Origin Witch - Ambush at the Trunk
Crack.
The sound came from forty yards below, faint enough to mistake for a beetle on the bark. Corinne drifted back from the open glass doors, one hand already on the Carver.
Beside her knee, Steelwool was fast asleep inside its wool scarf nest, its round steel-gray body rising and falling in a quiet, rhythmic pulse.
Crack.
The sound was tiny, hardly louder than a dry beetle snapping a pine needle fifty feet away in the underbrush.
Corinne’s eyes left the screen. Her thumb froze against her notebook page.
Steelwool’s round, fluffy head instantly popped out of the wool scarf. Its honey-colored eyes opened wide in the dark, and its head rotated a full hundred and eighty degrees to the left, staring straight down through the wooden balcony floorboards into the black abyss below the tree.
Corinne did not make a sound. She did not turn on her magic lantern.
She slid her Spectacles of Discernment down her nose, leaned her chest over the vine railing, and looked straight down into the shadow of The Spire’s colossal oak trunk.
Down at the base of the tree, forty yards below, three figures were crouching inside the deep, mossy hollow between two massive roots.
Through her spectacled lenses, three pale blue text boxes hovered over the dark shapes:
[Human Transfer: Knife-Face (Level 3)] – Weapon: Iron Hatchet / Grappling Hook [Human Transfer: Lanky Thief (Level 2)] – Weapon: Wooden Crossbow [Human Transfer: Scabby Red (Level 3)] – Weapon: Iron Crowbar
Corinne’s left hand closed into a tight, silent fist against her tunic sleeve.
She knew those two.
Knife-Face with his jagged white cheek scar, and Lanky with his twitchy denim jacket, the two scum who had kicked the latch off her slum shack back in Sector 9 three days before the transfer, spitting on her floor while she lay dying on a pipe-frame cot.
They had found her tree.
“You sure this is the spot, Lanky?” Knife-Face’s low, raspy whisper drifted up through the quiet leaves, heavy with stale beer stink and phlegm. “It’s just a damn oak tree.”
“Told you, Knife!” Lanky’s nervous, high-pitched voice twitched back from the darkness. “Look at the branches thirty yards up! See that wooden porch sticking out? That photo Zhao Dulai posted of the ‘Green Wraith’ was taken right near this ridge! That white-skirted bitch is living up there in a three-story wooden palace!”
“Keep your mouth shut, both of you,” the third man, Scabby Red, grunted, tapping an iron crowbar against his palm. “We know she’s a cripple. She can’t walk, she can’t run, and she’s sitting on hundreds of red and blue potion vials. We get up that porch, choke her out before she can scream, and this whole tower is ours.”
“What about her floating spell?” Lanky stammered, pulling an oak crossbow tight against his chest. “What if she flies down?”
“Flies down?” Knife-Face let out a quiet, filthy snort, spitting a glob of phlegm into the ferns. “She’s a paralyzed girl in a nightgown, Lanky. You put one iron bolt through her neck while she’s hanging up there, and she drops like a dead sack of grain. Now uncoil the grappling rope.”
Up on the third-floor balcony, Corinne hung suspended in the night air, her face completely hidden in the dark shadows of the vine overhang.
She did not feel panic. She did not feel her heart hammering against her ribs like it had when the timber wolves chased her on Day One.
She felt a cold, crystal-clear stillness, a sharp, icy quiet that settled into her bones like frozen spring water.
Not so long ago, people like Knife-Face had looked at her paralyzed legs and seen a broken doll they could rob, dump in a drainage ditch, and leave to rot in the dark. Three days ago, they had walked into her room, looked at her bleeding face, and called her worthless meat.
And now they were standing under her tree, holding grappling hooks and iron crowbars, planning to climb up her vines, choke her out on her own floorboards, and steal her cauldrons.
“Still looking down,” Corinne whispered to the cold wind, her voice so faint it did not even wake the sleeping owl chick beside her.
She reached into her Pouch of Preservation.
Her muddy fingers bypassed her health vials. They bypassed her mana vials.
They closed around two round, yellow glass throw-tubes sitting in the padded leather loops:
[Grade-E Offense Potion: Corrosive Slowness Decoction] [Grade-E Offense Potion: Crude Explosive Charge]
She did not yell a warning. She did not ask them to leave. She did not demand an explanation.
