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The training to learn spirit magic hadn’t gone as well as Annabelle had hoped. In fact, whenever she tried to summon the spirits from the river, the trees, the grass beneath her feet, nothing answered. The only thing she could feel were the words that echoed in her brain.

Feel. Become.

She didn’t know what they meant or who, or what, said them. All Annabelle knew was that the whispers hadn’t stopped since she took the stone of Mystel from Svario.

Even as she and Sean stood alone in front of the miasmic Forest of Mystel, the whispers remained. Feel. Become. Grow.

“Well… Are we ready?” Sean asked, his tone hesitant as he took Annabelle’s hand into his own. He held a sword in his other, the sunlight glinting off it.

“As ready as I’ll ever be… We just have to make it to the throne and I sit in it, right? After that, we can leave and figure out what to do with ourselves, right?” Annabelle’s hand squeezed Sean’s, a sign of her nervousness.

They could do this, right?

“Just make it to the throne, sit in it, and see if you’re the chosen Queen,” Sean agreed.

The forest had been nothing they expected. Sure, the foggy appearance of the miasma was expected, but beyond that, the creatures inside where…

Tame…?

Nothing attacked them at all. At least, not at the beginning. Though the animals of the forest had obviously been transformed into grotesque creatures, they were tame. Something, someone, had to have been in the miasma for them to have this effect.

That, or all the stories had been wrong.

What Annabelle and Sean hadn’t expected to find in the forest was a hut. A hut that looked lived in, with smoke coming from the chimney, and flowers of all things growing in gardens.

The voice that spoke to them startled them even more.

“How may I help you, dearies? Are you lost?” It was the voice of an old woman who came out of the hut after seeing the two elves through her window. “Not many visitors these days, I’m afraid.”

“You… Live here? In this?” Annabelle asked the woman, her hands curling into fists for a moment before relaxing. “In this miasma?”

“Oh yes, deary, but where are my manners? I am Morrigan, Witch of the Woods.”

The old woman came out of her hut, hunched over and dressed in robes, unlike anything that Annabelle and Sean had seen before. The colors were vibrant—yellows and purples mixed with a bit of dark blue here and there. Her dark hair was speckled with grey, pulled back into a tight bun on the top of her head.

“Witch of the Woods?” Sean raised a brow, tilting his head slightly. “The stories don’t speak of a Witch of the Woods…”

“Ah, yes, the stories of this cursed place,” Morrigan chuckled. “Many stories are wrong. As you see, this place is nothing more than a different biome compared to the rest of the world. There is no harm here.”

“But they say the Miasma twists people, to turn them into—” Annabelle started. ”Into unintelligible creatures? My darling, do you see the animals here? Yes, they have been twisted, but they are still of their same intelligence as before.”

Annabelle and Sean looked at each other with confusion in their eyes. Everything they had heard about the Forest of Mystel had been wrong, according to this old woman. Annabelle frowned, however, and turned her gaze back to the Witch.

“How do we know we can trust your word based on what we’ve heard?” she asked.

Morrigan only chuckled again, tilting her head to the side. “That, dearest, is only something you can decide. However, I can assure you, the stories about the miasma are wrong.”

“How so?” Sean was the one who asked this time.

“Your kind come in here with swords and magic, expecting the forest to be full of dark and terrible creatures. Yet, the only ones who bring in any kind of darkness are those who march into this forest expecting something that isn’t true!” The old woman slammed down the walking stick she held in her hand into the dirt of the forest. “And because you two are young, you may yet be saved from the mindset of the rest of the world! If you’ll only take a look around the forest yourselves, you’ll see the miasma hurts nothing.”

The two elves exchanged another glance with each other, and Annabelle watched as Sean sheathed the sword in his hand. She wondered what he was up to, though she didn’t have to wait long to find out.

“So tell us. Show us that the miasma isn’t as bad as everyone makes it out to be,” he said to the Witch.

“Sean—”

“Very well, young man. Come here,” Morrigan told him.

At that moment, when Sean stepped forward, Annabelle felt a shift in the area’s magic. She felt a shift in the world around her; the spirits seemed to scream for release.

Become.

Image by Author in Canva.