The Witch's Eye

by Steven Montano

  She crossed the room. Bowls filled with figs and dried cherries sat on small ivory tables. The ochre floor was smooth, almost reflective.

  Dragon walked onto the balcony and looked out over the city. Elephants moved through the streets, driven by hard-faced merchants in pale funerary garb. The men wore long and wicked scimitars on their backs and carried rifles in hand. They carefully watched the crowd, wary of those who might hold interest in the massive boxes tied to the backs of the great armored beasts.

  Dragon was surprised at the lengths people went to in order to protect their material belongings. She felt like personal possessions had once meant something to her, but it was hard to remember. She wanted for nothing now. The man who’d been waiting for her when she’d first arrived at the city, Lynch, gave her everything she needed. He and his servants provided her with lavish quarters, exotic baths, and clothing that cost more than most people could make in a year.

  And he’d given her the weapons. Necroblades. They could sever a mage’s spirit and cast it adrift, make so it could never return. The weapons were incredibly rare, and when Dragon looked at them she was transfixed by their midnight beauty, by the frozen fog that seemed to swirl within the layers of hammered steel. They were the perfect tools for carrying out her duties in Lorn.

  Wind swept through the apartment. The sleeves of her dress lifted in the breeze and exposed an arm made of animated steel. Her flesh was raw where the metal joined with her scapula, but the union was seamless. She felt nothing in the arm, and yet had full control over it.

  She felt the stirrings of power within the bloodsteel. A captive spirit thrashed uselessly against the walls of its prison. Dragon felt no pity for the spirit. She didn’t feel anything.

  Down on the street below, some passerby ventured too close to the train of elephants and angered the merchant-soldiers. Blades were drawn, and blood was spilled. In Lorn, it never took long for the knives to come out.

  The first thing she remembered was coming to the city.

  She was alone and on foot. Her vision came into focus outside Lorn’s crenellated white walls. The settlement stood at the edge of the pale wastes called the Grim Lands. The milk-drop sun was cold and white in the cloudless sky, and a low bank of dead fog crawled across the shattered ground.

  She turned around in a circle. She was dressed in sandy leather armor and carried a rifle. Her face was covered with a cowl, and her tall boots had the comfort of something she’d worn for a very long time. She was tired from the walk, but she was neither hungry nor thirsty. The canteen at her side was full.

  Cold wind stung her eyes. The air smelled stale and cold, like sour ice. Her fingerless gloves showed nails that had seen their share of work.

  Who am I?

  Lorn stood quiet. She wasn’t sure how she knew the city’s name. Flags whipped in the breeze. The dark stone gates stood closed. A long road led off behind her to the obscurity of the fog-wreathed wilderness.

  A heavy bell tolled somewhere within the city walls.

  She’d never been to Lorn, had never even walked in the region before. Few entered the Grim Lands: it was an inhospitable and lifeless waste filled with shallow bogs and twisted trees. Roving undead walked those pale lands, and if they didn’t kill you, the Ebon Cities patrols would.

  She tasted salt on the wind. There was singing inside the city, some holy chant or dirge. Everything felt unreal, like she’d just woken up.

  Lacking any other options, she carefully approached the city. She wore a piece of bizarre armor on her right arm, a carapace shell through which she felt nothing. It rendered her numb, and she was confused until she realized – until she remembered – that the metal was her arm, that it had recently been set there to replace her flesh and bone.

  She felt the presence of an arcane spirit in the limb. She was a mage, and clearly a dangerous one, for she felt the anger and power of that spirit, his pure and visceral desperation to be free. He struggled to escape, but she knew she couldn’t let him. He could only be released in controlled bursts of carefully shaped energies, and he couldn’t be allowed out on his own. Instinct told her that would be dangerous, that he would try to fight against her.

  Was I exiled here? she wondered. She must have been a dangerous outcast, banished from wherever she’d lived before and sent to this dreary outpost at the edge of nowhere to serve out a sentence in anonymity. Perhaps they’d wiped her memory clean so she could never find her way back.

