Wavecaller is one of the Coterie’s true believers. She’s an ecoterrorist like Sister Nature and works closely with her in Canada to wreck industrial plants, strand boats responsible for overfishing in places too costly to retrieve them from, and shut off oil pipelines.
Her power, as one might expect, is control over bodies of water, which makes her a powerhouse over the ocean and still fairly dangerous in urban environnts where everything is hooked up to a water main. She’s not on Typhon’s level, but then who is?
Her costu is a blue fish-scale-patterned wetsuit with black accents. Her hair is slick, seeming perpetually wet, and her eyes are like whirlpools swirling with infinite depth. Righteous fury lingers in the grind of her jaw.
Before Wavecaller can turn her rage on , I quickly clarify, “I don’t have any love for the Syndicate, if that’s what you’re worried about. I certainly didn’t expect her to start throwing around the worst readings of Nietzsche.”
“Yeah?” The other witch raises an eyebrow, still judging with her strange-eyed gaze. “You seed pretty chummy. Why keep talking to the reptile after she showed her true colors?”
“Intellectual curiosity,” I say honestly. “The Syndicate are a bunch of dead won walking, and I have that perverse instinct to study an insect as it drowns. It is, after all, only a matter of ti until Strix Striga kills every last one of them.” I smile.
Wavecaller scowls. “We do our part, too. Don’t give all the credit to Vanguard.”
The two organizations work hand-in-hand when it cos to pact violation. Sotis that’s a magical girl going full Punisher—murdering ordinary thieves and vandals—and needing to be put down, but more often it’s a witch crossing that line and putting too many lives at risk. Still, when there isn’t a breach to address, Vanguard magical girls are usually the first on the scene to stop Coterie witches from acting, or at least to minimize harm. “How do you feel about Vanguard?” I ask directly before taking another sip of cider.
“You ask too many questions,” Wavecaller accuses . “Is that all you’ve been doing, just going around interrogating everyone?”
I wince and scratch my head sheepishly, playing it up in the hopes she’ll feel like she’s caught in sothing and won so points. “That’s fair. Sorry, I’m still new to this. I want to learn as much as I can from more experienced witches. I want to find my place in witch society.”
“You didn’t act like this in front of Priscilla,” the other witch observes, still staring at with naked suspicion. I’m starting to think she was awake for the entire conversation, not just the end of it. “Cut the crap and tell it straight: whose side are you really on?”
Hmm, how should I answer that? I bite my lip and look away into nowhere, thinking it over carefully. “My side is… .” I smile again, this ti brighter and more impish. “Maybe I’ll join Visage, maybe the Coterie, or maybe I’ll go it alone. But I don’t think I’m your enemy, whatever I choose. I like you, and I like your organization. I’d love to hunt and kill Priscilla with you soday, when I’m stronger,” I offer sincerely. I’d be doing my dearest Striga a favor.
It takes a few monts for Wavecaller to chew over my answer, peering at closely with eyes narrowed, but eventually she relents, relaxes, and signals the bartender for another drink. “You seem like a bit of a freak,” she says, “but we take those. I believe you about the reptile, which is all I need.”
Yes! Victory! I silently congratulate myself over the last of my drink, and when I set it down I’m back in business mode. “You waited to pounce on the fash until she ntioned wanting to wipe out all magical girls, so I have to ask: are you a believer in the pact? I know you work with Vanguard, but do you respect them? If you’d like, I can share a few things about myself in exchange. I know I must seem pretty rcenary, but the truth is a lot sillier: I’m a fan.”
Wavecaller rolls her eyes at my last line, but she seems in better spirits now. “The enemy of my enemy isn’t always my friend. Give a better reason and I’ll talk.”
“Because I can be useful to you,” I answer imdiately. “Convince I should petition the Coterie for mbership. Tell what makes you believe in their mission, and I might start believing in it myself. I already said I like what you do. The boat trick, the sabotage, it’s fun to read about, and I’m not the kind of moron who thinks global warming is fake or harmless. But I have to wonder: why are you and Sister Nature both witches and not magical girls, if what you really want is to save the world?”
