The Witch of Algan Bog

Village in a Swamp

The stories often paint the village of my birth as a savage and barbaric place, where heretical wrong-thinkers would sacrifice children and worship demons. Burned down by valiant commissars in an effort to stop their dark corruption from spreading across the Conglomerate. 

The truth is far more mundane and yet far more complicated. My home was like any other. A village at the edge of the swamps. We'd cultivate berries through the spring and summer months, pick mushrooms in the autumn, grow chickens and goats. We'd dig for bog-iron, which our village smith would turn into nails, and horseshoes. Every few weeks we'd take some of our produce to Felinn and trade for what we couldn't grow or make ourselves. 

As far as I know, this is how we had lived for hundreds of years. Perhaps some of the villagers did still show a little reverance to the spirits of old, but it was hardly the heresy you'd hear in the tales. Elders might read the entrails of dead birds to predict the weather, a young woman might braid wild flowers into her hair to dream of what her future husband will look like. Little peasant superstitions. Traditions to keep the community together, to entertain the mind, rather than real magic.

And as for why everyone I ever loved was killed, my village burned to the ground, our way of life erased from this very plane, well... It was purely military strategy. A war of attrition, as they call it in the military textbooks. If you can't kill the enemy in battle, let them starve. Felgrad had not joined the Conglomerate in those days. It was a city of trade, home to fat merchants and exotic spices from distant Jeroli, its high stone walls unbreakable and unscalable.

It was far easier for the forces of the Conglomerate to blockade the port, then loot and pillage every town and village around that did not have the luxury of high walls and trained guards. The town would run out of food eventually. 

And what ensued next would be riots, rebellions, panic. Enough to get the people of the city to turn against their leaders. Then the conquerors responsible for their starvation would march in and hand out the food they stole from my family and countless others. How quickly the people would forget and call them saviors...

Perhaps that is why I never pitied the city folk. Their troubles were mere echoes of the horror that my people had to face. And yet my people went down fighting to the last breath. 

My father had a pitchfork in his  hands when his blood splattered across the shining chainmail and bright white surcoat of the soldier that murdered him. He looked his killer in the eyes as his guts spilled on the floor. My mother... screamed as they ended her slowly. 

Perhaps they could not bring themselves to kill a child, or perhaps it was just further depravity. But they spared my life, only to set fire to the house and leave me to my fate. And all I could do was wait. I sat in the corner, unable to move, unable to run as the flames got ever closer, my breath slowly dying in my lungs as I drowned in smoke. 

I was five years old when my life was ripped away from me.

I would have died there myself if not for the Lori's barking. I felt her fangs around my leg, dragging me out of the smoke. So small and frail was I that she could carry me across the floorboards until I snapped out of it for her sake. I could not leave her alone, the poor, innocent, brave thing. 

Through tears I rose up on shaky legs and pushed the door open. I looked back to see my house crumbling, falling down on the charred remains of my parents. The commissars had already gone, taking what spoils they could carry. And I realized Lori was not with me...

I saw her laying in the doorway, her strength having finally failed her at the last minute. She was hardly breathing, a beam had fallen on her hind legs and she could not move. One brown eye slighty open, still looking at me. There was a kind of peace in her eyes. Perhaps, somewhere in her animal brain, she felt she had fulfilled her purpose by saving me. 

But she was all I had left and I was not about to let her go. I tried to drag her out with what little strength I had in my small bones. I pulled and pulled, but she would not come loose. I pulled so hard heard the bones break in her legs, but she was too weak to even whimper. And when she finally slipped out I realized she had already died. 

I sat there in the mud, and the heat, and the rain, watching the house I had been born in collapse. Crying, screaming. For minutes? Hours? I cannot recall. And then I sat silent. Defeated. Time had ceased to exist and the memory of my time in the rain feels like an eternity and a mere instant to me now. 

That is when I felt the hand of Him on my shoulder. He spoke to me in the voice of an angel: 

"Poor child... To witness such horror at such a young age. Alas, to be savior is not my role in this World. If only I could take you as my ward and deliver you from your pain. Or show your mercy and reunite you with your family. But it is not yet your time."

He pointed his finger at Lori. I heard bones snap in place. I saw a twitch in her leg. And a pair of milky eyes open to look at me once more, as a smile formed on her face and she began to wag her tail. 

"I leave you with this one gift, my child. The rest, shall be up to you. I order you to survive. I order you to live."

And I never saw Him again.