The Witch of Ruin
Pilot Chapter: Arrival
00:00:01
"Oh… Oh my… Something must have gone very wrong…"
Anywhere her emerald green eyes look, the woman sees people running around in panic or looking at her in fear and confusion, while armed guards point steel swords and spears towards her, shouting things like "Who are you!" or "Where did you come from!".
"Muuu… This is definitely not a place I know," she hums as she plays with a lock of her bright blonde hair, gently wrapping and unwrapping it around her index finger. "Hey, Elyria, did we get teleported in a completely different world?"
pop!
"What do you think, you imbecile?" a distant voice echoes within her head as a thick tome with a seemingly endless amount of pages and a thick, leather exterior shakes beneath the woman's purple cape, held in place on her waist by at least a dozen leather belts. Several runes and magic circles adorn the cover, with an intricate seal on its center. The back of the grimoire has engraved a kneeling woman of indistinguishable features, bound by a plethora of chains on her wrists and ankles.
Despite its concealment, anyone that so much as glances towards its direction can feel a heavy weight appear on their shoulders, as if commanded to kneel or prostrate before a mighty existence.
"Now now, Stella, a simple answer will suffice~" the woman says with a smile, before turning to look towards one of the numerous guards surrounding her. "Excuse me, but could you please tell me what this place is~?" she asks the man with a smile, then takes off her rather large witch hat with a wide brim and a limp top and puts it down in front of her, a well known custom of her race that means she bears no ill will.
The guard watches the hat confused for a few moments, his gaze first drawn at the golden hoop at its limp top and the two, colorful pieces of cloth tied to it, then at the eyes and mouth stitched from some kind of thread.
"Hey man, what are you spacing out for? The peasants said she appeared out of nowhere, she might be some kind of evil mage!" one of the other soldiers says at the confused one to snap him out of his thoughts.
"Ah, really sorry about that!" the woman says after picking up her hat and placing it on her head, looking at the second soldier. "I was trying to experiment with a teleportation circle and it accidentally went haywire, flinging me to some unknown coordinates. I'm Ordylain Ardinavir by the way, holding the title Witch of Ruin. Pleasure to meet you~"
The plaza Ordylain has found herself in suddenly goes silent, everyone's faces draining of blood while their expressions mirror their sudden fear and hesitation.
"H-Hey… Did she just say she's a witch… of RUIN!?"
"T-Teleportation!? Wasn't such a spell just a myth due to how high of a Tier it is!?"
"Sh-She's a monster! A demon! Someone call the Church knights!"
"Tell barracks we need reinforcements ASAP! Evacuate the citizens, send an immediate alert to the Adventurer's Guild we need all able bodies to assist with the capture of a witch that can use teleportation!"
"Do we even have enough manpower to deal with her!?"
Sudden chaos erupts out of nowhere, and Ordylain is left standing in the middle of it with no clue whatsoever of what is happening.
"Way to go, idiot… Minutes in an unknown place and you stir up hell."
"Well, at least we can conclude we are at a totally different world given their reaction," Ordylain chuckles as she outstretches her right hand to the side and a staff appears within her grip out of nowhere. Its pole is made out of some kind of bluish metal, with various lines carved on it that somehow seem to not intersect one another. On top of its pole a giant, round crystal settles, its inside somewhat cloudy and murky, while just underneath its bottom six majestic, golden feathers curve upwards as if trying to hug the crystal.
While the scepter looks fascinating at first glance, almost as if it's been excavated from some kind of ancient ruins, a relic of the past from a grand empire, those who manage to gaze at the crystal for long enough have the unfortunate opportunity to see the pale visage of what must be resembling humans briefly appear on the surface of the murky water or weakly tap on the crystal as if trying to escape; a contrast to the sight of the gently glowing, golden feathers which seem to soothe one's soul, as if covered by divine energies belonging to a god.
"Now then~ We can either do this the easy way, or the hard way," Ordylain smiles, her eyes half-lidded and full of malice. "Choose wisely, little ones~"
The guards falter as killing intent starts emanating all over the plaza, now almost empty with most civilians having long since run away.
"Tch! Y-You are nothing but a mere witch in striking distance! You'll be long dead before you can cast your spells! Aaaaggh!?" one of the guardsmen snaps under the pressure and rushes Ordylain, spear raised and ready to pierce the woman's ribs any moment now.
"Heh~ The hard way it is, then!" the blonde grins sadistically and side-steps the attack, the guard looking in horror and surprise as Ordylain's left fist quickly arcs through the air and collides with his head.
Crunch!
Everyone looks in horror as the soldier's helmet caves in along with his head, blood spurting everywhere as the now soulless body takes a few steps to the side and falls like a sack of bricks.
