I awoke in the center of a perfect circle of verdant, green petals and bell-flowers, which clashed with the snow-wreathed, smoldering village. I didn’t know how long I was out for sure, but judging by the sun's position it was at least one day that I'd slept. The dragonfire had indeed died away, leaving only ruined islands of buildings around me.
Large snowflakes fluttered from the sky, landing on my face. They didn’t feel cold. Oddly enough, I felt rejuvenated as if I had just woken up from an exceptionally relaxing nap.
As I dug deeper into the recesses of my identity, I found myself confronted by a fragmented, discordant mosaic of Ioan's past made up of scattered, shadow-like snippets of memory that danced just beyond the reach of comprehension.
Was I Ioan? I didn't feel like Ioan.
My knowledge of Earth, rationality and science was sharp, as clear as day. It was a 40'000 lumen flashlight torch compared to the dying candle that was Ioan's memories.
Oddly enough, I felt no thirst or hunger while sitting in my glade. Feeling bored and curious I stood up and stepped out of the glade. Nothing seemed to prevent me from leaving.
As I ventured further from the enchanted glade, I observed a curious change in my physical condition. At a distance of about three meters from the glade, my muscles began to ache and I felt biting cold air, as if I had once again transformed into a mundane teenager.
Straying even further, approximately ten meters from the circle, I felt beset by increasingly worse thirst, hunger, nausea and exhaustion.
Twenty five meters away from the witch-glade, colorful spots began to dance in my eyes as if I had an extreme concussion and my entire body felt like it was boiling from within.
At about thirty three meters away from the glade, my bones began to ache with blinding pain, my head engulfed in a blinding migraine. I felt like a walking corpse, a man dying from thirst, hunger and glade-deprivation as if I was some kind of a vampire that was seeking only one thing–to turn around. Crawling back to the glade, the pain lessened then vanished completely when I touched the circle of plants.
Phew.
Being a domain-bound witch definitely had a big drawback since departing from the glade made me into a mortal boy and going past thirty three meter radius seemed completely impossible.
My distance measurement was approximate too, based on my feet going toe to toe and estimating that my booted foot spanned about 30 centimeters.
Pushing against the pangs of hunger and thirst, ignoring the migraine, cold and nausea, I reached the nearest ruined house and began to sift through the ashes and debris, seeking things of value among the ruination.
I discovered that the fire had left numerous metal implements completely untouched. As I continued to unearth random clothes, knives, spoons, forks, coins, candle holders, jugs, glass goblets, and other inorganic objects, a hypothesis began to take shape in my mind.
Perhaps the dragon’s flame functioned akin to a neutron bomb, a weapon designed to eradicate life while leaving the inorganic world largely unscathed.
The thought was as chilling as it was fascinating. The concept of magic manipulating chemistry to target specific elements seemed exceptionally handy if I could figure out the principle behind it.
I found a few giant footsteps in the village, indentations of gargantuan claws about 5 meters wide.
There was definitely a dragon here. A very big, scary dragon. The witch was indeed honest about that.
Digging through the center of one of the houses, I discovered a circular, slightly singed metal cover beneath the pile of ashes and debris. With considerable effort from my slender arms, I managed to pry it open, revealing the hidden depths of the well below.
Descending a sturdy wooden stairwell, I was greeted by walls lined with ceramic and glass jars brimming with pickled vegetables and salted meats, a veritable treasure trove of sustenance.
I immediately pried the nearest jar open, feasting on pickled cucumbers and drinking the juice. The feelings of dizziness, hunger and thirst lessened, but the sensation of the stabbing cold air remained, prickling at my exposed skin.
Curious.
A witch could theoretically sustain herself right outside of her domain, as long as she sated the mundane needs of her body which were otherwise somehow turned off while standing on the magic-circle of earth.
My hunger sated with the pickled goods, I wondered why the villagers hadn’t thought to seek refuge in these cold wells, or even flee into the surrounding forest when the dragon attacked.
