Becoming the Witch’s Familiar

Rays of pure fire peeked in from between the iron bars covering the windows of the simple building. Almost as present as the air itself, a small pile of sand accumulated on the floor before the portal, a constant reminder of where Sara suddenly found herself.

With only a simple sack filled with a cotton-like substance, the brick room was dreadfully empty.

“Pretty lady! Pretty lady, here!” The elves in the cell opposite to her shouted raucously, prompting the guard to slam against the bars of their cage with a baton. Few heeded the threat, continuing to shout at the exotic woman who the officers parked across the hall from them.

Jumping up to the bars of her holding cell after the door closed, she continued to plead with her officer, “Have you reached out to the tower yet?” The other detainees spoke up alongside her, filling the narrow hallway with audible confusion.

With another slam to the cell across from her, the officer that knew the tallman language leaned in, “We tried to speak to tower but no answer. We hold you until then.”

The shouts begging for her attention resumed as the guards left the hallway.

Sara tried to find a spot where she was not so visible to the howling men across from her. They looked no different than the female elves she’d seen, so it was strange to see such androgynous people act so boorish. “If I was still a man, I’d be able to fight back against the guards…”

As the shouts turned into whimpers and then silence, the sun began to set, bathing the cell in an almost violet light. The golden sandstone bricks changed colors in the waning sunbeams, something that would be beautiful, if it were not a piece of a prison cell.

Crawling over to the stuffed sack, the still disguised succubus had finally found the one comfortable spot on the lumpy bedding as she heard a creak from the cell doors.

Without any acknowledgement towards her, the guards led another woman into her cell. Sara was not sure what was more strange, that this woman was a tallman or that the men who raucously greeted her failed to do so with this new detainee.

Stranger still was that they almost seemed afraid of her.

The rail-thin woman was stripped of her shackles and took a spot across the cell from Sara. Pressing her back to the wall and slowly sliding down it, she was barely wearing what one person would consider clothing, just a ragged sackcloth gown that reached to her knees. Her arms and legs lacked any meat on them, just skin stretched over her bony frame.

“So, what are you in for?” She smiled. Draped by her bangs which were cut into a straight line, her face was nothing of note. An aquiline nose with a very noticeable overbite, but the young woman’s eyes were vibrant. She looked too clean to be wearing rags. Long straight black hair draped behind her, nearly as long as the sack she wore. “Something tells me you might be booked for the same thing…”

Sara did not like the way she talked.

Having a lisp was one thing, but this woman seemed to be purposefully drawing it out, calling attention to something someone normally tried to hide.

“They got me for murder.” She lied, hoping to scare off the strange cellmate.

A long, spindly finger found it’s way to the side of the woman’s face, coercing a just as thin smile, “That’s simply not true at all, Succubus Sarakiel…” Her grin grew wider.

“Or should I say, Samuel Proudmane?”

Sara froze. In her short life as a succubus, she had never met this woman. She would have no way of knowing the once Knight of Altalour, the Duke of Steel himself, had become such a monster. “How do you know me?”

“Why, simply put…” The woman drew a piece of fabric from her ragged dress before placing it on her head, taking the form of a tall pointed hat, “I am quite a fan of yours.”

Sara tried not to appear too frazzled, “And what have I done to catch the attention of a witch such as yourself?”

The hallway nearly froze at the word ‘witch’. Any loose sounds escaping from the cell across from the two had been silenced completely.

Back still against the wall, the woman stood. Angling her knobby knees underneath her, it was like watching a spider learn how to stand on two legs, “Well, your name came up in a meeting I just so happened to be attending and…” She loosed a deep sigh, “One thing led to another.”

“Well, you found me.” Sara stood to meet the challenge, “What do you want? I’m already the familiar to another witch.”

“Nothing!” The lanky witch shrugged, still maintaining her toothy grin, “I just wanted to see you in the flesh, nothing more, nothing less.”

Relaxing her stance, the monster woman tilted her head, “You just… Wanted to see me?” Normally, she would be on guard against any feigned reason from a person who could easily kill her, but the reason was just so simple. So honest.

“Correct. You certainly are a rare,” She breathed deeply, “And enviable subject.”

Sara could not help but to cover herself even more than the clothes she had on, “I get that often. So why corner me in a jail cell? How did you even find me here?”

The grin the woman had almost seemed like it would come off of her face, “A fantastic question… Let me answer it with another: What is a name?”

Looking around the cell to make sure the witch was not trying to distract her from her own familiar or some sort of spell, she returned her gaze back to the caster before her, “Spare me the lecture, witch. Give me the answer now.”

“My, my, my, my…” The witch returned to leaning against her wall, “Such a lack of inquiry. You’d never learn what you need to exact revenge on the man who killed you…”

Sara’s eyes widened once again. This woman knew far too much. “Answer the question first and then I’ll reconsider swearing revenge against you too, bitch.”

