18 - The Harridan’s Moon
The dew on the grassy moor serves as a bristling mirror to the face of the midnight sky. The moon looks down at its hirsute reflection on the wavery flatness. Its face is poxy, perfectly-round, and bright, brilliant yellow. A Harridan’s Moon.
The crickets pause a moment for a deep canine ululation.
As you pull your Blue Lady across the moor her foot slips in a dewy cluster of deer ferns. She drops to her knees. Her face is bent and pale. You waste no time; you lift and carry her. She is light in your arms. As you run, you take her hand in your yours. Her fingers are wet from the dew, and very cold.
“Knight, charging onto the moor is the hope of a blind man seeking a key to death’s door. “Stop- stop tiring yourself. “Ah! This venom. Like tiny slivers of ice, sliding along my arms, slipping under each of my fingers. “You have been a most faithful retainer. Rest. “The service is finished.”
You saw the insect that bit your Lady’s skin. A Nickel Beetle. You know what she says is true. Why do you plod through this moor in the night? You know she will die. You continue because it is your duty. Serve to your end. Not hers. You knew there was no hope on The Road. What chance had you of coming upon any stranger, in that desolate stretch? Few men, armed and armored, make the long journey from Middlemoss; which you have your Lady on. No, you would have met no stranger on this unfamiliar Road. But is there any more help to be found in this wild? You should have shaken her blanket. If she dies- The Nickel Beetle. The same insect killed that Walker of Whiteeye. Wrathmaige. But he died. Your Lady must live. Serve to your end.
Having come this far onto the moor, under the Harridan’s Moon, it is useless to turn back. Your Lady might reach the road alive, but there is a 0% chance that you will encounter another wanderer before she expires. (And a less than 0% chance that said wanderer happened to carry a cure for the venom that is in her blood.)
Your only hope lies on this godless moor.
As you carry your Lady, keep an eye on the scattered scrub trees, the ones with the tuberous leaves shining black in the moonlight. You have a 50% chance of finding one of three plants growing by the bush, which might aid your Lady.
| Arming Flower Small yellow flower with long stem. Its scent dulls the mind. | Mildhair Pale green moss growing on bark. Slows toxins, venoms, and poisons. | Shield-o’-Fahud A button-like weed with red petals. Can be chewed for pain relief. |
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Out of the night a lone light shines. At first you think it is the reflection of the moon on water. Or, an eye’s glimmer. You squint through your visor.
The gleam is not a reflection, nor an eye, but a window, in a wide, squat, black silhouette.
A hut on the moor.
As you stumble nearer the dwelling you see a fenced garden, and a nearby pond. Then a lighted seam opens in the side of the hut. The crack of a door. A second later something passes over the crack, blocking the glow cast on the blue moor-grass.
“Gah! Gah. Gah. “Two hornless kids stumbling through the bush? “Oh my bones. Oh this poor poisoned girlie. “Bring her in, sir. I have cures. Don’t mind that smell, that is just me doing my thing. “Hehehehehe!”
The first thing you notice as you step over the wide cedar doorsill is the slimy air. The inside of the hut is scented like spring berries, and sticks on your skin like a spiderweb. Elk Ears plants hang in a drying row from one drooping rafter. A lone lantern, hanging behind the Ears, shedding all the buttery light in the dark hut, casts the shadow of the Ears over your chest plate as you carry your Lady inside.
A few other items attract your eye.
| Silver Beetle Relief Projected on a flat sheet of shining steel, the horn of this beetle follows you wherever you walk. | Moss Basket A basket full of various mosses. You recognize at least one helpful and one poisonous cultivar. | Dreamcatcher Woven of yarn; hangs above the window; changes shape whenever you look at it. | |
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| Mangrove Table The kitchen table appears to be the stump of a large mangrove tree, turned upside down, and with all the roots woven into a roughly flat tangle. | Stone Cauldron Hangs above the firepit in a far corner of the hut. The bottom is blackened with soot. If you rub some of the soot away, you will find a symbol you do not recognize - a star with eleven drooping points. |
After shutting the ponderous door behind you, the hut’s lone occupant - a woman with more wrinkles than the crust beneath the earth - speaks.
“How white is your woman. She’s not long for this Time. “Minutes of life left in her bones. “I’ve seen that color on skin before. Hehehehehe. You wayfarers never do take care where you lay your bedroll, never throw the haunch of meat that keeps the bugs off. “Lay her on the table, knight. “And lay your scabbard and that shining blade there too. No sword’s borne in my home. “Nooooo, too wily for you, aren’t I? Hehehehehe.”
The old woman’s bead-eyes watch you blinklessly.