I could only speculate as to whether the attack had occurred under the cover of night, catching the villagers off guard, or if there was some other, more sinister reason behind the apparent lack of survivors such as the dragon hunting down everyone except for a solitary teenage boy that fell under the river.
If the Yaga knew when the dragon was coming, why didn’t she simply tell the villagers to hide inside their cold wells? This was definitely a point to the theory that Grandhilda allowed everyone in Svalbard to perish on purpose, to magically manufacture a hero that could slay the monster through the sacrifice of blood and life.
With a renewed sense of purpose, I set out to explore the remnants of the houses within limited range. As I searched through the ruins, I discovered numerous metal chests that had survived the dragon's fiery onslaught. Inside, I found an assortment of dry clothing and bandages.
I quickly re-dressed myself in the fanciest coat I could find that fit my skinny body. Then, I turned my attention to the task of surveying the surrounding village.
I noted that many of the homes were violently torn apart as if a massive claw punched right through the walls and ceilings.
A cursory survey of the village from my thirty-three-meter leash revealed that a non-damaged pub stood about forty meters from my glade, just outside of my range. It felt like the ideal candidate for a secure base of operations if I could somehow reach it.
The prospect of sleeping outside, even if the cold didn’t bother me, wasn’t something I was looking forward to, especially if the damned Sirin or something worse showed up to snack on me. The distant pub taunted me with the safety of its intact walls.
As a man of science, I refused to be daunted by the dastardly limiting constraints that bound me to the enchanted glade.
What was the earth exactly? It was soil and rocks. These things could simply be moved… could they not?
Determined to find a solution, I searched through everything within the range of my magical leash once again, pushing through the migraine and body aches. At the very edge of my reach, inside a torn-up shack, under a pile of debris, I found exactly what I was looking for–a sturdy metal shovel.
I considered the facts:
- According to Grandhilda the fact that I was a man somehow wouldn't allow me to meditate or see spirits. This implied an evolutionary difference between men and women in this world in correlation to magic interaction. Therefore, relying on meditation to see spirits or whatever was going to be a side quest for me, something that I would try but not despair if and when it failed horribly.
- Grandhilda knew exactly where my glade was. Even though she made me into a witch, her core motivations were still unclear to me. It was possible that she still planned to "hero" me up. If I didn't relocate and hide the glade, she could send monsters after me to "train me".
- The glade was a green patch of grass out in the open visible against the white snow. Any idiot could see it from miles away, come over and chop my neck right off with a sword or worse yet, just shoot arrows at me from a distance. Marauders were likely coming to steal whatever wasn't nailed down now that the dragon was gone. I had to steal it all first and put it all in a secure location. It was only a matter of time until someone raided the ruins of Svalbard. Gathering tools and supplies is more reasonable than simply sitting in the open where a dragon, or another fantasy creature or even a mundane wolf could just gobble me up.
As my paranoia intensified, I made a decision. The glade was definitely getting relocated to a safer position.
I rapidly began to excavate the edge of the green circle.
Inside my glade, the shovel felt lighter, cutting through the magic-infused frozen earth as if it was a hot knife going through hot butter.
I grinned maniacally as I obliterated a section of the glade.
As I excavated the edge of the glade, I couldn’t help but notice that the earth felt warm and oddly welcoming.
It was as if the complex amalgamation of various minerals and organic matter, with traces of silica, alumina, and iron oxide intermingling with decaying plant material and the remnants of microscopic organisms were now somehow suffused with an unknown form of energy.
As I crushed the earth with my fingers, it felt nothing like frozen soil was supposed to feel like. I wondered whether a witch's domain projected some kind of non-debilitating radiation, perhaps akin to the nuclear force that governed the behavior of subatomic particles. Rather than causing harm, this energy appeared to empower my body, blessing me with warmth and a high level of vitality.
I marveled at this strange phenomenon a bit longer, enjoying the tiny sparks dancing in my fingers.
Then, I filled the largest leather backpack I could find with the earth from the glade and began to walk away from my domain, counting my steps.
To my delight, I discovered that carrying the enchanted soil on my back permitted me to venture beyond the range of my prior leash without succumbing to the debilitating weakness and nausea that had previously beset my frail body.
