"Then why were you so easy to curse?!"

Lilith Clawthorne's snarled words rippled out through the air like water after a stone had been dropped. Everyone heard what she had spat out: Eda Clawthorne, her sister, standing before her; Luz Noceda, Eda's human apprentice, lying in the remains of the blue orb that had held her; Emperor Belos, Lilith's master, watching the duel from the battlements of his palace… and the Witches and Guards of the Emperor's Coven, their masks pressed against the windows, watching the duel as if their lives depended on it – after all, it wasn't every day that the Owl Lady – the most powerful criminal in the Boiling Isles – faced off against the head of the Emperor's Coven.

Every Witch and Guard heard Lilith, and while the corridor had already been quiet, now that silence grew deafening – you could have heard the smallest pin ever made drop from the smallest possible height.

That silence stayed in place until the duel ended. Once Lilith had dragged her sister's cursed monster form – a curse she herself had cast – inside the palace and the drawbridge had been pulled back, the whispers and the mutterings began – and began they did.

"She cursed her own sister?" One of the white-cloaked Witches shook his head in disbelief. "That's… that's just cold!"

"So what?" The Witch standing beside him shrugged – though from the sound of her voice, that wasn't the question she was thinking. "She's a criminal, she deserved it!"

"Yeah, but…" The first Witch shuddered, leaning against the window. "Wasn't Eda young when she was cursed – like, Hexside young?"

"I heard she was a few years older…" the other Witch muttered.

"I heard that she was cursed the day before she dropped out of Hexside." A Guard who had been listening in on their conversation added.

"Exactly," the male Witch nodded. "So she probably wasn't a criminal then… or at least not as wanted as she is now."

The female Witch sighed. "Yeah but… she could have joined the Coven if she wanted the curse gone, no one forced her to live with it apart from herself." She folded her arms. "Miss Clawthorne may have cursed her but only the Owl Lady decided to stay that way."

"I…" the Witch who had started that conversation tried to find something else to say before slumping in defeat. "Yeah, I… you have a point."

This was far from the only whispered conversation being held in that corridor. Every single Witch and Guard had something to say – or at least, didn't want to be left out of something like this.

"I did not see that coming," a Guard groaned to his friend. "I was so off – I owe Steve somany snails!"

His friend patted him sympathetically on the back. "Hey, cheer up, Johnny, you can always just start collecting again."

"But he's going to take Johnny Junior!" The Guard cupped his hands together as if he was holding a small object as his voice stared to wobble. "I've had him since he had his protoconch!"

"Well… at least you lost him for a good reason. Did you see the look on the Owl's Lady's face? That was worth more than any snail!"

The Guard nodded slightly. "Yeah I… I suppose it was pretty good."

A few metres away, a Witch was ticking things off on her fingers. "… And that's just what we know about, the Emperor knows how many other things she broke or how many other people she hurt when she was like that!"

Her companion scratched his head through his hood. "But if the Emperor knows, wouldn't we know too?"

"Well that's… it's an expression!" The Witch jabbed her finger in the air. "The point is, since Lilith cursed her so she's responsible for everything Eda did when she was transformed!"

"But Miss Clawthorne didn't force the Owl Lady to do all those things."

"And the King of Demons doesn't force all the other demons to do what they do but we still blame him every time they do something bad, don't we?"

"But Miss Clawthorne couldn't have known that her sister would do those things!" The other Witch argued. "Besides, she kept trying to get her to join our Coven, she was trying to fix what she had done. You can't blame Miss Clawthorne for what the Owl Lady did!"

"But… I… you… fine."

At the end of the corridor, three Witches were huddled together.

"My gran-gran was cursed," one of them was telling the others. "Completely ruined her life, it did, her career, her relationships… everything was gone the second she couldn't afford her elixir anymore!"

The other two Witches winced sympathetically.

"Yeah, it was awful," the first Witch nodded. "But at least she didn't have to go through what Eda did. No one deserves to find out their sibling cursed them."

"But Eda's the Owl Lady," one of the listeners protested.

"So?" The third Witch glanced at the second. "She still has feelings!"

"But she's the Owl Lady!" The third Witch retorted. "You don't get a bounty of $1,000,000,000,000 for being a harmless pest!" She turned to leave.

"That's true…"

As the various Witches and Guards filtered away from the corridor to return to their duties, most of the conversations began to die out. What more was there to discuss? Miss Lilith Clawthorne was the head of the Emperor's Coven and Eda was the Owl Lady, that alone showed who was right.

At least… that was what everyone told themselves.