Negotiations

Chieftain Kirak, leader of the Bonecracker Tribe, the dominant authority of this portion of the Red Plains, had more wrinkles than even Elder Gneaxi. He was a standing piece of dried jerky.

He was also classed. Aylin could feel it in some unexplainable way, a source of power radiating from the wizened goblin leader. Was that something he could feel from Aylin, too? Except certainly not so potent. Chieftain Kirak, at a guess, had been classed for a long, long time. A man for whom that ma...

22 - Starting Negotiations

By the time Sable set Aylin down in the town square, people were screaming and fleeing, the city in an uproar.

Aylin observed the chaos, her mistress raising back into the air with enormous flaps of her wings, buffeting the ground and sending pebbles skirting across pavement. The forcefulness of the motion pressed down on Aylin as she stood there, faking composure, watching people scramble about in their panic. The experience was a bit surreal.

Aylin had always expected to find so...