Great success! The backpack and shovel, plus the indomitable spirit of human inquiry and adaptability had overcome the domain limitation!
Using a plank balanced on a rock and a bunch of strewn bricks, I created a makeshift scale to assess my weight vs the weight of the soil within the backpack.
Then, I gradually altered the amount of soil inside of the bag, reducing and increasing it and venturing away from the glade with the backpack.
Using this method, I discovered that as long as I had enough soil in the bag that weighed approximately 1.5 times as much as I did, I felt no problems moving past the initial domain limit!
As I strode nearly five hundred meters away from the village, the magical soil nestled securely within my backpack, I grinned at the fact that my witchy stamina remained undiminished.
Being a witch, it seemed, was easy, especially if I could transport a section of my domain in a simple knapsack. What originally appeared to be a debilitation was now my advantage.
Could it really be this simple? Was it really possible to simply dig up all of the enchanted soil, compress it to save space, and then carry it with me in a large cart?
Thoughts raced through my mind as I considered the implications of this newfound power, thinking back to the process of creating compressed earth blocks. I remembered that in Portland cement, typically, a pressure of around 3,000 psi compressed the original material volume by about half. Technically, even a planet like Earth could be compressed into a black hole with a diameter of only 1.77 centimeters.
Smirking at this amusing fact, I knew that, unfortunately, I didn't have the power tools necessary to compress the soil.
Another thought came to me–were some sections of the soil more magical than others? Was Earth-type magic, or whatever it was that Yaga specialized in, better contained in some particular elements such as the roots, plants or specific rocks?
I went into the ruins of Svalbard and procured: a thin glass shard, a glass jar, two pieces of wood, a broken mirror shard and a drop of water. I quickly returned to the side of the magic circle I had unearthed and put the scraps together, creating a rudimentary water drop microscope capable of magnifying details up to five times.
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Using it, I set about examining the flora more closely.
As I carefully sliced open a leaf, I observed the blurry intricate network of thick plant cell walls.
To my amazement, I saw that the damaged cell walls of the sliced leaf slowly healed themselves. I also noted that the verdant life birthed by the magic-infused earth shared my immunity to the cold, thriving in defiance of the harsh winter.
Next, I grabbed some standing water from a rotting root and examined it as I placed it directly above the glade, using a mirror shard to bounce sunlight through my water sample located atop of an upside down glass jar.
My mouth fell open as I beheld a mesmerizing if somewhat blurry display of micro-animals, tardigrades and single cell Stentor roeselii, dancing within the water drop. The microscopic creatures somehow bred and multiplied at an unprecedented rate, their existence fueled by the potent, invisible energy that pulsed within the enchanted soil.
It dawned on me that the radiation emanating from the witch-blessed ground was a veritable furnace of life, a force that nurtured and sustained all organic things that thrived within its sphere of influence. This force stood in stark contrast to the deadly dragon fire that had wrought destruction upon the village, targeting living things and turning them to ashes.
My mind raced with the possibilities as the pieces began to fall into place.
Was this the source of a witch’s power?
Another fragment of Ioan’s memories surfaced in my mind, revealing that he had sought a potion from the Witch of the Shalish wood a few years ago to help with his grandmother's aching back.
This revelation coalesced into a solid theory: the enchanted soil produced life-altering effects that, in turn, transformed the plants and animals within a witch’s personal garden. It stood to reason that ingredients suffused with this life-rad magnified the efficacy of their organic components, unlocking a wealth of incredible potential for both healing and harm!
. . .
People didn’t need magic to be dicks. If anything, having access to excessive strength as a hero of legend most likely made one more prone to pillaging.
Take, for instance, the Vikings of Earth, seafarers of Norse blood. Their longships graced countless shorelines, from the rocky coasts of the British Isles to the frosty outposts of Greenland, from the uncharted lands of America to the fertile plains of Ukraine. Their unrelenting pursuit of expansion and adventure often ended in the enslavement of the locals and the pillaging of their treasures. If the local world was anything like mine history-wise, then I was in for a very bad time.
