They Called Her Hag

They threw her in a pit.

This barbarous act was not the first time she suffered an injustice. She was keenly aware of the many reasons why, and being punished was no surprise. Outsider perspectives are prone to venture a variety of guesses as to the cause of such treatment, and some would think the punishment was due to her heterochromia and crooked, wilted frame, or ragged brown clothing and sparse, stringy hair. Another might think it was her warty nose and affinity for that small furry creature that followed her every step.

These outsiders would conclude that the real justification for her punishment was not mere appearance. Strange events coincided with her presence, and her potent alchemic concoctions had been known to warp the fates of her patrons.

People assumed she was a witch, and they were correct.

Irmagen was accustomed to some ill-conceived restraint or ceremonial abuse around harvest and planting.

The spring, in particular, gives rise to fanciful deliriums and rash behavior in the weak-minded pedants. She believed that “if one aimed at death, wounding was only courting revenge.”

Her assailants arguably aimed to kill, but despite her ancient, withered form, she suffered nothing from her coaxed tumble. The courtship had begun in earnest, and Irmagen knew the next step was to approach the father before the proposal. Her given name may have been Irmagen, but the locals around these parts had a different word for her: Hag.

The father in this case was a priest, and he had chosen to deposit Irmagen headfirst. This decision had murderous intent. Far from being shocked by this malice, she was surprised not to be a shattered heap.

Irmagen was in a pit of great depth. The walls were steep, and all the root growth had been removed. To climb out through bodily means alone would prove impossible. She gazed toward the night sky as her thirst for redemption boiled. She pondered the vivid presence above and how it contrasted with the manner of her confiners. Tonight was cyclically auspicious, and Irmagen’s spite had woven the cosmos into endless sadistic possibilities. Her persecutors would suffer a cruelty tenfold what they had shown.

Irmagen felt the presence of her familiar, a skulking, furry brown creature named Aker. It announced itself in a shrill screech. Peering down over the edge of the pit, it flung dirt below in mock defiance.

The squat brown abhorrence quickly circled the pit, flipping and rolling. The creature was snickering and making exaggerated kicking motions with its hind legs, flinging cold dirt in every direction. The townsfolk called Aker a horrid, monstrous thing, but Irmagen knew the contract was set and Aker would serve. The Hag beckoned it to the edge of her pit with precise vocalizations, and it peered its bloated otter-like head down.

Irmagen, once assured of its attention, again began making strange vocalizations, but this time, accompanied them with hand gestures. Aker cooed in understanding and dashed towards a nearby copse to fetch a fallen branch. It bustled itself about aimlessly, tutting from one fallen branch to the other until finding a specimen that appealed to its taste. Aker used its reticulated hands in conjunction with its razor fangs to strip any remaining bark from the carefully selected stick.

Irmagen was pacing in her pit and conjuring more revenge schemes. At length, Irmagen was reaching the limit of her patience with Aker’s performance, but before any reaction seeped through, she heard that familiar rustle of Aker’s paws in the leaf-laden grass. An instant later, a small tree branch dropped carelessly into the pit.

Aker reclined near the pit’s edge and folded its claws across its frog-like belly. The moonbeams shone perfectly on that beautifully rounded mass of guts, and the beams reflected onto its countenance, illuminating buckets of smug self-satisfaction. Irmagen picked up the tree branch and began making several passes over her head in a counterclockwise motion.

After several dozen passes with the stick and ecstatic murmurs, she violently spat out a viscous black liquid. The liquid congealed at her feet, forming a wide circular plate with a deep notch on its surface. The Hag raised that branch again above her head and brought it straight down with fury; the base of the stick fit perfectly into the notch. Irmagen tested the thin perch to see that it was secure, and once she was pleased with her inspection, she leaped up with one foot.

Now balancing her full frame on the tip of that stick, she lowered her head down; seconds later, she snapped her head back, shooting a furious perception toward those auspicious stars. Her grey eyes flashed gold, and the stick grew in length, steadily raising her from the pit. Once the hem of her robe was above the pit brow, she took one small step forward and landed like a bent fawn next to her familiar.

The pair made their way rapidly to Irmagen’s tent. She riffled through loose satchels until finally producing a long, thin black hook-dagger; it was not like her to get her hands dirty, but seeing her Beltane celebration was ruined, she decided to take out her frustrations. Aker scampered about in a bloodlust fury.

It was elated at the promise of malice and rolled, clawing at the air.

Irmagen lurched over to her alchemical chest. She unlocked the seal with an incantation, but paused a moment to ponder her options.

The priest was so base, and her fury was so acute that she had not reflected on punishments. With the array of concoctions in front of her, visions of profound sensual debauchery and transmogrification wriggled in her warped mind. The youthful whimsy of creativity fled the aged crone, and she grabbed some powder of paralytic temper and a root of obscure cloaking.

She stuffed the items into a belted bag, snatched her pyre staff, and cleared her throat in Aker’s direction. The creature halted its wriggling and jerked itself upright in a faux subservient manner.

The woeful pair peered through the forest at distant lights ahead. The spring festival dance was illuminated so extravagantly that it served as a beacon.

