"People often assume witches are the sort to cloth themselves in fancy dresses, attend grand balls, and to cackle over the misfortune of human beings from on high. But this couldn't be further from the truth. A witch is not, as most often assume, simply a woman in a nice dress who knows a bit of magic, rather they are what lies beyond what we can see and grand beings that construct the very basis of our reality. Indeed, they are to us what an ant might be to an elephant, great and impressive, but none to concerned with our day-to-day lives.
While it may be disheartening to and try imagine such a magnitude of being existing anywhere in the cosmos, take solace in this single fact, dear reader, for as powerful as any great witch may be and despite all of the great feats of magic and miracle they might be capable of, most of them are also quite lazy."
- From "On Witches and their Habits" by Edward Coyin, Scholar of The Unseen
In the center of the sea of creation, where the ebb and flow was not of water, but time and space itself, there lay a single dwelling. Grand in scale and construction it most resembled the manor of a lord or lady from a bygone era and was dotted from front to back in high stained glass windows emblazoned with scenes from across all of the cosmos. Rounding the front of the building one would find themselves before a door higher than it was wide and constructed of a reddish material that seemed to change color in tune to a rhythm inaccessible to mortal ears.
It is a place you could not find, indeed no one but the highest of beings could, but was more than capable of finding you. For if the mistress of the domicile desired your audience, there was simply no way to resist, for no matter where you were nor what you were doing, you would soon find yourself standing before that great red door confused, and quaking in fear. But really, there was nothing so terrible that lay beyond the portal to warrant such fear. Really, despite its location in time and space and its mistresses' lofty title, what lie beyond is nothing but a place of residence, albeit one of the most powerful entities in all existence.
Carefully the door twists open, creaking at first from a million years of rust and decay, to reveal a foyer of the same mysterious hue as the portal itself. From there a grand staircase descended from the upper level, connecting one floor to another and enabling the residence of the hall to reach the dozen or so rooms that dotted each level's outermost wall. The décor was best described as eclectic, as statuary, paintings, and sculpture, all created by the mistress of the manor, lay strewn across the area as if they had been thrown there and then promptly forgotten. Each varied wildly in theme and style, looking almost as if they had come from a different reality or time entirely. This was a fact that pervaded most of the manor's design, though at first blush it appeared a normal enough living space, everything within its confines seemed just a bit off, was made with strange angles, or simply filled the heart with a sense that this was because this was a place not meant for humans but rather beings on par with the gods themselves.
They were called witches, and should you have the heart to tread upon their most sacred of ground, up those winding stairs that seemed to spiral even though they only went up and down, and a bit to the left you would find the only door that was ever unlocked when humans came to visit. Most likely your breathing would be heavy, your mind and heart racing as you imagine all the horrible things that lay within! An evil god perhaps? Or an alien being incapable of being processed by the human mind? No, none of those things exist in this world, but rather, as the heavy oaken door swings open widely and crashes against the room's innermost wall, you would only see a woman in a wide canopy bed carved from as fine wood as any that a human had ever seen. Dressed in a set eclectic dress and matching stockings cast from every color in the rainbow, and some found nowhere mortals dwelled to give them names, she rolled from side to side while snoring loudly in defiance of the very concept of productivity. Looking to be, at first glance, possessing no more than four decades to her name, the woman's sleeping face nonetheless was dressed in a worn expression that seemed to bear the weight of a period of time longer than the universe itself had existed.
Over her stood an angry-looking girl who appeared many years the woman's junior. She was dressed in the manner of a servant, with a ruffle black shirt with white trim, long skirt, apron, and decorative headpiece that all seemed to be far too plain to exist in a place like this. Loudly the maid grumbled at the woman on the bed while tapping her foot in impatience. Her mistress had promised she would be up at the crack of the 13th hour, the time when the time of sleep gave way to the time of work for all of her kind, yet by now it was the middle of 18th hour and they both were horribly behind schedule. Behind her youth eyes, the maid's mind rumbled with angry thoughts. She had promised her mistress that she would not yet, stomp, nor so much as make a fuss should she over sleep. But this we beyond absurd! No (im)mortal creature needed this much rest, she thought to herself and thus resolved to break her promise just this once.
