A Salem witches vs. Voodoo war?
Staring at Fiona, who'd just declared war in a tone that brooked no refusal, Rai was stunned. Things had veered completely off his expectations. Nothing in his memory said it would go this way, and it left him wrong-footed.
He glanced at the young witches beside him. They were trading looks, clearly not recovered from the shock.
After a beat, Zoe Benson raised her hand, hesitant but firm. "Was something this big decided… this fast? I mean, shouldn't we notify the Council?"
"Yeah! Worst case, have the Coven send reinforcements. Just us few against the Voodoo Queen's people sounds thin," Madison, usually fearless, added, surprisingly cautious.
"I am the Supreme," Fiona said evenly. "I decide the Coven's business. And don't forget: while we're gathering, Marie Laveau won't sit on her hands. Those people love making more of themselves. If it's a headcount contest, we lose."
"So we move sooner, not later. They won't expect us to hit back this quickly. Catch them off guard, and we can wipe out that lot who've feuded with Salem witches for a century." She looked down at her own hands and smiled coldly. "Believe in your power. And believe me, the title of Supreme isn't just talk."
She swept her gaze over the room of young witches. "That's settled. You have the day to get your affairs in order. Tonight, you come with me to put down Marie Laveau and her bitches." She turned, then paused and looked back unexpectedly at Rai. "I'll admit it, boy: you surprised me. Since you've awakened a witch's power, you'll represent the warlocks and come with us tonight."
"As you wish, Fiona," Rai said. He couldn't risk being 'pruned' early, and he wasn't about to leave Zoe and Madison to face this alone.
"Good." Fiona nodded, satisfied.
A low voice cut in. "Do we really have to fight to the death? Can't we sit down and talk?" It was Queenie.
Fiona's eyes flashed, then softened with recognition. "Poor Queenie. When Marie set her sights on killing everyone in this house, she didn't plan to spare you for being 'one of them.' Come, there are things you and I should discuss." She beckoned Queenie and, over her shoulder, told the others to finish disposing of the bodies before leading Queenie deeper into the residence.
"What do we do?" Zoe asked, shovel still in hand.
"What else?" Madison shrugged. "If you don't want Fiona to kill you first, you do what she says."
"Fiona means it," Nan said, worry plain in her voice.
"Then we plan for the Voodoo side properly," Rai said. "You three finish the cleanup. I'm stepping out to prepare."
"Prepare what?"
"Things that kill."
—
Rai drove to a gun shop and went on a pre-battle buying spree.
Inside the parlour, Fiona was talking with Queenie and keeping an eye on her to prevent any warning calls to the Voodoo side when the front door opened. A man stepped in. Fiona's face darkened. "What are you doing here?"
"I'm picking up some clothes and toiletries for Cordelia," said Hank Foxx, Cordelia's husband, matching her frost with his own.
They'd never liked each other. Fiona had always called him a liar, every word a con, and Cordelia had never listened. Hank thought Fiona unfit as a mother and unfit to meddle in his marriage.
"Fine," Fiona waved him off, disgusted. "Grab them and get out. Don't make me see you again. You know what I can do."
Hank knew exactly what everyone in this house was. He bit back a retort, headed upstairs, and, while packing, paused when he heard Fiona and Queenie speaking about Marie Laveau and the Voodoo side. He held his breath, listened, then finished quickly, walked out without a word, drove a long way from the Academy, and finally braked hard. He pulled out his phone, hovered over the contact labelled "Father," and pressed call.
—
Late that night, outside Marie Laveau's Ninth Ward beauty parlour, the street lay still. A cold wind sheared past, and a line of figures in black cloaks appeared as if from nowhere. Black hats, black robes, black clothes paired with a soul-shaking, uncanny air that made them look like reapers walking the earth.
Get closer, though, and the spell broke: except for the one in front, the black-clad figures were carrying rifles and shotguns. Spirits don't usually pack heat.
Madison, her blonde ends tucked beneath her hood, didn't care about optics. She ran her hands over a Winchester M1897, thrill humming cold steel beat image every time. Zoe carried the same shotgun. Nan gripped a Glock 43; Queenie had a plain handgun in her hand. Rai shouldered an AR-15 he'd outfitted the coven during his afternoon run.
Everything was ready. Against Voodoo witches, no matter how uncanny their tricks, bullets were still the best answer. If that weren't true, the colonisers with their flintlocks wouldn't have dragged the Voodoo priests' ancestors here in chains.
Fiona looked over the young witches, all armed to the teeth. She knew it wasn't wrong, but as the Supreme, she couldn't help the sigh that slipped out.
