Sunset ^beta

The Wasteland Witch roames the wastes alone.

If you leave a blue paper flower just outside the lights, the Wasteland Witch will bring you some food in exchange.

I heard the Wasteland Witch has hair of pure gold that can heal any ailment with a single strand.

One time I saw the Wasteland Witch emerge from a crypt like a revenant!

The Wasteland Witch definitely eats daemons for breakfast. My grandmother told me.

The Wasteland Witch was a folktale. Every time Crowe visited the outposts, the tales of the Witch got taller and taller. If she were real, Crowe would have seen her by now. Few spend as much time in the field as her. Yet, here she was, on a mission to track down the very same bitch. Crowe suspected Monica wanted her out of town to let off some steam after the last barfight.

Crowe marked down another Witch sighting as she idled under a streetlight. She raised an eyebrow at the map, noting that a pattern was starting to emerge. Maybe the Witch was a newly emerged lich. They were more common now than before the long night. She leaned on her handlebars, mulling it over.

If there was any truth in these sightings, then the Wasteland Witch was headed for Lestallum. The route was meandering, but the rough trajectory was clear. Crowe decided to try to get ahead of the Witch and wait. She put her bike in gear and sped as fast as she dared to go. There were few lights on the backroads. Crowe was well equipped, but she wasn’t reckless either as a lone soldier the dark. The extra lights she added to her bike did little to deter the daemons anymore.

She drove a couple of hours before deciding to rest for a while at an unoccupied haven. Crowe didn’t bother to put up her tent, and instead stretched out on her bedroll in the open. Looking at the starless sky gave her a strange feeling of vertigo, like the ground and the sky had switched places and she was falling. Only the cool glow of the haven’s runes kept her grounded in reality.

Crowe thought about the rumor she had heard the day before about how the Wasteland Witch had golden hair with healing effects. Could be that someone transposed phoenix feathers onto a story about the Witch, but it also fit with some oral histories of the Oracle she’d heard as a child.

Lunafreya’s cool fingers in her hair. The tingling spark of her healing magic. Ash and fire all around.

Crowe snapped awake, unsure of when she had fallen asleep. Her ribs ached. She was sweating. Disorienting echoes bounced around the ravine where her camp lay. Fire came to her hand, hot and angry, as she tried to get her bearings.

The echoes dissipated. Probably daemons nearby. But Crowe kept her flame until the wood in the pit achieved a hearty fire for cooking.

When Crowe left the haven, she spotted a faded blue paper flower entangled in the lower branches of a dead tree. The wind ruffled it lightly in passing, and Crowe brought her lantern close to examine it. On one of the petals, written in a childlike hand: Pleas bring Tuna thanks followed by a drawing of a heart. The sight of it ran a chill up Crowe’s spine. There was no child or child’s body nearby.

Crowe shook it off, annoyed with herself for getting worked up about a paper flower. Caffeine withdrawal and daemons fighting nearby, that was all.

Along the road, Crowe stopped at a temporary outpost to get something to eat. She dumped every single flavor of sauce on her tinned sausage to mask the stale cardboard taste of the bun. As she ate, she leaned against the doorframe where she could pretend to look out over the wastes while listening to the refugees talk. The Witch came up a couple of times, including by a young child who asked if someone else took their flower because it was gone, but the Witch didn’t give them anything.

Crowe stopped mid-bite when she heard the child speak. The relief she felt wash over her was a surprise. She could easily pretend that the flower she’d seen caught in the tree was this kid’s, caught on the wind. She thought her heart had died in the sea with Lunafreya.

Crowe hit the road against as quickly as she could. Riding was the only thing that could clear her head without fail. She didn’t put on her helmet, favoring the roar of the wind and her hair whipping painfully across her face. An accident seemed like an relatively easy death; she had the opportunity to die every day fighting daemons and yet she was still here. She went through the Battle of Insomnia with her guts torn open, and yet she was still here. Like a cockroach.

At the next haven, Crowe didn’t sleep. She sat on the edge throwing rocks at daemons to piss them off. After a particularly large rock, the daemons all ran away into the gloom and disappeared. Curious, Crowe hopped down to look at where the rock had landed. She flipped it with the toe of her boot and found that it had cracked open, revealing a slight blue glow from the geode inside. It must have broken away from the haven.

Sorry, Crowe apologized silently to the Oracles of old as she put it back. How fearsome their power must have been for the havens to survive the death of their creators. Had Lunafreya been like that too? Could she command the very earth under her feet to fight against the darkness? Command the waters?

Crowe imagined what Lunafreya’s last moments must have been like, facing the raging sea alone with only a polearm and her words. The surge of water in her mind engulfed Crowe until she kicked and punched her bike fighting to get away, roaring to the sky when that wasn’t enough. The column of fire that shot out of her reached high enough that everyone within a fifty-kilometer radius must have seen.

Panting, Crowe gave herself a moment to remember where she was before getting back on her bike. If the Wasteland Witch wasn’t aware of her before, she was now.