"What…"
"H-Holy…!"
"A-A monster! She's a monster!?"
"Oh my, I didn't hold back enough," Odyleen says in fake shock, even going as far as to cover her mouth with her left hand. "Oh well, I guess I won't be needing the staff anytime soon."
Throwing her staff away, everyone looks at it confused, before it suddenly disappears into thin air and Odyleen cracks her knuckles.
"Now then, who's next~?"
The guards take a few steps away from the blonde, their spears trembling in primal fear as their encirclement of the witch starts loosening and breaking.
"S-Screw this, I ain't dying here!" another guard shouts and throws his spear down, before turning around and running away as fast as he can.
"H-Hey, come back! Reinforcements will be arriving any moment now!"
"I'm leaving as well! I have a family to go back to!"
One by one the guards run away, their comrade's cowardly display inciting even more panic amongst their ranks.
"Oh my, leaving so soon~?" Odyleen muses and lifts her left hand over her head, her index finger pointing up in the sky as the air above it starts rapidly condensing and spinning on multiple points, gradually forming ice shards that point at the remaining guards around her.
"Wh-What… What kind of sorcery is this…" one of the guards comments in disbelief, being one of the few people in this town that had seen Martial Arts and Tiered Magic, and both resembled nothing like what this woman was using.
"First time seeing something like this~?" the blonde teases the man, before she moves her finger in a circular motion. "[Icicle Rain]."
As if to follow her command, the shards fly away from Odyleen, embedding themselves either on the stony ground or on the guards, easily piercing through their lackluster leather or iron armor. In the blink of an eye, fourteen guardsmen have been killed, including those who were trying to make a run for it.
"Mmh… this mana they have here, it feels unusual," Ordylain muses as she looks at her hand.
"Took you long enough to notice, slowpoke," Stella comments with a bored tone, almost as if she's watching a show on TV while filing her nails. "Unlike back in our world, the mana here is raw energy. It resembles more of a force of nature rather than the residual divinity of a god. In other words, your spells are not bound to the names of the gods."
"Yes, but will this affect their output? We also don't know if spells like [Gate of Heaven] can be used since we are not in our world anymore," she muses as from the road behind her several men clad in plate armor arrive in horseback, their capes white and adorned with religious symbols, while from the front road several men and women clad in a variety of gear and wielding various weapons arrive; Odyleen surmises the former are probably some kind of knights, while the latter are plain to see adventurers.
"A lot of people have gathered. At this rate it'll turn into a one-sided massacre," Odyleen hums as she looks around, entertaining the idea of reducing the whole town to rubble for a few moments, eventually deciding against it as it'd put a pretty big target on her back for the foreseeable future. "Hello there! What can I help you with, today~?" she asks with a polite smile, which the people currently in the plaza don't seem to appreciate.
From the knights' side a somewhat old man dismounts his horse and carefully scans Odyleen, before gently grabbing the hilt of his sheathed sword and walking towards the witch.
"Commander, that's-!" one of the knights says and tries to dismount his own horse, but the old man simply raises his hand to stop him.
"Await there," he instructs in a voice that commands both fear and respect, his slow walk finally coming to a stop a few meters away from Odyleen. "Are you the one that did this?"
Ordylain watches as the man glances at the dead guards and his grip on his sword tightens, which makes her slightly smirk.
"And what if I did~?" she muses, shrugging her shoulders as if this was nothing but a harmless accident. "They attacked me and I defended myself~ Is it so bad?"
"Mmh… I see," the man hums, before the air around him suddenly changes to something deadly. "[Fatal Edge]!"
With a single step, he's found himself right in front of Odyleen, his sword being drawn from its death and revealing a blade covered in some kind of red aura. It beautifully arcs through the air and flies towards the blonde's neck, not even the air itself able to slow it down from its purpose.
"Nice trick," Ordylain says as a single, hexagonal, blue tile appears between her neck and the blade, managing to not only stop the blade dead in its track but to also absorb all momentum, the only signs of clash being a tiny shockwave at the point of impact and a few cracks on the tile. "Sadly you're a few hundred years too young to really kill me with such a strike."
"What!?" the old man says in shock and tries to pull back, only for Ordylain to grab him by the throat and the hand that wields the blade, then squeeze just tight enough to barely allow him any air in his lungs. "Ghhhk…! Kkh…!"
"No one moves, or I'll crush his trachea right here and now!" Ordylain shouts loudly as the knights draw their weapons and quickly dismount their horses, looking all around as if calculating something. "Hmm, no other choice. Elyria."
Suddenly her hidden grimoire appears above her and opens, shifting through countless pages before settling on one that has a rather weirdly drawn magical circle.