  She stood and shivered in the wind. She knew she was trapped. If the situation weren’t so preposterous she’d have laughed…but it wasn’t preposterous, it was happening.

  Her memories were gon, but basic knowledge and her instincts remained. She knew how to fight. She knew she could carve most opponents apart with a sword, and that if she properly focused and channeled the spirit trapped in her steel arm the effects were devastating.

  She knew she had a questionable past. She had little doubt that her current situation was a result of some malfeasance she’d been involved with.

  Of course, if someone used magic to wipe my memory, they could have planted thoughts there.

  Part of her was tempted not to play along – to just turn around and wander back into the wilderness – but she had no supplies aside from her clothing, her armor and her weapon. The jagged hills and twisted bogs of the Grim Lands stretched to the horizon. She was in vampire territory, and wouldn’t last long on her own.

  Reluctantly, the woman without a name walked up to the city gates. The walls were bone white, scarred and pitted by burns, claw-marks and projectiles. A corbelled watchtower stood over the frosted and rune-covered gates. They swung wide as she approached.

  Vampires waited inside. Her heart froze.

  There were two of them, and they stared at her from within the folds of their heavy black cloaks. Their malevolent pale faces seemed frozen, and their taloned hands hovered near the hilts of serrated blades. A cluster of unarmed humans stood behind them, and she understood she’d been brought to an armistice city, a human settlement that had surrendered itself to vampire authority. She saw tightly packed buildings on pale lanes. Deep shadows loomed from every doorway and window. People moved cautiously, afraid to disturb the near silence.

  She stepped forward. Neither of the vampires made any move to intercept her. They stood back and watched her with large eyes like ebon mirrors that reflected the image of her frightened face and grimy hair.

  Her fingers tensed, and the spirit in her arm screamed and pounded against its arcane prison like an animal in a cage, but she kept her pace steady and her breaths slow. Tension shot up her back as she passed between the undead and entered the city.

  A human man stepped out of the shadows and approached her. He was tall and lean, and his face was marred by slash marks and burns. He, too, wore a heavy black cloak.

  Her spirit writhed and wailed in the metal arm. She ignored him.

  The man stopped, and smiled. She stared back at him.

  “My name is Lynch,” he said. “Welcome to Lorn.”

  She stood at the edge of her chambers and looked out over the balcony. She smelled fruit and tobacco in the dry wind. Her eyes went beyond the walls to the wasteland of salt marshes, ice waters and frost boils. The apartment sat over a market, and she saw fish vendors and dried goods merchants, knife sellers and weapons dealers, slave traders and mercenaries. Everything was for sale in Lorn. Razorwings sat on the city walls with their tails curled around the watchtowers. Vampire warships left grey fumes in their wake as they flew low over the city. The air grew darker as the morning wore long.

  She needed to prepare herself. Lynch had told her she’d be needed.

  Tailor-made armor hung in the tall wardrobe behind the silks dresses and other clothes she didn’t need. The armor was purple and black, tight-cut and form-fitting, something a man wanted to see her in.

  The notion of being found attractive by a man did nothing for her, nothing at all. She knew she didn’t like men and i
nstead preferred women, and she also knew that hadn’t always been the case, that something had happened to make her that way, some event from her childhood, but she couldn’t remember what.

  The more she tried to recall who she was and where she’d come from the more distant it all became. Her mind was foggy and distant. She felt like she’d just woken up, only the feeling never went away.

  Her skin was cold as she donned the armor and laced the straps tight. Once the shoulder-plates were in place she slipped on her tall boots and positioned the black katars in the sheaths on her back.

  Her metal arm wasn’t covered, and it shone in the failing light. She tensed her fist, trying to push feeling into it, but there was none. The spirit contained in the bloodsteel struggled, but the fight seemed to have gone out of him. He knew she wouldn’t release him until she was ready, and even then it would only be briefly. The arcane device granted her absolute control over him, more control than any other mage had everhad over their spirit.

