Chapter 1: The Crimson Witch
The cell itself was nothing to scoff at. It had a nicely rusted, barred window, and a perfect, musty smell. The amount of rats was just right, and the draft was delightfully chilly. Through the soft haze of moonlight coming in through the window 50 ft up, Ashila could just make out the decrepit iron door she had been locked behind for ages. It was well rusted around the edges, yet it remained sturdy. The only other visible thing in the room was that blasted spider web in the bottom corner of the room. It reflected what little moonlight there was into a sheet of glowing silver strands. However beautiful they were, she could not help the waves of disgust rippling through her soul as she saw the eight-legged demon sitting in the middle. The spider's back glowed in the moonlight with the image of a small, silver skull, which she swore was laughing at her as the creature twitched, poised to strike at any unsuspecting insect unfortunate enough to get close.
The only thing that she would change (aside from the disgusting multi-legged horror), was the guard. She had read his thoughts once, but after finding only boring chapter after boring chapter of monotonous life, she realized his life was so uneventfully depressing, thus leaving no point in burning herself on the iron ankle chains by exerting her powers on seeing something so yawn-inducing. However, the curly-haired lad's past was the only thing keeping her entertained, and as the door rattled, she did her best to hunch her shoulders and appear to him as the scraggly, old hag he undoubtedly assumed her to be.
"Are you awake?" his voice quaked with not only fear, but also a hint of pride. She began to probe his mind to find out what was the source of this newfound self-esteem.
"No, this is an automatic message spell speaking, please leave your message after the tone." She did her best to rasp, but the faerie iron in the cuffs had begun to burn, and as her multitasking faltered, her crystal clear voice cracked through her disguise. It seemed that the boy had been accepted as an apprentice to his town's battlemage. *Good for him.* she thought. There was also a fuzzy image of a young lady, but she felt a sudden surge of painful energy from the cuffs, and the spell broke.
"Well miss, I've brought your dinner, would you like me to carry it over?" His voice had gotten deeper since she remembered him, but considering how he only comes to feed her every two years, she wasn't surprised.
"Yeah, sure. Why not? I could do with a bit of company. What did you bring me today, hm? More of those delicious glowing noodles soaked in soursap?" Her voice dripped with malice as she described the disgusting food she had been forced to eat for the last 200 years. Being immortal sure opened doors for some strange, new forms of torture.
She heard the boy's keys jingle, and the door shuddered softly as the magical seal was removed. Ashila turned her head slightly to see better from her vantage point in the corner, and cracked a fiendish grin when she saw what the boy was wearing. He stopped halfway into the room, and placed his torch in a levi-holder in the middle of the room. The metal closed around the torch's handle like soft clay, and lifted it up to a height that was several feet out of the witch's reach.
"Charley," she started, doing her best not to cackle with glee, "what in the Six Demons' armchairs are you wearing?"
"What, this old thing?" he said, twirling around to show off his rain-speckled tuxedo. "Today was my wedding day, and I wanted to come here and give you your present before the rain really hits." She could now see the slightly squashed, pink box that he had tucked under his arm that read: "Jeffrey's Eats 'n Treats" on the front.
"A present? For me? Out of all the wretched, creepy, wicked old hags in the world to give a pink box to, you chose me? Why I'm flattered! First I would like to thank my old friends the rats for never giving up on their dreams…"
"Come on, Ash," He interrupted, "we both know you're not really an old hag, I've heard the rumors around town." Ah, yes, the old story of the Scarlet Witch. The evil woman who, after finding the secret of immortality, set out to find every battlemage out in the field, and steal their magic. The battlemages were said to return days later, with no memory of ever leaving, and an inability to do anything but babble for months. If they survived, that is. Charley slid into a sitting position against the opposite wall facing the witch.
"Nevertheless, what exactly did you bring me? Just because I have forever to wait, doesn't mean I want to."
Charley silently opened the box, then slid it across the small cell to rest at Ashila's feet. Inside was a wooden safety fork, and a small, pink, frosted, strawberry cake with the words: "Thank you" written in red icing on top.
"Why?" Her voice quivered, and her hand shook as she beheld this small gesture of kindness, wrapped in a color she hadn't seen for over 200 years. "No One's ever... I mean... I… why me? Why now?" Her hands shook as she gingerly lifted the fluffy, pink delicacy from its box. They shook even worse as her hand graced over the presence of the safety fork. Its wooden texture was something she never knew she had missed in all her long years of confinement. She gently lowered the fork into the top of the cake, and broke through the soft icing with a sigh as she finally felt something real, and different from her ordinary life of slow, miserable, solitude. The first piece consisted of a chunk of the top left corner of the perfectly square shaped pastry. As she placed it into her mouth, she received a taste of sweetness she thought could only exist in either heaven, or in dreams. Just this first bite caused her to release another sigh as she imagined herself in the old family meadow, picking strawberries with her mother while they waited for her Pappa to come home. The memory filled her with joy, and she couldn't stop the smile that was slowly forming even if she wanted to.
Charley witnessed all of this, and as tears of happiness formed small rivers on Ashila's dirt-covered face, he smiled and proceeded to explain himself.
"I was just stopping through town on my way to visit and thought: 'You know what? Poor Ashila has showed nothing but kindness to me ever since I got here, and I get to go home every day, while she's stuck in that dank old cell all the time.' Then I decided to stop by the bakery and get you a little something as a thank you gift for your being so sweet. Ever since my Folks died I always felt like I had nothing. Once, I didn't even have the strength to get out of bed, and every day, I think of all the things you would do to comfort me. You'd tell jokes, give advice, and share stories of all your wonderful adventures before your confinement. You always seemed to know what to say when I was feeling sad, or when I missed my mom. So thank you, thank you for always being there for me when I needed it. I don't know how you knew, but thank you all the same." At this point, tears were flowing down Ashila's happy face almost as fast as the rain outside, and while she ate, Charley smiled a sad smile with a tear rolling down his lean face as well.
"Well, I had better get going before the storm gets any worse. This island is hard enough to get to in good weather." He stood, and waved down the levi-holder with his badge to retrieve his torch.
The first sound of thunder made the stone prison tower shake, and Ashila thought she could hear strange noises through the window, almost like shouting, but she dismissed it as just the wind.
"Charley," she said suddenly, "on your way out, would you kill that dreadful spider in the corner there, I hate them, and this one just drives me crazy."
Charley glanced where she was pointing, and said to Ashila, (who was absorbed in the consumption of her strawberry gift), "What spider?"
Ashila was about to reply when she heard it again. There was a strange, whistling noise on the wind that didn't quite match its usual tone. It became steadily louder and charley said, "Do you hear that?" By the time the cannonball hit, Ashila realized too late why the whistling was getting louder.
The force of the Blast shook the tower, and blew the windowed wall of Ashila's cell to smithereens. The resulting shockwave threw Ashila to the ground, and her head hit the floor with a resounding crack. It probably had multiple fractures. She rolled onto her stomach and clawed her way to the area of the ground where her cake miraculously remained fully intact. Struggling to remain conscious, she groped for the one thing that gave her any hope of joy in her tiny, forsaken world. Her ankle chains were just long enough to allow her fingers to brush the icing around the edges of her gift, and she curled up to stare through the rain at the soggy, melting pastry and lick the frosting from her fingers. She relished the flavor one last time before the blow to her head began to affect her, and the salt from her tears burned away the memory of her favorite strawberry patch. The last things she experienced before losing consciousness were the cold biting rain on her face as she looked up at the blackened sky, the cries of alarm from charley, the mound of rubble cascading around her, and a second round of whistling heading straight for them.