She leaned her torso three feet out over the balcony railing, holding the yellow glass vial containing her Crude Explosive Charge between her thumb and forefinger, directly over the dark root hollow where the three men were crouching.
She opened her fingers.
The round yellow glass tube dropped silently into the dark abyss.
It took two seconds to fall forty yards.
Down in the dark root hollow, Knife-Face was just knotting the iron grappling hook around his hemp rope when a tiny, pale yellow glare caught his eye from above.
“What the-“
The charge detonated with a flat, concussive crack.
A blinding, sulfurous orange flash erupted in the narrow space between the two giant roots, accompanied by a deafening, concussive roar that shook the heavy oak bark.
The thirty-point instant kinetic shockwave hit the three men at point-blank range inside the enclosed root hollow.
A second blast punched the air.
The iron crowbar flew out of Scabby Red’s hands, shattering against the tree bark. Lanky was slammed sideways into the granite root, his wooden crossbow snapping in two as his chest hit the hard timber.
Knife-Face was thrown flat onto his back in the dirt, his legs mangled by the blast, his clothes burning with bright, oily yellow flames from the volatile sulfur residue.
“AAAGH! MY LEGS! MY LEGS!” Knife-Face’s frantic, blood-curdling screams tore through the quiet night forest, echoing off the high canopy. “MY LEGS ARE GONE! LANKY! HELP ME!”
“FIRE! IT’S FIRE!” Lanky shrieked, crawling frantically backward through the dirt on his elbows, his face covered in dark soot and blood. “SHE’S ABOVE US! SHE’S IN THE TREES!”
Corinne leaned over the balcony railing, her black frames reflecting the yellow fire burning forty yards below.
Her face was completely emotionless.
She pulled the second round yellow vial from her bag, the Corrosive Slowness Decoction.
She leaned out over the edge, adjusted her aim by two inches, and released her grip.
The glass tube plunged through the smoke.
Wet flesh met hot iron with a wet, tearing rip.
The vial shattered against the stone root right between Knife-Face and Lanky.
A thick, mustard-yellow cloud of acidic mist erupted outward, adhering instantly to their clothes, skin, and open wounds.
Knife-Face’s screams dropped an octave, turning into a muffled, wet gurgle as his Agility dropped by 3 Points instantly. His legs felt like lead weights. His hands twitched uselessly against the muddy earth, unable to drag his burning torso even an inch through the burning ferns.
“Please,” Lanky gasped, his vision swimming as the acidic yellow smoke filled his throat, burning his lungs. “Please… don’t… we didn’t know…”
Corinne did not speak.
She slid her Moonstone Carver from her belt, held it in her right hand, and activated Zephyr Float.
Her body lifted off the balcony floorboards. She plunged straight down through the dark gap between the branches, her white cotton dress billowing in the night wind, her dead legs hanging limply beneath her in their loose shape.
She dropped silently into the burning clearing, hovering three feet above the smoking mud, her transparent crystal blade glinting under the yellow flames.
Knife-Face lay on his back in the dirt, his eyes wide with pure, unadulterated horror as he stared up at the white-dressed figure hovering over his chest in the dark.
Through the yellow smoke, he saw her face. Pale, cold, framed by messy black hair, her eyes icy and clear behind her black frames.
“You,” Knife-Face gurgled, blood trickling from his mouth. “The girl from the shack.”
Corinne did not answer him.
She raised her Moonstone Carver, her Strength +30 enchantment making her right arm move with effortless, lethal speed.
Her Strength +30 enchantment drove the Moonstone Carver in a single slash, the crystal blade cutting through the yellow smoke, through the night air, and through the dark.
Ten seconds later, the fire in the root hollow died down to a dull, smoking ember.
Corinne hovered beside the three motionless shapes in the dirt. Her white cotton dress was clean, untouched by the fire or the mud.
She reached down, picked up Lanky’s dropped wooden crossbow from the ferns, the iron trigger mechanism still intact, and slid twelve sharp iron bolts into her spatial bag.
She did not look at Knife-Face’s face again.
