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Three witches, traveling the lonely witch’s road at twilight reached a deep treacherous river, where anyone who attempted to swim or wade would drown. All extremely adept in the magical arts, the witches conjured a bridge with their magic and proceeded to cross.
A hooded woman met them halfway across the bridge. The woman was the manifestation of Death, cheated of her due. Death snarkily pretended to congratulate them and proceeded to award them with gifts of their own choosing.
The red witch, a combative soul, asked for a wand more powerful than any in existence. Death granted her wish by fashioning an all-powerful wand from a branch of a nearby elder tree standing on the banks of the river.
The second witch, a younger boy in mourning for memories he couldn’t recall, asked for the power to recall the deceased from the grave with one lost brother in mind. Death granted his wish by crafting the resurrection stone from a stone picked from the riverbank.
The last witch, the oldest and wisest, knew not to trust death and asked for something to enable her to go forth without death being able to follow. A reluctant Death, most unwillingly, handed over her own invisibility cloak.
The three witches gleefully took their prizes and went their separate ways. The red witch traveled to a city where the human superheroes who’d wronged her resided. She fought them using her wand, instantly killing all of them. Leaving her enemies dead upon the floor, the red witch walked into an inn not too far from the crime scene and spent the night there. Enveloped in her lusting for the Elder Wand’s power, the red witch boasted to the inn’s inhabitants of her dark powers. Within the same night an unknown hero with a vendetta crept to the red witch as she slept. The hero stole her hand, then murdered the red witch by slitting her throat for good measure. Death crept to her with glee.
The younger witch returned to his body’s home where he lived with his body’s parents. Turning the stone thrice in his hand, the body of his twin brother appeared, who’d been taken from this world too soon. Yet he was sad and cold, separated from him as by a veil. Though he’d returned to the mortal world, his brother did not truly belong there and suffered. The witch suffered as well; his own soul stuffed in a body that wasn’t his own. And so, the young witch driven mad with desperation to escape his skin, committed suicide by hanging so as to truly rejoin his brother. That was when Death fully took both brothers for her own.
Death searched for the oldest witch as years passed but never succeeded. It was only when the witch reached a great age, she took off the cloak of invisibility and gave it to her son. Greeting Death as an old lover, they departed from this life as equals.
