Maiden of Pain-This is part of my witches world idea. If anything about it confuses you, then just ask me about it and I can try to explain it a bit better.

Rated T for a bad word.

Inspired by a Forgotten Realms book with the same name by Kameron M. Franklin.

It was a complete accident that it had happened. But Mathew would still need to pay for it. And that he did, with days and days and months and months of service. That wasn't enough for those greedy bastards though. There was always more that they wanted, and one day they had arranged for a way to bind him into the service that they wanted.

And his pride had then kept him there.

In Mathew's world, the three most powerful witches are given their title according to their age. Maiden, Matron, and Crone. The witch society is a female-based one. Only females have powers, but not all of the time. There are sometimes rare, very rare, individuals who are male witches, but if they are one of the Three, their title does not become a masculine one because of their tradition. Mathew is one such male witch, and he is one of the Three. For the top three witches, the rest of their title shows what their power is. Mathew's power is that he can either give or take away pain. He is called the Maiden of Pain.

The way that the Church of his world binds him is by using his power as their trick to keep him there.

During a visit to discuss the Witch-Church Treaty, he had accidentally touched the hand of the priest in charge of the Church that controls his world. The priest had jabbed his arm when he went to leave, and hid the action, then caught Mathew's hand when Mathew had turned around startled, and in his unaware state, Mathew had accidentally released his magic, the pain kind, into him. Which the priest had not hidden at all. The priest had howled in pain and caused an uproar in the crowd that had been watching everything. After that, a new argument had risen up.

The Church had then wanted him to do more than the normal witch duties of preventing natural disasters. They wanted him to do much more than that, they wanted him to make the church rich. Mathew had agreed to the demands, and in repayment for the pain he'd caused, despite his annoyance and anger at being told he had done it on purpose and for being forced into this, he had started growing flowers for the church that had the ability to drink gold out of the soil of a place in the same way that normal plants drink water and its minerals out of the soil. These plants were known as Witch Flowers, even the weakest witch could grow them from birth, he was willing to make these plants. He made a whole garden of them, enough to make the Church a fortune. He had reached an agreement with the Church, after the accident had happened, that he would make over a dozen of these flowers for them every day for a month, and that month was finished. He should have been allowed to leave, but in the last few days before he left he saw something, actually someone, who made him stay.

On the way back from the garden one day, three days before he was to leave, he met an albino going by the name of Gilbert who was walking, stumbling, along the hallways bleeding onto the carpet from the whip lashes down his back. Mathew had helped him to his room, and had taken away his pain, and found out the reason for the man's state. It was a tradition of the Church, one of the reasons why the witches refused to work with them more than the Witch-Church Treaty stated that they had to. That was the reason behind this man's pain. One of their stupid traditions. They were the cause of much grief, and yet they never changed. It was saddening to see.

Their little tradition was very specific this time around. In a ceremony conducted every one hundred and thirteen years, a person with blood red eyes was found and chosen to be a representation of the devil and executed. The family of the "devil", of course, was paid handsomely not to object to it. Gilbert, with his perfectly silver-white hair and eyes as red as any ruby Mathew had summoned into being, clearly fit their requirements for being a "devil".

Mathew had left him there with a charm filled with his magic to keep taking away his pain, and had marched to the priest`s quarters to demand Gilbert`s release. An agreement was reached. Mathew would do any service the Church should want as long as the albino continued to live. Mathew had hesitated only a few heartbeats before signing his name to the agreement, and had ignored the smirk the priest had given.

This deal did not favour him in any way, but he couldn't just let the man die. So, he`d agreed and the ritual was cancelled and a notice went out to the citizens that it was not to be completed that century because the requirements for the "devil" had not been met. Gilbert was allowed to live for another few years, and Mathew almost died from the amount of magic he released to fulfill the Church's demands. It was a fair trade.

So, I'd realized that I have never written a romantic PruCan story, so I came up with this, and it ended up not being romantic at all and I'm left feeling like..."Well then". Then I was all like, I don't even like PruCan that much. Why am I doing this? For fun, my dearies. Nothing is worth doing if you do not have fun with it.