The Stories of Latia, Vol. 2: Demon's Curse

Chapter 14: The Bone Witch

Chapter 14: The Bone Witch

The Narrator

None of them remained awake very long after they'd started a fire. Cassidy and Avery fell asleep inside the carriage, using their jackets as sheets, their backpacks as pillows, and each other for warmth. Whereas, Jayme and James had fallen asleep on either side of the ever dwindling fire, laying on their jackets too, to keep the sand out of their hair and clothes.

While the others were sound asleep, Jayme had woken up during the night. He didn't know exactly what time, just that it was still near-pitch black outside. But, it was bright enough for him to groggily make out three figures with red cloaks and some sort of off white helmets all gathered around the little camp the group had set up.

He sprung to his feet the moment he saw them, but before he could take a single step, what he guessed to be a fourth tugged a hand-knit bag over his head, pulling him back down to the ground.

"Shhhhh. Du er trygg, du er trygg," the figure whispered in a language Jayme didn't understand, shortly before he passed out again.

The second time Jayme woke up today, the bag that rested on his head was eagerly pulled off and he found himself kneeling on a surface that was the same off white as the red cloaks' helmets.

He looked to his left to find Cassidy, Avery and James, also kneeling and seemingly just as confused as he was.

Behind them all were four of the red cloaked people, and Jayme could now tell that the helmets they wore were the skulls of some large animals. And behind them, was a gaping hole in the weird bone-white room they'd woken up in.

"Vi fant dem like sør for her," a voice in the direction they were facing said.

When Jayme looked back around, he saw the voice came from another red cloaked person, speaking to an instead purple cloaked, much older person, seated at one end of the long table that stretched almost from one end of the rounded rooms walls to the other.

"Hi! I am so, so sorry if we intruded on your land, we are but simple passerbys, looking for someone," Cassidy pleads, loud enough for the purple cloak person to hear her.

"Forstår du språket de snakker?" Purple Cloak asks, puzzled. The Red Cloak closest to him shakes their head.

"Vi leter etter lauget av bein?" Avery buts in, speaking in a much more broken form of the language that they are.

"You know what they're saying?" Cassidy whispers to her, surprised.

"Yeah. I learned a little when I was a kid 'cause of how close we were to the Dunes. Though, I think this means we're in the right place."

"Hvorfor leter du etter oss?" The Purple Cloak bellows, standing from his seat at the table. James quickly clasps his hands together in front of him.

"Vi ble fortalt at du helbredet en kvinne ved navn Katherine Tuffin fra en dødelig sykdom," Avery stumbles,  slowly standing from her knelt position. Jayme flitches at his mother's name.

The Purple Cloak hovels over to Avery, stopping only a few feet in front of her. He looked much smaller further away but up close, he towered over Avery, even hunched over. Avery could see now he was balding, only small patches of gray hair left, and his face had a large scar across it, spanning from his left temple to his jawline.

"Du leter etter Beinheksa," he mumbled, swaying slightly closer to Avery with each word and Cassidy clenching her fists more and more each time he did so.

"Ja."

He steps away from Avery, looking up at the other three and giving a hardy laugh.

"Følg meg." He signals for them to follow as he walks past them and towards the gaping hole in the room.

"What happened? Where are we going?" Jayme whispers to Avery as they're exiting the room through the hole, and entering what looked a lot like a large coal mine pit, with all sorts of wooden structures built throughout it.

"I spoke with him, and he's bringing us to the Bone Witch. They're the one we want to talk to," Avery explains.

They all turn around to look back at the room they'd left, to find that it was actually the eye socket of a ginormous skull, still half buried in the sandstone that lined the ground in this pit.

They don't have time to wonder what the dead beast the bones belonged to was or where its other bones were, because they'd arrived at their destination. A large tent in the very corner of the pit, made of the same red cloth the people's robes were made of, with wooden walls and with rib bone support beams. They weren't quite big enough to belong to the skull, but they definitely belonged to a larger creature than any of them had ever seen.

The four are led in by the Purple Cloak, and the inside of the tent is a mess. One large cauldron sits in the middle of it, with something being boiled over it, various tables, chairs and benches lined the walls, all of them overflowing with miscellaneous bottles, herbs, plants and ripped out notebook pages among the occasional actual book. One hammock hung in the back corner, and in it slept a young woman, cloaked in the same cloth as everyone else here, except hers was a pale blue.

"Mystia!" The Purple Cloak shouts, banging on the nearest table, jolting the woman awake and making the others jump.

"Å hallo," she groggily greets once she notices them all standing around her hammock.

"Da overlater jeg deg til det," the Purple Cloak concludes with a heavy sigh, slowly exiting the tent.

The woman hops out of her hammock "Så... jeg antar at dere alle snakker engelsk?"

Avery nods, and the rest of them go along with it.

"Wonderful! My name is Mystia. You have probably gathered by now, but I am the Bone Witch."

"Nice to meet you. I'm Avery, this is Cassidy, James and Jayme."

"Lovely to meet you all. How can I be of service?"

"We're here because we heard you were able to cure my mother of a terminal illness, and we know it's a big ask, but can you please help us?" Jayme interrupts, getting straight to the point.

"Your mother... Katherine Tuffin?" She asks.

"Mhm."
"She never mentioned having a kid named Jayme. She mentioned a son and a daughter... Nor and Jasmine, I think it was?" Jayme takes several steps backwards in extreme discomfort.

"Oh... uhhh, yeah. Sh-sh-she must've f-f-forgot-" Jayme uncomfortably stammers.

"Anyway," James interrupts this time, noticing how uncomfortable Jayme was and changing the subject as quickly as possible.

"Can you help us?"

"Mhm!" Mystia affirms, sending a collective sigh of relief among the group.

"We can start with symptoms to identify what exactly it is." She sits down on one of the only empty chairs in the tent, pulling a pencil from resting behind her ear and selecting a random mostly blank sheet of paper, and looking back up at them.

Cassidy steps forward, revealing a lock of fluorescent blue hair that was hidden behind the rest.

The hair wasn't glowing a sinister dark red, but it might as well have been with the way Mystia looked up at it in complete horror. She looked at Cassidy like Omnis themself just appeared in front of her and was giving her all the horrific secrets of the universe, as her pencil slips out of her grip, lightly clattering on the floor.