Witchy Business

“You're sure these people can help?” John asked Cammie as she drove the diner's van towards those she attested could resolve Kiera’s problem. The bluenette's state hadn't improved much in the time it took Cammie to reach them and drive to the far side of town.

“If anyone in town can, it's those two witches,” Cammie declared. “I'm a little surprised your goddess can't just wave her hands and fix her.”

“Maybe if Kiera was a plant,” John grimly muttered.

“Her powers lie more in nature than dragons,” Senka spoke up from her seat next to Kiera. The spirit had been trying to get Kiera to speak more with limited success. She could answer complex questions with equally detailed responses but in a totally dispassionate tone, almost like she was a robot.

Both of them took some solace in that her memory didn't seem affected. She knew them, recalled what they did at the diner before, even what she and Brenda had purchased a few days prior.

“Well, I guess even the divine have some limits,” Cammie mused. “But I suppose this sort of thing isn't exactly a common occurrence. Any of you come up with a theory? Even if it's totally off the wall, thinking might knock something loose that could be usable.”

“Only thing I can think of is Kiera subconsciously drew on Verida’s essence, and when she freaked out over it, her powers basically hiccuped,” John said.

“Possibly aggravating some lingering psychic wound,” Senka added.

“Could explain why she's gone back to that passive state,” Cammie remarked. “Maybe I should have told you guys about Estelle and Nephele before you started doing anything strenuous. Guess I assumed everything would have been fixed on your trip.”

“It probably was, but then we added more things to the mix and something went wrong,” John groaned. “Why do even our training sessions turn into a crisis?”

“Maybe it'd be good for you guys to take a few days off,” Cammie suggested. “I know you really can't laze about, but this week you've been running around something crazy.”

“We'll have to find some way to balance our obligations and keep ourselves in good health,” Senka said. “And maybe look into someone to give us all a proper check-up.”

“Well, Estelle and Nephele aren't doctors like the Apothecary have, but they can give you the once over,” Cammie remarked.

“Who exactly are these two?” John asked. “Not that we don't trust you, but it'd be nice to know what to expect. Especially since you said it would be rude to use Observe on them.”

Cammie was quiet for a moment before asking, “You know what a coven is?”

“Only the mundane definition, a group of witches,” John answered. “I'm guessing that only covers the very basic idea.”

“Yep,” Cammie said. “Not that I can shed much more on it, but covens are more than just a sorority. There's power in pooling together a bunch of people. A sum of their parts being greater than the whole sort of thing.”

“So they'll be able to work greater magic than we would expect based on their levels,” Senka postulated.

“That's the idea,” Cammie nodded. “But, they’re not in the best spot right now. Nothing that would stop them from helping, or at least offering to help, but it’s just the two of them. They need three to invoke anything big.”

“And I gather that joining isn’t a simple matter,” Senka surmised.

“From what they’ve told me, it’s a strong commitment,” Cammie said. “If you’re not willing to put in the effort, then it’s pointless.”

“Did they lose people?” John asked solemnly.

“To changing interests, not anything life-threatening,” Cammie clarified. “From what they’ve told me, their rites don’t **** anyone to stay if they don’t want to. Something about **** spoiling their magic.”

“They aren’t going to try and recruit any of us, right?” Senka asked. “Because I think we're pulled in too many directions already.”

“I don't have a clue what they're looking for in a sister, but I know I didn't qualify,” Cammie said. “Plus, like I said, they want someone who can throw their whole effort in. Even if one of you met whatever criteria they have, I think you'd be a poor fit.”

‘Knowing our luck, someone is going to end up compatible,’ Senka thought to John.

‘Yeah. Hope they don't ask until they try to help Kiera,’ John replied.

‘I would hope anyone Cammie holds in high regard wouldn't be so petty to hold someone's wellbeing as a bargaining chip,’ Senka remarked. ‘Plus, I imagine emotional **** would affect the commitment element they need to fully realize their power.’

‘True,’ John admitted. ‘Still isn't going to keep me from worrying.’

‘As long as they don't keep you from properly assessing the situation and making proper choices, worries are good,’ Senka advised.

“Well, we're here,” Cammie announced. John looked out the window to see a rather normal shopping outlet, sparsely occupied with other cars. “Yeah, I know. It hardly screams, ‘Here be witches.’”

“You can say that again,” John muttered as he watched Vivian’s car pull up next to them. “Kiera, are your arms covered?”