  She wondered how that had happened, wondered who’d made her that way, and why. Sometimes she had vivid flashes, memories of pain and fear. An underground prison. A loved one dying in her arms.

  She looked at herself in the mirror. She had to admit she was beautiful, and though the armor was cut too tight to ever be practical she still appreciated the effect. Her short blonde hair looked strange on her, she thought…somehow wrong. She sensed that many aspects of her appearance had been changed. Her left cheek bore a trace scar, something like a teardrop made of blood. Her eyes were cold and vacant.

  I don’t know you, she thought to her reflection. And I’m not sure I want to.

  She was ready.

  Lynch was her handler. He kept her safe and made sure she had every amenity, and he passed down the orders given by his vampire superiors. The notion of not doing what he said seemed preposterous. She never questioned him, even though some instinct told her she should.

  Lynch had set her up in what used to be a hotel. She was the building’s only occupant apart from the slaves and guards who tended to her. With the exception of her own lavish quarters, the rest of the hotel was filled with rubble-strewn halls, cracked plaster, broken doors and shattered chandeliers. The place looked ancient and smelled of rotting wood and mold. Only dim illumination filtered in through the boarded-up windows.

  Lynch waited for her at the bottom of the stairs. Lean and dressed all in black, he looked more a shadow than a man.

  “Good morning,” Lynch smiled.

  “Good morning.”

  “Are you ready?”

  She didn’t reply, but walked towards the door. She felt Lynch’s eyes on her as he followed her out into the street.

  The air in Lorn was bitter, stale and grey. A steel fog hovered over the city. Hawkers shouted out, promising the best knives, cloaks and cuts of boar meat. Tobacco smoke filled the air. Throngs of people pushed past one another, many of them leading monkeys, camels and goats.

  The crowds parted before her. They knew who she was, and what she did. No one was going to stand in her way.

  Vampire sentries stood along the parapets near the barbican. Blades pointed upwards from the top of the dark structure. The undead watched impassively, their lips pulled back to reveal wide fangs, their smoking hand-cannons held ready. Dark hair and dark armor glistened with blood dew and thaumaturgic sparks. Cold steam curled off the walls and revealed the wolf visage of the Ebon Cities on the stone.

  The last stretch of road ran directly beneath the barbican, and the tunnel to the outer doors was long and dark. Dank moisture dripped down and gathered in fetid pools. The pale Raza, mercenary witch-monks with a penchant for cruelty, floated in the dark like burning knives.

  She walked on, ignoring them. She’d already done this many times. The crowd murmured behind her. She smelled the city’s sweat. The air grew freezing as she drew close to the gates. Light spilled through the crack at the bottom of the stone doors.

  She heard ravenous growls on the other side, and the presence of corrupted spirits chilled her blood. Dragon stood before the doors and waited. Her mind was distant. Tension ran down her limbs as her body prepared for the coming battle.

  The bolt across the gates was drawn back by a complicated mechanism, a series of shifting gears and cranks that echoed noisily in the still air. It took exactly eight seconds for the doors to slide open, and in that space of time Dragon called up her spirit. His acrid scent burned in her nostrils. His whispers filled her mind, pleaded with her, begged her to pull back from this moment, but she rendered him silent and focused him into a hardened shield of translucent force which she raised around her body as the pale wasteland came into view.

  The Witchborn waited for her. It snarled as she approached. The gates slowly shut behind her.

  Dragon knew the vampires watched her from the city walls, as did Lorn’s citizens. They always amassed to witness the spectacle. She had the sense she’d done something like this before in some far off place: committed acts of violence for the entertainment of others. But that had been in her previous life. The life that was lost to her.

  This was no spectacle. The Witchborn threatened the city, and not even the vampires were willing to deal with it for fear of exposure to the disease it carried.

  The sun was frozen behind spectral clouds. The white wastes north of Lorn were littered with steam vents, and thick gunpowder mist rolled across the hills. Sulfur and copper blew in from the east.