"Wake up, Mistress!" the Maid yelled while shaking the woman on the bed's sheets rapidly and in a steady rhythm. "the time for sleep has long since come and gone, and that of work is upon us! If you do not get up soon all of those poor people will remain on ablaze forever!"
"hmm." the older woman roused from her blissful sleep with a yawn and sat up. Her clothing was wrinkled and her hair a mess, but only for a second, as per her existence they soon warped for a moment in time and space and then fixed themselves in a more pleasant configuration. "but they've been on fire for the last three thousand years? What does it matter if I extinguish the blaze today, tomorrow, or even in the next century?"
"Lady Amelith Gertrude Selvia Vespaerous!" the maid shouted, and her lady recoiled in turn. She did only ever use her mistress' full name and when that happened even the Witch of Creation knew better than to argue. "I will have no Greater Witch of mine speaking like a common Acolyte! You will get up from that bed, and finish the story you began or there will be no sweets in this house for a week."
The Witch of Creation grumbled. Her bed was so comfy, and she had been having such a wonderful dream about meeting with old friends over a veritable universe of candies and treats. But reality had beckoned with a burning hand. That universe, just as her favorite servant had so loudly yelled, would indeed not put itself out. Such was the job of a creator, be it of a universe or simple story, to finish what they had started, lest a fire burn forever without purpose or direction. But more than that, there was no greater way to motivate a Witch, of the rank of Greater or otherwise, than to threaten to take her candy away.
"Fine, fine. I'm getting up. You don't have to shout." Amelith rose from her bed with great grace and purpose, "fetch me my pen and tablet, then meet me in the kitchen, Sevel. I'm feeling creative."
"More like you were feeling hungry..." Sevel muttered to herself.
"What was that?" Amelith starred into her servant's very soul with eyes so kind that all forms of sarcasm and wit fell flat before them.
"Nothing my lady!" Sevel scrambled and began to wave her arms frantically.
As difficult as a task as it might have been, she had long ago promised to herself that, under no circumstance would she ever make her lady mad. This was after hearing a story from the Witch of Time, a good friend of them both, that once a fellow Witch had dared to insult Amelith in a public forum and soon found themselves bound to a universe made up entirely of spikes, scorpions, and boiling lava. It was then that Sevel had made that simple promise and reaffirmed to herself that her first and only job was to keep the Witch of Creation happy.
"Good, now as I said before, I will be in the kitchen. I expect you can do as I've instructed you?"
"Of course, my lady. I will be down with book and pen in hand in a moment." Sevel said as her usual composure returned and the threat of her imminent death dissipated into the void. "You can count on me."
Amel, as her close confidants often called her, nodded and left the room. As she did her dress seemed to distort the reality around it, just as her hair had just moments before, and shifted from a rainbow-colored gown to a beige shirt and pleated black skirt. This was her usual work attire and emphasized in its simplicity the Witch's creative process. Starting from a simple concept her worlds often grew larger and larger till they could breed plots and stories of their own, or until she lost interest and resigned them to the dust bin in the corner of her bedroom for all times. Whichever came first.
Once known as the Witch of the Hunt, as she was prone to wandering the universe in search of beasts and monsters to slay or capture, Sevel now bore only the title of Witch of Service. While titles possessed by humans are granted and given by the dozen with little thought to what they actually mean, for a Witch, a title is among the highest honors or dishonor, one can ever hope to achieve. For once one is gifted or earned, it is forever etched by the Witch of Records in her book that contains memories of all things and times, unchanging and eternal. That is why the change was so frustrating. She had once been known as a great hero among men and witches, a person who had once challenged a dragon god and survived!
Yet once, many many lifetimes ago, she had been unfortunate enough to have run into Amel in some backwater part of creation. There, after a dinner prepared from the night's hunt, the Witch of Creation, the origin of all and creator of worlds as she was, thought it funny to give her the title of Witch of Service. While titles are a mark of pride, those given by Amel are even more than that and serve as a sort of bind upon a person that defines their very being and can change the direction of their life forever. Marked as a being of service, her existence as a hunter was over, and that as a maid began.
The maid witch carefully picked up after her mistress, placing her bed just so and moving sheets with a wistful sigh upon her lips. As she placed each item just where it should be, she recalled her past and the beasts who had once fallen by her hand on a nightly basis.
