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“So what’s their deal?” Witch Wizard asks.
Spirit Dream Warrior smiles. Or rather, continues to smile. Guy is like, always smiling. He says blandly, “I think she’s a huntress.”
Witch Wizard frowns. The little plant child who had made her sacrifice today is… strange. Spirit Dream Warrior has brought new members to them before, but they’ve never acted as this one did. They were all, to be blunt, desperate. People seeking purpose in life, people who had lost it all, people who had been dealt a bad hand. Witch Wizard can see it on their faces- the hunger for power.
Witch Wizard’s not judging or anything, she’s been in their place. She too was once exhausted and starving, furious at herself for her shortcomings, aching to pluck the stars from the sky for herself.
But this girl hadn’t been like that. She walked in, back straight, showing not a hint of pain. And when met with the disdain of the coven, she had just glared back, unimpressed. She didn’t stick around to meet her elders.
So Witch Wizard is concerned. Had she been a slightly better person, she would have said it was because it was worrying to see an unaccompanied child with a completely blank face cut off her own hand to learn magic, but Witch Wizard stopped bothering to lie to herself years ago. She’s concerned because the desperate are easier to control and the child is not desperate enough.
Desperate people, in Witch Wizard’s experience, want only one thing. Power. And then they won’t ask pesky questions like, “But where does the power come from?” And “Hey, what’s this giant shovel doing here?” And “No, no, no. It’s alive? You can’t just chain it here forever!”
A not-insignificant number of Spirit Dream Warrior’s recruits end up asking said pesky questions. And then the green wizards have to deal with them, which is never exactly pleasant.
Witch Wizard goes out looking for the child. Better to get a grasp on her personality sooner, rather than after disaster strikes.
The child is found by a waterfall, crouched in the swaying grass. She’s staring at a round, plump quail nearby. She’s very skinny.
“Hey, kid,” Witch Wizard says.
The quail startles and takes flight.
The child glares daggers at Witch Wizard and springs into motion. Bug-like, she starts scaling the rocky side of the waterfall with way more agility than Witch Wizard would have expected.
“Hey!” Witch Wizard yells up at her. “I’m trying to have a conversation here!”
“Go away!” the kid shouts back. “Busy!”
Insolent little brat! “Get back here!” Witch Wizard bellows, and when that doesn’t work, she starts climbing after her.
Above her, the child has taken one hand off the cliff face. Witch Wizard considers warning her to be careful, but before she can, the girl thrusts her empty hand up towards the quail in one swift, decisive gesture, and a sharpened stick flies through the air and hits the poor bird.
Huh. That’s pretty impressive, Witch Wizard thinks. Well, making a stick hover isn’t nearly as impressive as shapeshifting into a bear or anything, but the aim was certainly something. Guess she really is a huntress.
When Witch Wizard reaches the top of the waterfall, the child is absolutely devouring the quail. Her fingers have turned to roots, burrowing into its flesh.
“Kid. Ugh- I’m trying to ask you a question!”
The girl takes another huge bite. She looks up at Witch Wizard with those huge, blank eyes and doesn’t speak. Witch Wizard takes the opening.
“So- uh, why’d you decide to become a green wizard?”
“I wanna be strong,” the child says.
“Strong. And now that you’re a green wizard, are you strong?” Witch Wizard asks.
“Guess so.”
“What will you do now, then?” What is the power for?
“I dunno,” Huntress Wizard says, eyes empty. She looks out at the edge of the cliff. There’s a small grove of scraggly trees there. Sturdy, but not yet fully grown. “Maybe I’ll just live here.”
Witch Wizard leaves her to it. She has her answer now. Huntress Wizard is listless. She uses her powers to feed herself and barely anything else. No bleeding heart, no maliciousness. No reason to stay alive other than instinct. She keeps to herself and lets life pass her by. Witch Wizard can relate. She spends her life using her magic to guard the source of her magic. She is nothing more or less than her abilities. Neither of them are.
So although Witch Wizard rarely sees Huntress Wizard, and most meetings are some combination of short, unsettling, infuriating, or confusing, Witch Wizard feels a vague, distant sort of kinship with Huntress Wizard. They’re one and the same.
“Give it here!” Huntress Wizard snarls.
Witch Wizard grins. She lets the vial (it’s cute. Acorn shaped. Since when did Huntress Wizard care for things to be cute, not just practical?) fall to the floor. “Whoops.”
Huntress Wizard drops onto all fours and stares at the empty glass, horrified. Now, Witch Wizard is powerful and Huntress Wizard is weak. It’s delicious. She laughs and laughs and laughs.