"Wh-What… are you… planning…!" the old man manages to croak as he fruitlessly tries to break free from the witch's grasp.
"Watch and learn, old man. Not that you'll remember~" Ordylain winks at him and with a graceful pirouette throws him away on some knights, knocking them all down like bowling pins. She then bites her thumb just enough to draw blood and with a sudden move throws it on the grimoire's open page.
At first nothing happens, but in rapid succession the magical circle on the book starts glowing a bright purple color, then a massive magical circle appears above the whole town, forcing everyone to their knees as if a massive weight has formed on their shoulders.
'You shall all forget about me. You shall all forget what happened here today. Should anyone ask, a demon attacked and then fled.'
The voice reverberates within everyone's head over and over, until in macabre unison everyone faints and falls down on the ground.
The grimoire then snaps close and teleports back to Ordylain's waist, with the blonde letting out a sigh of relief.
"Well, that's done. Now to get away."
Putting her hand within a leather pouch that hangs from her waist thanks to an enchanted thread, she retrieves from within a small piece of silver paper, on it engraved with blue, metallic ink a magical circle.
"Are you sure about this? You do not know any places here, so we'll be flung into random coordinates."
"I know. Hopefully this time around it won't be in the middle of a busy square," Ordylain chuckles to herself, then supplies the paper she's holding with mana, its magical circle brightly glowing for a moment before teleporting the witch and her grimoire somewhere far away from their current location.
…
…
…
A single moment later Ordylain finds herself in the middle of a forest, trees with thick trunks and leafy canopies all around her except for the single and fairly wide dirt road that snakes through the forest itself.
"Oh my, somewhat of a familiar sight~" Ordylain muses as she looks around. "It's no Great Forest though, the trees here are a bit short… But lucky us, there's a road for us to follow!"
Clapping her hands happily once, Ordylain starts following the road towards one of the directions, humming a cheerful tone as she converses with Elyria in her mind.
"So, do you think we'll be able to return back to our world?"
"Hah! Obviously, who do you think I am?" Elyria scoffs offended. "However, our shift in this universe was not natural. While the tampered teleportation circle helped to put us in range of this universe, we did not fall in here ourselves; rather, we were dragged to this world."
"Huh? Is that even possible? Given the principles behind teleportation, it should be impossible."
"Normally yes, but I fear we might have been unwilling participants to the most improbable coincidence ever."
"…We were interdicted by something teleporting through our path, correct?" Ordylain says with a serious expression.
"Indeed. Although I'm still not sure, some kind of grand magic was fired, pulling a substantial mass of information through a path interdiction ours, which in turn dragged us in here as well."
"Really now… Still, wouldn't we have arrived with that mass then and not on our own?"
"Ugh, can you not try to use that shriveled brain of yours a bit more? Obviously we were set off course but not completely thrown out of our path. Also, spacetime at the arrival path is a fucking mess, so the mass got separated in the time axis."
"So everything got separated at the end, huh?" Ordylain hums as she finally exits the forest, instead finding herself in grasslands not unlike those close to her homeland. "Then what about us returning back? Given it's two different universes, can we teleport an instant after we left?"
"Look at you, so you CAN think if you try hard enough," Ordylain's grimoire quips, which causes the blonde to shake her head amused, used to her companion's snarky remarks. "Obviously different universes use different time axises, therefore normal continuum theory does not apply to them. Even if you advance a thousand years here, you can return to your departure time back home."
"Haah, that's one concern gone. Oh look, I can see a carriage further down the road," Ordylain muses as she spots a horse-drawn, wooden carriage just a bit aways from her, its axle and left wooden wheel completely broken. Around the broken wheel a few people stand, most of them dressed like your typical newly-started adventurer, along with an old man that seems to sigh every now and then. "Five people in total, old man included. Hmhm, perfect chance to hitch a ride~"
As she gets closer to the group, Ordylain finds two of the adventurers arguing with one another on what they should do, a third one looking at them and shaking his head, while the fourth one has their hands crossed over their chest and is angrily tapping their leg on the ground, evidently their patience slowly running to an end.
"I'm telling you, Jayce, the cart is a lost cause! The axle itself has broken, we'll get attacked by monsters at this rate!" a young man dressed in leather armor and having an iron sword sheathed on his left says, with his fellow adventurer looking at him angrily.
"Absolutely not! The quest said we had to escort the merchant and his cargo to E-Rantel, so we either fix the carriage, or we'll have to carry the crates till there, Darsh!" the man called Jayce responds, clad in the same leather armor as his friend but rather wielding a round shield and a shortsword rather than a normal sword.
