The Carrion's Craft

Chapter 7

Feeling the granules of filth and dirt beneath my fingers, I pulled myself up onto my feet. My blue pyjamas were practically grey no matter how much I brushed myself down. Giving up, I noticed the human glaring at me while I ducked beneath the plethora of effigies hanging from the ceiling. 

My bare feet were cold and grimy as they padded past an upturned dining set, chairs were scattered about the room and a round table protruded from the wooden wall. It's legs hung off the ground, as if it were thrown with a supernatural force. Long, jagged cracks travelled along the grainy surface, surrounding the object like a spider web. Beyond the strange décor, I found myself marvelling at the open space within the wall.

At the flowing blades of grass and the deep blue sky above. I had never seen such beauty before. Daylight had always been so bleak and grey as my own hair. I wish I had known about the tranquillity beyond the smog sooner, my hands reached out to it, to touch the ground at the foot of the window whilst the fresh air filled my lungs, inducing a rush of euphoria unalike any I had experienced before.

My muscles stretched, almost allowing me to brush the silky ground below me. But I was unable to. A pair of hands grabbed me by my shirt and pulled me back into the dank room. The human stared at me before checking the window, "Trust me, ye don't want to get caught by them." He said pointing further out. Following the direction of his finger my eyes turned to a collection of wattle and daub buildings atop a hill. Pink skinned humans were wandering around, busying themselves with menial tasks.

"I'm guessing this is your home - Breanna?" I asked, looking to the kid who backed away.

"Yeah, this is the Witch's house. Nobody knows what happened," He said gesturing to the scattered interior, "she just disappeared one night. Nay even her familiars know where she went."

"Familiars?" Excuse the pun, but I was unfamiliar with the term. Was it just another human colloquialism? I remember when I was a child some of the human boys would talk amongst themselves on our walks home from school. Their funny accents always intrigued me and yet, whenever I attempted to approach the peculiar fellows, my mother would whisk me away before I could utter a word. I'm not really sure what had become of them really.

"Her assistants? Ye've already met 'em, Iric's the talking bird and Sylvanna's the cat. She's the one who broke yer window by the way, apparently ye annoyed her." That didn't surprise me, the damned cat seemed to have a vendetta against me ever since I reclaimed its paraphernalia.

"Well, when we get back I'll lob the bloody thing back out of it." I mumbled, a new question already forming in my head as we returned to the centre of the room, "We can get back, can't we?"

"Me thinks so. Iric said something about using the ooze to re-power the artifact." Simon said holding out the orb in his palm, the bright blue swirls were now a dull grey. I looked at it with furrowed brows, presumably I dropped it upon making contact with the ground.

My hand slid down my face, hiding my exasperated sigh, "And what's this "ooze" exactly?"

"Ay, ye believe in the mystical ways now?" Simon's eyes narrowed at me.

I made a point of waving my hand over the room and foreign landscape outside. I don't think I've seen anything as blue since I saw my reflection. He seemed to accept it, shrugging at me before directing me towards the thick green slime churning in the cauldron before us. It bubbled and boiled with a foul aroma emitting from it, and yet no fire burned underneath, nor did the metal burn the tip of my finger. Magic, it was a strange thing - chaotic, and unbowed to the whims of any rhyme or reason.

"Iric said Lady Mishava calls it the Ooze, some kind of alchemical do-hickey. S'posedly healers and people with power use it to make potions and things like this," He said holding the orb over the cauldron. "Hopefully, that bird knows what he's talking about." His little palm pivoted ninety degrees, allowing the delicate object to drop into the cauldron with a smack.