She pushed off the bloody oak root with her palm, rising smoothly into the night sky, flying higher and higher until the dark ground vanished beneath her, returning to the high, quiet balcony of The Spire.
She landed on the balcony floorboards with a soft tap of her palm against the wood, killed the lantern glow with one tap, and latched the glass door shut behind her. The night’s work was done, and the cauldrons would need their morning run.
The gray mist that morning smelled of cold copper and scorched leather.
Dawn arrived not with sunlight, but with a greasy gray mist that hung in the broad oak branches like wet wool. Down in the hollow root cavity thirty yards below the Spire’s third-floor balcony, the air smelled of cold copper, wet dirt, and the sharp, vinegar-like stink of scorched leather. Three bodies lay piled together in the mud, tangled in the heavy, mossy roots like discarded rags. Knife-Face lay on his back, his jaw open to the fog, a dark, frozen pool of blood spreading from the base of his neck where the crystal blade of the Moonstone Carver had severed his throat. Beside him, Lanky Thief’s eyes were wide and glazed, reflecting the dull gray sky above, his hands still hooked into the mud as if he were trying to drag his shattered legs away from something that had already caught him.
Corinne hung suspended in the air three feet above the bloody leaves, her dead legs dangling beneath her dark tunic in their loose, familiar shape. She did not touch the ground. The heels of her bare feet hovered inches above a pool of yellow, acidic slime that was still sizzling softly against the granite root.
Her hands were steady, but her breath came in short, visible puffs that turned white in the morning chill.
She stared down at Knife-Face’s open eyes.
Five years ago, back in the hospital ward, she had dreamed about what she would do if she ever saw the drunk driver or her aunt’s family again. In those middle-of-the-night fantasies, she had shouted at them. She had demanded answers. She had wanted them to see her the wheelchair, to feel the crushing weight of what they had taken from her. But hovering here over Knife-Face, the man who had spat on her floor three days before the transfer and called her worthless meat, she felt nothing like anger.
There was no grand realization. No surge of dark triumph. Just a cold, heavy silence in her chest, as flat and unyielding as the granite stone under her tree.
She reached into her Pouch of Preservation.
Her fingers closed around a round, yellow glass throw-vial. Through her Spectacles of Discernment, the blue-tinted text box hovered over the glass:
[Grade-E Offense Potion: Flame Potion] [Type: Volatile Incendiary Decoction] [Effect: Explodes into a 4-meter pool of sticky, high-temperature thermal fire upon impact. Burns at 800°C for 45 seconds.]
If Mickey Callahan’s trackers came looking for Knife-Face and Lanky, they would find the yellow chemical burns. They would see the precise, razor-sharp cuts made by a crystal blade. They would trace the shattered glass vials and the acid marks right back to the base of this massive oak trunk. A trail of blood in Sector 666 was an invitation, and Corinne had no intention of hosting visitors.
She pulled the cork stopper with her teeth, spat it into the mud, and flipped the glass tube upside down over the root hollow.
Shatter.
The vial hit Knife-Face’s leather vest and broke.
Instantly, an aggressive, roaring orange flame erupted in the narrow space between the roots. It was not a normal wood fire. The volatile sulfur dust and Fire-Bell sap inside the decoction clung to the clothes, the skin, and the fat like liquid tar, burning with a harsh, white-hot intensity that made the damp air pop and hiss.
The heat washed up over Corinne’s face, drying the cold mist on her cheeks in a fraction of a second.
She hovered in mid-air, unblinking behind her spectacles, watching the fire eat.
The smell changed fast. The metallic copper stink of fresh blood was replaced by the sickening, heavy stench of burning hair, scorched cotton, and rendered fat. It was a smell from an incinerator, thick, oily, and heavy enough to settle on the back of her tongue.
Corinne did not look away. She kept her eyes fixed on the flames as they consumed Knife-Face’s cheek scar, his leather vest, and the broken wooden crossbow lying in the mud beside Lanky’s hand.
Back on Earth, when her parents died in the crash, the funeral home had given her two small copper urns filled with gray ash. Everything had been clean. The mortician had worn a dark suit, played soft organ music over hidden speakers, and handed her a box wrapped in velvet. It was polite. It was sanitized. It hid the brutal, messy reality of what fire actually did to bone and muscle.
