Starglow Basin bruja

there is the matter of la bruja.

he knows she is behind all of this; this steadily unraveling yarn that yanks and pulls and tugs, each new string revealing a knot, a twist, a snare in the patchwork that cannot be mended --

and he knows it takes more than a man to kill her.

he remembers la bruja from home. a stooped, haggish thing; long claws and bleak, leaking eyes. around her a fetid scent of dried lavender and rot.

and how she had been killed in a dispute by a man who systematically and categorically had his life fall apart shortly thereafter. because she had not died; he had only killed a part of her, and when she collected her scattered pieces like they were playthings on the floor, she had come for him.

first his novia and the budding lives beneath her breast. she died struggling -- suffering -- in her own blood and they pulled her children from her, some already turned black with rot and others pickled to vinegary shrivels. every one more disfigured than the last; around each their tiny necks the bulging twine of umbilical wrath.

then his home, flame licked by the errant spit of an insatiable fire.

he lived long enough to see the world he'd built for himself dismantled, and then, la bruja came for his eyes too. the first clouded to feeble grey and the second held on just long enough to hold one last disorienting vision -- the old witch hobbling back into camp.

shortly after, the man was found along the dusty road with his veins seized in rattlesnake poison.

soto knows it takes a witch to kill a witch; but there are no witches in camp.

he turns to qiao and strikes at her wounded leg, forcing her to bend to the ground beneath his teeth. if he endured torture beneath khusobek, he will make sure she suffers worse.

i know you did this, he thinks as he advances upon her with a strike so terrific it sends her sprawling limp into the shalestone.

even qiao marveled at the stealth of akashingo, under no illusion that the cavalry came for her next.

his shadow leans across her long before he carelessly stepped upon her wounded leg. with a gasp, qiao reached instinctively to pull her wounded limb under her.

only, the anaconda was waiting for that very thing -- qiao saw a constellation of eruptive black and white as pain made her consciousness its captive.

she woke dazed several hours later. a chorus of crickets announced the sun had long sank past the western rim of the world. a ruinous agony slowed every motion of the witch. with a wince, she propped up and saw she was alone in the stone quarter.

no -- not alone. a single vehement eye held her in its gaze.

fucking bastard.

qiao knew better to murmur a haka under her breath for fear of eliciting a second retaliation. as she achingly turned onto her other side she mapped the stars and plucked two hairs from her forelimb. the first a gentle russet -- the second black and belonging to soto.

she placed them in the dry earth with their follicles facing west and spat upon them. using her back to shield the menacing gaze of her captive, qiao rubbed their edges into the gritty surface, trailed one claw counter-clockwise three times, and then razed the pattern with a single swipe of her paw.

this spell was small, and would cost her greatly -- but qiao could do nothing more.

sleep did not come for her until the burn of a second eye simmered on the horizon.