The Vampire & Her Witch

Chapter 1024: Isabell’s Mark (Part Two)

Ashlynn flipped quickly through the book until she found the section that described different manifestations of a witch’s mark. While Isabell couldn’t understand the strange, hooked, and angular characters that filled the book, the diagrams were all neatly labeled with brackets to measure the length and breadth of marks, the length and position of roots, and countless other details that made each mark unique.

Once again, she was taken aback by how sophisticated the Eldritch understanding of their world and the power of witchcraft must be. Far from the primitive superstitions the church claimed it to be, the book in Ashlynn’s hands proved that the Eldritch people had adopted the same kind of systemic methods of learning to their use of witchcraft that Isabell had practiced to learn engineering.

"Here it is," Ashlynn said, tapping the page as she found what she’d been looking for. "’Twisted Roots and Choked Potential," she read as her eyes began to rapidly scan over the text. "Can I see your mark again?" Ashlynn asked after a moment, carefully inspecting the other woman’s mark once she pulled up the hem of her skirt again while comparing it to the records in the book she held.

"All right, first of all, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing," Ashlynn said firmly, hoping to reassure the older woman as much as she could. "There’s nothing harmful about this, but it is... extreme. You should prepare yourself for some harsh limits on what you’re able to do with your witchcraft."

"Ashlynn," the silver-haired engineer said with a slight shake of her head. "I’m like a pauper who has been offered a chest of gold. Even if you tell me that the chest is smaller than someone else’s chest of gold, I’m not so attached to a dream as to be disappointed if I’ve received less than someone else might have."

"The power I have now," she said as she glanced at the knife she’d transformed, where it lay on the table. "It’s still more power than I ever expected to possess. So, you don’t need to cushion the blow. You can just tell me."

"You’re right," Ashlynn said with a smile. "You’re a ’big girl now’," she teased as she reached out to gently touch Isabell’s mark. "The length of each root represents the strength of your potential in one of the five elements. Air, Earth, Fire, Water, and Wood. In your case, the long root represents your strength in the element of Wood," she explained.

"But, when a root twists to block off another root, the way yours has, it’s a sign that your strength at one element has come at the expense of your power in another one," she said, pointing to a diagram in the book.

The example in the book showed the roots of a yew tree, where the root representing the element of earth had become tangled with the one representing fire, choking it out to grow thicker and stronger, becoming equal to the wood root in the drawing.

"But mine wraps all the way around," Isabell said as she began to understand why Ashlynn called her mark ’extreme.’ "Does this mean that I’ve lost the ability to use any element but wood in my witchcraft?"

"You haven’t lost it all," Ashlynn said as she pulled a small piece of string out of the pouch at her waist and began to measure the length of each root before it encountered Isabell’s all-consuming wood root. "You still have some strength in the power of earth, about as much as I have in air," she said with a light laugh, hoping it would soften the blow.

"But your powers over water and air will be extremely limited," Ashlynn explained. "I think one of the things you’ll need to learn early on is how to work with a partner who can add strength to compensate for your areas of weakness. Witches can pool their powers and work together on more complex rituals than they could attempt alone... For most witches, it’s something they do infrequently if they ever do. But for you, it might be necessary."

"I see," Isabell said, nodding in understanding as she considered what Ashlynn had said. "What about fire?" Isabell asked when she saw Ashlynn hesitating. "Let me guess. Nothing at all?"

"Nothing at all," Ashlynn confirmed as she closed the book with a heavy thump. "But, Isabell, there’s more to this than just a measure of potential," she said as her expression grew solemn. "Roots twist to choke out another root for two reasons. When a root twists outward, it’s a sign that the power of the world is... rejecting you."

"It’s something that’s very rare, but when a witch is flawed or unworthy," Ashlynn said, choosing her words with exceptional care. "When a person demonstrates during their trial that they cannot be trusted with certain types of power, the world itself seems to intervene in their development as a witch. Such witches are said to be the Orphans of the Earth, rejected, at least in part, by the very thing that should be the source of their power."

Isabell didn’t have to think hard to come up with half a dozen different reasons why someone might prove unworthy of wielding a specific power. The trial she’d taken required a certain amount of skill, knowledge, and persistence, and she believed that she’d learned what she needed to from the trial fairly smoothly.

But if someone had brute forced their way through, without accepting the lessons the trial was intended to teach, then perhaps the world would allow them to complete the trial while limiting the damage they would be capable of inflicting upon the world.

It was frightening to think that the mystical force of the world, the one that was supposed to be a neutral well of power that was uncaring about how witches used their power, would have such a mechanism. It implied a great deal more intelligence and thought lay behind the source of their power than Ashlynn had ever implied.

But at the moment, those thoughts were distractions from something else Ashlynn had said and Isabell quickly shook off those distractions to focus on the part that was the most important.

"You said that a root that twists outward is a sign that the world is rejecting the witch," Isabell said as her brows furrowed in thought. "But mine twists inward. Does that mean that I’m rejecting the world? That seems a bit pretentious, even for me," she said with a light self-deprecating chuckle.

"I wouldn’t say that you’re rejecting the world," Ashlynn said quickly. "But you have rejected a portion of its gifts. You have no ability to harness the power of fire because..."

"Because I refuse to unleash flames again," Isabell said as her eyes grew distant, filled with the ghosts of battles long ago, as the flames of the hearth reflected in her eyes began to resemble the flames that had consumed entire villages and towns.

"It’s better this way," Isabell said, as she forced herself to turn away from her memories of the past. "You said you wanted my help to build the future, not to fight your enemies, right?" Isabell asked rhetorically. "Well, it works out this way."

"I, I suppose it does," Ashlynn said carefully as she fetched a pair of hearth mitts to pull the iron cage and its savory, aromatic fish off the rack before the hearth. The scent of it was enough to start her stomach grumbling, and she hoped that Isabell would find the dish a pleasant distraction after discussing her mark.

Part of Ashlynn wanted to press on further, correcting Isabell’s misunderstanding about her power. A witch with as much strength in wood as Isabell possessed could be a devastating force for destruction if they wished to be. The elements weren’t limited to just a single expression of power. Heila was proof of the fact that wood could be both regenerative and healing and potent in unleashing controlled violence.

By the same token, when Isabell rejected fire, she hadn’t just rejected the ability to burn her enemies to death or to strip the land bare in a fiery inferno. She’d also rejected the flames that cooked their lunch and warmed their rooms from the winter cold. She’d walled herself off completely from a force that was more than just a weapon.

And in the process of doing so, she’d given herself more power over wood than any witch other than the Mother of Trees herself possessed... perhaps even rivaling the Mother of Thorns in her strength with wood.

At some point, Isabell would have to learn what it meant to possess that much power before something provoked her into unleashing it in the most devastating ways imaginable. But clearly, the Hemlock Witch wasn’t ready to think about her potential for violence yet, and Ashlynn was reluctant to press the issue.

She only hoped that the battles to come wouldn’t force her friend to confront the truth of her power before she was ready...