Hekate’s Return the opening

Sandar bolted straight up on her sleeping mat. The first sounds she noticed were the howls and barks, almost animal in nature. Then came the shouts and calls and spells of her people. Her mind filled with visions of The Dark Emperor’s forces falling on them and driving them into the narrow sea. Her shame flared anew. She should have seen his treachery coming. But now was not the time for self-pity. She smelled smoke. Not the smoke of regular cooking or dancing fires, but the smoke of burning reeds; the reeds they used to construct their huts. She grabbed a small satchel holding every meaningful thing she owned, threw a cloak around her shoulders, and stepped out of her small hut. Her dark hair flowed full in the wind.

There was chaos across the camp. Witches scrambled to remove items from their burning huts. They grouped together in defense. They made their silent calls to one another, and one such call landed on Sandar now: “We’re not alone.”

Sandar saw them. Other figures scampered about, near naked, filthy, their muscles lean and spindly, their bodies hanging loose with rough and ill-fit animal skins, their feet slapping unshod over the hard-packed valley floor. Who were these aggressors? Certainly not The Dark Emperor’s forces. They weren’t even Witches.These people lacked tactics, strategy, and stealth. They flashed their teeth. They wielded fire as if it were some unknown magic. They swung their flinty axes wide. They lobbed their crude parodies of spears into the dirt. Calm and focused, Sandar raised a hand and spoke a word. The flames consuming her hut bowed and curled into an idle ball, awaiting her command. A raging clump of savages came for her with murder in their eyes. She swung her arm. The fireball arched and consumed her attackers, sending them off into the night, like a senseless blazing many-legged insect.

Sandar went to the Empress’ hut. Empty.

A lightning strike flashed in the corner of her eye. She scrambled up a small outcropping, and saw The Immortal Twins, three times the size of any Witch, naked save their leather bandoliers, their cheekbones like mountains, their hair like bramble bush, their brows like cliffs, hard skin scarred with wounds earned when Hekate herself walked the Earth, standing back-to-back, shouting spells, and pulling down lightning bolts from the churning clouds above. The surly twin, Araja The Demon, grabbed one crafty savage up overhead, snapped his back, and cast him limp into the night. “Sister,” the other twin scolded. Gentler, kinder, and wiser, she was Araja The Just. She sent plenty of the bumbling nomads limping away with broken feet and fractured arms, but avoided killing them if she could.

Sandar circled back around a rock formation and there was The Empress, flanked by the bald and grizzled Callus, stout, certainly not fat, but a solid bulk of unknown constitution under his cloaks and armors. He was the one oddball Witch who did not believe in “overusing” magic, so dispatched his share of filthy brutes with club and dagger.

“General,” called The Empress, her black and kinky hair whipping in the wind, her deep brown skin signaling her lineage as among the oldest of the Witch race. She was a mortal Witch, to be sure, but her ancestors were present right beside The Immortal Twins on that day Hekate first gave magic to their people. “What is this?”

“I don’t know, Empress,” shouted Sandar. “They’re like animals.”

“So, we’re food?”

“That doesn’t seem likely. This is something else. I’m going to check on the Council.”

Sandar bolted off across the landscape with Speed and located the three elder members of the Witches Council. Of course, there had been many more, but these were the only three who came with The Empress when The Dark Emperor drove her out. The ancient three sat together on a rock. Bone-thin Agnis cackled around the pipe between her teeth. Ceres wore no cloak, but let the winds whip her sun-tough skin at will. Kolta kept her face passive and unreadable as always. Together, they whispered a wide swath of Influence, causing the filthy aggressors to hack one another’s skulls with their silly axes, and run one another through with their pathetic sticks. Sandar leapt atop a large boulder and surveyed the battle on all sides, and indeed, despite the burning huts, the Witches were roundly beating these dirty scoundrels. Surely, even their slow-witted brains knew they were out-matched. Why were they fighting a battle they couldn’t win?

Lithe and slippery Jamus, who had sided with the Dark Emperor before his change of heart, jumped on the boulder next to her.

“General. It’s a distraction.” He pointed off in the distance, where a small band of the nomads scurried away from the battle, struggling with a number of lumpy sacks.

“They’re stealing from us?”

Sandar led Jamus through the battlefield with Speed. By the time they caught up, the nomads had moved into a large patch of scrub. Sandar and Jamus picked their way through the high, spiky plants, until they perceived a flickering glow in the distance. Jamus pulled a branch aside, and there were the nomads, crouching and swaying and bowing their heads before a burning bush.

“General!” Jamus gripped Sandar’s arm. “There, in those sacks. The children! They’re stealing our children!”

Sandar’s rage was instant and all-consuming. She spoke a spell and commanded the fire in the bush to consume the brutes. But the fire did not obey her. Instead, a white-hot spike of pain pierced her mind. Jamus dropped to his knees and gripped his head too.

The nomads turned as one and looked at the two Witches. Then, they looked beyond and up to the sky. Towering high above the mountains, and spread wide throughout the lightning-lit clouds, the unmistakable horns of a bull.

“Apis...”

A rumble in the earth, growing until small pebbles danced and shifted across the soil.

“Back! We have to get back!”

Sandar and Jamus ran with Speed, but they were too late. They perceived flashes of marbled horns and swells of shining haunches. They heard the spews and snorts of ten thousand wet snouts. The rumble grew so loud, Sandar could no longer hear Jamus’ shouts.

Apis’ unstoppable bull army wiped away everything in the valley.