"I should have gone with the Elder Dragon set."
"You look fine."
"I mean, that was a fight. Plus your dad used to slay dragons for a living, didn't he?"
"Sure, back when he was, I don't know, twelve."
"Twelve!? "
"Or ten? I don't remember. It doesn't matter. Look, he's never owned dragonskin armor. He always said that if he was able to kill a dragon at eight-"
"Eight?!?"
"Why would he ever wear the skin of one? I mean, if a six-year-old can bite right through it..."
"...that's it. I can't do this. I'm sorry, I love you, but this is headed straight towards TPK-ville. I've gotta...I've gotta-"
"Well look who it is."
"Hi Dad! Hi Mom!"
"Hello, sweetheart. Oh we've missed you."
"ahem Hello."
"Mom, Dad, this is my boyfriend Erick Lightrender. He's a Paladin of Durghosh, so I hope you remembered to keep a steak or two fully raw for him."
"Oh, ha ha, no, no, please, that's okay, I...I can just quest later to make up for it."
"Erick, it's so nice to meet you."
"Nice to meet you t-"
"Durghosh, huh? Princess, didn't you tell me this guy has an Elder Dragon armor set? What, is our castle not good enough for that?"
"Daddy, don't be silly. He's here for dinner, not for the last stand against Frozeblood's Deathliches...which he attended and did very well at."
"Oh God..."
"What was that?"
"Oh god...god...good to meet you, sir."
"Oh, Haroldicus, let's not keep them out on the stoop. Come on in out of the anti-aura, dinner's almost ready."
"..."
"You're doing fine."
"He hates me."
"Of course he does. You're wooing me. Let's go."
"I'm going to throw up."
"Don't care. Just don't do it on Mom's rugs. And stop sweating so much...it's just dinner with my parents, jeez..."
Copyright 2017, William R. Spear
"You're not afraid of her, up there in that massive castle?"
"Augh, 'm terrified," I say over the clatter of the biscuits on the wooden plate. "Letz her munsterrs out once e'ery month'r'so to feed among us. Y'ne'er know when it'sa yer turn to get etten." I hate talking like this, like I'm chewing through a big bowl of gravel. But it's what they want, and I was raised never to disappoint a houseguest.
"That's terrible," she says sympathetically as I return to the table. "I mean, I just assumed that you weren't afraid because...well...because you still live here."
"Aum too auld, too poor, too crickety to move elsewhere," I tell her, taking a biscuit for myself and then sliding the rest over to her. I don't tell her that I'll never leave because it's not my house, it's ours - mine and his, the same home that we planned to fill with children, with the same bed that we planned to share for the rest of our lives.
"Well, after I'm done you won't have to worry about her bothering you any more," the battlewitch says. She waits for me to take a bite out of my biscuit before taking one of her own. Smart. I can see how she's made it this far.
"Well, missae, ah'll be sah very grateful be it that the case," I say. So kind of her to offer her services to me. I guess the silver teaspoon she pocketed while I had my back turned is just a clandestine payment for her services.
"Have you ever met her?" she asks, sipping her tea, spellsign-infused eyes piercing me from above the lip of the cup. She's scanning for illusions, magic that the great villainess might be using to trick an unsuspecting hero. But the only illusion I ever show them is the one they want to see - an old lady, who lives alone, in the shadow of a dark castle guarding an even darker heart, an old lady who fears both life and death, an old lady whom they can help with their swords and their magic and their obsession with low-level larceny.
"Ne'er have I met her," I say. Bored, I try to appraise what this one will add to my personal wealth. The robes will fetch ten thousand, easy. The eyes and tongue will be another two to five thousand each. The skin, with all of its tattoos and whatnot, will bring seven-five, assuming my man can cut it off her in a single piece. Personal effects, staff, scrolls, rings, potions, might just bring in ten. The necklace, although beautiful, is likely just a personal heirloom and nonmagical - her mother's, maybe. Something she likes to keep close to her to remind her of her purpose.
I understand that. I feel the same way about that damn teaspoon that's burning a hole in her pocket right now.
"I hear she went crazy after her husband died," the witch says. "Started killing people left and right. Amassed a fortune, built a castle, went the whole evil queen route without a crown or a kingdom to her name."
"Yea, that be pretty much th' truth."
"Do you know how her husband died?"
I've run out patience with this charade. Thank God it's time.
"Somebody just like you came to her house," I say, dropping the accent and fixing on her eyes. I can see the shock, then the realization, then the start of the locked-in seizure that will steal her life from her.
"He took something of hers, for no reason other than he thought he could turn it into gold. Her husband tried to take it back, and that's when the 'hero' took the only thing that she truly found precious."
Trembles. She can hear me still. These are her final seconds. She knows it, too, and I almost wish I could pause time so I can hear everything going through her mind as she dies. I think her anguish would make me feel a tiny bit better.
"And as she was forced to watch her great love's blood darken the ground at her feet, she changed. She darkened, and so did the world around her. And when she woke up, the 'hero' was dead alongside her husband, slain by the same knife, both of their blood on her hands, and the only thing she had left any more was a simple, silver teaspoon that her mother had passed down to her."
The witch is dead. The light, both literal and figurative, is gone from her eyes. Although she was smart enough to watch me drink the teas and eat the biscuits before she took some of her own, she just didn't know enough to recognize the airborne poison masked by the scent of the lilacs I have nailed above the door. The scent of death...hers, and everyone else's who enters here to take what is mine.
I push myself out of my chair and hobble over to the stiffening corpse at the other end of the table. Wordlessly, I search her pockets...then search them again...then pull her clothes away from her young, taut skin, looking for my little spoon. And as I pause for a moment to try and figure out where she might have hidden it, I recognize a familiar weight in the front fold of my apron.
"Oh," I say, reaching down and pulling the teaspoon free from my clothes. I remember now that I forgot to place it next to her cup. I had forgotten to give her the test that I've given to thousands of others over the past seven decades.
"Well," I grumble, dropping the spoon back into my apron, "she would have stolen it anyway." And, as sure of that as I'm sure that the sun will rise in the morning and that I once loved a man who was strong and kind and the best that could ever be, I go about cleaning everything up in preparation for the next one.
Because there will be a next one. There always is.
Copyright 2017, William R. Spear