The elements are my allies. The dead are my servants. And fear… Fear will be my closest friend.
My name is Chatechi, and I am an Exile.
The witch was the worst of the worst. Dabblers of black magic and necromancy, raising the dead and casting curses on innocent, good people. They represented the darkness, the slime in the corners of the sewers, evil itself incarnated.
Such are the thoughts of the common. They distrust magic and usually blame all of their problems on it. As such, practitioners of magic- whether witch or warlock- are blamed for any and all troubles. In her previous life, the witch had been accused of causing droughts, mad cow disease, storms, illness, a nasty rash and turning someone into a newt, who claimed that he had "gotten better."
In reality, the witch is a child born knowing they have this dark power and possessed of a natural inclination to practice it. Once a witch is discovered, it doesn't take long before she is immediately persecuted for her "crimes." It is true, they are occasionally responsible for some minor flood or landslide, but these events are few and far between and unnecessarily exaggerated until suddenly one dog dying of a fever is reported quite seriously as "a massive epidemic."
Is the dark, mistrusting witch really a monster of untold proportions? It is up to you, dear reader, to decide over the course of this narrative. In it is told the quite factual and precise story of a witch who found herself marooned in a land of darkness and despair- Wraeclast. A land where the dead rise on their own, where cannibals and necromancers are more plentiful than the ordinary people. Where one can meet their death swifter than any other place. For centuries, it has been the pleasure of the King to exile criminals there, laughing as he told them of the "great chance at a new life" they had in the untamed land. Most of them meet their death within minutes of arriving.
So what chance did this twisted, perverse child have in a land such as this?
Cold.
That was the first impression Chatechi had of Wraeclast. It was cold. True, she was imprisoned in the deck of a ship, in an area that had no heating whatsoever. After all, why waste the fuel warming some mangy prisoners? It was also wet. Very damp and wet. Chatechi was used to being wet- indeed, as a witch she'd often been forced to live in damp caves for weeks at a time. But this damp was another sort of damp entirely. It sank into her bones, chilled her very soul. It also didn't help the whole cold situation. She sat in the back of her cell, huddled for warmth. Her raven dark hair hung limply and felt slimy against her skin. She closed her eyes and muttered something- and flames sparked into life on her palm. She held this warming fire close to her chest, taking comfort in its little warmth. The other occupants of her cell- some pirates, she thought- edged away from her uneasily. She didn't care. More fire for her. Across the room languished more pirates and a strange, gray-bearded man who clutched to his staff as if it were his lifeline. The staff was very distinctive; it was constructed of ebony wood from top to bottom and adorned with a large, ornamental cross. He looked apprehensive, and yet there was a strange calmness in his gaze, as if he knew he was going to be alright. She knew that look well, because she had the same one. All these others were simply more corpses to bloody the shoreline of Wraeclast. She would use them to raise her army.
"Prisoners!" Came a bellow from on high, and the shadowy, heavily cloaked form of a guard loomed over them. Keys clinked as he drew them from within his cloak somewhere, unlocking the cage. "Alight, move upstairs you worthless piles of dung! Time to go to your new home!" Chatechi ended up beside the old man as the prisoners slowly lined up to trudge to the upper deck. The man looked at her.
"Witch." His voice was not accusatory; nor was it condemning. It was a simple, emotionless statement of fact. "My brothers and I hunted down many of your kind." She realized what he was now- A Templar. So called holy warriors that made a sport of killing witches and any creature deemed unholy. She smiled, the smile cold and displaying her ever so slightly pointed teeth.
"And many of your brothers met their deaths at my hands, old man." He did not react in fear as she had hoped, but rather nodded sadly.
"Death accompanies us all," he said. "It is the route to divinity."
"Your faith is a crutch. It will fail you someday." She spat the words out, filling them with all the bitterness she could muster.