The bluenette nodded after a moment's pause before slipping her transformed hands into her pockets, hiding every sign they weren't normal. Senka popped open the van's door and helped Kiera out, the spirit glancing around as she did.

“I would have expected a place like this to be rather busy on a Saturday afternoon,” she said.

“Bad vibes,” Cammie said bluntly. “John, you should be able to pick them up.”

Quickly understanding that it was a spirit-related issue, John closed his eyes and let Arcane Sense activate. A horrible sort of presence assaulted all of John's senses. The area smelt like rotting garbage, sounded like nails on a chalkboard, felt like walking through slime and tasted of vomit. Only his sight was spared and John only attributed that to his eyes being closed. If he had left them open, he was sure the shopping center would look worse.

Shutting down his magical perception, John found himself coughing, the phantom sensations still clawing at him. Once he calmed his breathing, he glanced at Cammie and asked, “Is it really safe here with that going on?”

“What's going on here?” Beth asked as she jumped out of Vivian’s car.

“Place is infused with some really horrible psychic energy,” Cammie explained. “Really subtle stuff. You can show up and be perfectly fine for a short bit, but a sort of unease will creep up on you. And that lingers, making you not want to come back if you can help it.”

“And these friends of yours decided to set up shop here?” Aeolia asked unseen from her perch on Vivian's shoulder.

“They want to cleanse it,” Cammie said sadly. “They took one look at this spot and were like, ‘Yep, we can fix this.’”

“Sounds like they’re community-minded,” Senka noted. “A pity it hasn't been successful.”

“They’ve been trying,” Cammie remarked as she led them to the barrier. “But most of their magic is geared towards working in concert, so with just the two of them, it’s been slow going. But they have made some progress. When they started, reaching out with your senses would have made you puke.”

“Not much of an improvement then,” John muttered bitterly.

“You’d be on the ground if you got hit with the full blast,” Cammie said. “Barely managed to get into the barrier before I did. Thankfully, they’ve set it up to block most of the effect.”

“If they’ve made their barrier safe, why go through the effort to clean up the outside?” Beth asked.

“Would you want toxic waste sitting outside your house?” Cammie asked with a pointed look.

“Yeah, that’s a fair point,” Beth relented. “But, did they have to set up on the toxic waste dump? If they want to clean it up, good for them, but couldn’t they just show up, do their voodoo and go home when done for the day?”

“Maybe they have to maintain a constant presence to keep the area from regressing?” Vivian suggested.

“Guess that makes sense,” Beth muttered. “Anyway, are we going to go in or just keep chatting out here?”

“One last thing I should tell you about,” Cammie said as she led them down an alleyway between two of the stores. “Nephele’s pretty normal, but Estelle’s a bit oblivious. Not dumb, but she doesn’t always catch when she says or does something that can be taken another way than she intends.”

“How bad can she be?” Aeolia asked as they began to vanish into the barrier.

John expected to appear in a replica of the alley, perhaps with a door now present leading into the building. Instead, he, along with everyone else, appeared in a large circular foyer, with three arched passages leading deeper into the building. The tiled floor under their feet stretched out in a repeating floral mosaic and numerous landscape photographs dotted the walls. The faint sound of classical music echoed around them.

“Guess they’re busy,” Cammie muttered. “Nephele usually pops out pretty quick, so she might be out. Estelle’s probably back in their lab. She’s not absentminded enough to leave the music on.”

Cammie led them down one of the hallways, the music growing louder. The short passageway opened into an expansive and rather cluttered chamber. Numerous tables that reminded John of the ones in the science labs from school were covered in various pieces of paper, tubes, beakers, crystals, plants and other pieces of likely magical doodads that were too varied for John to count.

At one of the tables, her back to them, a brown-haired woman in a purple dress and wide-brimmed witch’s hat worked on something set up in an overly elaborate chemistry set, the liquid contents bubbling away.

‘Can she not hear us?’ John thought incredulously. ‘Hold on, don’t people normally feel when people enter a barrier they control? If she’s not in control, then the other witch should be here, right?’

The bubbling from the witch’s work increased in fervor, and before any of them could announce their presence, with a flash and crack like thunder, the beaker in front of her blew up, a cloud of neon green shooting up into her face.

“Estelle!” Cammie shouted, lurching forward before the witch let out a cough and stumbled back from her work.

“Cammie?” she asked, back still to them as she waved her arm to clear the air around her. “Oh, guess I was too focused to hear you come in. And with guests! How lovely!”

