The Last Witch

The spirits grew brighter as the sky grew darker, as though they were trying to light the way for both of them as they trudged on. Light pulsed from the trees, following the cracks in the bark, and mushrooms and flowers growing in the brush illuminated from somewhere within, causing their colours to become vibrant. Every so often, they passed a gap where the ground was bare and only dirt was visible, though as soon as Asher focused in on it to turn his eyes away from the bright lights, a burst of flame would shoot upwards, flashing bright enough to send spots across his eyes. Each time a new light flashed, Penn would growl, or shoot it an angry look.

‘Is it always like this?’ Asher asked him. He struggled to keep up with the man, even when he put more weight on his bad leg and tried walking normally. It didn’t take long for the bone to start aching again.

‘They’re agitated,’ Penn said. ‘Nothing is where it’s supposed to be, and they don’t know why.’

‘Exactly how sentient are they?’ Asher asked. ‘Do they have thoughts and feelings like us, or —’

‘No.’

They came to the edge of the forest, where the field that used to be Valenda spread further north to the moorlands. The ground switched gnarled roots for rocky crags, and began to slope upwards into the smallest of hills. Asher had never been this far north, but he knew the rise would keep moving up and up, until the land itself ended in a cliff as tall as the mountains. A part of him wondered if Penn was planning to toss him off it.

He couldn’t help think about what Aria had told him about the spirits. Parts of a world separate from this one that made this one work the way it did. He didn’t know what it meant for something like that to become agitated, and trying made his head hurt. If it was connected to human agitation, did they get like this when there were disasters? Had the tsunami that swallowed Telkesi whole made them burn like this? The other option was the monsters. The Fienta.

It felt good to give them a name. Asher suspected it was because it separated them from the fear mongering stories he’d been told as a kid. They weren’t impossible beasts, but only something foreign. Foreign things could be understood. The fear of unknown disappeared. For some reason, calling the Underlands Le Torkani didn’t quite have the same effect. He blamed the complexity on that one. It wasn’t just fear but the scrambled mess of everything, less an unknown and more a web made to disorient him.

When the pain in his leg moved up to the rest of him, to his arms and his hips and his shoulders, he strained to see if anything was ahead, because he needed to stop and was sure that if he did, he wouldn’t get up again.

‘Where are you taking me?’ he asked Penn.

Penn glanced back, and seemed to just now notice Asher was falling behind. He bounced back so he was level with Asher. ‘Right there,’ he said.

Asher craned his neck to see if they’d reached the edge of the land, but the rocks around them were tall and craggy and still stretched on as far as the eye could see. There was no way they had travelled that far anyway; Asher knew he wasn’t capable. Then Penn pointed at a marking in the ground. He kicked at the stones, and when a burst of light sailed up, he snatched it out of the air and squeezed it hard in his fist, until the light burst like a bubble, enveloping Penn’s fist in a white, spectral flame.

‘Does that hurt?’ Asher asked.

Penn shook his head. ‘Spirits. You try.’

He held the flame towards Asher, the light flaring enough to be blinding. Slowly, Asher lifted his own hand and let it hover over the dancing tips of the flames. There wasn’t any heat. He placed his hand over Penn’s, and Penn twisted his wrist to drop the flame into Asher’s hand. Asher recoiled, but the fire snuffed out in a blink, turning into a large pile of dust that bled through his fingers. Penn frowned.

‘Witch,’ he muttered.

Asher opened his mouth to argue, but something pulled the words away. He stared down at the dust in his hand, sitting as large as his fist and still bleeding into the ground. Maybe he was, with the dust and the spirits and the lights. Maybe he’d been changed in all of this.

Had he?

Penn caught another light and the flame reappeared, but he didn’t try and give it to Asher again. Asher stood and watched, still holding the dust in his hands, feeling dumb and out of his depth. Penn gestured to the rocks again, stepping over to a point where part of the rocks had collapsed to create an arch across the cliffs, creating a crude amalgamation of a door. Like a Gate…

Along the bottom of the arch was an ash line.

‘Was this your home?’ Asher asked.