Meanwhile, in the town center, candles, torches, and more complicated riggings glowed brightly. A ring of haystacks encircled a large flat area located directly in the middle of the dwellings. A bandstand had been erected, and rustic instruments waited to be played. Tables and chairs were placed, and a wide array of home-baked confections were on display. An area to the side was sectioned off with a thin piece of twine. This area contained the wine and spirits that the adults were meant to imbibe. Daisy chains and other floral displays had been placed with meticulous care. The entire scene beamed with the muted grandeur of ignorantly misplaced equinoctial exuberance.

A bent, sinewy being tore furiously at the corpse of a young man in a shadowy area just outside the centrally lit hall.

This blanched white semi-humanoid figure was pulling fragments of fleshy bone from the carcass and devouring in a gluttonous rapture. Dark ruby blood sprayed from its slathering jaws as it chewed, and the thick hair on its chest and arms was drenched with the visceral drippings.

Several similar scenes were playing out all along the cobblestone streets and beneath the thatched roofs of this town. Gurgles of the dying mixed with bellows of the feeding. Rank fumes of gore overpowered the flowery abundance of spring.

Irmagen and Aker were approaching the town, and although the witch began to have premonitions, it was Aker who first caught the anthrocarion odor of bloodshed mixing with primordial musk. The familiar raised the sharp spines on its back and retracted its lips in preparation for an encounter now more precarious. Irmagen noticed her familiar’s demeanor and said,

“Oh! It seems we will have more fun than we had expected.”

The witch readied the hook dagger in her left hand with the blade facing downward.

She hoisted the staff in her right hand, and it blazed deep orange before issuing black smoke. She hitched up her robe and, taking on a mocking prambulation, she made towards the outskirts of that town; her dainty feet barely stirring the dust. Aker followed close behind, crouching deep and dragging its belly on the stone path.

Its lurking gait left a single unbroken slime trail on the earth as it crept.

Upon arrival, Irmagen and Aker could see several homes partially destroyed, and through the windows of others, small fires were raging. Torn limbs, entrails, and unrecognizable remnants of humanity littered the streets.

Loose scat, viscous saliva, and blood mixed in pools. Other liquids pushed through dusty cracks in the cobblestone. The lit center of town remained eerily untouched. It resembled a sacred circle protected from the surrounding massacre.

It appeared as if the dance were set to proceed as normal.

Irmagen proceeded with a confident caution, and Aker remained her skulking shadow. The gorey debris draped about led the pair to an accurate assumption.

Irmagen knew the primordial cave dwellers and their crude rites of spring. Identifying them as culprits was easy. Their rank genital odor arrived well before visual confirmation.

A broad broken grin etched its way across the witch’s face.

They approached the town center.

Three hulking forms loped from the shadows; they greeted her with tyrannical posturing and churlish howls. Irmagen struck a mock demure pose and spat at their feet.

The primordial dwellers stood aghast at the witch before them.

In their primitive minds, they believed that they had completed their Beltane ritual. They remained behind to revel in the joy their slaughter had brought. Never had they imagined that such a presence was near. The two smaller dwellers yelped and stumbled into a hasty retreat toward the bandstand. The lead dweller narrowed its eyes, slackened its dripping jaws, and inhaled deeply, inflating its chest. It crouched down slowly, placing its front hands on the clean dirt of the dance area. Its thigh muscles rippled and bulged with prehuman musculature.

Aker chittered madly at the sight of the dwellers, sprawling and hissing wildly.

Irmagen was enthralled by the vision of beauty that crouched before her. She discarded her weapons and bounded over to the crouching dweller.

She extended her left hand limply with the palm facing down.

The dweller took hold of her hand and licked the back of it before rising to his feet.

The pair tore off in a dexterous, graceful twirl around the lit area. They danced starting wide against the perimeter of the circle, but as they grasped hands and drew each other closer, the circle grew gradually smaller.

Finally, their chests touched, and they whirled tightly in the dead center of the well-lit pavilion. Irmagen inhaled deeply the smell of rotten flesh and gore on the dweller’s teeth.

Her mind was drawn back to an age of blood and fury. The dweller was content being led and basked in the glory of the eldritch creature that clung to him.

The speed of this performance increased, and the two partners merged into one celestial body.

The two dwellers not participating in the dance fled to the depths from which they crawled. Aker squatted in the shadow, chittering with covetous joy, and waiting for some unforeseen shift to free it from its obligation.

The spinning and twisting pair approached the pinnacle moment, their bodies melded into an amalgamation. The surrounding artifice shook, and the materials closest to the pair started to be drawn in.

The lights, hay, daisy chains, confections, alcohol, and instruments entered the celebratory maelstrom.

The cyclone continued to grow, pulling in human remains and bodily fluids that were spread throughout the town.

Irmagen essence craned its head free from the torrent and looked at the stars. The tiny age-old pinpricks of white light trailed into a singular glowing dot.

She could feel her singularity begin to fade. Her personhood waned as she was pulled upwards. Her spirit tried to flee her body, but she caught it and held it tight. She dragged the entire scene to a crashing halt.

The rapid turning of the dance came to an impossible full stop, and the dweller was ripped forcefully from her body. His material form was jettisoned out and burst from a forceful impact with piles of splintered wood and stone. Aker came scampering from its shadowy nook and gave Irmagen a probing sniff. Irmagen traced a pattern in the sky with her bent index finger and looked down upon her familiar. There was a long pause, but Irmagen ended it with a caustic cackle and said to Aker,

“We are not done yet.

Now, where is that priest?”