‘Well, she’s certainly not the sort to take apparent failure badly,’ Senka remarked as Estelle turned around. ‘And a bit of an airhead it seems.’

The spirit’s last statement was prompted due to the fact the smiling witch wasn’t as unscathed as her words would imply. As now that she had turned to greet them, the damage to her dress was blindingly obvious, as it was completely gone, as was anything resembling a bra, giving all of her visitors an unobscured view of her large, pale breasts and erect pink nipples.

John managed to tear his eyes away after a second of gobsmacked staring, noting that he wasn’t alone in his surprised gawking. In fact, all of them were and with a mix of stunned confusion and sheer appreciation of the witch’s endowment.

Cammie, perhaps the least lusty of the assembled party, as even Kiera in her zoned out state seemed entranced, spoke up, “Estelle, I believe you’re a little underdressed.”

“Huh?” the witch uttered, cooking her head to one side in confusion before she looked down at her exposed tits. “Oh, wow, that solvent was more powerful than I thought it would be. Good thing the lotion worked.”

She whipped her hat off her head and used its wide brim to cover herself.

“There, that'll do,” she said with a smile. “Oh, right, where are my manners? Estelle Morgan, at your service. How can I be of assistance?”

Before Cammie or anyone else could lay out why they were here, Estelle marched towards them, her hat doing its best to maintain her modesty.

“You've got some interesting friends, Cammie,” Estelle said, her sparkling green eyes sweeping over them. John felt a sort of pricking sensation wash over him, and he had the impression the witch had hit him with some sort of scrying spell.

‘Oh, so they can use info gathering magic,’ John groused, a little annoyed that they were now operating at a greater disadvantage.

Estelle then honed in on Keira and darted towards her, bending her knees slightly so she could be at eye level with the bluenette.

“Oh, you poor thing,” she softly said, her unoccupied hand reaching up to cup Kiera’s cheek. “You’ve sure been through a lot.”

“At least we don’t have to point out who needs help,” Senka remarked, causing Estelle’s eyes to dart to her before snapping back to Kiera.

“You’re interesting too, but not in distress,” the witch said.

“Is she going to be alright?” Vivian asked, her voice quivering with a slight note of fear.

“Oh, we can fix her up right as rain,” Estelle chipperly answered.

“Estelle, I think our guests would prefer a bit more of an explanation,” a new voice, one that clearly was used to the brown-haired witch’s eccentricities, interjected from behind them.

“Nephele! You’re up!” Estelle said in a peppy voice as she took a step back from Kiera and rose to her full height.

John turned around, along with the girls, to see a fair-skinned, pink-haired woman standing in the archway they had come from. She looked slightly taller than Vivian and watched them with languid purple eyes. She wore a red dress with a very low cut, revealing the inner sides of her breasts and clinging to her curves like a second skin. Resting atop her head was a cat with deep red fur, its tail swishing about.

‘I wonder if those two share dresses?’ Senka mused, noting the similar size in their busts.

“Woke up when Cammie and her friends stepped in,” Nephele said. “And while I don’t think any of them minded your little show, I believe it’d be more appropriate to discuss things and get to work if you were properly dressed.”

“Yeah, working with one hand is a bit of a pain,” Estelle muttered before flashing everyone with a smile. “OK, be right back!”

She bolted passed them, parting them like she was Moses, and disappeared down the hallway. Nephele shook her head, drawing a displeased mewl from her cat.

“You’ll have to forgive my sister, she knows our craft, but things can get away from her,” the witch said as she gracefully strode into the room, stopping at the table Estelle had been working at. “Now, I know Estelle already seems to have zeroed in on the problem, but I prefer to do things by the book. So, Nephele Foster, head of this coven. How can we be of assistance?”

The explanation took long enough for Estelle to return before the end, now wearing a dress similar to the ruined one. The pair of witches remained silent as they finished recounting everything they thought was relevant, from Kiera’s recent psychic trauma to her connection to Verida.

‘I know that information is needed so they can help Kiera, but I can't help but feel that revealing Verida to more people might cause trouble later,’ John thought.

‘We can't keep that information private forever,’ Senka soothed. ‘I think that Cammie knows that leaving out the Kingdom's existence would lead to bad things and wouldn't have suggested we tell them everything if they weren't trustworthy.’

John found himself agreeing with Senka’s point of view as Nephele began to speak.