This was absolutely not what witches should look like.
---
With a turn of the palm, blazing fire rose up.
With a movement of the eyes, she bewitched a crowd of living beings.
With the casting of a spell, she brought destruction and despair to the world.
That is the image of a witch, both to witches themselves and in the eyes of the world.
Not like now, holding hot weapons, fully armed and ready to go.
To this, Madison only wanted to snort in disdain: "Ma'am, times have changed."
Even the vampires in Hollywood movies had gone from roaming around sucking blood to wearing suits, opening hospitals and biotech labs to make their blood-taking reasonable.
What's wrong with witches playing with guns?
That's called keeping up with the times.
"Do you need me to get one for you, too?" Seeing that among everyone, only Fiona's hands were empty, Madison asked with a smile.
"No need. You all keep those little toys."
Joking aside, she was the Supreme Witch. If a few guns aimed at her could put her in danger, that would be far too pathetic.
"It's time to let you see why a Supreme Witch is powerful."
Fiona narrowed her eyes, slowly raised her right hand, spread her five fingers, and aimed at the broad two-story beauty parlour in front of them.
Seeing this, Zoe felt a bit worried. "If we make too big a scene and people outside notice, what do we do?"
"I've already placed an isolation spell here. Before dawn, no outsiders will disturb us," Fiona said, everything under control.
"Get ready."
As soon as the words fell, Fiona clenched the five fingers aimed at the beauty parlour into a fist. A terrifying aura burst out from her.
Boom!
In an instant.
The sky shook and the earth moved.
In the stunned gazes of Rai and the young witches, it was as if a magnitude-7 earthquake had occurred. In only a blink, taking the beauty parlour as the centre, dozens of surrounding houses all collapsed.
As a force entrenched here for more than two hundred years, whether for safety or concealment, those living around Marie were naturally Voodoo cultists.
Under this single move of Fiona's, who could say how many died without even knowing why.
The tidy neighbourhood became a field of ruins.
In the wake of the aftermath, thick smoke and dust rolled like waves and surged toward them.
Fiona flicked her hand, easily blowing away the onrushing dust, then, looking quite content, lit herself a cigarette.
Under the force of the wind, a rich vanilla fragrance entered the nose, yet Rai had no mind to cover it. Looking at the scene of destruction before him, his heart was not only shocked but repeatedly thankful.
Fortunately.
He had not arrogantly tried to take Fiona head-on and had always kept the young witches out of her way.
Otherwise, not to mention his current small frame, even two times stronger, he would absolutely not be a match for Fiona.
"Are they all dealt with?" At this moment, Queenie, staring dazedly at all this, asked in a very complicated mood.
"Marie won't die so easily. And there are still some small fry."
After saying so, Fiona took a drag on her cigarette, and had only just been about to exhale when a sharp burst of gunfire suddenly rang out.
It wasn't Rai and the others firing, but survivors in the ruins, furious gunmen raising their weapons and sweeping fire this way.
Rai was just about to shout for Zoe and the others to find cover and hide.
But Fiona gave a gesture for them to rest easy.
The next second, a vast, invisible telekinetic force swept the air.
All the bullets that were flying over instantly froze in mid-air.
Then, at Fiona's pointing finger, all of them returned even faster than they'd come.
Amid screams, clouds of blood mist burst open. The gunfire fell silent.
Rai finally understood why Fiona didn't think much of firearms.
"Can your telekinesis do this?" he turned to ask Madison beside him.
Having seen this, Madison's eyes were still glittering. She hesitated, then shook her head.
She had never tried, but she didn't need to try to know she couldn't be as relaxed and free as Fiona.
The gap was too big.
Which was normal.
After all, one had sat in the Supreme's seat for decades; the other had only awakened her power not long ago.
"Salem witches! The Voodoo Queen won't let you go!"
Suddenly, an aged voice came out of the rubble.
An old witch wearing a skull necklace crawled out, her face full of gloom and hatred. She flung the necklace down to the ground, and, using it as a medium, spoke in the most venomous tone to lay a curse: "I curse you never to see light again, you will fall into the abyss, with demons…"
"Noisy."
Fiona cast a cold glance at the old witch.
The next second, the old woman's voice abruptly cut off.
In horror, she felt around her own face with both hands: her mouth had vanished for no reason, leaving only a smooth patch of skin.
Not only that her nose, eyes, and ears vanish in turn, but in the end, she suffocated in agony.
"Ebony! Damn it!" Marie Laveau, having just struggled free of the ruins, witnessed the death of her companion and, extremely enraged, looked at the instigator.