Surveying the fractured beams and scorched and buried fragments scattered across the landscape, I spotted the remnants of once stout, wooden walls and watchtowers.
Alas, the dragon had made quick work of that defense, obliterating it in its entirety.
My magical grove lay vulnerable under the open sky, the green flora a beacon for anyone or anything flying overhead. If Dick-Jarls could fly on swords then they would absolutely spot the green glade from above sitting amidst the white snow.
The risk of discovery by a fly-by hero suddenly felt like an imminent threat. I didn’t want anyone to find out or even to suspect that I was a witch, preferring to have the element of surprise on my side.
The whole reason I bugged Yaga to turn me into a witch was to mess with people’s future expectations of me–it was going to be my biggest trump card in my new life in Svalbard.
Thus, driven onwards by a healthy degree of paranoia, I focused on digging out all of the magic-irradiated earth and relocating the entirety of my precious domain inside the old pub. I quickly shovelled the earth into a wheelbarrow I found behind the mostly undamaged smithy building, rolled it to the pub, and dumped it inside. I also replanted all of the magic-infused greenery into chests that I faced towards the round windows.
Once done with the relocation of my magical domain, I set to secure the pub itself.
The village smithy, now bereft of its previous tenants, though slightly singed and torn up on one side, housed a trove of medieval weaponry.
As I rummaged through the smithy’s cluttered remains, my fingers brushed against the familiar heft of medieval craftsmanship—crudely forged swords with uneven edges, iron arrowheads pocked with imperfections, and several hefty arbalests.
The dragon’s wrath had spared this corner of the village, leaving the tools and weapons undamaged. But as I sifted deeper into the debris, pushing aside a dented breastplate and a tangle of bowstrings, my hands closed around something unexpected—something that didn’t belong.
I pulled out a pair of pliers, their sleek, gleaming surface catching the dim light filtering through the smithy’s cracked walls. Unlike the rough-hewn iron tools surrounding them, these were precision-manufactured, their jaws perfectly aligned, their handles smooth and unmarred by the pitting of forge-fire.
I stared at the pliers with wide eyes.
The metal wasn’t the dull gray of medieval iron, nor the brittle sheen of poorly tempered steel—it was stainless, a high-carbon alloy by the look of it, with a faint bluish tint that spoke of chromium and meticulous craftsmanship. I turned them over in my hands, marveling at the weight, the balance, the way the hinges moved without the slightest grind. These weren’t the product of a village smith hammering away at a lump of ore; they were engineered with machine tools.
Digging further, I unearthed more anomalies: a slender chisel with a razor-sharp edge, its tip hardened to a degree that suggested heat treatment and quenching far superior to anything a medieval forge could achieve; a small hammer with a head of tool steel; and a set of calipers, their delicate arms etched with precise millimeter markings, the kind of instrument a machinist might use, not a blacksmith pounding out horseshoes. Each tool bore the same unmistakable quality—modern, industrial, utterly alien to the crude metallurgy of Svalbard’s fallen age.
As I examined the pliers more closely, my thumb traced a faint embossing along the edge of one handle—a ring-like logo, clean and deliberate, encircling a stylized crow. The bird’s head was minimalist, its beak pointed downward as if in mid-caw. The mark was subtle, almost invisible unless you knew to look for it, but it screamed intent. It was a brand, a signature from someone—or something—that operated on a level far removed from the village’s rustic existence.
Was this a remnant of a lost technology, a trade good from some distant, advanced enclave, or evidence of an outsider meddling in this magic-driven world?
The crow-head logo hinted at an organization, a maker, a purpose—but what? I had no idea.
For now, answers eluded me, but the tools themselves were a windfall. The pliers alone could grip and twist with a precision that medieval tongs could never match, and the chisel promised to carve through wood or stone with surgical accuracy. I tucked them into my leather backpack alongside the enchanted soil, their weight a comforting addition to my growing arsenal. If I was to survive in this fractured world—whether facing dragons, witches, or whatever bore that crow’s mark—I’d need every advantage I could scavenge. And these tools, gleaming and out of place, felt like the first clue in a puzzle I was only beginning to comprehend.
