Dark Fantasy

Dark Canticles of the Blood Witch is a hexology spanning three continents and two different worlds – the Planum Materia, or physical world, and the Planum Astrali, the astral world of spirit, thought, dreams and nightmares.

This adult fantasy series of novels contains some explicit content aimed at mature readers, and has a voluntary age restriction of 18+.

Are you ready to enter the Planum Astrali?

Prologue, Scroll One

The mist coming off the sea was unusually thick and heavy. It was curiously warm and sticky, and its grey pallor dampened the rosy colour of the pre-dawn. Wherever it clung to the hardy plants growing along the shore, they withered.

The midwife looked up, as though her gaze could see through the mud walls of the small fisherman’s cottage, at something or someone approaching from afar. She sharply drew in her breath and whispered: “He is coming.”

She swallowed, looked down at the bloodied child stuck halfway in its mother’s birth canal, took a deep breath and carefully hooked her forefingers under the child’s armpits. Her hands were bony and wrinkled, and her nails long and thick and yellow, with the thumb nail of her left hand filed into a sharp point.

The old woman’s lungs wheezed as she exhaled and, with a gentle pull, the child came free, making a soft moan. “Ah, she’s a strong one… she’s already breathing…” the midwife said, turning to the anxious father standing close by, clutching the back of a chair, his knuckles white.

“…she’ll do nicely,” the midwife finished under her breath. She leaned forward, and took the wrist of the woman lying on the bed. She held it for a while, then shook her head. The old midwife’s rheumy eyes had the tiniest hint of sympathy as she said: “She’s gone… Sorry.”

The father mutely stood staring at his wife, and a tear rolled down his cheek.

With her thumb and forefinger, the midwife pressed down on the child’s belly on either side of the umbilical cord. “Wouldn’t want a pretty girl like you to end up having an ugly, bulging old belly-button like me, do we now?” she said to the child, pointing a thumb at herself. With her free hand she gave the cord a practised yank, and expertly tied it off with a short piece of copper wire. She then took the knife lying on the nearby table, and neatly cut the cord.

“You must name the girl. Quickly!” the midwife anxiously said, looking over her shoulder as if seeing something creeping up behind her.

The father turned his head towards her, his eyes vacant of any thought.

“Name! A name! Quickly, before the sun rises!”

The father muttered something.

“Very well, that it shall be.” The skin of the midwife was old and saggy, and the wrinkled, loose skin under her chin undulated as she began reciting a spell. With her sharp thumb nail, she dug into the dead mother’s inner thigh until she found the main artery. The heart had stopped pumping the blood a while back, but the blood was still warm and had not yet begun coagulating.

With her nail, the midwife took some of the blood, and drew an intricate pattern on the child’s chest, all the while muttering an incantation.

“Wha…what are you doing?” the father stammered, suddenly alarmed.

“Hush,” the old woman said, her tone commanding and absolute.

The father stood staring at the ritual being performed on his daughter, his eyes wild with fear, but his body strangely unwilling to move. An invisible, icy hand gripped his heart, while yet another ran its ethereal fingers down his spine. The father tried to turn to look, but couldn’t, and merely stood staring ahead, a crazed light in his eyes.

“Come here,” the old woman said, beckoning with one of her long, yellowed fingernails.

As if in some kind of stupor, the father mutely shuffled forward, until he was within easy reach of the midwife. She began loosening the tattered blue ribbon that closed her grey homespun top, and unceremoniously pulled out one of her old, saggy breasts. She held the child’s head to the wrinkled breast, and the child instinctively found the nipple and began sucking.

“Here child,” the midwife said, “drink.” With that she reached out with her free hand, and clutched the father around his throat. He gasped and made a creaking noise, like an old door or a rotten floor board, and began shrinking in size. Eventually, only a dried-out husk was left, and the midwife carefully let it drop to the floor.

“There, there,” the old woman said, smiling crookedly and revealing her gums and three stained front teeth, the only teeth in her mouth. “That tastes better, now doesn’t it?” she said, looking at the child. The child was sucking on the old woman’s breast, but instead of milk, a dark smoke was entering the child’s mouth, which, on reflex, she swallowed down all the same.