"Fiona! How dare you! Do you want to set off an all-out war between the Voodoo faith and the Salem witches?"
"Didn't it already begin? Once you summoned a horde of Voodoo puppets to attack the Academy, and after Cordelia was disfigured, everything was already decided."
"The appearance of the puppets was only to take Delphine away. As for disfiguring Cordelia? I didn't do that!"
Fiona was disdainful. "You did it, but you're only this magnanimous Voodoo Queen. I am not the previous Supreme Witch. She only weakly sought peace. I, instead, will erase every danger that affects peace."
Marie's face sank. "Arrogant fool! Since you want to die, I don't mind putting another witch's corpse in my secret room, especially the corpse of a Supreme."
She never regretted what she'd done to the Salem witches before.
She only hadn't expected Fiona to come so quickly this time, so fast she didn't even have time to gather people, and was caught completely off guard.
Seeing her tribespeople scrambling from the rubble, and many more buried forever beneath it, Marie's gaze grew murderous as she swept it coldly over Fiona's group. Suddenly, she opened her mouth and let out a sharp, shrill, long whistle.
"Hissss…"
One after another, pythons as thick as a man's thigh instantly poured in from all directions, tongues flicking. At Marie's command, they raced toward the figures reflected in their cold vertical pupils, Fiona and her party.
Seeing the battle of witches turning into a calamity of vipers, Rai did not keep waiting. He directly raised his AR-15 and opened fire.
With Rai firing first, Zoe, Madison, Nan, and Queenie, those who had guns, also started firing.
The dense bullets instantly became a storm, chopping the foremost pythons into pieces.
In a flash, burst serpent heads, bodies cut into several segments, and spraying snake blood were everywhere.
Marie, watching, showed not the slightest disappointment.
She suddenly hummed a strange chant.
Under the influence of the song, the snake's blood scattered all over the ground seemed to come alive, rising drop by drop to form one blood-red serpent shadow after another.
As the chant reached its highest pitch, all the blood-serpent shadows let out a silent hiss and, at even greater speed, thrust through the air toward Rai and the others.
"Blood sorcery."
Fiona sneered, but did not choose to act. Instead, she looked toward the young witches.
Finding that bullets were useless against these blood shadows, Rai promptly reminded, "Use fire!"
Having already learned control over fire, Madison and Zoe immediately put down their guns. With a sweep of their eyes, balls of fire rose on the blood shadows, which were turned to ashes in moments.
Lacking the girls' abundant "mana," Rai, in the spirit of sustainability, wrapped fire around his big kukri again and turned into a close-quarters mage, slicing apart the blood shadows stroke by stroke.
He absolutely could not let the blood shadows touch him.
He had learned this the moment he had just killed one, only to be ambushed by another lurking nearby.
Thanks to his superior reflexes, he had dodged the attack and even counter-killed the second, but the shadow had still brushed past him.
Rai glanced at his left arm, where there was a small patch that looked like withered wood, completely devoid of life.
If the blood shadows were allowed to envelop his whole body…
Just thinking about it sent chills down his spine.
Truly vicious sorcery!
From then on, Rai was more cautious.
Taking his eyes off Rai, whom she admired but knew would hit a male-witch ceiling, Fiona focused on the girls, particularly Zoe.
As for Madison, after their talk during the outing last time, Fiona's attention had moved away from her.
"In such a short time, already grown to this level?" Fiona mused.
Finally, she looked toward Queenie and Nan.
These two, who hadn't awakened the fire ability, stood anxiously in the rear, eyes burning with desire to have the same power, so they could help their companions.
Queenie succeeded.
In less than a minute, under the stimulus of fire being cast again and again by Madison, Zoe, and even Rai, she too awakened fire control and quickly joined the fight.
"This cohort of witches has pretty good aptitude," Fiona sighed.
Back in her year, apart from herself, the only one of decent strength was Council member Myrtle.
But now, among the current witches, Zoe, who had only recently awakened, already surpassed Myrtle in magical force.
Others like Madison, Queenie, and Nan each had their own strengths.
"So hard to pick."
Fiona shook her head.
Seeing that the blood shadows were almost wiped out, she snapped her fingers, instantly burning the rest to cinders. Then, high heels stepping forward, she took the initiative to walk toward Marie, mocking as she went:
"Is this your method? Truly not living up to your reputation. Looks like over time, the famous Voodoo Queen's power is weakened."
"I suggest you obediently surrender so I don't accidentally hurt you."