Utilizing a wheelbarrow, I transported the entire medieval weapons arsenal into my makeshift stronghold, setting up arbalests at each window.
Then I emptied a few of the cold storage wells and brought the food into the pub in a wheelbarrow. I didn't feel hunger when I was carrying my domain in my backpack, but my body already looked far too skinny and pitiful and I knew that healthy eating was important to my growth, no matter if magical bullshit took my desire to eat away.
By the time my fortress was secured within the old pub, the horizon had welcomed the warm hues of the setting sun, and I battened down the iron-clad shutters and door in anticipation of the coming night.
My dinner was a modest feast of preserved jars and smoked delicacies. Since cold seemed to be a minor inconvenience to a Yaga, I dismissed the idea of lighting the fireplace. Instead, I innately sought solace atop my mound of warm earth.
My feet automatically took me to my lovely, warm pile of earth.
I buried myself in it halfway feeling like a solitary mole ensconced within its subterranean sanctuary, slowly succumbing to the lull of slumber as I contemplated my future plans.
. . .
A whisper, soft and lilting, slipped through the shutters, curling around the edges of my consciousness, forcing me awake.
My eyes snapped open, heart jolting as the whisper blossomed into a melody, pure and haunting, threading through the night like a silver needle. It was her. The Sirin. She was back.
I scrambled upright, dirt crumbling from my clothes, and pressed myself against the mound, straining to pinpoint the source. The song grew clearer, its notes weaving a tapestry of longing that seemed to vibrate through the wooden beams of the pub. She wasn’t at the door, not yet—her voice carried from above, perched somewhere high, likely in the skeletal branches of a tree overlooking my sanctuary. Those golden eyes flashed in my memory, predatory and unyielding, and I clenched my fists, willing my pulse to steady.
Her words drifted down, each syllable a shimmering thread that coiled around my thoughts:
"Come, sweet witch of broken land,
Step beyond your earthen band.
Night unfurls her velvet cloak,
Join me where the shadows smoke."
The melody was richer now, deeper, its beauty sharpened by an edge I hadn’t noticed before—a compulsion that sank invisible hooks into my mind. My legs twitched, an involuntary urge to rise, to move, to fling open the door and answer her call. I gritted my teeth, digging my fingers into the soil, anchoring myself to its warmth. Don’t move. Don’t breathe. Yaga’s warning echoed in my skull, a lifeline against the Sirin’s growing power.
I crawled to the nearest window, peering through a narrow slit in the shutter. There she was—a dark silhouette against the moonlit sky, perched atop a gnarled oak just beyond the pub’s perimeter. Her wings were half-folded, feathers glinting with that eerie emerald sheen, and her golden eyes glowed like twin lanterns, fixed unerringly on my hiding place. Her head tilted, birdlike, and the song swelled, its potency rising like a tide:
"Feel my voice within your veins,
Shed the weight of mortal chains.
Earth cannot your spirit hold,
Come to me, be free, be bold."
The words burrowed deeper, their hooks sinking into my head with a visceral tug. My hand trembled, inching toward the iron latch of the shutter as if guided by some unseen force. I yanked it back, pressing my palm flat against the soil-strewn floor, letting its faint pulse ground me. The Sirin’s song wasn’t just sound—it was magic, a living thing that clawed at my will, prying at the edges of my resolve. It was stronger tonight, more insistent, as though she’d learned from her failure the night before and honed her lure to a razor’s edge.
I squeezed my eyes shut, focusing on the texture of the dirt beneath me, the faint scent of crushed petals, anything to drown out her voice. But it was relentless, seeping through the walls, wrapping around my thoughts like vines:
"Lonely witch, so frail, so still,
Bend your heart to match my will.
Step into my waiting arms,
Taste the night and all its charms."
My breath hitched, shallow and ragged. The compulsion was physical now—a pressure behind my eyes, a tingling in my limbs, urging me to stand, to unlatch the door, to stumble into her embrace. I could almost feel her talons brushing my face, her feathers soft against my skin, promising an end to the isolation, the uncertainty, the cold. My knees buckled, and I slumped against the wall, the shovel clattering beside me as I fought to stay rooted.
