A Wicked Witch on Halloween Island
"You're going to have a lot of questions, but we probably won't have all the answers as you would like." The Devil offered her a clawed hand up, which she pointedly ignored. The Devil grinned, as if amused by her rebellious attitude. "Welcome to Halloween Island, a place named by strange explorers from another land, albeit without the consultation of the natives, as non-native explorers are want' to do. We decided to keep the name though, because it struck our fancy."
The witch had never heard of the place. She hated water; and she had no reason to consider travel beyond the Deadly Desert; thus, she had foregone any investigation about islands surrounding Oz. "Why was I sent here?" Morella asked. "How?" The devil paused at that, before continuing.
"The Minotaur-folk came first seeking refuge from 'Great White Hunters' setting up an unfortunate trend of monster hunting. The Minotaurs in turn started the trend of horrors and creatures coming here to live peacefully, and free of persecution. Other citizens are here for more... complicated reasons. This is a place of refuge for the fearful, and a place of rehabilitation for the fearsome. Outcasts and strangers, and wild things." His grin widened as some mysterious memory flashed across his eyes.
"More outlanders." The witch sneered with hateful disgust.
"Desperate souls." The Devil said. "Once upon a time the needy, the lost, those who fell between the cracks- these were my bread and butter. I supped regularly and well."
The witch knew little of temptation or the corruption of the innocents. She was a beater, a breaker, a Warhammer of selfish ambitions and crude desires.
"And now you are a serpent rent fangless?" The Devil's grin flickered for the briefest moment. A moment the witch noted with mean pleasure. "You are merely a cautionary tale of that which I should avoid becoming."
"Harsh words for one bested by powers far more great and powerful than herself." The Devil said.
"I was assassinated in my own kitchen by a bratty sorceress sent to my peaceful kingdom, by an ego-driven wizard more cow-hearted than that miserable lion." She paused and took a deep breath before the Devil could reply. "A child from another world, a traveling blight on my family, one of these accursed outlanders you seem so fond of, and once I have escaped this prison island, I will hunt down that doubly damned wizard, and Dorothy and her little dog too!" Another deep breath. The Devil waited patiently this time. "Oh yesss. If the wizard is double cursed than she will be triple cursed! I'll turn her feet to lead, and her knees to jelly. I cause her precious little face to break every time she dares to smile! Oh, how she will be cursed! Eh-eh-eh-eh-eh-eh!"
"ENOUGH!" The Devil roared. His grin had melted away completely now like the winter ice into a stream, carried swiftly away. She began to realize several things at once, fear bringing her situation into fierce clarity: She didn't know where she was, or if Death would come back for her. She was surrounded by water. She felt no magic within herself, and she was testing the patience of the King of Daemons. She realized her blood was flowing for the first time in centuries, and that it could still freeze with terror.
"You are a poor, simpering little thing. You don't know what has happened in your absence, but in your arrogance, you think the world has stopped for you. You've been leave of this world for thirty and five years now. This world has moved on." He leaned forward, forcing her to involuntarily shrink back. "Dorothy and the Wizard have grown in power since then. Oz has amassed defenders and heroic-types. Even assuming that you were not UTTERLY annihilated the moment your mere shadow touched the mainland shore, there is no way you would reclaim your former glory, let alone your misbegotten revenge plots-"
"Now now." Came a woman's voice from near the fire, commanding attention and reining the mood in. "This is not our first aggressive egoist. Is she worth backtracking on your own progress, Nick?" The voice belonged to a seductively attired Gypsy woman, bejeweled and robed. "Pride, ego, rage. Violence. hatred." These are the chains we all wore in life, and some in death. Perhaps she will be more amicable when she meets everyone. My name is Zinaro."
The Devil stabbed his pitchfork into the ground and gestured grandly behind him with his other hand. An enormous human that seemed to be sewn together. A man with a bull's head. A massive, hunched wolf starring with suspicious shining eyes. A skeleton wearing a silk top hat. And a strangely formally dressed figure of indeterminate sex, wearing a high collar cape, and possessing no head above the shoulders.
"The tall one is Adam-"
"Call me Frankenstein. Or The Monster. I should stand as a warning of man's hubris when playing God. I was not created perfect, let me bear the name of the broken creator who birthed me."
"He goes back and forth on what he wants to be called." The Devil rolled his eyes. "The minotaur is Jason. The walking boneyard is Tom Bones-"
"Yes, yes a menagerie of broken or haunted creatures hiding away from the scary humans. Why am I here?" The Devil and Zinaro exchanged glances.
"That's depends on you. You were a horror out there, so if you aren't here for safety than you were sent here to be punished. A day with the Rodentians would take some of the of the bite out of you, as they put their bite on you." His bones rattled as he chuckled.
"No one here is sent for punishment." Zinaro replied evenly. "Though some find an easier time her than others. Some creatures are less civilized. They live here as a preservation measure, but as it was said, the Rodentians, and the Ghouls do tend to be hungry and, well, disagreeable to polite conversation. I assume though you would not prefer to camp with such..."
"Perhaps that is our true fate." Frankenstein lamented. "To shift one another as wheat and leave behind a purified creation."
"You say a line one time, and no one forgets it for two thousand years." The Devil said. The werewolf had wandered away somewhere, and Tom Bones seemed to have lost interest when the monster began speaking.
"Look," Zinaro said "you're here. Why will become clear when the forces that brought you here want you to know. We have a delicate society here. You may be part of it, or you can wander off into the wilderness and make it on your own." As if to accentuate this comment, something in the distance made a sound between a roar and a moan, a stretched-out sound that made Morella's skin crawl. The sound was followed by a shrieking laugh.
The Wicked Witch was afraid.