Hearing this, Marie snorted coldly. "Even from far away, I can smell the rot, the stench of a Supreme Witch about to die. Just now was only an appetiser. Next, I'll give you a proper reception."
Marie waved her hand.
Thump! Thump! Thump!
The surviving Voodoo witch began to beat strange drums with fierce rhythm.
Very soon, including the witches who had just died, a great many Voodoo puppets clawed out from the ruins, baring their ferocity and rushing at Fiona.
Fiona's eyes flashed with disdain. One ball of fire after another ignited on the puppets.
"If you…"
Before she could finish the sentence, she suddenly paused, because she found that the puppets scoured by flames, for the most part, did not fall, but continued to pounce at her.
Fiona quickly figured it out. "Puppets that have been 'warmed' for a long time. You really paid the price."
For Voodoo witches, while puppets could be used against enemies, more often they did chores, as slaves to be ordered around.
Generally speaking, if a puppet had existed for decades and been constantly nourished by a cultist, its body would be much tougher than a casually summoned puppet, even developing a trace of spirit.
This was why they now had great resistance to Fiona's flames.
"Destroying them all will probably make you heartbroken."
Most Voodoo witches needed decades to create such a powerful puppet.
Those appearing here were likely the entire foundation of the Voodoo witches.
Thinking of this, Fiona smiled.
Just as the puppets' grasping hands were about to touch her, she vanished.
One of the Seven Wonders, transmutation. Fiona appeared at Zoe's side, patted her shoulder, and said, "Leave these to you."
Zoe nodded solemnly.
Recalling carefully what had happened the previous night, she raised both hands toward the front. A vast, formless magical power surged out and swept over the puppets.
The next second.
Just like last night, even though the puppets here were much stronger, they still fell one after another like dumplings dropping into a pot, completely silent.
The Voodoo witches' faces abruptly changed.
Marie looked at Zoe in surprise. "So it was you last night!"
"What powerful magic!" Soon her eyes turned vicious. "You're very likely the next Supreme Witch. Good, then I'll catch two generations of Supremes in one net here."
Marie raised a snakeskin water flask filled with the blood shed by those pythons. Most of the serpent blood had quietly flowed into this earlier, not been used to make blood shadows.
At this moment, with Marie taking a deep breath, all the toppled puppets' bodies collapsed, turning into wisps of black vapour that merged into the flask with the snake blood.
She had not taken a lesson from last night's failure.
As for releasing puppets now, she had already planned that whether they performed or not didn't matter; they would be hers to use in the end.
It was time.
Prepared long ago, Marie looked at the mixture in the flask, black and red entwined and drank it down in one gulp.
Noticing this scene, Fiona's expression changed for the first time. She immediately moved to stop it.
But a force not much inferior to hers suddenly struck.
"Too late."
Marie's sister, Chantal, the future inheritor of the title Voodoo Queen, blocked Fiona.
"Too late."
Chantal blocked Fiona.
Seeing the situation turn bad, Rai couldn't care about anything else. He raised his AR-15 and let loose a string of shots at Marie.
A thick, broken slab of stone rose from the ruins and blocked all the bullets.
After doing this, Marie cast a cold glance at Rai, who had fired a cold shot. She did not delay any longer and drained the black-and-crimson liquid in one gulp.
In the blink of an eye, Marie's belly swelled like ten months pregnant.
The blood vessels all over her body writhed like snakes. Her eyes were now pitch-black. She opened her mouth wide.
Woooo!
Along with a howling wind like a wailing ghost, a great mass of black-and-red mist poured out of Marie's mouth as if from a bottomless pit.
Before Rai and the others could react, the sky-blotting strange fog, like a surging tidal bore, submerged them all in an instant.
"Now," Marie announced with a cold smile, "the identities of hunter and prey have swapped."
"Go! Kill them!"
"Yes!"
The still-living Voodoo witches, murderous, stepped into the thick fog.
…
Everything happened too fast.
As soon as the black-and-red strange fog swept over, Rai instinctively held his breath, afraid the gas was poisonous.
Not long after, his face showed blank astonishment.
Because in the blink of an eye, the black-and-red fog around him disappeared.
In its place was a place whose building material was flesh and blood, where countless towering walls formed what looked like a maze.
"What the hell is this?"
Rai thought he was hallucinating and instinctively pinched himself hard.
It hurt.
It didn't feel like an illusion, and he wasn't dreaming.
He reached out to touch the flesh wall.
Very real. Very disgusting.
Rai withdrew his hand and was just about to probe ahead.