Can you trust this remote dweller on the moor? Don’t fool yourself. You know only wild folk and witches live in places like this - where the meaning of the wind is ‘eternity’, and rain and snow and the strange wolves are one’s sole company. And, the wild men keep no huts… Feel how your Blue Lady breathes in your arms. Shallow. Slow. The hut woman, witch or not, says truthfully that your Lady will not live long. You must serve your Lady. But which way is right?
You must choose either to give up your Steel to this old woman, or with it cut her down. Ultimately, if you don’t lay your Lady and weapon on the table, your Lady will perish. It would be hopeless to search the hut for healing medicines yourself. You need her assistance.
While the old woman has insisted that you lay your Polished Steel Longsword on the table, she has not mentioned your Pinecone Crest Shield. Keep it strapped to your arm. You’ll need it soon.
Your scabbard seems almost to leap from your hand and adhere to the rooty table as you lay it beside your Lady. The old woman’s throat makes a wispy sound.
“One should not heed strangers without care. “Hehehehehe. “I will cure your sickly woman. “Ahhhhh, how uncomfortably you shuffle there in your steel plates. She’s not your woman, but your Lady? “She’s a pretty woman. Not much pink in her cheeks, and not as young as one would wish. But pretty.”
At this point the woman will present you with one of three tasks.
| The Sandbook She asks you to retrieve a book bound in white leather, which is buried in the earth, in the crawl space under the hut. You will have to maneuver around three venomous rattlesnakes that nest there. | Chimney Sweep Something lives in the chimney of the hut. Your task is to climb up, hunt it down, and kill it. The chimney is vast and cavernous on the inside, and no light can shine within. You will have to rely on senses other than sight to slay whatever is lurking there. Even if you succeed, you are unable to drag your quarry back into the light. | A Pattern in the Stars A bowl-shaped, crystalline ornament sits on the sill of the hut’s lone, rounded window. You will be asked to capture a reflection of a shooting star in the facets. A tip - don’t look at the bowl while you are capturing the star. Its light will blind you. |
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You have no choice but to perform the task you receive in order to progress the healing of your Lady.
Upon completion of your task you find the old woman bent crookedly over your Blue Lady, her thin grey hair tickling the sleeping, pale face. When the old woman notices you, she scowls.
“Done already? Impossible. “But then, you valiants were always capable at such set tasks. Not a mark on your sight or your skin? “I should have taken the advice of that hypnotist on the yellow moor. Never a task inside the- “Your Lady will soon be well. “She will be thirsty on waking. There is a pool, outside, beneath the heavy and leafless elm. You cannot miss it. “Here. Take this bucket and fetch your parched Lady the silver water to wet her lips.”
The door groans against the wind as the old woman shuts it behind you. You step toward the shining reflection of the moon on the pool, held between the black branch-fingers of the tree.
As you bend over, you see your own reflection. Your armor, your helmet. Not your face.
As you gather the water you hear a shuffling from behind.
The hut charges you. It towers over your head now, running on two giant goat-legs. You raise your shield just in time to catch the hoof on your Pinecone Crest, but the kick sends you hurtling. You splash into the pond.
You sink.
Witches
Witches, cursewives, harridans; the weird fears that flourish in the unwalked wilderness have many names in The Time of Dying. They are a peculiarity of nature. They are neither human, nor undead, nor animal, but sometimes wear the features of all three. Sometimes they appear as old women. Sometimes, as great black half-hounds. Sometimes with dripping grey flesh, breathless, bloodless.
Their magic is profane - not necromancy. Antique. It is said their spells can cure ills beyond the means of mancer spells. Even so, few are those who willingly deal with witches. A deal with a witch always ends badly in the stories.
You crawl from the pond, retching. The slime of the pond’s shore swallows your gauntlets as you grasp and pull, like some prehistoric amphibian, the first to drag itself from the ocean. At last you reach a root of the leafless tree. You find thick moor grass. You spend a moment bent, sucking in the night’s biting atmosphere.
You finally force yourself to stand, scanning the ground as you do. The witch’s hut is nowhere in sight. Witch, hut, and your Blue Lady with them, have vanished onto the moor. The bright yellow Harridan’s Moon lets you see far, but there is only the vast and waving plane.
Then something catches your eye. You march against the wind to a patch of flattened heather. Looking about, you quickly spot a trail of similar patches.
Footprints, you realize.
You let yourself believe the witch. That beetle poisoned your Lady because you lacked care in your service. Now this weird fear has her for the same reason. Why did you let yourself fall for that storied trick? The old woman in the lonely place. If your Blue Lady dies, it marks the certain failure of an oath. Your greatest oath. Haven’t you failed enough?
As you begin your march, following the trail of giant goat-prints in the yellow midnight grass, the cold will be your first peril. You can use your Pinecone Crest Shield to block the biting wind, but the air still slips through the creases in your armor. Your wet wool against your skin is like a frozen tongue.