  The Witchborn knelt low in the smoke. Hunger had brought it to Lorn, where it detected the scent of vampire flesh. It had been a vampire itself once, but something had soiled its dark blood and corrupted it. Its fangs dripped venom and its tongue was capped with spines. The Witchborn stood naked on the plain, its dark skin ridged with bone spurs and blisters. Its voice was raspy and deep, but it could no longer form words, as its new and remorseless appetite had destroyed all capacity for reason.

  This was why Lynch had brought her to Lorn. As the human liaison to the vampire authority of the city, it was his duty to aid the undead rulers. In this case that meant protecting them from a creature that could do them serious harm.

  Dragon drew her blades and stepped forward. Her spirit floated inches away from her body as a hot shield. She knew it hadn’t always been possible for her to hold him in that form for so long. She gave no thought to the pain she caused him.

  The Witchborn leapt forward. Black claws raked the shield, and ebon sparks fell to the ground. Her spirit buckled beneath the monstrous onslaught.

  Dragon unleashed her spirit in a blast of acid frost. Spirit collided against spirit. The Witchborn was possessed by an infected soul that infused its body like a ghost pilot.

  The air peeled with explosive pressure. Dragon smelled flame and rot, and she tasted the foul aroma of dead magic. The spirits twisted in spirals of green fire. Heat washed over her. The metal arm hummed and pained her flesh where it joined the steel.

  Her spirit’s reserve of power faded. He was being overwhelmed. She had to strike quickly.

  Dragon twisted her body and ducked beneath claws aimed at her throat. She hissed as razor nails tore across her back and blood ran down her skin.

  She turned one of her Necroblades sideways and sank it into the Witchborn’s ribs. Animal howls filled her ears. She held the blade tight with her supernaturally strong bloodsteel arm.

  The vampire’s claws sank into her side. Blinded with pain, she released her grip on the embedded blade and elbowed the Witchborn in the face. Fangs snapped and black blood splashed on her armor.

  Talons snapped free but remained lodged in her skin. The soiled spirit howled deep within its vampire slave as she cleaved through the creature’s skull with the second Necroblade. Pale eyes went dark as she severed the bonds that kept the spirit tethered to its host body.

  The weapons had been designed to sever a mage from their spirit. They were also the only thing guaranteed to kill the Witchborn. Arcane tendons snapped as hex energies burned away. Nec
rotic waste gushed from the seams.

  An image flashed before her eyes. The malformed ghost was twisted and covered in boils and puss. It plummeted from a pale sky towards a forest filled with dead trees, where it was consumed by ravenous black unicorns. Its moans faded into darkness, and her vision returned.

  The body collapsed. Black blood ran like oil. Cold steam poured from the mutilated corpse. Dragon stood still and silent as her captive spirit wove her damaged flesh back together. It was a painful process, but she gritted her teeth and waited for it to be over.

  The vampires and captive citizens of Lorn were silent behind her. They’d seen this all before. This was the sixth Witchborn to show up at the city gates in just the past week.

  Dragon slowly walked away. Dark smoke billowed from the Witchborn’s body as it fell in on itself like a grisly sinkhole. Skin blistered and crackled like burning grease.

  She walked back to the city gates, where the Raza sisters watched her with disdain. Lynch stood there, beaming with pride.

  “Well done,” he clapped. “Well done.”

  All of the way back to her apartment her captive spirit mended her wounds and tried to convince her to release him before she forced his vaporous essence back into the steel prison. His screams reverberated through her head as she locked him away.

  “This is a wondrous city,” Lynch said as they walked. “We are lucky to have you. I am so grateful you were delivered to us. You are invaluable to the vampires, you know.”

  “I’m supposed to be somewhere else,” she said. She wasn’t sure why she’d said it. The words came without her really being aware of them.

  Lynch stopped and took hold of both her shoulders with his calloused hands. He looked her in the eye.