CW: This chapter contains depictions of serious injuries and allusions to imprisonment.

In the Witch's Town

With the Witch’s words, the air seemed to grow even heavier, then lightened suddenly and unnervingly to a normal morning atmosphere. Doren ignored the sounds of footsteps and stumbling as the people ran to do as they were ordered, no one speaking. He could See the fire and blue that Orlo had mentioned, now, as though Valla had dropped her walls entirely. He could sense the strength she expended to keep her power constrained. And as he studied her, he saw it was not a snake, but a binding, the blue coiled around her magic tightly, not encasing it completely but sealing the bulk of it. Again, Doren was bemused. Firstlly, such bindings were rare, and usually forbidden. He had never seen one and did not know what kind it was. And secondly, even with so much locked away, she could easily have left a crater where this town was if she had lost control of what power remained under her control. But she had used raw aether, pushing pure power rather than influencing the flow of aether around her with her own. If he had needed any more proof that she was not human, he had it.

Cautiously, Doren placed a hand on Valla's upper back. "Can you move?" he asked, "Or you can lie down here. I have some healing." He sent a bare thread of power through his hand, cauterizing her wounds. There were more than he had realized, and he was suddenly angry, seeing the ridiculous mob with their weapons and mostly undamaged bodies walking away. "You could have stopped them."

"Yes." The Witch had approached them without his notice. The one word was reproving, but there was no longer ice in her voice.

"No, friend." Valla opened her eyes and lifted her head, looking exhausted. "I would never break your rules here. And it was my fault."

The Witch laughed quietly, raising the hairs on the back of Doren's neck.

Doren tried his best to ignore them and focused on Valla's injuries. Fractured ribs, lacerations on her back, hip, and thigh, and a mild concussion. By far the worst was a cut on her side. It was shockingly deep, tinged with a rotten magic, and could not have been inflicted by any of the people she had just fought. He sent more power through his hand on her back, focusing on the wound, but found his hand was thrown back by a surge of power as he attempted to heal it. The skin on his palm was seared, and Valla shuddered violently.

"You can't," she ground out, "thank you, but you can't." The Witch stepped forward and waved Doren back, not unkindly. "That healing is beyond you, Child." Dazed by the buzzing pain in his hand and shock at the rejection of his healing, it took Doren a moment to realize she was speaking to him. When he did, he looked up and saw the Witch giving Valla a small amber bottle from one of her many pouches. Valla took it in her left hand and glared at it.

"You shouldn't do this, Witch. They will resent you." Astonished, Doren watched as Valla shuddered again. She looked to be on the verge of tears. "You are strong, but if they reject you –"

"My rules bind even me." The Witch cut her off sternly, then looked at Doren. "You will help me. The other damage is fixable." Silent still, Doren moved back to place his now burned palm on Valla's right shoulder, gently, sending a numbing thread of power through as he grasped her arm with his other hand and fit the joint smoothly back into place with controlled, preternatural strength and skill. Despite the pain relief his power offered her, Valla winced. Doren grimaced in sympathy but continued his task, finding he and the Witch worked well together, him lending magic and her supplying bandages and salve and tinctures from her apothecary belt. It was only after they had staunched the worst of the bleeding and started to lead Valla back to the tavern – not the Hall behind them, where the town had already begun to gather – that it occurred to him that perhaps it would make more sense for the extremely powerful Witch to provide the magic instead of him. The Witch scoffed, as though reading his thoughts. She likely was. Perhaps her magic did not work for healing. He knew precious little of Witches.

He kept his Sight and healing focused on Valla as they walked in and set her on one of the benches before continuing to tend her wounds in silence. He noticed upon close inspection that a dark, sticky residue bubbled at the edges of the wound at her side. It was an ominous power, almost sentient. And it was something beyond him to heal, the Witch had said. Perhaps beyond the Witch to heal as well. He suspected, though, that the reason Valla had been beaten so badly was not simply her injury, grievous as it was, not even just the blue bindings coiled tightly around her power. Even with her flaring magic partially bound, he had seen enough to be wary of her, to know her to be beyond his abilities to easily defeat. And yet she had been knocked around by less than a dozen hapless villagers. Looking at her now, withdrawn and distant, seeming unfeeling as they probed her bruised and damaged ribs, he began to feel angry. It was disconcerting to see her face empty, eyes dull. Even after just a few hours, he had become accustomed to the mercurial joy and sharpness she had so confused him with. Seeing her beaten by those weaker than her, those who didn't understand her and who had once accepted her, was like looking in a mirror. It shamed and enraged him.

The Witch removed Valla's scarf and shirts, revealing the blood-soaked bandages wrapped around her torso and a vibrant blue band wrapped around her neck, winding across her collarbone, around her ribcage to her back and under the bandages, reappearing along her hip before disappearing beyond her wrapped belt and pants. The band looked like a tattoo, part of the skin, but was impossibly vivid in color, almost luminescent in the pale light from the tavern windows. Valla's defenses hiding her power were completely down, and he could See the same blue bindings wrapped around her very aura.

"A mage's collar," the Witch said softly, focused on dressing the sword cut on her upper back. Doren looked up, startled. He had heard of such a thing but never seen one and had assumed this was some simple binding. The mage’s collar was used, rarely, as a punishment for powerful criminals in the Empire centuries ago. It had been used to bind an order of rebel mages in the early years of Carram but it could be used to bind any magical being. There were stories, more myths, of incredibly strong versions of the collars used to bind elementals and dragons, even daemons and other creatures from other realms. Their use was considered barbaric and taboo. On her neck and wrists were bands of scars, faint, layered over one another in rough rings. Her back was a mess of white lines, and other remnants of old cuts crisscrossed the rest of her visible skin.

"Don't stare, knightling. Help me," the Witch admonished, and they worked as Valla sat, still and pliant, awake but eyes unseeing. When they came to her wound on her side, she started.

"Leave it." Her voice was harder than Doren had heard before, tinged with flames, grey flashing silver as she glared at them. "Fool," clucked the Witch, unoffended, but she pulled back. "It needs new dressings."

"I will deal with it," Valla said flatly. Doren had stepped back, wary, but no fight materialized. It was as though this was simply a repeat of an old conversation, and he wondered exactly how well these two knew one another.

Valla was fading in and out, and she focused a bleary grey gaze on him. "You're still here." It was not a question. The Witch looked between them, her face carefully blank.

"I had decided. But then you did... this." He sounded angry even to his own ears. It was hard to stay calm looking at her bandaged and shaky at a tavern table not far from where they had sat just hours ago. He took a breath to try to speak again, to start over but cut off when he saw her begin to grin, eyes sharpening as she looked at him, mirth obvious on her face. In an instant, his growing rage was gone.

"You decided. You will promise?"

He knew, somehow, that she did not mean to mock him, that she was asking for his personal vow, for him to swear on his own honor and not on his old Order's. Ignoring the Witch's fascinated stare, he nodded once, sharply. "Yes. I promise." He felt like a child again, speaking of simple promises, but he also felt lighter than he had since he'd been cast out.

"Witch!" Valla spoke cheerily. "Please give him your blessing. He can promise to keep this place hidden, but I need him to remember."

The Witch sighed, looking strangely happy and sorrowful all at once. "You may not be able to return. You can live your life here in peace. Vengeance leads to a bloody end." The last earned her a sardonic look from the one bleeding all over the table, and the Witch sighed again.

"I don't think peace is an option any longer, friend. I am grateful, but I do not belong here."  Valla spoke seriously now. "Staying will only bring harm to you, and I owe you too much."