Out here, there was no velvet box. No organ music. Just the loud, wet crackle of burning fat and the smell of sulfur in her nose.
This is what I am now, she thought, her fingers tightening around the hilt of the Moonstone Carver at her waist. I’m not the girl in the hospital bed waiting for the nurse to bring a plastic cup of water. I’m the witch in the tree who burns the bodies.
The words settled in her chest the way a stone drops into still water. For the first time, she noticed the shape of them did not point at power. They pointed at the corpses. At the quiet, smoking pile in the roots beneath her, at the men who had spat on her and the men who would come after. The line was starting to mean more than a joke she told the fog. It was naming what she had already become, and the part of her that registered it felt no flinch, only a flat, cold recognition, like reading a line in a ledger that had been true for a long time.
She stayed suspended over the root hollow for forty-five seconds until the yellow flames died down to a low, blue flicker.
Where three men had been crouching with grappling hooks an hour ago, there was now only a shallow pit of black, glowing carbon and crumbling white bone fragments. The intense heat had scorched the granite root black, turning the green moss into dry ash that blew away in the morning wind.
Corinne pulled a small, five-milliliter vial of clean Anseic Water from her pouch and poured it over the black embers.
The cauldron sighed out a long, cooling hiss.
A thin plume of white steam rose into the gray mist, carrying the last traces of the stench up into the high canopy.
She used her Zephyr Float talent to create a small, localized swirl of air with her hands, fanning the ash across the mud until it mixed with the wet leaf-mold, completely erasing the shapes in the hollow.
No tracks. No faces. No evidence.
Satisfied, she pushed off the scorched root with her palm and rose forty yards straight up into the fog, returning to the quiet, high terrace of the Spire.
Up on the third floor, Steelwool was waiting for her beside the glass sliding door. The owl chick let out a raspy click-click with its beak, its honey-colored eyes wide as it sniffed her dress, smelling the smoke clinging to the cotton fibers.
“I’m fine, bird,” Corinne muttered, unbuckling her spatial bag and dropping it onto the wooden floorboards.
She went straight into her bathroom, turned on the copper tap connected to her S-Rank Anvil of Repose, and let the warm, forty-degree spring water wash the soot from her cheeks and arms. She scrubbed her skin until it turned red, using a bar of lye soap to get rid of the lingering smell of burned sulfur.
When she stepped out, she changed into a fresh, dark gray linen tunic, settled at her Magic Desk, and opened her private channel with Jasper Finch.
The desk screen was glowing with blue text.
[Jasper Finch]: The morning collection cycle just finished. My haulers cleared 400 lbs of Bitter-Grass and 300 lbs of Yellow-Tail from the southern ridge. The creek ford is open.
[Corinne]: Garrett Thorne cleared it?
[Jasper Finch]: He didn’t just clear it. He drove three iron pikes into the mud on the southern bank and hung Marnell’s squad banner from a tree branch. Mickey Callahan’s boys haven’t come within half a mile of the water since dawn.
[Corinne]: Good. Tell Piper Bell to send up fifty pounds of fresh herbs by noon. I’m starting a new batch of health potions.
[Jasper Finch]: Also, there’s a rumor floating through the southern camps.
[Corinne]: What rumor?
[Jasper Finch]: Three of Knife-Face’s old crew members went missing last night. They told people they were going north to find a ‘rich tree.’ Nobody’s seen them since. Some of the outcasts are saying the Green Wraith ate them.
Corinne picked up a dry wooden spoon from her desk, turning it over in her palm.
[Corinne]: Rumors are good for business, Finch. It keeps people from wandering off the paths.
[Jasper Finch]: You’re a cold woman, Corinne.
[Corinne]: I’m a busy woman. Send the herbs.
She closed the thread, picked up her leather-bound copy of Basic Mana Circuitry, and leaned back against her mattress. Outside the glass balcony, the gray mist was beginning to burn off under the morning sun, revealing the vast, endless ocean of green treetops stretching away toward the horizon.
Deep down in her gut, the low, steady heat of her Witch-blood pulsed softly. A quiet, burning ember that refused to go out.
— Origin Witch —