"Come on guys, knock it off. The sun will set at this rate. Carina, say something to them…" the third man, clad in robes and holding a wooden staff says at the only female adventurer of the group, wearing an iron breastplate, iron gauntlets, and iron boots, finally reaches her tipping point and prepares to swing her morning star at the two bickering men.
"I'll do you one better, Spalin, I'll permanently shut them up!"
"Oh my, being young certainly makes you energetic~"
The sweet voice of the witch that has reached the party of adventurers instantly draws everyone's attention towards her, though thanks to her strapless leotard that even has cutouts at the sides to expose more of Ordylain's skin makes the men quickly look away in second-hand embarrassment and slight arousal.
"H-Huh!? Who are you? And why are you dressed like a whore?" Carina furrows her brows after a moment of shock thanks to Ordylain's clothing choices, eyeing the blonde with some suspicion.
"Now now, little one, I won't bite~" Ordylain chuckles.
"I-I'm not little! I'm already 17!" Carina scoffs, which makes Ordylain chuckle a bit louder.
"You're plenty young to me, you know. Hehe, my name's Odyleen, a wandering wizard from a very faraway land. A pleasure to meet you~" Ordylain introduces herself by her nickname, taking off her hat and this time around putting it over her chest. She then turns her attention to the rest of the adventurers, who are still avoiding any direct eye contact with her.
"Hah… I'm Carina, a knight," the girl responds, her red, flowing hair and green eyes giving her an air of elegance and unmatched beauty.
"I-I'm Spalin Armentage, the magician of the group. A pleasure to meet you, Miss Odyleen," Spalin introduces himself and does a short bow, his baggy robes hiding most of his physique but his silver hair and grey eyes.
"Khm! I'm Jayce, the tank of our party. N-Nice to meet you…" Jayce says with a slight stutter towards the end, still avoiding eye contact with Odyleen but stealing a few glances of her figure every now and then, the violet stockings and high heels adding to the woman's alure even more.
"I am Darsh, a vanguard swordsman and leader of this party named Pilorn. Uh… sorry for the weird glances…" Darsh apologizes with an awkward expression, but Odyleen simply dismisses it with a wave of her hand.
"No worries, boys your age tend to act like that~" she muses, then approaches the silent merchant. "Hello, grandpa~ If you'd like, I can fix your carriage for you~"
"Oi, lady! The axle is broken, how are you even going to repair something like that?" Carina says in disbelief, which quickly turns into surprise as Odyleen effortlessly lifts up the broken carriage to take a look at the damage. "What the…!"
"Hmm… looks repairable. Now then, old man, how about we strike a deal~?"
"Did she… did she just lift the carriage with one hand!?" Jayce says incredulously, with Darsh not wanting either to believe what he's just seen.
"She's… she's supposed to be a mage, right?" Spalin says slowly, a few beads of sweat forming on his forehead.
"How much?" the old man asks Odyleen, who simply grins in satisfaction.
"Fifteen silver coins~"
"Huh!? That's outrageous, are you trying to rip-off the merchant?" Carina immediately protests, with Jayce speaking up as well.
"Miss Odyleen, that's three times the reward of the escorting quest. There's no way-"
"Upup, you're not the one who will make the choice, Jayce~ Unless you'd prefer to stay here bickering till monsters attack you, or you are force to carry the cargo on your backs~" Odyleen cuts-off the leader of the group, then turns to look back at the merchant. "I trust your instincts won't fall off~"
The merchant gazes at Odyleen for a few moments, before sighing and nodding in agreement.
"I'll agree, but only if you escort me towards E-Rantel as well."
"Works fine for me~"
"But Mr. Merchant, the guild…"
"Dont worry, you'll get your reward upon completing the quest," the merchant says to Darsh.
"Then we have a deal, excellent~" Odyleen muses, then looks at the broken axle and wheel, before both start glowing in a soft, white light. "[Mend]."
The white light quickly dissipates as the axle and wheel repair themselves before the astonished eyes of the party and the merchant, in mere seconds the carriage looking brand new.
"There we go~ All done!"
"It's… It's really fixed… I can't believe it…" Carina says in surprise, while Jayce and Darsh check the repaired wheel.
"Oh wow, it's like it never broke. Hey, Spalin, do you know what kind of magic she used?" Darsh asks, but the mage shakes his head.
"No. It doesn't feel like Tier magic, and the pronunciation of the spell sounds all weird to me," he says and Odyleen chuckles a little at that.
"I did say I'm from a faraway land, no~? A few differences here and there are bound to become apparent~" she winks at Spalin. "Well, shall we get going? I'm sure we can get to know each other a bit till we reach the city~"
And so the adventurers and the merchant continue their journey towards E-Rantel, now accompanied by a newcomer from a very distant land that seems to have quite the tricks up her sleeves.