Destroyer

We went to the penitentiary and I tucked in for the night. Early the next morning, I awoke, and Herrat was soon at my door with three palatines, decked in sabres and white tabards.

Demishah was close. Perhaps twenty minutes out of town—and I had no intention of letting her in.

The palatines, Herrat, and I ventured to the northwestern outskirts of Vish, to a plane of dry earth with sagging trees peppering the dirt road. A small silhouette was approaching on the road, from the distance.

A quick check of my tracking magic confirmed this was Demishah.

“Alright,” I breathed, crossing my hands in preparation of casting. Czjeir had emphasised the importance of dispatching Demishah immediately. Even the short seconds I spent readying myself were cutting into that ‘immediately,’ and my success.

“I’m going to cast. Three, two...” I announced for the palatines.

My hands flashed with blue light, and I fired.

Out of the clear blue sky, a bolt of lightning descended like the dive of a peregrine. It crashed down upon the distant silhouette—a direct hit.

“Alright, that’s over,” I mouthed to myself. My eyes adjusted back to the normal daylight. The silhouette was still standing, the tracking magic confirmed she was still approaching, and I recognised that the magic seemed to have... fizzled, upon contact.

I fired again. And again, and again, to no effect.

As she grew nearer, and into closer range, I swapped to blasting her with fire, and crushing her with wells of gravity—but her approach continued unimpeded. She had grown close enough now that I could make out the airy scarf draped around her, and the dark hue of her skin, and that she held an object in her right hand.

“If you’ll mind my speaking, Bishop Sharvara, this combatant appears immune to your magic,” one of the palatines said, hand tracing the hilt of his sabre. “I advise that we engage the target while you retreat. You are effectively unarmed in this conflict.”

But Czjeir said I needed to kill her. With this thought a thorn in my mind, battling my sense, I absently nodded.

The three palatines stepped forward. Demishah truly was close now—and now that I saw her more clearly, she was moving as fast as a cheetah. The palatines drew their sabres.

“Let us leave here, and quickly, Mephi,” said Herrat, ushering me backwards. “We must follow the road until Rikkjar. The Bishop there may cover for your deficiencies—come, hurry.”

Herrat dragged me along as I, still not in the clearest state of mind, looked over my shoulder at the palatines. Demishah had engaged them, a whirlwind of movement, swinging the weapon in her right hand—a kukri, glowing with a vicious black light. Metal clanged against metal. Even as a child fighting against fully grown men, her small size didn’t impede her at all, and she landed a cut on the arm of the first palatine. As if crushed, his whole body compressed into a smear of blood and bone on the dirt.

My eyes widened minutely. That was the gravity altering magic I had attempted to use against Demishah—

She struck the next palatine, who exploded, screaming, into flame. The third palatine engaged her with caution, parrying strike after wild strike, the onslaught unrelenting. Demishah raised her kukri high for a forceful slash—the palatine jabbed his sabre toward her exposed chest—and she brought it down. Blood sprayed from the palatine, and lightning crashed down.

It was so fast. I stumbled forth, still looking behind me, as Demishah, unhesitating, rushed for Herrat and myself. She was upon us in instants.

Desperate, I reached for the magic of the ptarmigan witch from so long ago, and summoned spears of ice out of the ground to pierce Demishah. With a single slice of her kukri, the spears melted away as if consumed and her advance proceeded with barely a second of interruption.

I ran. If I could just shapeshift, I could leap across a whole city or take to the air, but with the Church’s earring, I was limited to a mundane human pace—and not a very fast one. I felt Demishah’s presence upon me.

“Mephi!” Herrat called from ahead.

I turned on Demishah and grabbed her by the throat.

I had one second to snap her fragile, child’s neck.

In that one second, our eyes met.

And I saw into her. Her eyes were as dead and as hollow as the soul they belonged to. Demishah, poor Demishah—born unwanted, and after her father died, at eight years old, locked in an empty basement to starve. As the hours and the days ticked, with nothing to do but pace that blank room, and feel the hunger bore into her stomach, she grew weaker and weaker, until in delirium she would surely die—when she wordlessly prayed, and a miracle happened.

A power came to Demishah, alongside visions of men and women ripped apart by claws, cut and swallowed by vicious fangs, a silhouette of a hoofed creature jumping in front of the moon. It was the herald of hunger, the starved King of Witches, who heard her when Czjeir didn’t.

And his power blessed her, and her body changed. She could alter her shape to be stronger—strong enough to rip the door off its hinges, and escape that infernal basement. Her mother threw her out to the streets. She relied on charity, soon being adopted, for those years until she became old enough to truly recognise what had happened.

She was saved by the King of Witches. His activities, even now, were beautiful—hunting down wicked rapists, witches, and villains, and taking them off this earth. Demishah’s dead eyes sparked with life at the whispers, spread month by month as folktale, of the King of Witches’ exploits. She knew every story. She was a scholar. She was his acolyte. And she adored him.

Then the Church got him.

They bound him, restricted him, stopped him from feeling that holy hunger that drove him to hunt. The thread of connection between Demishah and the King of Witches frayed. She knelt and prayed in fury for answers that came to her mind swiftly. They were ruining him with domestication.

So Demishah resolved to save him, free him from his shackles, and return him to his glory. It took much negotiation with questionable sources, and much prayer, but she had the means to.

And now she would do it.

Unless I stopped her, with my hands around her neck—but in that one second, I hesitated.

With relief on her face, she plunged the kukri into my side.