Witch of Fear [Mild horror, Isekai High Fantasy]

A city of sorrow and spires sat huddled beneath the shadows of the corpse-mountain. 

From one rocky wall to the other, tall spiked towers loomed above a curtain wall of menacing watchtowers and spiked crenellations. On each side and each end of a blood-red river tainted by the city’s sins, stood a pair of tall black bastions, joined by thick iron chains that obstructed the passage of ships into and out of the corrupt city. A pair of sinister metal drawbridges crossed that crimson water further into the city, amongst which a harbor of massive ships lay. 

Into the sky rose high a trio of massive fluted column-like buildings of ebony steel — the three sisters — which flared into the descending archway of stone and gems, melding into the stone. Sharp balconies spun off the towering columns to overlook the ominous gloom rising off the darkened streets. 

The streets were dark as night, mostly devoid of the ever-present bioluminescence of the Feydark. Aside from a few glowing fruits serving as streetlights, the darker kin of elves had stripped their city of wilderness like parasites. Miles around the walls of the city lay burnt and barren soil, toiled endlessly by bloodied slaves, their bones dusting the ground. 

In the murky air rang the screeches of bats, pained screams of tortured slaves, roars of chained beasts, and the baying of commerce — a siren song of a cruel city. 

Here lay Nasurin, the place where good were taken to be broken or die.

Autumn peered out from behind a frond of giant leaves at the grim city in the distance. The party had stopped ashore, well out of the sightline of the drow city, and crept into the jungle to observe it before risking entry.

From what she could see, there were three ways into the city — if you didn’t include sneaking in. The river gate and a set of gatehouses, one on either side of the river. However, concerningly, there didn’t seem to be much traffic from this side of the city either in or out. As such, their approach would be swiftly noted and likely contested.

Letting the leaves fall back into place, Autumn backed off from the treeline and rejoined her friends. 

“Ok, the city's bigger than I thought. So? What are we thinking?” 

Hidden by the dense foliage, the party didn’t really need to be huddled around one another and talking in hushed tones, but they did so anyway. It seemed like the thing to do. 

“Can we sneak in?” Nethlia asked, her face hard-etched, eyes alight with promised fury.

Autumn shook her head. “Not likely, at least not all of us, and not mundanely. We could swim through the black water, but then we’d have to leave the sleigh behind — it floats, after all.”

“I cannae swim,” Edwyn grunted. “Too heavy besides in this armor.” 

Pyre raised her hand. “Me neither. It doesn’t go well with being made of flame.” 

“Me third,” Nelva said. At the quizzical looks she added with a huff, “what? I’m from a landlocked country. Nor did I spend my youth frolicking in rivers and ponds. It’s not strange at all.”

“Right, ok,” Autumn breathed. “So our only option into the Umbral elven city is the front gates?” 

Liddie shook her head. “I think they’re drow, not Umbra elves.” 

“What’s the difference?” 

“Umm. Drow are the meaner ancestors of the Umbra? I think. If you can imagine such. Word has it they came from another plane — not this one mind. Said to be a rather wicked sort…I suppose we’ll find out soon, huh?” 

Autumn huffed. The city of chains in the distance gave her foul feelings; it practically radiated despair. She could smell the fear on the wind — a smell of rusted iron. It flowed like a thick miasma and even as far away from it as she was, it still coiled in her veins. 

The pulse quickened her heart. 

“Alright, then we need to head into the drow city, but we can’t exactly go in as we are; we stand out too much. The less scrutiny we come under, the better. Are any of our races on good terms with the drow? Or Umbra, for that matter?” she asked the others.

Nethlia shook her head, giving Autumn a strange look. 

“Not likely,” she gestured around the group. “Aside from yourself and Pyre, all of us are from nations either currently at odds with them or have a history of conflict. And we’ve no idea if these ones are the same. If we were in the mortal plane, I’d say we’d lean on our adventurer status, but here?”

“What about wearing a disguise?” Eme asked. “We could dress up as Umbra or drow.”

A contemplative look crossed everyone’s faces. Autumn thought it over, but ultimately shook her head. 

“It’s not a bad idea but we don’t know enough about the drow to pass any sort of tests, or at least I don’t. All I know about them is that they are a clan based matriarchal society, but that’s just from reading, not any practical knowledge. Sure, I could pull off a female drow with some make-up, but with no idea of what clan name to call myself…”

“You’d be right fooked,” Edwyn nodded. 