After some time, the midwife got up, put the sleepy child down in the pool of sticky, drying blood between her mother’s legs, and picked up the strange, dried-out husk that once had been the father.

She put the husk into an enamelled dish that was standing on one of the crude shelves, and began crushing the husk with a clay mug she had taken off another shelf, her withered old hands gripping the mug around its rim, and using the bottom of the mug to pulverize the husk. Her many copper bangles made a rhythmic, clinking sound as she worked, reflecting myriads of tiny motes of red light all around.

When the entire husk had been turned into fine, grey powder, she shoved the enamelled dish into the fireplace atop the coals. She dug in the leather satchel she had brought with her, and found a small clay jar with a cork in it. The remains of a red wax seal on the cork and rim of the jar gave the impression that whatever was inside, was either very expensive, or very dangerous.

With the nail of her pinkie, the old midwife scooped a little white powder from the jar, careful not to breathe. She then flicked it into the enamelled dish, and gave it a stir with the nail of her forefinger. She watched in satisfaction as the grey powder immediately turned dark blue, and eventually, black.

She used the front of her skirt to pick up the hot enamel bowl, and placed it on the rickety little table beside the bed where the child and her dead mother were lying.

“What a silly name he gave you,” the old woman said as she leaned over the child. “I always thought your mother’s name sounded like ‘marmalade’. Now you’re stuck with it too… I think I’ll just call you Mella for short… yes.”

She pulled the sleeping child a bit closer to the edge of the bed, sat down, and with her sharp thumb nail, began piercing the child’s skin, making numerous dots and lines. Somehow, the child didn’t wake, only making one soft little moan.

The dots and lines that the old witch drew on the child’s chest began forming a rune, and she quickly scooped some of the black powder from the enamel dish, and rubbed it into the bleeding wound.

The rune-shaped wound instantly stopped bleeding, turned black, and then began fading first to dark blue, then dark grey, then light grey, and was gone.

“Yes, yes!” the old woman cackled with satisfaction, the loose skin under her throat wobbling. More and more tattoos she made, watching with satisfaction as each settled in and vanished.

When it was done, she lay the still-sleeping child down atop her mother’s cooling, lifeless body, and the old woman sat down on the floor. She painfully crossed her legs, then rested her upturned hands in her lap. She closed her eyes, and soon she was standing in a different place – the lowest tier of the Planum Astrali.

She looked around at the sickly grey light, and felt cold. She was young and beautiful in her Astral form, and completely naked. Tattoos were swirling underneath her dark brown skin, warding off the denizens and creatures of the shadows surrounding her.

She walked to a smallish, black rock that was in the shape of a twisted spire – a miniature of a much larger spire elsewhere – and touched it with her forefinger. Instantaneously she was transported to yet another realm, a place where darkness was not the mere absence of light, but rather its true and equal opposite. A place where darkness had substance. A place where darkness had power.

Far in the distance stood a gigantic black spire, a giant version of the rock she had touched a moment ago. The spire was continually being struck by lightning bolts, but they were made, not of light, but of pure blackness. A creature made entirely of shadow approached the woman, and they began speaking in a hideous language, completely incomprehensible to anyone on the higher tiers of the Planum Astrali.

The sound of their voices had a strangeness about it too. Unlike sound on either the Planum Materia or the Planum Astrali, which is produced at its source and then ripples outward, the sound here in this strange place moved in the opposite direction: Instead of rippling outward, it was sucked inward, towards its source. Their voices had a hollow, echoing quality, and travelled no more than two feet.

“You have done well,” the shadow creature said. “Return with the child on the not-sacred birthdays – the fourth, the sixth, the ninth and the sixteenth. As promised, on the sixteenth, you will be… released.” The last word was a mere hiss.

The woman smiled, turned and walked back to the spot where there was another twisted rock similar to the one that had brought her there. She touched it, and found herself no longer in the Planum Umbrata, but back on the lowest tier of the Planum Astrali.