Penn nodded. He then lunged forward and kicked the ash as hard as he could, sending flakes of it into the air. ‘I did everything I was told!’ he cried. ‘Everything!’

Asher took a step back.

‘The spirits tell me what to do and I do it,’ Penn said. ‘They tell me when something is wrong. They didn’t. They said nothing!’ His features warped with his expression, his entire body growing translucent around the edges as though his form would disappear. Beneath the haze, Asher could see copper ridges on his forehead, and a sharpness to his nose and jaw that hadn’t been there before. He recoiled with a shout, and Penn blinked back into solidarity once more, tilting his head in confusion.

‘What the fuck was that?’ Asher cried. Had Penn been serious when he said he was a Fienta? Whatever had happened just now, he couldn’t unsee it. There were chrome, stone-like lumps jutting from Penn’s forehead, and his features were too sharp, impossibly pointed in a way that humans couldn’t be. His eyes still burned bright, glowing in the low light. His eyes were still on fire. Asher had been an idiot not to see it before.

Penn’s eyes only narrowed. ‘I am angry. I can be angry at you?’

‘You’re not human,’ Asher said.

Penn blinked. ‘No.’

Asher stared at him. ‘You’re not human.’

‘I am a Nakati,’ Penn said.

‘But, I thought…’ Asher glanced at the archway next to them. ‘This was your home? So is Nakati a place, or a type of person?’

‘I am not human,’ Penn said. ‘I am a Nakati, and this is also Nakati. My home.’ He tilted his head again. ‘I don’t understand why you’re confused.’

Asher’s head was starting to spin. Of course Penn wasn’t human. It made sense. Human beings didn’t command the natural world, they didn’t have eyes that caught fire. ‘I don’t know what a Nakati is,’ Asher said. ‘You’re not a witch, and you’re not a mon… a Fienta, and you’re not human. So what makes you different?’

Penn bounced over to the open part of the ground and traced a wide circle into the ground with his foot. He then traced another, connecting them in the middle so they both overlapped. He pointed to one. ‘Here,’ he said. He pointed to the other circle. ‘Le Torkani.’ He pointed to the overlapping part in the middle. ‘Nakati.’

Asher stared down at the circles. ‘You’re from another world?’

Penn nodded. ‘We protect spirits. We watch the Gate. We serve the world.’

‘So, this is a doorway into your world?’ Asher gestured to the arch.

Penn’s face fell. ‘It used to be.’

There was nothing special about the arch. Asher hadn’t even noticed it was an arch until Penn pointed it out. He had to wonder if it was that easy to stumble into this strange place, or if something specific had to happen. It had been an accident with Le Torkani, but the monster – the Alchemist – had been provoking him, trying to push him to do… something.

‘Is it always a doorway?’ Asher asked. ‘Going into another world?’

Penn shrugged. ‘Easy to see. You want to go to a place and you step through, and you’re there. Never done it another way.’

‘And it’s the same for Le Torkani?’

Penn nodded. ‘Fienta confuse on purpose, so prey can’t find a way out.’

Asher shivered. It sounded so animal, as though he was just a rabbit or a mouse waiting for a claw or a gnash of teeth to end it all.

‘You can go in,’ Penn said. ‘See the spirits.’

All of Asher’s other thoughts scattered. ‘What?’

Penn pointed to the arch. ‘I go in, I go back to Nakati. The door isn’t open, so you go in, more mountain. See if the spirits are going over the line.’

‘Is that why you brought me out here?’ Asher asked.

‘Yes.’

Asher swallowed, regarding the archway in front of him. There was nothing special about it, no magical aura or markings. If Penn hadn’t told him it was a gate to another world, he wouldn’t have thought anything of it. ‘What if there is something over there?’ he asked. ‘What then?’

‘Use the dust,’ Penn said.

Most of it had bled out of his hand at this point, staining his boots and the ground around him. Asher didn’t see many other options. His whole body ached, so much that he didn’t want to think about walking back to Valenda, much less running. He also wasn’t completely sure Penn wouldn’t grab him again and throw him through it.

Asher tested the weight of his cane, then stepped across the arch.