"It has been so long, hasn't it?" she spoke only to a discarded lollipop wrapper. "But things really aren't bad here, I suppose. Amel is a fine and caring mistress, even is she is horribly lazy and the pay is far better than dragging the corpses of dragons to town one at a time." she sighed." But I really do wish there was some form of game to be had in this void of a place."
After rummaging for several moments more, she found the book in which her mistress had read the burning tale in question in a far corner of the bedroom's tome-lined back wall. With a fine crimson cover and expert binding, it was a lovely sight, but one left sadly unfinished by its creator. "That woman, I swear." Sevla mused as she grabbed a gold-accented pen from amongst Amel's belongings. "If I wasn't here to whip her into shape she'd never get anything done.
***
Amel sat at the kitchen table with the red-bound book in front of her open to a blank page and a gold-trimmed pen firmly in hand. Carefully she eyed the blank expanse in front of her, playing over and over in her mind the infinite possibilities it could give birth to. For she was not only the Witch of Creation, you see, but also the Witch of Words, she who spins tales into worlds with a pen and etches the life stories of all living things with her mind alone.
Yet for all her infinite power, she was stuck and unable to think of a single thing to pour upon the blank page. "Grrrr!" she gritted her teeth and scribbled several errant pen parks upon the page in frustration. "I can't think of a single thing to finish this stupid story!"
Sevel could only giggle under her breath at her lady's hair-tearing frustration she prepared a meal of eggs culled from a world where chickens grew ten times larger than they did in most realms and bacon cured from the meat of a beast more similar to a bear than a pig. "My lady," she said as she flipped the mysterious bacon upon its side, causing it to sizzle against the pan below it. "why don't you try re-reading the story first for context? It has been over three thousand years since you last touched it, so a refresher might be in order. Don't you think?"
"Of course, why didn't I think of that in the first place?" Amel slapped herself on the forehead.
And so she went back to the beginning to page one of a story she had begun eons ago in the past by most human reckoning. Within the books, fine leather bounding was one of a world that had flourished under the aegis of a great and wise king. However, upon his death, the vacuum surrounding the throne gave rise to a war that raged for decades, as villains and heroes alike grabbed for the rulership of the known world in a blind attempt to guide their fellow man down a path they thought was just. In the end, when all the dust had settled and corpses lined the landscape in mounds higher than any hill, the man who stood alone was a powerful and sinister-looking sorcerer of flames from the north who promised all that he would rule just as the old king had. He had lied, and upon taking the throne cast the world ablaze in preparation for the coming of his own master, the great Demon King of the Flaming Abyss.
But that is where the tale simply stops and gives way to blank page after page of history and heroics left unwritten for their creator's own forgetfulness. She had once planned to write a stirring end to the epic and give the people of the realm a stirring tale to praise in song and sonnet. But she didn't and the people had been living in a veritable inferno for longer then any could remember.
"So there we go, the evil sorcerer cast the last ablaze as a welcome present for his dark master. Not my best work, but it would have been more than enough to give the people a good story to tell their grandchildren around the fire at night." Amel sighed. "But I have no idea where to go from here! Do I summon up a hero to defeat the horrible old man? Or should he fall to his own hubris and, I don't know, be defeated by some risen townsfolk who had decided to seize destiny with their own hands? There are just too many possibilities!"
"My lady," Sevel said gently as she placed a plate before her mistress, who sat at the small kitchen's round dinner table. "Your breakfast is served. Today's selection consists of the fried eggs of the great Duodedic Bird of world 5563, and bacon culled from the finest flesh of a Star Bear I'd killed with my own two hands while I was out shopping last. I do hope you will enjoy eating it as much as I did making it."
"I always do.." Amel said halfheartedly as she tapped her pen against the table and contemplated the direction of her still unfinished work. "Hey, do you think anyone would mind if I just had this idiot die of a heart attack and end things here and now?"
Sevel shot the Witch of Creation a gaze filled with spite and then gently shook her head in the negative.
"No one would ever be the wiser in that world, my lady. But I'm afraid you would know that you took the easy way out for all eternity. I cannot decide the fate of a world that you create, but I implore you to do whatever you feel is best. It is the least you can do to honor the lives of those who you've created."
