POV: Catharine
It's that time of the month again, and since I'm one of the highest in rank while still young I have the 'honor' of buying our supplies for the next month.
It's not easy to live as a Witch, we all stay in a big swamp and try to live our lives even if we're not wanted by others.
Everyone from this clan became like this once struck by lightning. We don't know why it does this but we try to gather everyone that became like us and help them with a community.
Some people would think that were blessed instead of cursed. Who wouldn't want to become a master at one skill?
But everything comes at a price, of course, we become more isolated from other people, and lose our trading system while also stagnating on our other skills.
So if you're Crafting skill is level 2, for the rest of your life you'll be stuck with crafting stone tools at most.
Luckily some of our members managed to have a high level of this skill to help the rest of the community.
We know how to make potions but that doesn't mean we have the ingredients to make them.
Some of them we can grow it ourselves while others we have to buy it from the city.
Fortunately, since the Stone Kingdome specializes in Brewing potions, you can find most of the ingredients on the open market. Their not cheap but it's possible to be bought.
We can't just stop brewing potions, it's in our instincts to produce more magic liquid. If we don't do this once every two weeks or so we will start to lose our minds, and we don't want to have that problem.
Today I took the batch of potions made by others with a few stacks of slime balls.
Since we live in a swamp biome, most of the monsters are slimes, and they don't even attack us. So we raise them like cattle to sell them in the big city, they are pretty popular after all.
I was at the capital of the Stone Kingdom since we don't visit smaller towns that often, we tend to go to the bigger cities to get the best deals.
While the work I did was important, this job also tended to be done with one person. This way we didn't attract too much attention.
I've been to the usual shops to sell my whereas, I was a loyal supplier and had a good relationship with them, which made me smile whenever I came here.
With all that done it was time for the fun stuff.
Shopping!
I took all the emeralds that I just got and went on a shopping spree, this was my favorite part of the trip.
First was some food, clothes, and other commodities. Shortly after I almost had my inventory full, and it was starting to get late.
But everything for the Clan was bought, now I could buy some stuff for myself.
I eyed a dress for a few months already and I think I can finally afford it if I haggle enough.
As I was enjoying the other dresses while humming with happiness I felt someone looking intensely at me.
This happens pretty often when I come here, my light skin attracts a lot of unwanted attention, but after the novelty is done, everyone continues on with their day.
Minutes passed, and I still felt like someone was watching me, I decided to make a few turns to make the other party lose interest.
It didn't work, instead, the follower decided to observe me from a greater distance.
I didn't like where this was going, but we're trained in case of this.
So I went to an isolated street and confronted whoever was following me.
I had a poison potion ready to be thrown if things got ugly.
To my horror, from beyond the corner, a fully armored person came to light.
He had an iron armor which meant that he was rich or powerful, neither one was good for me.
I tried to communicate with him about why he followed me, and he revealed that he knew my true identity.
This is frustrating since it means that he looks specifically for people like us. One Which flew under our noses, and since he didn't have the necessary resources to brew potions, slowly he lost his mind. And with that, he started to attack people, one of our only rules of the Clan was to not attack people unless attacked.
But he didn't have anyone to guide him in his new life, so now he is a wanted fugitive who killed a few people and made a lot of families angry.
Five years ago, my predecessor was killed by one of those victims. They wanted revenge for their dead parents.
We tried to look for that Witch but he knows how to hide even when he lost his mind.
To my relief, he wasn't a victim of that criminal, instead what he told me was even worse.
"What? No, I wanted to know if you had any connections with the party from the Sandstone Kingdome."
We didn't have a big network on that part of the land, most of our business is done in the Stone Kingdome, so I asked what exactly was he talking about.
"Someone killed the Sulatn in public with potions while invisible!"
This shocked me to the core. While we were pretty isolated from the world, we still listened any news about the big nobles and what their next move would be.
Our elders told us that once there was a crusade against them, they became too much of an eyesore for the leaders of the nation so they decided to kill them all in the name of 'cleansing'.
Very few managed to escape those dark times, and that's why it was decided to be more isolated.
But this felt more like the hand of the Pillagers. While people tended to put us in the same category as them, they couldn't be further from the truth.
We become like this by accident, they decided to become like that intentionally, they were the ones who gave us a bad name most of the time since they had two witches in their ranks.
They tried to control us or at least trade with us but we strongly refused. We knew what those potions would be used for and we didn't want to hurt other people with them.
But with this, they broke the beehive. The world would be in turmoil soon enough, and most likely a crusade will be come once again.
Only because those crazy Pillagers couldn't stay in one place for more the a year.
They always looked for trouble, and we suffered because of them.
I tried to explain my case to the man, and he seemed to believe me.
He still wanted to speak with someone higher than me to be sure, if not there would be dire consequences.