“Right.”

Sitting upon the wagon of bone, Autumn looked out towards the city, wailing in the distance. To enter such a place of sin, perhaps they’d have to look like sin themselves. 

Inspired, Autumn stuck a hand deep into her pouches and pulled out the collection of dark robes they’d plundered from the necromancer’s wardrobe. Spilling forth onto the wagon were sable-toned hooded robes adorned with all manner of mottled feathers, warped bones, and eldritch symbols.

“I know! We’ll go in as cultists!”

The others looked at the robes in distaste. 

“What about our skin color and horns or ears?” Nethlia asked as she picked through the piles of robes for something in her size. She wasn’t having much luck.

“Oh! I’ve got a thingy!” Liddie chirped eagerly. With haste, she dove into the sleigh and rummaged around in her pack. “Now, where was it? Not here, or here, aha!” the pirate exclaimed as she pulled free a battered disguise kit. “I bought this thing ages ago and never used it. Hells, I thought I’d wasted my money on it. It’s got some hair dye, skin coloring, even some fake teeth and ears in it. You name it, I likely got it! Although,” she glanced up at Nethlia’s impressive set of horns, “I don’t think I can hide those.”

Nethlia absentmindedly touched her horns.

Autumn hummed. “Well, how about disguising her as some sort of pacted devil or hellish mercenary?”

The berserker paused, turning to Autumn with a furrowed brow. Eyes squinting at the thought. Around her, the others too looked at Autumn in silence, some more offended than others.

Autumn flushed. “Look, I know, but this is a den of evil, right? It wouldn’t look too out of place. Hopefully. And it beats pretending to be a slave.”

Nethlia grimaced in distaste. “That’s true. I’d be more offended if you’d suggested that. But what of the others? I doubt anyone would believe Liddie was a devil, no offense, and she is a known figure — villain — in the south.”

“Hey! Offense very much taken!”

“Well,” Autumn hummed, ignoring Liddie’s outburst, “Nelva, Eme, and I can pass as humans — obviously in my case — and we can dress Liddie up as some kind of silent assassin. A very silent one. Completely. We’ve got a few non-cursed masks lying around that’ll look the part. And as for Edwyn, we can disguise them as a duergar.”

“What the devils a duergar?” Edwyn gruffed, a fuzzy brow ascending into their hairline.

“They’re underdwarves—er, I mean deep Manus?” Autumn corrected at the squinted look Edwyn gave her. She still wasn’t sure if that was an insult or not. “They’ve ashen onyx skin, white hair, and are proper mean and crotchety.”

“Sounds like we only have to do two things then!” Liddie smirked at Edwyn, who gave her a stink eye.

Much to Autumn’s chagrin, it took little to make her look like a cultist. A quick exchange of robes and she was all done, now only slightly more evil-looking, bedazzled as she was in bones and black feathers. Loathed to divest herself of her witch’s hat in favor of the hood, Autumn kept it and simply wrapped a dark scarf around her lower face, effectively “disguising” herself as a necro-witch.

She refused to look deep into that.

With only a set of fake human ears — why Liddie’s kit had so many of those, she didn’t want to know — and some make-up to blend them in, both Nelva and Eme were looking remarkably human. And with a set of robes with deep hoods to hide their real ones, and a grim mask to hide their faces, nobody would likely tell they weren’t. Autumn just hoped humans were a race that frequently visited this city.

There wasn’t much they could do about Pyre other than throwing a robe over her — her flaming hair was far too iconic and bright to hide. On the plus side, as her people lay scattered across the continents, it was unlikely she’d be tied with the Echa Empire like the others would be.

Under Autumn’s guidance, Liddie dyed a grumbling Edwyn’s hair white and tinted their skin a dull gray. Duergar were typically bald atop their heads, but there wasn’t much they could do about that as Edwyn wasn’t willing to shave themselves. However, once they applied a set of white contacts, the Manus Runelord looked startlingly different.

Edwyn looked at their beard’s new color like she’d killed his favorite puppy.

“This’ll come off, right?” 

Liddie pursed her lips. “Should do in a couple of days or with the remover.” 

“Should?! What do you mean; should?!” Edwyn growled. 

“Should, as in, I don’t exactly know! I’ve not had much use to dye my hair alright!”

“Quiet down, you two!” Nethlia barked. “Do you want the entire city to hear us?”