"Perhaps," came the cool reply. "But at least I believe in something, witch. What do you believe in?" They faced the raging sea now. One by one, under prodding from the guards, they were ordered to leap from the deck of the ship into the roiling waves. A dark shape squatted in the distance, tantalizingly near and yet impossibly far. Rain pelted her face and lighting flashed. Her hair swayed, dank and limp in the wind, casting her face into frightful shadows. Her eyes were hard and unworldly. Finally it was her turn, and she turned to the Templar.
"I believe in myself." She stepped over the edge and plummeted into the water.
She awoke on a beach, sprawled where the waves had thrown her. The sand cut and bit into her skin. The wind beat mercilessly on her, the chill cutting into her and stealing what little warmth she had. Coughing up water, the witch managed to rise to her knees and draw a shuddering breath, casting her gaze about her to learn what she could. In front of her was more beach and a cliff face, almost certainly unclimbable. To her left were the ruins of some boat or another, and to her right the coast stretched into the distance. She fancied she could see a twinkling light in the distance.
"Alive, are ye?" The voice, rough and hoarse, came from a pirate whose shirt was stained with blood. He sat propped up against the boat. He coughed, blood flowing out of his mouth and onto his shirt. He laughed weakly. "Better than this guy, eh?" He said, jerking a thumb towards the corpse lying next to him on the shore. As he chuckled at his joke, the corpse rolled over and bit out his throat. His laugh died away to a gurgle, and the pirate died with a surprised look on his face. The corpse dug into the fresh body, but the witch had much experience with undead and knew that wouldn't last long. It already took notice of her, shambling to its feet and beginning to lurch towards her. She scrabbled back from it, reaching back for something, anything- there! She gripped the peace of wood she found and pointed it at the corpse, yelling something. A blast of energy rippled from the tip, and tore apart the oncoming corpse. Chatechi released a shaky breath and looked more closely at the piece of wood she held. Then she laughed, not caring who or what heard. It was a wand. A wand!
She rose to her feet, grinning savagely. The wand was a simple one that looked like it had been carved from driftwood, but it was a wand nonetheless. It had three sockets in its handle- red, blue and green- but only the blue one was filled. Experimentally, she tapped the gem and a fireball sprouted in her hands. Curious, she lobbed the fireball a good distance from her and watched in glee as it detonated. Now this, this would be useful. She heard a low moan and turned to see a horde of undead beginning to rise from where they had fallen in the sand and surf. The Witch giggled. "Silly undead," She said smugly, lobbing fireballs into the crowd of corpses. They went up like torches. The fire jumped and spread from dead to dead; before long they resembled nothing more than a slowly moving forest of flaming, screaming trees. She pirouetted, waving the wand and sending blasts of magic into them, dispatching them one by one, all the while with that unnerving grin on her face. Her small, slightly pointed teeth gleamed in the light of the burning corpses. She paused and took a bow- more than a dozen ex-undead lay burning on the surf. The tide came in, the waves dousing some fires and bearing still-flaming corpses out into the ocean.
The Witch searched their bodies for anything useful. She found one corpse, heavily burned, wearing robes of some sort. In them she found another gem, and another wand. She slotted the gem into the second wand and held it- this one, she knew what did instantly. "Rise," she commanded, and a corpse slowly climbed to its feet, ready to serve her. "Rise!" She commanded again, and another rose. "RISE!" She cried out, spreading her arms wide. The multitude of bodies twitched- but only one rose. Chatechi frowned. Only three minions? That was slightly disappointing. She shrugged and decided to mull over it later. For now, the lights of fires twinkled on the horizon. She began walking that way, her horrors forming an honor guard around her. She liked that. She was the Princess- no, the Queen. The Queen of Death.
The Queen of Death, caught up in her newly found name, failed to notice the pair of eyes that followed her progress from a bush- or the large, shadowy form that followed them.
Hello, reader! Just a friendly note to help clear up a few things. Chatechi is pronounced Cat-e-kai. She IS a real character in PoE that I AM playing at the moment, and I'm basing the story on her exploits. If you play PoE and wish to be a part of the project, my in-game moniker is Pikdude. Contact me at your own risk- the Queen of Death is fickle in her element.
And yes, she is dual wielding wands. Badass, right?