On the side, the previously still flesh wall suddenly split open dozens of slits. Dozens of pitch-black arms thrust out from inside at once, grabbed him, and began to drag him into the wall.
"Shit!"
Caught off guard, Rai's whole body tilted toward the flesh wall.
Before his eyes, the flesh wall heaved like breakers. A huge crack tore open from top to bottom, waiting only to eat him.
At the very last instant, he yanked out his blade and, with all his strength, swept it across, chopping off more than a dozen black arms.
The pulling force weakened. Regaining his footing, Rai dared not be careless. The edge of the knife flashed again and again until all the arms were chopped clean.
But that was only the beginning.
After the severed arms timidly withdrew back into the slits, with the constant writhing of the flesh walls, new pitch-black arms, smeared with foul slime and scraps of meat, thrust out again, set on fusing Rai the living man into themselves.
Crack!
In a moment of inattention, the AR-15 hanging on his chest, only recently bought, was directly torn apart.
Rai had no time to feel heartache.
Seeing the endless black arms, he didn't dare to linger. With a big backward step, he moved away from the wall and ran in another direction.
Only now, the labyrinth of flesh composed of countless walls seemed to wake.
Wherever Rai ran, the flesh walls on both sides would stretch out arms to seize him.
Rai could only cut a path with his pistol and his knife, running without pause.
"What the hell is this place? A maze?"
The pistol rounds ran out quickly. With only the big kukri flashing in his hand, Rai frowned tightly.
He did not know how Marie had done this.
Judging by the distance he had run, even with all the turns, he should have already moved beyond the real-world area where Marie's beauty parlour stood.
But in reality, there still stretched these corridors of flesh and blood that seemed endless.
What made him even more uneasy was that, as time passed, the walls on both sides were closing toward the centre at a speed visible to the naked eye.
That meant if he didn't want to become a sandwich cookie, he had to find an exit as soon as possible.
Rai sped up.
Just as he turned a corner, cut the arms blocking him with one stroke, then flashed aside to dodge the arms lunging from the flank, a string of obscure, difficult sounds suddenly rang by his ear.
In an instant, Rai felt as if he had fallen into water. Every step was extremely difficult.
His speed involuntarily dropped.
Seeing this, the arms on the walls around him flared with excitement, thrusting out in a rush and easily grabbing him again.
A few breaths later, countless black hands had almost covered his whole body.
Seeing that no matter how he struggled, he could not break free and would soon be dragged into the wall..
A man stepped out, feathers on his head and red tattoos covering his face.
Just now, Rai's sudden slowing was precisely because of the slowing curse the man had cast.
Looking at his prey's despairing face, he made a throat-cutting gesture and happily rattled off a string of slang no outsider would understand.
The Voodoo faith and the Salem witches had a blood feud.
Being able to kill one, this was something worth rejoicing over to him.
Whump!
An unexpectedly deep crimson flame suddenly rose up on Rai's right arm.
Compared with bullets and blades, fire clearly made the black arms shudder.
As some arms crispened into charcoal to the touch, and others shrank back in fear, the right hand holding the blade on Rai's side was freed.
Without wasting words.
A flash of silver.
With Rai's full-force throw, amid a fierce whistling of air, the blade streaked at extreme speed toward the caster.
The man's expression changed dramatically.
He wanted to dodge, but the blade came too fast.
He could only watch as it sank deep into his chest.
Blood sprayed.
The man stared, reached to grasp the knife in his body, but his hand sagged halfway.
Thud.
The man fell heavily and did not move again.
Clearing the hands from his body, Rai walked over and retrieved the knife. Looking down at the corpse, he said, "Idiot. Don't you know how many villains die from last-second speeches?"
The moment he'd felt his speed drop of its own, Rai knew he had encountered a new enemy.
He simply hadn't found the man's position then. With the threat of the flesh-wall arms, he went with it and deliberately let the black arms grab him.
If the enemy had never appeared, he would at worst have turned himself into a man of fire and burned free.
If the enemy did appear, then just as now he could, as the man grew smug and careless, kill him in one strike.
It seemed this guy was easy enough to trick.
Noticing that a new page had appeared in the grimoire and that the situation was still urgent, Rai didn't look closely. After sweeping a glance at the man's abilities, useless to the present scene, he immediately converted the sixty containment points he had just gained straight into [Spirit].
His Spirit, already low from repeated use, was almost empty.
Knowing that both the black arms and the flesh walls had a certain fear of fire, he naturally knew what to choose.
[Spirit: 1.0] → [Spirit: 1.6]
Feeling the Spirit within him become much fuller, Rai let out a slight breath.