Crowe drove until she couldn’t. The engine sputtered to a sliding halt as the last drop of gas burned out. She had an emergency gallon stowed in her gear, but she didn’t want to use it since she could see the next haven down the road. Pushing the bike was hard, but the strain of her muscles felt good, felt human.

By the time Crowe finally laid out her bedroll, every muscle in her body hurt. She put two expired electrolyte tablets in her canteen and decided not to make a fire; she could barely stomach a few salty potato chips anyway.

Rage had gotten the better of her. The column of fire, the ride, the fact that she was starting to believe in the Wasteland Witch all made Crowe feel hollowed out, unstable. Every little sound made her think she had been followed. She twitched hard when a twig cracked near the base of the haven.

Crowe picked up her map for something to concentrate on. She marked the location of the paper flower, and then the child at the outpost. Sylleblossom blue? Crowe jotted in the margin. She refused to understand. Her eyelids drooped as the adrenaline crash hit, but she stayed in the liminal space between alert and resting that she had relied on during her time fighting the Niffs.

Light entered her eyes. Crowe couldn’t tell where it was coming from, only that the glow surrounded her body, absorbing into her skin. Silky hair brushed her cheek as she felt lips press against her forehead. You’re awake, a playful voice told her.

No, I’m not, she countered.

The voice laughed. Someone has kindly made us lemonade for our journey.

That’s nice, but I was— Crowe paused for a yawn. —hoping for something a little stronger. She’d had this conversation before. But when?

The scene was all mixed up. I don’t understand why you won’t let me go with you.

Silence. Then, It’s too dangerous. You’re not fully healed.

But wasn’t she?

Crowe woke to a sound unlike anything she had heard before, a deep yawn that wanted to suck her ears in. It was more sensation than true sound. Then, the sudden roar of an Iron Giant quickly cut off and the sound was gone.

Clutching a dagger against her chest, Crowe gave herself two breaths to wake up before she started to crawl to the edge of the haven. This one was high enough that whatever was on the road below might not see her if she stayed low.

Crowe peered over the edge and couldn’t believe what she saw. Lunafreya, the dead Oracle, stood in the middle of the road. The daemon was gone. Miasma particles swirled and dissipated around her. Lunafreya was draped in a worn and shapeless dark fabric, and held a walking stick. She was barefoot. Her gleaming gold hair fell loose around her shoulders. Umbra sat at her side, tail thumping against the cracked pavement.

Lunafreya looked up, a calm smile on her face. “How wonderful to see you, Crowe,” Lunafreya said, warm and inviting as ever.

“Long time no see, my lady,” Crowe replied weakly. Her mouth was desert-dry and she felt frozen in place. The years she spent believing Lunafreya was dead, years spent grieving her, clashed with the tangible evidence of her survival. For one brief, startling moment Crowe had felt real again when Lunafreya said her name.

Crowe’s pulse was beating erratically, instincts were ringing alarm bells down her nerves. The exposed skin of Lunafreya’s legs and arms appeared grimy…but no, not dirt. Something under the skin, shifting slowly like distant galaxies the more Crowe stared at it. The most striking thing was that her eyes, once a clear blue, were now pink and bloodshot. They flashed like a cat’s in the dim glow of Crowe’s lantern.

Lunafreya lowered her eyes. She gestured to the worn clothes. “Alas, I had hoped to greet you in a nicer outfit than this in Lestallum.”

“The daemons…that was you? How?”

“The gods still have a role for me to play, it seems.” Lunafreya side-stepped the question, crouching down to scratch Umbra’s ears.

“I’ve been looking for you. Though I didn’t know it was you at first, ‘Wasteland Witch.’ I sure was surprised that the stories were true.”

“Ah, yes, the hunters’ name for me,” Lunafreya said fondly. “When I overheard them mention you by name, my breath left me, I….” She trailed off, distressed. Her eyes flashed red and she seemed to be trying to gather herself.

Crowe waited until Lunafreya took a deep breath and appeared calm again. “Yeah, me too,” she said sadly. Her heart was up in her throat.

“I am glad we found each other again.” Lunafreya had not moved to approach the haven.

“Why don’t you come up and rest for a while? We can talk about…this? Whatever this is. I missed you so much.” As she stirred up the fire, Crowe took several quick breaths through her nose and let it out long and slow. Her weapon felt awkward and heavy in her hand.

Umbra circled around Lunfreya, yipping excitedly. Maybe Crowe was wrong, maybe the dog’s easy confidence was a sign.

“I cannot,” Lunafreya said gently as she set a blue paper flower down in front of her like an offering. “You know I cannot.”

A little bit of miasma leaked from Lunafreya’s lips and she wiped it away with the back of her hand. Crowe put both her hands over her mouth trying to hold in the gasp wrenched out of her lungs. There was no doubt now that Lunafreya was a daemon.

“I am sorry, my love.”