The healer woman had many names. The one she currently used was Anasta, and she possessed the widest collection of both medicinal herbs and poisons known to man. The problem was, though, that just like Bastian had heard, one had to survive her company for long enough to get her to do any favors. And she was also into monsters, she even kept some as pets. Rumors occasionally spread themselves around, about how human she herself exactly was, about her supposed elven blood, but she never denied or confirmed anything at all.
Mahogany gave the sword to Bastian quite happily. He was satisfied with the attitude of the pirate captain.
Bastian held the Greater Venom Sword, as it was called, felt its weight and surprisingly, its agility. This bad boy could pierce anything or anyone, and even give them a quicker, more painful death than a person would experience when bitten by a cobra. Mahogany explained that the venom left in the container was barely enough for one single use, and that Bastian should be extremely careful with it.
He smiled. The wicked grin gave him power, but nothing made him feel better than this huge sword. He knew that everyone who saw such a thing on his belt would be instantly intimidated by it.
"You have to press that button to activate the poison. Don't do it to yourself. Of course, some linguistic people would agree that once the poison is inside the blade, it already becomes venom, hrm."
"Save me from your nitpicking," Bastian sighed, but in reality, he was glad to talk with another bookish man with a high level of literacy.
"So good to have you here, Captain. Are you ready to meet Anasta?"
"No," Bastian said, and shrugged. "I will never be ready for that, but let's do it, anyway."
"All right. She will be around if we are quick. At night, she prefers to go out and do…whatever witches do. My tunnels have a shortcut to her place, but we must be careful. She has a project going on here. Spiders."
Bastian got more careful with his steps now.
He looked towards the walls and saw some vegetation resiliently pushing through the stone. Moss, too.
"Spiders?" Bastian asked. He was not afraid of them, but he surely did not want his buttcheeks to fall off because of a super necrosis jumpy megaspider bite.
"Yes, spiders. She trains them. Apparently they can act as if they have some kind of a shared intelligence. Be smart, and don't argue with her about it."
Bastian already considered the woman to be the most dangerous of her gender he had ever met, and he expected to hear a lot more about her monstrous adventures. However, Mahogany fell silent and seemed to be getting more and more nervous with every step he took.
Finally, he stopped at a junction that was already so full of vegetation that it was more like a jungle than a dungeon or a secret corridor or anything like that.
"Take the left," Mahogany said, turned and ran away much faster than a man of his age should have been able to.
Bastian just shrugged and stepped into the leftmost part of this strange labyrinth.
Vines and flowers paved his way. He tried to step on nothing that would bite him. There was a heady, floral scent in the air that resembled an exotic perfume. What was really inconvenient about it was that it was getting Bastian in the mood for lovemaking again and he didn't even know what the woman he would meet soon really looked like. For all he knew, she could be a horrifying hag with hair sprouting out of her nostrils. And in any case, it would be bad manners to start suggesting any raunchy stuff to her. He would let her do the suggesting part.
He walked up to a wooden door. It did not seem locked, but he knocked on it three times, just to be polite.
"Captain Black seeks assistance!" he shouted through the door.
Almost immediately, the witch opened up the door and gave him a short glance while he did the same.
She was stunning.
Purple hair, no bangs, just long, luscious hair running down her bosom and her athletic yet soft body. She was wearing a leather vest that revealed her slim stomach and a long leather skirt with a slit in the side, and Bastian wondered whether that was kind of an excessive outfit in the tropical heat.
Her eyes were purple as well, of the luminous shade of amethysts. She barely had any makeup on except for thin lines of eyeliner, which somehow made her even hotter, even though Bastian had only recently thought that he did not give a shit about makeup either way.
She looked appropriately suspicious about him, but a feeling of being recognized passed through his body as she let her in.
"Anasta," she said. "You owe me, Bastian. Your first mate is here, being delirious about you. She has been talking nonstop about your, well…"
Bastian looked around the underground room.
"HUSBAND!" Amanda shrieked from the makeshift hospital bed. It looked like she was not in any pain at the moment. It also looked like she was taking the equivalent of a psychoactive painkiller. Her pupils were so small that they practically did not even exist anymore.
"Ahoy, wife," Bastian said. "Anasta…I am beyond grateful for this. Thank you for treating my wife. How much time do I owe you? I have been told that you take payment in time. I have to say that I admire that - it is the most precious resource of all."
"The captain has a way with words," Anasta said with a smug smile. "I like that, but you will have to prove that you're worthy of that sword. Mahogany is desperate, but the rest of us are not, and we are many. We will not accept just anyone to wield such a sacred weapon."
"Perfectly understandable," Bastian said.
For some reason, the scene with Sharona flashed in his mind and he had a strange feeling that public love was only the beginning.
For now, though, he had to treat this woman like the powerful witch healer she was. He could not appear too condescending or smug, no matter how all that tail he had been getting lately was getting into his head.