She’s doing something to me, I realized, panic threading through the haze. The hooks weren’t just pulling—they were sinking, rooting, rewriting my instincts. My scientific mind rebelled, clawing for clarity. Was this telepathy? A neurochemical manipulation triggered by sound waves? Some kind of magical resonance tuned to my soul? I didn’t know, and that ignorance fueled my defiance. I wouldn’t be her puppet—not tonight, not ever.
I grabbed the shovel, gripping its handle like a talisman, and dragged myself back to the mound. The song intensified, her voice rising to a piercing crescendo:
"Why resist what fate has spun?
You and I shall be as one.
Leave your den, your fragile shell,
Heed my call, my sacred spell."
The hooks tightened, a searing pain lancing through my skull as though she were physically wrenching my mind free. My vision blurred, the pub’s interior swimming in a haze of shadows and flickering moonlight.
My hand shot out, fumbling for the door’s latch, fingers brushing the cold iron before I caught myself. No. I yanked my arm back, slamming my fist into the soil instead, letting the jolt of pain anchor me.
“Shut up!” I hissed under my breath, voice barely a whisper, afraid that even speaking might give her purchase. The Sirin paused, her song faltering for a heartbeat, as if she’d heard me. Then it resumed, softer, more insidious, a crooning lullaby that slipped beneath my defenses:
"Sleep no more in dirt and stone,
Claim the sky as your own throne.
I will lift you, make you whole,
Witch of earth, give me your soul!"
The pressure was unbearable now, a vice around my temples, my pulse hammering in time with her rhythm. I buried my face in the soil, inhaling its damp, living scent, willing it to shield me. The earth responded—a faint tremor, a surge of warmth that pulsed up through my arms, steadying my fraying nerves. My domain. My power. She couldn’t cross it, couldn’t touch me here, but her song was a battering ram, and I was the wall cracking under its weight.
I didn’t know how long I could hold out. Minutes stretched into eternity, each note a fresh assault. My body trembled, sweat beading on my brow despite the chill, and my grip on the shovel tightened until my knuckles whitened. Think, I told myself. Analyze. If her power over a target grew with time, I needed a countermeasure—something to disrupt the frequency, to break her hold.
The song shifted again, a desperate edge creeping in:
"Come, my sweet, the night grows old,
Leave behind this cage so cold.
I will wait, but not for long,
Heed my heart, my endless song."
She was tiring—or growing impatient. I wondered if she was expanding magic power to try to hook me like a persistent fisherman.
I pressed myself lower, flattening against the mound, and stopped breathing, stopped moving, just as Yaga had instructed. The earth thrummed beneath me, its pulse a quiet defiance against her pull. The hooks loosened, just slightly, their grip faltering as my stillness merged with the glade’s protective veil.
Silence fell abruptly, a void so stark it rang in my ears. I didn’t dare move, didn’t dare breathe, counting the seconds as the night held its breath with me. Then—a frustrated screech, sharp and guttural, split the air. Wings beat furiously, a gust rattling the shutters, and she was gone.
I gasped, air rushing into my lungs as I collapsed fully onto the soil, trembling from head to toe. The hooks were gone, their phantom pain lingering like bruises on my mind. She’d nearly had me—closer than last night, her power amplified, her intent clearer. She wanted to devour me and she wasn’t giving up.
I lay there, chest heaving, staring at the pub’s rafters as snowflakes slipped through a crack and dusted the floor. The earth beneath me pulsed softly, a reminder of my tether, my shield. But shields could crack, and I wasn’t naive enough to think I could resist her forever—not without understanding her, not without fighting back. Tomorrow, I’d start planning—dissecting her song, fortifying my domain, turning this pub into more than a hideout. Tonight, though, I’d survived again.
Sleep crept in, tentative and uneasy, as the wind howled her absence. The Sirin was gone—for now—but her golden eyes lingered in my dreams, watching, waiting.