The Reborn Witch had a nice 'Tea Time' with the Dragon Queen today
Chapter 66: Druid’s Homecoming

Chapter 66: Druid’s Homecoming

Flashback

"Hero of the Evergreens...do you wish a proper burial for your...companions?"

"...I’m afraid there weren’t any ashes left to be buried, Elder Adil."

"...I see."

The elder’s silvery eyes narrowed at Demond, before glancing upon the graveyards that filled the clearings, each of her sister’s name carved into the wooden crosses, a sincere request from Adil to the church, for even without vessals that contained laughter under the suns or cheers for the rains, may they be rested in the lushed greens that used to be their home.

Adil glanced around, charred remains have been cleared away, yet the soils forever were tarnished blackness, the tyrant’s ash and blood seeping into the lands, and his flames forever stitched into the Evergreenn’s roots. All...all because he knew the Hero is here, by the damning vampires who dares intrude and leak the intel that would cost Adil’s everything.

She clutched her palms into her fist, the lily’s bile mess still clinging to the throat, the children’s cries and the sisters’ sorrowed smile just like yesterday, the vengance’s disgust forever a part of her, so...maybe that’s why...

The avenger took a peek at Demond, whose brows calmed and loosened, as he smelled not the tarred soils beneath him, not the dusty graves in front of him, but the lushness of woods that once surrounded this land.

Even the clinging lily’s sweetness in her throat let slip a curiosity, as Adil’s lips opened once again, for the fellow survivor who deserved none but more.

"I am sorry...for everything."

Demond’s eyes fluttered as he turned to Adil, confusion drifting along in the flesh wind. "Why?"

"If not for our request to deliver the Hero home....if only we were strong enough to annihilate all the vampires...the tyrant would not have come, and your companions...would have survived."

Adil gritted her teeth, the familiar redness of tyrant’s flames and vampires’ eyes knawing away her sanity to lash out. It is not our fault, it is the vampires who dared intrudes, yet her manners as an Elder knew better, even if she casted it aside for the rights to vengance without the sancity of the woods watching over her sins.

"Perhaps so. But...while we do not expect the tyrant’s coming, we adventurers know the basics. Not a day goes by without deaths and corpses at our door after all." Demond chuckled, as Adil frowned. The pitch low enough to hint at a self-defeat, but not low enough to sink into the bottomless hatred or despair like hers.

"Why did you..." Adil gulped back the question that has been marring her mind. She knew full well what she was about to embark on for a path of no returns, scorched only thorns of her own makings as her families’ eyes gazed down upon the disgraced her.

At the end, the courage inside her asked once again. "Why did you burn the remains of the war-axe your companions once held? Would your companion not be...ashamed of you not even leaving behind a trace of her beings?"

Demond, upon listening to the fellow survivor’s wanton curiosity, merely glanced down at the soils, as if that housed his axed companion’s robotic soul, each seed beneath an archive for the programs and memories the axed Andoids once held.

"She’s a...weird one. She won’t allow her corpse to be buried, for she treats it as a humiliation after what she’s been through." The mage chortled as if nostalgia mixed a potent solemness with his grief. "Well, long story for an Android, but...she’s treated herself bound to a duty that should not have chained her, bound to a sorrow that should not have defined her. Even memories of her first drink were only drowned in oily tears, funny enough."

"...that Android must be a great person." Adil recalled other elders as they laughed and spouted great words of wisdom like drunken old men in a tavern, and the unseeming intellect must belong also to that axe-wielding Andriod.

"She’s not. She won’t admit it, so I won’t as well." Demond’s eyes met Adil’s silver, the mage’s pupils sparkled not just of the past but an admittance for a journey well-walked. Each sprinkle a salted wound to Adil’s vengeful resolve, the sweetness of mudded lily paired against the saltiness of other’s forwardness, for she must be left behind in a trauma undeserved to her.

"What are you going to do now?"

The mage’s question echoed in her mind, ever a reminder of the ember for her heart, for she spoke without hesitation. "Revenge."

"...that’s cliche. I won’t stop you, but letting it go feels better, you know?" The mage smirked, not in mockings, but in boundaries that respected the Druid’s decision.

"You have a daughter, our savior. I have none of my families left." Adril recalled the innocent smile of the Hero as the baby raised her tiny finger for a tap, an innocence too pure for her deep-rooted hatred.

"You spoke like you would never marry again or adopt one." The mage sneezed, laughter escaping him for how he found the situation bizarre. "Besides, Selene is still in the camps, right? It’s not like....well, all of you are gone."

