0413 — A Cruel Tomb

The merchant-industrialist troops stationed at Fort Cygne (0612) killed a witch.

Being a superstitious man, their commanding officer ordered the witch buried near her home in the hope it would keep away curses or hauntings. He oversaw a proper Catagean funeral, with a properly inscribed headstone bearing the witch’s name, which he could easily find due to his diligently kept records of prisoners passing through the fort.

A witch in this tradition holds no ownership over “their” name, so that a younger witch may discover, adopt, and share it, and gives up all hold over it in death so as not to discourage its discovery by another. Inscribed in stone, it is trapped, unable to pass freely through the world.

Patience Rawbone (she/her), the dead witch’s trainee (or fledgling as she calls herself), furiously wishes to destroy the headstone but cannot bring herself to do so — seeing and touching it makes her feel hellishly sick, as does any attempt to break it through magical invocation. For now she lurks in the small shack she used to share with her mentor and tries to build courage to ask a stranger for help. It won’t come easily.