A black cat slinked across the dusty shelves of the arcane workshop with two headless mice stuffed in its fangs. Beakers bubbled with liquids in every color of the morbid rainbow. A strange structure like a coffin crossed with an iron maiden was propped upright against the damp stone wall. It started to rattle with cosmic energy.
The container's double doors split open and spilled fog across the floor. A black figure stirred in hollow shadows before stepping one slender bare foot into the light.
Agitha walked out of her restorative chamber with a cheerful yawn. She was bare-skinned from top to bottom with a fair ivory complexion that risked being swallowed up by the grim and drab basement surroundings. Long brown hair draped down her shoulders and lightly covered the fronts of her breasts. A wiry brown carpet covered the chalice between her legs. She had the smaller and slightly more corpulent build distinctive of female lines bred for mana abundance rather than agility or physical strength. The fog from her sleeping chamber left her skin gleaming with moisture to keep it fresh and her body cool so it aged more gracefully.
She reached to a rack beside the chamber and retrieved a long necromancer's robe as her only piece of clothing. Loose and coquettish by nature, she straightened the robe over her shoulders and casually pulled it around her front without making the extra effort to tie its waist sash. She technically counted as dressed while leaving her cloak parted slightly open and showing glimpses of the creamy nubile architecture underneath. Every now and then, she would look down and smile at a new interesting quirk of herself she hadn't noticed before. After all, she was a 500-year-old crow with the body of some spry 17-year-old chick.
She treaded barefoot across the musty stone floor and came to a stone table covered with a shroud. Peeling the sheet halfway down, she revealed the bare body of a stocky blonde young man. He'd been dead for at least a day, but a combination of magic enchantments and herbal ointments in his flesh kept him perfectly intact as if he were still alive.
Agitha rummaged through the bag of belongings sitting on the side of the table. A scabbard full of throwing daggers. A cheese wedge. A wedding ring. An old moldy whip that was worthless when it wasn't in the hands of a specific family of hunters. She shrugged before dropping the bag to the floor and pushing it under the table with her toes.
The two people in the room had been enemies of Agitha back when she was a bit more gray-haired and wrinkly. They had come to the castle as a horrible little witch and the dimwitted vampire hunter she dragged around as her assistant. The witch had been full of promise and spunk, but she too inexperienced to harness her body's magic to its complete potential. She made the mistake of intruding on Agitha's workshop and trying to match wits with the superior enchantress. One second she was strutting her stuff in a cute pair of violet stockings and conjuring a lightning storm. The next, her naked body was lying on a slab surrounded by black candles with a black sheet pulled up to her shoulders and a pentagram traced in oil on her sleeping forehead. Her defeat resulted in the death of her male companion and her soul being purged to oblivion, but at least her flesh ended up with an owner who would make better use of it.
Agitha flopped into a wooden chair and sighed in serenity. She leaned over the desk she used for studying, enchanting, and potion brewing. The table with the cadaver was still within arm's reach on her left.
She opened a leather-bound incantation tome on her desk and began reading from where she left the marker yesterday. Her eyes shined like focused blue opals in the table's soft candlelight. Her mouth moved silently and subtly as she trained herself to get used to the feeling of her new young lips pronouncing the arcane words she'd known for centuries. Underneath the desk, her feet crossed and the narrow blades of her bare ankles brushed against each other. Dracula only ever bothered her when he needed her expertise for identifying some ancient artifact or summoning a mythological beast. For the most part she kept to herself in her murky laboratory retreat and researched every day at her leisure.
Her right index finger traced the text on the page as her left hand reached beside the book. She picked up a fork laid out on her desk and, keeping her eyes attentively fixed on the page, she stretched her left arm toward the body beside her. Her hand steered the prongs of the fork into an open cut on his side and wiggled around to pick out a small chunk of his liver. She slowly drew the fork back to her mouth and chewed by turning her jaw like a cow who'd been taught table manners.
Agitha exploited the girl's body for its beautiful youth and natural magic power. She exploited the boy's body for sustenance.
Turning the page of the tome, she discovered a new spell for polymorphing into a mountain weasel. She leaned back in her chair while she memorized the words. She traced the page with her right hand while twirling the fork with her left hand and flexing her fingers to practice her incantation motions. She was so used to working with rickety old knuckles that flexing the silk tendons in her new hand felt almost too easy.