The ecoterrorist witch blows out air and takes another drink before answering. “That… is a better question than I thought you’d ask. Fine. Yeah, I respect so of my opposites in Vanguard. The carbon removal project in Victoria is damn fine work, and when I heard about what they’re doing in the Arctic it gave a sliver of honest to god hope for this burning world. But it’s not enough to just address the symptoms. It’ll never be enough, not while the bastards on top of the heap keep throwing fuel on the fire. Because there’s money in coal and there’s money in oil, and the people making that money don’t care if the world burns so long as they get a golden casket and another zero next to their bank statent. So I do my work, and so do my comrades.” Her voice gets sharper and more intense as she finishes by saying, “I am a droplet in the tide that will drown this planet’s murderers.”
“But you can’t just fly around killing them all,” I point out. “The pact ties your hands. Does that not frustrate you?”
“Of course it does!” Wavecaller snaps. “I’d love to get my hands on the slimy fucks in charge of ExxonMobil and drown them in their own precious crude. It’d feel real, real good. And then the next day, they’d appoint a new board that would make all the sa votes, and nothing would change. So, fine. If it keeps the girlies in Vanguard from pushing back too hard when I hit an Exxon facility, I won’t go around murdering Exxon executives, and Exxon knows that. ‘Course, in turn, Vanguard better use that leverage to apply pressure their way. And credit where it’s due, that Striga bitch knows her way around leverage.”
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
I do not wrap my hands around Wavecaller’s throat and squeeze until I feel sothing crack when she calls my beloved darling a bitch. I only think about doing it. “Striga’s ruthless, that’s for sure,” I praise with a laugh that sounds real. “So Vanguard plays politics while the Coterie breaks what needs to be broken, but both are trying to fix the world. Is that how you see magical girls and witches?”
“The proper ones,” she mutters. “The way I see it, words like ‘heroes’ and ‘villains’ are labels for fiction, not real life. We’ve all been given power beyond what any human can have, and that carries a responsibility to use it for sothing that matters. The difference is whether you’re working inside the system or taking a hamr to it.” She glances over at Kira Kira and Sweet Tooth, still playing gas on the couch, and her expression darkens. “I don’t think the Jovians see it my way, though. Not if they keep picking witches like that.”
I follow her gaze. “Maybe. I think there can be value in entertainnt, but you’re probably right.”
Before I have the chance to say anything else and keep mining Wavecaller for her perspective, my attention is seized by an arrival I’ve been waiting for all this ti: Ferromancer is finally here. My teacher steps out of a door from nowhere like Howl and the others vanished through, and for the first ti I get to see what she looks like transford.
Her figure is obscured by sharp, angular power armor and a black, hooded cloak. The tal of her armor is different from what I’ve seen in all her other creations: a dark silver instead of that deep blue tone, and seeming to absorb light instead of reflecting it. Her face is hidden behind a silver mask, the eyes and mouth of her helt glowing the sa bright orange as the energy lines running across the suit—another departure from the technology in her workshop, which glows green.
She’s carrying a tal briefcase with an electronic lock that I’ve seen once before, though I don’t know what’s inside it. “Sothing absurd,” she told . No drones, no visible weaponry; just armor, a cloak, and a briefcase.
“Archon,” she calls over, voice distorted by her mask. “Your presence has been requested by the Morrigan. Co with .”
That gets everyone’s attention. Looking around the room, I’m pretty sure Wavecaller, Kira Kira, and Sweet Tooth don’t know who Ferromancer is. Bombshell is giggling to herself. Harlequin doesn’t look any different, which could an recognition or just being better at hiding their ignorance. I’d bet on the forr, if Lilith knew.
“That’s my cue,” I say to the Coterie witch beside as I rise from my seat and wave at Ferromancer in acknowledgnt. “Thanks for the chat. Let’s do this again, yeah?”
Wavecaller frowns at , a bit of genuine curiosity finally creeping into her expression. “We’ll see. Try not to piss off the old monster. The Morrigan’s no joke.”