Divested of her berserker armor — although calling it that seemed like a misnomer as it left her mostly half-naked all the time — Nethlia stood with a hand on her muscular hip, glaring at the two. Autumn couldn’t help the blush that alighted upon her cheeks. In order for her gay heart to calm, the witch busied herself picking through the robes and masks for something that’d fit the towering demoness. Nothing did. So, with knife and needle, she tailored a garment to make Nethlia look decidedly more devilish.

A set of now sleeveless robes twisted about the demoness’ form, slit open at the thighs to allow her legs room to move with alacrity. Her horns pierced through a deep hood, plunging her upper face in a dark shadow while an ivory half-mask shaped like a grinning jaw hid the rest. The glow of her orange eyes glared out from the dark. Down her stomach and around her waist ran a set of ornate ribs, etched with chaotic symbols in a mimicry of armor.

“I look stupid,” Nethlia grumbled. 

Autumn huffed in response as she put the finishing touches on Nethlia’s outfit. “You look hot, to be honest.”

“Hot? I do feel kinda stuffy.” 

“I meant you look attractive.”

Nethlia’s eyes crinkled up in a smile, glowing from deep within the hood. The sight did something funny to Autumn's stomach like she’d swallowed a bunch of butterflies. 

“I know — I could tell from the aggressively sexual tone you used.”

Autumn blushed. 

“Are you two done?” Liddie grumbled. 

In the time it took Autumn to tailor Nethlia’s robes, she’d changed into a set of her own. Like the others, she hid in a deep hooded robe of ornate bones, gilded gold, and dark symbols. However, unlike the others, she’d donned a complete death mask to cover her face, the orange glow of her eyes peering through the slits. 

“We’re burning daylight while you two play grab-ass. Well, we’re not, but you get the point.”

“Careful,” Nethlia growled. “Provoking me when we’re having a moment won’t end well for you. Next time I’ll throw you in the river, water-breathing or not, you’ll not like it.”

Liddie held her hands up in surrender. “Ok, ok. I give. Maybe you two can go on a date in the city.”

Nethlia grimaced. “I don’t know how romantic a stroll through a slave city would be.”

“Maybe if you were breaking chains, it might be,” Autumn said, shrugging. 

“Huh. That does sound nice.”  

“Can I come too?” Eme quietly asked, looking sort of adorable swallowed by her grim robes. Although she’d cut the sleeve off her prosthetic side for a greater range of movement. “Not to be a bother or anything.” 

“We’d be glad to have you,” Autumn chirped. 

“Not to be growled at by your seven-foot-lover, but we’re all set,” Pyre piped up from within the bone sleigh. “Which gate are we heading towards, and how are we propelling this sleigh? Having Nethlia drag it over land is an option but the look of it…”

“The river gate is raised, from what I saw,” Autumn said. “We’ll want to take the south-eastern gate. And as for moving the sleigh? I could look through the necromancy spell-book — it’d look the part, at least,” she offered.

Seeing as nobody had any objections, nor any other solution, Nethlia quietly clapped her hands. 

“Alright. You heard the lady, try to look for some bones or something while she reads. horse-sized would be great.”

“Or reindeer,” Autumn joked, although she felt disgruntled when nobody got it. 

Plopping herself down into Nethlia’s lap within the sleigh — the big Inferni staying behind to guard her — Autumn opened her spell-book and began to read. 

“Raise Skeletal Mount,” she read outloud. She was almost certain there was a raised Spectral Steed in her Tome of Witchcraft. Or was it find Shadow Steed? She’d look it up when she got back. Maybe she could merge the two spells somehow. 

Raise Skeletal Shadow Steed?

Thoughts for another day. 

Nethlia’s hands were warm as they traced lines atop her stomach, trying to sneak into her clothes. Autumn was of half a mind to let her — to burn away the horrid memory of the nymphs caress with a berserker’s rough touch.

Autumn took Nethlia’s hands in hers. 

Her top became untucked and a pair of warm, calloused hands snuck inside to gently grasp her breasts. The witch moaned into her lips. 

“D-don’t go further than that — the others will be back soon.”

“Oh? I can do a lot with just these,” Nethlia purred into Autumn’s ear. A bit upon the sensitive lobe sent her squirming. She bit back a moan as her peaks stiffened under expert fingers. “They’re perfect.”

It proved to be rather hard to read with hands playing beneath her shirt, but Autumn was always up for a challenge…ok, that was a lie, but she was up for this one.