“Such big words from another witch’s property! Tell me, how much does your name, Samuel Proudmane, mean to you? Presumably more than the name you say you go by now…” The depraved grin relented into one of smug assuredness. “That’s where my question stems from: what is a name?”

The headache she usually got from dealing with magicians resumed, asserting this one as a new annoyance. “A name is what you call a person, place or thing. Something I never got from you, witch.”

“You’re half right!” With new confidence, the witch sauntered into the center of the cell, her spindly legs clearing quite the distance with each stride, “A name is not what you call something, it’s what it calls itself. The name of it’s soul.”

It was Sara’s turn to back herself up against a wall as the witch drew closer, “You asked how I knew where you were? Who you are? It’s easy when you know their true name, Samuel Proudmane.” Her twisted grin alighted one more, drawing her tight skin on her face even more gaunt, “That is the magick of Onomancy…”

Samuel- No, Sara remembered the name came up during her last conversation with Ashara, the reason why The Eternal refused to say his name or even show an inch of skin. “Well, you know my name. Does that give you so much power over me?”

The witch’s breath felt warm on Sara’s neck, the spindly figure craning down to get close, “More than you know, familiar. If I feared no consequences, I would make you my own. But…”

A warm hand stroked Sara’s lower stomach, caressing the familiar’s crest beneath her clothes and hidden by her glamour. “But since you allowed me to rattle on about my craft for a minute, I’ll reward you with two gifts…”

As quickly as it started, a pain flashed in Sara’s lower stomach. A cackle filled the air, causing the succubus to lash out with her only good hand.

Hitting nothing but air, she looked up to see the witch back across the room, cradling a gilded sphere between her spider-like fingers. “I see your pain, Samuel Proudmane, something I wish I could still feel… But something I wish to remedy.”

“What did you do to me?” Sara asked, patting her lower stomach to check for blood. Her clothes and hand were dry, the stabbing sensation feeling like it never existed in the first place.

Delicately placing the ball on the ground, the witch snapped back up, her smile now warm and entreating, “I offer you freedom, Samuel Proudmane. Freedom and companionship.”

“And I’ll offer to send you back to your hell, you traitorous whore!” Sara swung in the air.

Holding up one frail finger, the young woman waggled it back and forth, “Be careful with what you say! Words do have power, as I’m sure you know now.”

Turning around, she faced the wall, “Oh, and please just call me Eldura. I look forward to watching over you, Samuel Proudmane!”

Stepping into the wall, which received her like the surface of a pool of water, the witch vanished.

- - - -

After Eldura’s sudden arrival and departure, Sara was almost alone in the cell once more. Replaying the entire experience over in her mind, her gaze was transfixed on the golden orb left behind the onomancer.

Waiting for something to happen, Sara waited for roughly an hour in the moonlight filtering in from the window before retrieving it.

Turning it over in her only hand, she noticed the intricate line work engraved into the sphere. Filigrees of gold danced along the ball, vines creeping out from between small pin-sized holes along the surface. It was a masterwork of design, the craftsman almost certainly long dead judging by the apparent age of the subject. Fitting into the palm of her hand, it was not something she had ever seen before, let alone heard of.

“I should probably throw this out…” Sara concluded, remembering the character of the woman who left it. But as she held it in the moonlight, specks of sand undulating in the rays, something told her to keep it. A gut instinct, perhaps?

Without a place to store it, she kept it beside her in the makeshift bed as the weight of the day she had begun to drag down her eyelids.

“I’ll find a way out of here tomorrow…” She yawned. Thoughts of either seduction or prayer that The Eternal would wonder where his student went played through her mind as she closed her eyes and faded into the darkness.

World notes: Onomancy

The magick that allows the manipulation of whatever the caster knows the "true name" of, it is almost entirely practiced by witches.

Researchers on the subject matter are only allowed to be observers of the magic art rather than practitioners due to the inherent devilish nature of the spells, so concrete knowledge is limited. This is not due to any laws or regulations, but instead for the safety of the scholar as it is said their life expectancy after casting their first onomantic spell is around two weeks.

No historian nor anthropologist is able to place what language these 'true names' are from, let alone any specific region, thus it is assumed they are some sort of infernal language. However, devils maintained in captivity seem to not be speaking the same language as the limited lexicon of 'true names', so there is an ongoing debate and theories as if it even is a functional language.

One thing is certain though, the knowledge of a 'true name' to these witches allow them to observe and even have limited control over the subject. The more 'free will' the creature has, the less power a witch can exert over them. On going debates as to what 'free will' even is has muddied the waters into the research of this magick, further barring any further meaningful discoveries.