Hekate is dead.
Adreanna focused, directing her will into herself, grasping at the visions of the gates that had allowed her to channel the power of the Goddess. Nothing.
Where once there was light and warmth, now lay nothing but a void, forged with death.
The death of Hekate, the Divine Queen of the Witches.
A Dead Queen.
Somewhere within the darkness of the void, even the shadows mourned the loss of their Dark Mother. Around her, nature wept. Flowers wilted, and the stench of rot filled the air. The leaves adorning the oaks fell apart, scattered in a storm of misery.
Thunder roared, and demonic lightning tore the sky as clouds converged in a writhing mass. Rain battered Adreanna as she traversed the forest, once a place of warmth.
Now a place of death.
She ran, running faster than she ever thought possible. Brambles whipped into her skin, creating stinging lacerations. Dead leaves were crushed beneath her legs as she fled whatever eldritch darkness followed.
Thunder roared as if presaging some imminent threat.
She sensed it, just behind the trees. It hid behind every corner, watching, observing, waiting for just the right moment. Watching with amusement as she tried in vain to escape what could not be escaped. Her vision darkened, her lungs begged for air.
Sometimes, she caught it, hiding in the corner of her sight, cloaked by shadow. She could not outrun it. It was hopeless. Yet she ran until finally, her cottage home had appeared. Her parents had been gone all day, yet surely they would be back by now?
Thunder shrieked even louder. It was getting closer. If her parents were not there...
Mother!
Hope thrummed in her veins. They were here, they could protect her.
All these thoughts came to a stop when she realized her father was not among them.
"Adreanna!" Her mother's face contorted in rage. Blood covered her clothes.
Where had they been?
"Mother, where were you? What's happening-"
She cut her off.
"Hekate's dead. The worshipers flooded the streets, searching for us. Your father and I, we tried to fight them off. But their power, it was unlike anything we'd seen before. They were stronger. Your father..."
She looked away, her anger turning into pain.
Adreanna never particularly liked magical history. She spent her mind more on magic itself, or intimate fantasies involving other men and women from the neighboring village. But the threat worshipers posed to witches had been hammered into her.
The worshipers were those who venerated the other gods. Some were benign, of course, and witches had no quarrel with them. The trouble came when you put the others into the mix, many of whom despised witches.
Hekate kept them in check, and without her protection, they were free to kill, destroy, and enslave the witches with impunity. They would lose any freedom they had, destroyed by the ravenous hunger of insatiable gods.
The thunder shrieked, unholy lightning filling the black skies.
"What about Will? Where is he?!"
William Moonshadow was her best friend, a fellow witch. He was an orphan, taken in by her father. The last she had heard of him, he had been selling his wares at the local bazaar.
"He's dead. He tried to help us, not that it did him much good. Listen to me, you hear? If you, Hekate forbid, get discovered, not even try to fight them."
She thrust a black bag into her hands.
"You have to run, now.."
"I'm not leaving you-"
That was when she noticed Alice's teeth. Two of them were missing, and the rest were badly rotten. Like something from a nightmare.
Witches could survive for centuries, their flesh sustained beyond mortal lifespans by their magic. But much of Alice and Samuel's power had come from Hekate. Time was catching up with them.
"I'll only slow you down. Find Yggdrasill, the Tree of Worlds. It is the only way you can survive. Go!"
Adreanna turned to run.
Her mother screamed as darkness swallowed her whole.
It was in that same darkness that she awoke; the color sucked from the world. The grass was dull, the vibrant green nearly faded. Where once there had been a cottage, now was nothing more than a building, hollow and devoid of life. Stripped of all that made it home.
Only a few steps away, her mother's corpse lay butchered beyond recognition. Some dark thing gnawed at her bones.
She stared at it. She felt numb, as if the world around her was but a fragile illusion. Ready to shatter any second.
Had her mother used some kind of invisibility to hide her? Invisibility spells worked by bending light into a very special pattern. To move would break that pattern, revealing herself.
In another world, a kind world, she would have stayed put.
But this wasn't a kind world.
She stood up, staring at the monstrosity that had so eagerly destroyed her life. She felt dull; her steps shook.
The moon was red. A monstrous and bloated thing, its staring face covered in blood. It watched every step she took. The sky was black, and the stars had all died. She could still hear the screaming of thunder in the distance.
Soon, the monster left, smiling widely at her with its grotesque teeth, leaving her to bury the little remains of her mother. By now, her father's corpse would have been burnt at the stake.
But she tried her best, marking the grave with a sign scrawled in the dirt.
She grabbed her black bag, wondering what she would do. What could she do?
I have to find Yggdrasill.
Yggdrasill was a portal that spanned throughout the multiverse, linking all the worlds together. But she never found it, and as centuries passed, forgot about it entirely. Convinced herself that it was all folklore.
But she knew she had to live through this. To honor the sacrifices of everyone who had died for her. And most of all, for herself. To find whatever scraps of life she could in this eternal death.
I am Adreanna Lucian, and I will survive this.
Whatever it takes.
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