The beautiful dark-skinned woman sighed, wistfully ran a hand over one of her firm, pointy breasts, down her trim waist and over her shapely hip and thigh, longingly following her hand with her eyes as she caressed her own skin, smooth like satin and soft as down. She sighed again, made a peculiar gesture with her fingers, and closed her eyes.

The old woman sitting on the floor opened her eyes, her Astral travel complete. She smiled a wide grin made mostly of chapped lips and gums. “Come child,” she said, getting up, “time to go.”

She wrapped Mella up in a blanket, and strode out the door of the fisherman’s little mud cottage, looking back not even once.

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Chapter 11

The next morning started with a drizzle. The seasons were changing. It had been late summer in the south, when they’d first set out, but the days were now noticeably getting shorter, and the trees were showing the first signs of their autumn blush.

Tullwch stood outside, wearing only a shirt, palms spread outward. He had his eyes closed and a serene smile on his face as the tiny droplets tickled his face. He stood like that for probably a quarter of an hour, when Jade lightly came up behind him and put her arms around him from behind. He didn’t flinch, however, as he had felt her approaching presence.

She buried her face in his back, and held him tighter.

“Ah, this is so lovely,” he contently whispered. He reached back and put his hands on her waist.

“How come you’re up so early?” Jade asked, her voice still groggy.

“I needed a bush, so I came outside and here’s this beautiful rain.” He let go, turned around, and put his arms around her waist once more.

Jade buried her face in his chest, and he watched as her curly blonde hair slowly began matting from the damp. He kissed her on her head, and asked if she would like some tea.

She nodded, in the process rubbing her face against his chest and messing up her eyebrows. When she looked up at him, Tullwch laughed and straightened them for her with his finger. “My beautiful darling,” he said. He cupped her face in his hands and looked deeply into her sleepy green eyes.

“Get back inside, I’ll bring you your tea.”

“Will you?” she smiled. “but first, I also need a bush,” she said and walked away.

Tullwch was busy laying down wood for the fire, when it happened. Suddenly, without warning, it felt as if a giant fist had slammed into his back. He fell forward onto the firewood he had just packed, and scrambled to his feet. He spun round and cast a fireball in the direction from whence he thought the attack had come, but there was nothing there.

He looked around wildly, shouting for Sh’velle and the others.

Jade came loping out from a small clump of trees nearby. “Tulley, are you all right?” she panted as she came closer.

Sh’velle, completely naked but with her broadsword in hand, came dashing from their tent, and Levrasse and Jargs – wearing only shirts, dangle-berries hanging out – also came scrambling from their own tent, brandishing swords.

Tullwch quickly looked around, making assessments. He turned his back towards his wives, and pulled up his shirt. “Do you see anything?”

The gasp coming from both women confirmed to him that he wasn’t imagining things, but that he had in fact just suffered a magical attack. “What is it?” he asked.

“You have marks on your back that look like… burn marks, or bruises, they’re quite strange. I don’t know…” Jade’s voice trailed off.

“This almost looks like, well, Zhavarra magic.” Sh’velle closely inspected the marks. “But it’s different, somehow. It looks like a technique called…” but she never finished her sentence.

A whirlwind of fury broke loose in the camp. Jargs and Levrasse went down before they could even do a thing to defend themselves. Jade instinctively sprouted her defensive bramble cocoon and frantically tried to get a grip on what was happening.

Tullwch and Sh’velle, but especially Sh’velle, were the only ones who had an inkling of what was going on.

Their attacker was hiding in the between-worlds, where the fabric from which this world was woven, touched the fabrics of other worlds. There were a few such places, where there were tiny rifts through which a person could slip, or creatures, as it was believed had happened in the Darkwoods five centuries ago.

Sh’velle pulled her concentration in on herself, and vanished. A moment later she re-appeared, all bloody and holding her side. The gash was deep. Tullwch rushed over, and was gathering a misty-blue ball of healing in his palm, when a soft rustling sound behind him alerted him to the sudden danger. He dove sideways on instinct, and was very glad that he’d done so, as a sword cleft the air where his head had been.

