Page 124 of Kingdoms of Night

The surface quivered, the rusted blade embedded halfway to the handle between the carved faces of a screaming eagle and a gnarled old man. Dark sap leaked from beneath the blade, trickling to the ground with a sickeningly molasses-like smell.

Where had that come from?

There hadn’t even been the scent of another person in this room.

Idalno seized the cleaver and tried to pull it out. The blade had sunk so far deep that it didn’t even budge. More dark sap seeped out and dripped down.

“Where are you?” Feron bellowed. “At least show your face.”

Idalno’s eyes widened as she cocked her head.

What? Had that been a mistake? He shrugged. If they could see her, they could aim for her. It wasn’t that complicated.

“Oh, you want to see me, pretty boy? Oh. I am touched. Perhaps I’ll touch you.”

“I’d rather you didn’t.” First Puck, and now this lady? This realm had seemed fairly unpopulated thus far, but just how lonely were its sick residents?

“But you want to see me?”

It really was starting to sound like a bad idea.

“It isn’t every day a witch like me is asked to show her face to such lovely children.” Shadows pooled at the far end of the table, wisping and whipping about until they came together in a single figure.

From her towering six feet, greasy black hair hung straight as a blade, with an edge just as sharp, over her face and down to the floor. Deep wrinkles furrowed her pale-blue skin, and a mass of scarred blue tissue knotted where one eye should have been. The other eye could’ve been glassy, or milky white. Could she even see? She spread out her hands, revealing nine-inch iron claws.

He gaped at her, his stomach twisting. People didn’t ask to see her for good reason.

“What do you think, dearies?” she asked, her high-pitched lilt in no way a match to her appearance.

Idalno shook her head. “Words fail.”

The witch laughed and fluffed her hair, exposing her long needle-like teeth. “Oh they do, don’t they? They do!”

“Perhaps you’ll tell us the riddles?” Idalno asked. “We hate to intrude.”

“Oh, not an intrusion at all. I love company.” She clasped her hands together, her claws rasping against one another like the sharpening of knives. “But I also love my riddles. So listen carefully to the first:

“What brought you in will carry you out,

Eater and eaten within, without doubt.”

She gave a wise nod of her head and winked her one translucent eye. “You see. Poetry. And riddles. That’s your way out. Now for what the biggest threat to you here is. Listen to my second riddle.” She cleared her throat delicately.

“Creeping blight

In endless night,

Forever in mind,

Forever from sight,

“From deepest shadows I leer,

Forever behind you I peer,

In silence you'll hear

The worst for you and all you hold dear.

---