"...she would not like a parent like me, Demond." The sterness in her voice quivered with a slight hesitation, as Selene’s green-lit hair twinkled in her dark-red abyss.

"But you won’t leave her behind, I can tell. Or would you really hand her to a stranger you never met?" As if sensing Adil’s body shaking, Demond merely stapled the final nail. "Or...I can adopt her for you. My little...collection could afford two daughters to read on the same sofa, you know?"

"Mmm. I will adopt her."

"...good decision." The passing joke paired with a sneaky laughter soured Adil’s mind once again, as her silvers met the barks on her sister’s wooden graves, the woods ever a reminder for what has been lost and yet...the little branches that grew from them urged her to look forward, even for a future she may never want.

But she won’t leave the child alone without a proper home. Even....even if she must burn herself along with her sister in vengance, she would grant her enough wealth and fame for her to live properly, for her to smile widely without worries. Adil would keep her at a distance, yes, occasionally sterning her to prepare her, but she will watch over her as a guardian in a town, a fortress, a new home that she would build for her daughter.

That day, the idea of the Town of Rouen was born, after consulting the mage who answered with a random name from his old World, as Adil failed to grasp the meaning behind Rouen. Though she can sense from her friend’s smile that he, in the end, was glad that she was interested in guarding for the future, not chasing a past that was already scorched clean.

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Present

Demond...my old friend...come to think of it, I never bid you thanks, or a proper apology.

Black-red bloods that pooled around her body seeped into the soil, but what comes is not malice but lushness for a new beginning, as small seeds beneath the soils trembled at the wills of the Druid. The seeds coiled, giggled, cried, not of sorrows, but like children of innocence who witnessed her mother’s returning, as they sprouted branches to the soil, the tiny lushes paints the Druid’s relief, for the day she first held the child Selene in her arms, the tickly sense from her green hairs tinged a warmth greater than the wound in her guts.

Manasseh gasped at thuding sound of the plant growing as she turned around, the cloaked visage faced as vines and branches surrounded Adil. Gritting her teeth, her legs moved before she could register the scenery for she won’t allow a mistake, yet a root sprung to block her from the assault, as the bloodied plump Druid wobbled, her knees buckling as she tired herself to stand.

The houndmaster’s eyes widened, as a green fell upon Adil’s shoulder as she stood, the leave grew and stretched as vines to slip and weave close her wound, her vengance, her corruption...as the lush manas of the Druid echoed with that single pulse, the plump cheeks and waists hued, the flesh thinned and grew tall, as if past reversed, but only the person, and not her released soul.

The Druid stretched out a hand, as the branch chuckled and nodded a white petal at her fingertip, the protruded bones slowly ingrained to make rooms for youthful veins, the roots coiling around not to protect but to celebrate with a choir. The lily...ever a whiteness, a sancity, a purity...now clarified her existence, now completed her for a return.

"Manasseh. I must apologise."

The fingertip let go of the petal, as silvers no longer slited but rose. The eyelid no longer stitched her eyes of blind rage but of clarity, as leaves that fell clung to her hair before brushing greens in the whitness, drifting along the wind to reveal the lushful greens that now painted the Druid’s hair.

"As someone who once thirst for revenge, I must not accompany you in destruction that means less than a splinterd seed for tomorow."

The elder’s voice, full of authority and boundless understanding, shivered the cloaked vampire in complete and utter shock. Instead of a plump, short old hag, she found now a tall green-haired woman as she stood, the wrinkles from her eyes glowed as they sprinkled away like scented leaves, leaving behind a beauty that knew no solace, only of inner-peace and silence.

"And so, allow me to declare again for my dismanner. In the name of the Evergreen’s last guardian, the protector of Rouen and the Daughter of Selene the Young Druid."

Her hand stretched to side as a branch coiled for the Queen’s homecoming, willing itself as a staff with lily at the tip to complete the Druid’s journey. Adil the elder’s smooth palm gripped the wood and closed her eyes, the children’s laughters and the sisters’ groaning dripped honeyed memories like a quiet rain after a harvest. Indeed, it all just seems like yesterday.

The branches thickened into bountiful roots, as they walled the Druid, before with silvers, stilled yet determined, calm and bursting with sheer force of will, she pointed her staff at the redness she once despised, at the redness that now coursed in her veins like never before blackened, at the redness that reminded roses’ petals instead of thorns.

"May I challenge you once again, Manasseh of the Bloodhounds, the last noble vampire."

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