A thicket of brambles grew up around the attacker, but the woman turned to face Jade, and disdainfully said: “Tch, please,” and with a wave of her hand she turned the brambles to dust. This, however, had given Tullwch just enough time to grab Sh’velle’s sword, and attack.

He wasn’t quite used to Sh’velle’s heavy sword, and it felt as if he was moving incredibly slowly. The sword came down on steel, and Tullwch tried a counter-parry, which also stopped against steel. He stepped back, feigned a left strike, but brought the sword down low instead, cutting below the assailant’s parry, aiming at her legs.

She nimbly jumped high into the air, but Tullwch was anticipating that, and was already changing the direction of the cut, bringing the sword straight up.

Tullwch was hoping to slice open her hamstring, but the female assailant punched down on the sword, her gauntleted fist stopping the blade from penetrating too deeply. Only her leather britches and skin had been cut.

She came down and in the process put the sole of her spike-heeled boot down on the sword, meaning to pin it to the ground, while she swung her own sword in a gracefully controlled, wide arch, aiming for Tullwch’s head.

The swipe at his head was a decoy, meant to force him to make a hasty move, and he fell for it. Tullwch let go of the trapped sword, rolled sideways, and let fly with a fireball.

There was a strange hissing sound, and Tullwch could hardly believe his eyes when he saw his own fireball being absorbed into the woman’s palm. “Nice try, Tullwch,” she said coolly.

Behind her, Jargs stirred, and without looking around, she kicked him on the forehead with her spiked heel.

Bamboo shoots started growing around the woman again, but as before, she merely waved her hand and it all turned to dust.

Tullwch, now unarmed, let fly with another fireball, a small one, dodged sideways, and then threw two more big ones, coming from different angles. The woman deftly caught the first two, and dodged the third, her hair getting slightly singed.

“Oh come on!” she shouted, “Is that the best Tullwch Mendorph can do? And here I thought it was going to be a challenge.” She put her hand on her hip, and regarded Tullwch for a while.

Tullwch took proper note of the woman’s looks for the first time. She was clad in some kind of tight-fitting leather armour, but there were cut-outs in the armour, with sashes attached to her skin with rings in the same way Zhavarra priestesses attach their ceremonial garb – the skin of the wearer is pierced with gold rings in specific places, and the sashes are then pulled through the rings.

There was something strangely familiar about her too. She was slightly taller than average, and rather good looking. She had light brown hair, a broad forehead, smallish eyes, high cheekbones, and thin lips. Her body was lean and muscular.

“Don’t you know it’s rude to stare at a Zhavarra priestess?” The woman snidely asked.

Tullwch was thinking fast. He suddenly knew he stood little chance against this woman, save by sheer luck or perhaps cunning, but Tullwch was never a very cunning sort of fellow, and she definitely seemed to be very crafty.

From the corner of his eye, he saw his wife’s life ebb away in an ever-growing pool of blood.

“Oh, I forgot, you have your own little pet priestess. Pity about that, that she let herself go like that, all on account of a pathetic little male.”

Tullwch decided that he might as well try to buy some time while he thought of his next move. “Aren’t you supposed to give me a message… from your client… before you kill me?”

“Client? There’s no client!” She scornfully laughed, and jumped forward with her sword raised high. Tullwch still had no real plan, but the time he had played for was enough for him to remember the words of a very old spell he hadn’t used in years. He let fly with a fireball, which the priestess dodged by somehow blinking in and out of existence.

She reappeared, hurtling along the same trajectory as before, with her sword coming down fast. Tullwch blocked with his arm, and the sword struck sparks off his skin. He leapt forward and punched the woman in the gut as hard as he could, but the spell had slowed him down significantly, and he didn’t hurt her nearly as much as he had wanted to.

“Ah, copper dermis, how quaint,” the attacker belligerently chided him. “Suppose I’ll just have to wait till it wears off. And of course,” she leaned forward to well within Tullwch’s reach, “there’s no way you can catch me while you’re wearing your tough little hide. You’re too slow.” She whispered the last sentence, and kept her gaze locked with his, enjoying the slight panic in his eyes.

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