This made me more angry, why do we have to suffer so much? We didn't do anything bad to the world, but it seems to keep kicking us while we're down and laughing at our weaknesses.
But I didn't have a choice, so I accepted the deal.
With that, he left.
I quickly ran to my horse and galloped toward my Clan.
It was still night, so monsters were everywhere on the road, but they all ignored me like I was invisible to them.
One of the perks of being a witch.
After two days of riding, I arrive at home and run straight to the biggest house in the village.
"Elders, there's an emergency!"
Two older people stayed at a table while sipping milk from a wooden bowl.
Both of them wore the classic purple Witch robe with the black hat. They stopped their discussion and slowly turned towards me.
"Catharine, my dear! What happened?"
One of them got up and walked closer to me while looking for any visible wounds.
"A noble found me, and knew that I was a witch."
Both of them gave some annoyed sighs.
"Don't worry, it happens from time to time, we won't go there for a few months and then I'll forget about us once again. Or was he looking for the rogue Witch?"
"No, it's something even worse. He asked me if we were in any way related to the Sultan's death at his party. Apparently, some invisible assassins killed him with potions."
Both of them froze, and then the ones still sitting down hit the wooden table with their fist.
"Those damned Pillagers making trouble for us once again! This is why they keep asking for potions a few months ago, they made another mess."
"We have to go into hiding once more, we can't risk our lives like the last time. Well go deeper into the forest, the monsters will keep them away."
Both of them already started to make plans for the future, but I haven't finished my report yet.
"Once I told the Nobel that was not part of their plan, he seemed to believe me, but he wanted to meet with someone higher than me to speak. If I don't get back in five days they'll ban us from the city for good."
The two elders groaned in annoyance. While we can go to other cities to make our deals, we already established a relationship with some shops to get some good deals.
Sure, we plan on retreating deeper into the forest, but after a few months we will be back.
But if we don't do this meeting well have to start everything from scratch. And it's hard to make people trust you when they see you once a month and have pale skin.
"Well talk with the others, go and take a rest, I'm sure you're tired from the trip."
I nodded my head and left the big hut. I've done my job, it's time for the elders to decide the next move.
With a tired body, I went to my hut to get some rest, I'll deal with the rest of the problem's tomorrow.
------
Three days have passed since I got back home, I've delivered all the requested items to all the people and waited for any updates on the unfortunate encounter.
As I was working with my brewing stan I heard a knock to my door.
"Come in!"
The door was opened and an elder entered my home, though she was the youngest of them all by a few years.
"Hello Catharine, take this armor and prepare for travel, will be leaving in an hour."
"So what's the final verdict?"
She stopped at the door thinking if she should tell me or not, and in the end, she decided to satisfy my curiosity.
"We wanted to leave with the whole Clan deeper into the forest, but we decided to take this gamble with the noble. If we're lucky, we may be able to pin all the blame on the Piligers and set ourselves free. Of course will also be preparing for leaving at a moment's notice. "
With that, she left my house while closing the door.
I looked at the armor she gave me, it was made with leather and it was enchanted, but not by a lot.
I quickly got it on me and left for the meeting spot.
We were four in total, not too many to attract unwanted attention but enough to make other people hesitate on attacking us.
We all had horses to get there faster, and just to be sure, we gave them a speed potion which they always loved.
After one day we arrived at the capital, the gates had a long line of people who waited to get in, we also waited for our turn and paid the entrance fee.
"We still have one more day until the meeting. Go, relax, and see you all tonight at our usual place. Be careful not to get in trouble.
With that, everyone split up, some of them were for the first time here, so they loked around with wonder.
But I already had my place in mind, so I had fun until we had to meet.
It was night outside, and we were walking towards the meeting place, we wanted to arrive later to intimidate the noble once we met.
But once we arrived there, something unexpected happened, instead of one fully iron-armored person, there were four, and on top of that, everyone was fully enchanted.
Not a great sight for our morale.
While the beginning was tense, we resolved everything through talking, at one point I started to zone out until I suddenly heard my name.
"... Catharine will stay with the gentleman until tomorrow."
Wait what?! Why do I have to be the hostage, I don't remember being so easy to hand over.
But the elder decided my fate, and I couldn't do anything about it.
I said an awkward hi to them while the others left to contact the Clan.
To my surprise, they seemed more relaxed once the others had left, and they even took off their helmet.
They were an odd-locked bunch, and they didn't have the air of an arrogant person anymore, but what truly caught my eye was the person who had pale skin.
He was a Witch like me.
My memory was hazy after this, I snapped out of it, only after I arrived at my room to sleep in.
I remember Trader talking with me about something, but I don't remember what he said.
My mind was still on one thing, what was the Witch doing with them?