I walk over to my teacher and she slips back through the open doorway without a word, so I follow. Bombshell stays behind, now fending off the pestering of the Visage witches.
The upper halls of the Ossuary are much like the lower halls, composed of breathing bone and splitting away into dozens of private chambers, most marked with sealed doors like the one that Bombshell took to. Our footsteps echo in the silence, Ferromancer’s cloak softly swishing along the floor as her armored feet pound, and I can still feel and taste that gentle seaside breeze.
“So,” Ferromancer asks as we walk, “how was it?” It’s a little harder to make out emotion in her voice through the chanical distortion, but I can hear a faint trace of amusent.
I think back over my experiences this evening. A lot’s already happened, and I haven’t even t the Morrigan yet. “It’s been interesting. They’re all very opinionated—the witches, I an. They all had lots to say and were fairly open about it. They hate each other,” I laugh. “I knew that, I guess, but it’s different to hear it said so plainly. I had fun listening to what they thought of each other. I honestly wish I had more ti to spend back there so I could keep hanging out with Bombshell’s friends and the other witches. I want them to like . Well, not so much the Syndicate witch, Priscilla.”
“You learned what their organization really believes,” Ferromancer guesses.
“Fascists, apparently,” I sigh. “It’s a sha, ‘cause the idea of a witch-led cri ring is so cool! I wanted a witch mafia, not ‘we must exterminate our enemies and enslave our lessers.’ Very disappointed about that.”
“They aren’t unified in ideology,” she notes, “but supremacy is the consistent thread. A problem to discuss later. Tell about before the witches, when you were down below.”
I’m mindful that the Morrigan could be listening—is listening, going by what Ferromancer said a few days ago—but then she would have already witnessed everything anyways, so there’s no point in being evasive. “I’m never going in as a mortal again,” I mutter. “Sensory overload, too hot and too loud and too everything. I didn’t feel like I belonged. But when I ca back as a witch? That was magical. It was thrilling. I want to do that again, because I absolutely loved the attention.”
“Sounds like it was useful, then.” Ferromancer’s in her professional mode right now, cold and focused, so I can’t tell if she’s satisfied with my report.
“The Ossuary is fascinating,” I add. “I an, I knew intellectually what an impressive pocketspace it was, but seeing it in person is sothing else.”
Being able to make a permanent pocketspace is a pretty rare ability. Lilith’s signature pocketspace—the Coterie’s eting hall—is temporary, and so is the Minotaur’s labyrinth trap. nto, one of Visage’s magical girls, can create a palace dinsion that is also strictly temporary. The Morrigan and Ferromancer are a rare breed, and I doubt Ferromancer could create a pocketspace half as intricate as the Ossuary.
Ferromancer nods. “The craftmanship is exceptional. Feel free to tell her I said so.”
Ahead, the long hallway we’ve been traversing cos to a sudden end with another skull-arched set of doors, the Morrigan’s raven symbol glowing over chains. I’m nervous, but Ferromancer strides along at the sa unhurried pace. She taps the raven and the chains vanish, and then she’s pushing the doors open and we’re stepping inside.
The Morrigan’s throne room is a garden maze below a clear blue sky. Twisting hedges stretch on into infinity, an unending wall of green broken by roses and dandelions and a thousand other flowers in a dizzying array of color. Placid ponds host frogs, cranes, and buzzing dragonflies. A path paved in bone winds through the garden to a throne of skulls blanketed in carnations and chrysanthemums, and upon that throne sits the Morrigan herself.
Most witches look… human, for lack of a better word. I have wings and pointy ears, but that’s hardly more than a costu. Cat ears, marble skin, glowing hair, they’re all just details. The core is still a human being. Not her.
The Morrigan is a corpse. She is bone and stretched skin, sunken eyes and scoured lips. She is a ruin of a woman in a gown of black feathers. She does not recline on her throne but is fastened to it, bound to it by flowering vines. Her eyes, twin embers of pale blue fla, are the only signs of life in her withered, long-dead form.
“Welco,” she greets, face unmoving, her smooth, warm, rich voice echoing inside my mind. “Co to , O visitor mine, and let us speak of war.”
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