“That's certainly a tale,” the pink-haired witch remarked, scratching her cat's head. “Luckily, the fix is rather simple.”

“You'll have to forgive us for not accepting that at face value,” Vivian said, taking point in the negotiations as they had agreed to on the way over.

Nephele peered at Vivian with interested eyes, looking almost like a predator sizing up its prey.

“I can accept that you would have some hang-ups in taking our word right away,” she retorted smoothly. “But you wouldn't be here if Cammie didn't recommend our aid. And lying about the time or effort would be a horrible way to begin our relationship.”

“And what sort of relationship do you want with us?” Aeolia asked tersely.

Nephele smiled. “One that benefits all our interests. As you can likely imagine, fresh resources, especially plants, work better for things like potions.”

“So in exchange for healing Kiera, you want some kind of trade deal?” John asked, already feeling tired from having to do that again.

“Nothin so formal,” Nephele replied, waving her hand. “Just the chance to take a look and see what your Kingdom has to offer.”

John felt there was something more to her desire, but did they have the option to turn them down?

“And we want to meet this goddess of yours,” Estelle added cheerfully. “She might be able to help us make some real headway in cleaning this area up.”

Nephele’s eye twitched at her companion's candor but she quickly schooled her features.

“Yes, there is also that,” she said, her voice slightly strained.

Vivian narrowed her eyes. “Perhaps you should be a bit more upfront with requests like that.”

“I presumed that sort of thing was obvious,” Nephele countered. “But, in all honesty, we would like to see if she could aid us. Help for help. And as a show of good faith, we’ll heal Kiera right here, with no collateral.”

John watched Vivian’s eyebrow raise slightly and found himself agreeing with her confusion. He wouldn’t have expected them to heal Kiera with no guarantee they’d get their meeting with Verida, not after Nephele’s less than honest start.

‘It sounds like too good of a deal,’ he thought. ‘Do they expect us to hold true to the agreement due to Cammie? Or are they trying to pull a fast one?’

“Cammie,” Vivian spoke up and gave the spirit user a pointed look.

“They’ve never given me any trouble and always kept up their part of any deal,” Cammie said.

Vivian gave everyone a look, her eyes clearly conveying her intent to accept the deal. With none of them making any objections, she returned her gaze to Nephele.

“We accept your terms,” she said. “Is there anything we need to do before you heal Kiera?”

Nephele and Estelle smiled, the latter far more widely, and the pink-haired witch shook her head.

“No, we can get to it right here and now,” she proclaimed.

“Can you walk us through what you’re doing?” John asked, both curious as to what happened to Kiera and to keep track of what they claimed they were doing, just in case.

“Of course,” Nephele agreed as she approached Kiera, stopping on one side of the bluenette. “First, so we’re all on the same page, my theory as to what transpired. I believe, while fighting, Kiera here began to subconsciously draw upon your patron’s power. In particular, her draconic nature, not the divine. However, the shock of doing so caused her powers to basically short circuit, trapping her I’d say about ninety percent of the way through her transformation. Which also aggravated her lingering psychic trauma, leading to her zoned-out state.”

“The fix is really quite simple,” Estelle picked up the explanation, walking over to Kiera’s other side, leaving her between the two witches. “We’re going to reset her magic. Just for a moment, cut her off from her reserves. That’ll turn off the transformation and should shock her brain back to full power. Actually, just waiting for her to run out of mana or fall asleep would probably result in the same thing.”

“No need to go off on the theoretical, dear,” Nephele chided lightly before extending her arms out. “Now, shall we?”

“Right,” Estelle cheerfully replied, lifting her own arms up, now fully encircling Kiera. Then both witches began to hum. The air around them started to crackle with energy and John felt the hair on his arms stand up on end.

Suddenly, and with no signal to start, both Nephele and Estelle let out a short and loud shout. The tension in the air abruptly vanished and Kiera took a sharp breath. The scales on her arms faded away as if they were made of sand and she blinked several times, almost like she was waking up.

“I’m, I’m back to normal,” she breathlessly said as she ran her now normal hands over her clear arms.

“Like we said, a simple fix,” Nephele remarked as she backed away from Kiera, a tired expression on her face, one mirrored by Estelle as she did the same. “Now, if you have no objections, I think a visit to your Kingdom is in order. We have much to discuss.”

Thanks again for reading this little story. If you liked the chapter, please hit that thumbs up, and if you want to support my writing, check out my Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/ScrapCrow. Get access to my chapters before they’re published here and join my private Discord.