For a period of time longer than the combined lived experience of all of the humans in all the worlds in all of creation, the witch known as Amel had created plane upon plane of existence from a single template. A world, the guide she had written for herself to avoid forgetting anything over the centuries and millenniums, must be round, populated by human beings, and possess a worthy back story to give the people something to live up to. For a while this worked just fine, the other Greater Witches were more than happy to breathe life into such worlds for many many years, but in time they grew sick of such repetition and demanded Amel think of something new or they would walk!
Then suddenly, not so long ago in the time of Witches, something had changed. Suddenly less worlds were round, the basic design of human beings had given way to beastmen, bird people, and other things far more interesting, and, perhaps most importantly of all, worlds came into existence without a grand narrative to guide the people. What had spurred such a change was anyone's guess, but most pin it on the arrival of a certain person to the manor at the center of creation...
"I know and that is the problem! These people are counting on me and I don't want to let them down with a half-witted story of little substance." Amel choked down her sorrows with a piece of bacon before tearing up a bit.
"That is some talk coming from the witch who had been putting this off for nearly a thousand years," Sevel said. "But if you wish to give them a proper ending, I suggest you avoid your usual trove of tropes and try to look at things from a new angle. You might be the immortal and endless creator of 95% of the universe, but even you should try new things every once in a while." the maid argued as she cleaned up the preparations for the day's meal. "So whatever you were thinking of doing, just do the opposite. Even if it doesn't turn out in the end, you'll at least be expanding your horizons."
As her maid washed dishes and placed dirtied utensils in their proper place, an idea struck the Creation Witch! And so she slapped herself in the head once more, "The opposite! That's it!" stuffing her face with what remained of the bacon on her plate, Amel applied her pen to the blank paper before her and began to write with amazing speed, filling dozens of pages in the span most would take to write a single word. It was a trifling matter for the Witch of Words to write once she had an idea to act upon, but without one, she was capable of little more than whining.
With blazing speed, in that the table below the unwritten tome had actually begun to catch fire by now, Amel hurled herself through what remained of the blank pages and finished in a matter of minutes a plot for the people of her unfinished world to finally see an end to their fiery troubles. Then she closed the book with a loud slamming of its back cover against the last page and threw her arms up in the air. "There," she nearly screamed. "I'm done!"
"Can I read it?" the Witch of Service said as she looked over Amel's shoulder, her hands occupied with scrubbing a pan she had used to prepare a pair of oversized eggs.
"Of course," the Creator Witch beamed. "Take as long as you like. I'm in no rush."
"I wouldn't mind I you'd put out this fire first as well, my lady," Sevel said in a matter-of-fact tone.
"Oh, right. The fire. Let me take care of that."
It took only the flick of Amel's wrist to banish the fire from her realm, a none-to-impressive feat for someone of her stature, and another to offer her favorite maid the seat she had previously occupied. "Well go on, read as much as you like. Though it may take you some time, as there is about 5,000 pages of text there."
Sevel rolled her eyes, her lady had gone a bit overboard, hadn't she? "Very well, let me begin."
Carefully the apron-wearing Witch thumbed her way to the page where the new text began and focused herself on the long journey ahead.
***
Sometime in the fall of the 31st year of the reign of the evil Emperor of Flames, a great blizzard rolled upon the land, extinguishing the formally unquenchable fires that dotted the world and covering everything in a beautiful blanket of white. The Emperor in turn attempted to fight against the encroaching cold but found his magic useless in the face of its advance. Without recourse to the frozen onslaught, the source of all the world's woes for years was consumed by a snow drift and soon after froze to death. Leaving the throne to be taken on by one more worthy, and less prone to cackling evilly at odd hours of the night.
No one seemed to know whence the unearthly and entirely unseasonable cold had come, but all welcomed it as a sign that the gods had finally found favor to save them from their hellish prison. In truth, however, the wave of cold had been the work of a simple mage who had for years researched a way to combat the inferno that his world had become. The people would never know of the young woman's triumph, or all the work she had done to save each and every living soul around her from being consumed by darkness and devils, but that didn't matter in the end. As the savior of so many had left for greener pastures with nothing but the clothes on her back and a smile on her face, thus bringing to an end a story left open for longer the most mortal beings could even fathom.
***