Huntress Wizard lunges.
If she had it her way, Witch Wizard would have guarded the heart of the forest for the rest of eternity. If she had her way, she would stay in the empty space between universes and feed off their power forever. Alone. Huntress Wizard, the horrible, stupid, little girl doesn’t grant her even that.
“You’ll learn to be somebody again,” she says, not unkindly. Witch Wizard can tell she truly means it.
And then they start the journey back to Ooo.
Huntress Wizard gets more and more frustrated as time slips away. For some reason, she seems to understand the design of this strange place like instinct. It’s like she can communicate with it. She moves with a purpose, reaching out here, connecting there. And she can perform feats that Witch Wizard has never seen, much less been able to do herself. Heck, she’s never even heard of such things. How is she doing that when Witch Wizard can’t? Why does this place yield to her when Witch Wizard has to tear the magic out bit by bit? Why is she so powerful?
Witch Wizard’s one consolation is that despite it all, Huntress Wizard cannot accomplish the one thing she wants the most. It might be nice to have the company. They can be powerful here together.
And then Huntress Wizard says, “Show me. Please.” Her face is the most desperate Witch Wizard has ever seen.
Witch Wizard takes her hand.
To Witch Wizard’s surprise, it’s Huntress Wizard who reaches out after the dust has settled. Witch Wizard is back where the hart used to be. There’s nothing left for her here, but where else would she go? So she had headed back to the place that, depressingly, was closest to being home. Now it’s a giant hole where the wretched creature had thrashed as it was unearthed. She has guarded this barren glade for lifetimes- there’s no world in which she wouldn’t hear footsteps approaching.
“Hey,” says Huntress Wizard.
“What do you want?” says Witch Wizard.
Huntress Wizard hesitates. “Uhhh. Um. A bunch of us are gonna get together and figure out this heart of the forest thing. You wanna come?”
What. “What? No!” Witch Wizard says.
“No, you don’t want to come?”
“No, you can’t do that!” Witch Wizard snaps. “You’re just going to tell everyone the source of ou- of your power?” She can’t fathom what Huntress Wizard is thinking. Two decades of being a literal hermit and suddenly she’s blabbing all her secrets to strangers? What happened to wanting to be strong? This fucking kid!
“I mean… only people who are interested,” says Huntress Wizard. ”Also, it’s not really about power, I think. It’s about roots”. Then they gape at each other for like eight seconds straight, Witch Wizard completely baffled, and Huntress Wizard not understanding what wasn’t clicking.
“It’s not like you have anything better to be doing,” Huntress Wizard says eventually. (Rude.) “You know where I live so, Thursday…” And then she flails her arms in some sort of incomprehensible gesture. Witch Wizard takes it to mean come by and watch me casually teach powerful multiversal magics to randos. Huntress Wizard seems to consider the conversation over. She turns around without another word, wanders away, and starts rummaging in the dirt. What the actual fig?
The curiosity ends up getting the better of her. “What are you doing?” Witch Wizard finally asks, when it seems Huntress Wizard has found her prize. Huntress Wizard holds up a withered, reddish brown pod. A rose haw. She closes her eyes, takes a breath, and hums a single note. Witch Wizard feels the world sing with her and then, Huntress Wizard is no longer holding a piece of dried fruit, but a handful of writhing, tender sprouts with pearly white roots. She kneels, deposits them gently in a divot in the crater, and pats soil over them. Witch Wizard feels a sudden excitement.
“You can revive the hart! We can have our power source back!”
Huntress Wizard tilts her head up at her. “Oh. I have no clue what they’ll grow to be. Maybe a deer and maybe totally normal roses. We’ll just have to see.”
The absolute nerve of this infuriating little-! Witch Wizard groans. “Then what-“ she starts but she doesn’t even really know what she wants to ask. Nothing has been making sense lately. She rubs a hand over her face.
“Normal roses would liven this place up,” Huntress says. “It’s kinda dead here.” She plops her hand down on Witch Wizard’s shoulder, hard. It takes a few repetitions for Witch Wizard to realize she’s trying to pat her shoulder, but being horrendously awkward about it. “Look, don’t be a stranger, okay?” Huntress says.
It’s only after Huntress leaves that Witch Wizard realizes her teeth are fixed now. She spends the week imagining how cathartic it would be to stomp the rose saplings into the ground just to spite Huntress, but doesn’t end up doing it, not even once. And come Thursday, Witch Wizard gets up off her ass without a second thought, and heads to the cliff. She even brings a notepad.