Keep your shield raised anyway. You’ll need it.
A lone call. Canis major. It whistles like birdsong over the moaning wind. You know the sound, though you wish you did not
The Spiderwolf Fight
This will be one of the more difficult fights in your adventure, mostly because you have only your Shield to fight with. The wolves skitter in through the rustling grass. They attack in duos and trios, coming in at crossed sides with each attack. Their greyblack fur, thin limbs, and long, low bodies make them hard to spot when they lunge from the grass.
Lacking your Polished Steel Longsword, your best strategy will be shield bashing. Your plate mail should spare you from the pincer bites of the wolves, though they attack from varied angles. Brace your shield in the direction of one of the lunging wolves. After it rebounds off your Pinecone Crest, and after you recover from the stagger of the bites at your back and flanks, bring the edge of your shield down on one of your attacker’s bulbous, chitinous heads. You can usually kill a wolf in one blow.
Once you kill six Spider Wolves the rest will flee.
Ahhhh. One of the beasts nipped through the chain behind your knee. A stinging, worse than cold. It is bleeding. But, your relationship with pain is different, ever since your body cracked. You can march through it. You will. Will you die here on the moor? You would have no burial under a stone on The Road. An unknown grave. If your Lady has no stone over her bones, should you?
You wander north across the wind-chilled, moonlit moor for what feels like days. The moon remains fixed in its place among the stars, as if that golden face were painted on the blackly purple canvas. A Nightjar follows you, trilling in your wake.
Your fingers and toes fall numb.
At last you spy, against the indistinct horizon, a black mass. It is a mound, topped in the silhouettes of pines. Amidst them you see a familiar, cone-topped, round shadow. The witch’s hut. It has squatted down. Its windowlight mirrors the color of the moon.
You raise your shield and proceed up the hill.
As you reach for the knobby door handle you hear a deep, growling voice within.
“Not young. Not youthful as I might have wished. But young enough is she. “Never have I worn skin so white with hair so bluish-black. “A pretty one I shall be. Hehehehehe. Pretty in a way. “And she was easily had.”
The knob of the door refuses to turn…
…So your steel clad foot opens the way.
As you step inside you see that the entire hut has altered. The soot-blacked hearth looks as if it exploded outward; the fire-poker is embedded in the opposite wall. Though the round window seemed small on the outside, it now dominates the wall to your left like a giant cornea covered in cataracts. The yellow harridan’s moon streams through this fogged glass like a foggy hooded-lantern light.
Where the mangrove-root once made a table, there now stands a tall upright stone. It is covered in chalky, rose-colored scratchings.
Your blue Lady lies on soft moss at the base of the stone. She is in some kind of stasis. Her eyes are open, her color has returned, and she breaths, but she shows no reaction to your bursting entry.
The Witch-Beast of Windy Moor
The old woman of the hut, or a creature that is her weird fear reflection, stands over your Blue Lady. She spins on you. Her throat grinds. Her eyes are small and black like a bug’s. Her wide nose flares with wroth.
Like an older Time’s huge wolfdog, her body is now covered in shaggy grey hair. In mass she has tripled, perhaps quadrupled. Her hunched posture and longer forearms make her look like she crawled from the first dawns of the world. All about her there is a musk of the shadowed floor of an old forest.
In her left claw, she waves your Polished Steel Longsword.
The fight begins with the witch-beast lunging. She’ll immediately lay into you with your own Steel (in a rare moment you may regret keeping the weapon so oiled and sharp.) You’ll have to block or dodge her strikes. Her power is astounding. Even strikes you block with your shield send lightning pain through your cold-numbed fingers.
Your goal in the first part of this fight is to keep moving. Take as few hits as possible, let your body warm up. The witch will eventually stop to catch her breath. Take that as the signal to go on the offense.
Your best bet is retrieving the fire-poker embedded in the wall. It’s not much of a weapon, but it’s something. Keep dodging the hag’s swipes, they’re slower and easy to avoid now. Whenever she opens up her ribcage as she follows through a swing, capitalize.
As her ribs bleed and crack, the witch becomes desperate and dangerous. She will speak words that are not necromancy.
Curses.
The witch will try to lay her magic on your head. Strike fast to interrupt her curses. A single completed curse will likely spell your end (petrification, sleep, skin rot, etc.). While she curses, the witch’s long tongue will loll out. This is her most vital point. It’s a narrow target, but you’ll need to spear her tongue with the fire poker.
Once her tongue is speared, the witch-beast will stagger, and begin baying at the ceiling. She’ll drop your sword and try to pull the poker out.
From here the battle is won. Quickly retrieve your sword, raise it, and sever her head.
As the witch-beast falls, your Lady’s trance breaks. She blinks, rising.
Your Blue Lady is healthy once more.