After reading the pages multiple times, I proceeded to inhale the smoke of Sosden flowers and let my mind wander off. The ritual promised a descent into the Underworld. There, I would meet its ruler. He was my only chance left to figure out what it meant to be a Witch.
As instructed, I opened the ritual when I was comfortable to cut my hand open.
“Hear me!” With the athame, I cut my left hand and let the blood drip into the chalice. “Make me your guest as I step down to you unguarded,” I chanted and placed the chalice between my legs before laying down and spreading my joints to the candles. “Hear me, Veymor, Lord of the Underworld, for I am coming!”
The potent flowers calmed me down faster than my chamomile essence. I laid still, unable to move while an orgasmic wave ran through my body. My breasts and abdomen overheated while the numbing effect of Sosden helped me resist the urge to move.
After I came to my senses, I found myself in the same position, on the same cold floor of my room.
“It didn’t work,” I mumbled and sat up.
The sun was still shining but the noise of the campus had disappeared. Wondering, if they finished preparing the festival already, I walked up to the wall and pressed my ear against it.
“It worked just fine,” a sonorous voice said. “Welcome to the Underworld.”
8. Underworld
I turned around to the source of the voice; Veymor, the Lord of the Underworld, sat nowhere else but on my bed.
A man of white skin, almost translucent, and pitch-black hair. He drank from the chalice, naked. He must’ve taken it while I was on the floor.
I looked down on myself and flinched. I had forgotten I was naked, too, and quickly wrapped myself in my new nightgown.
He wrinkled his eyebrows when I ran to the bed and kneeled in front of him.
“I don’t like this,” he said, and the gown dropped from my shoulders, baring my chest. He took another sip from the chalice and leaned back.
I scanned his body. It was flawless. The limbs were portioned well, the hairless skin around them glowed and invited me to touch him.
“Climb on,” he said, but I remained kneeling and hovered my hand over his leg, fascinated by the steam that was radiating from it.
“How’s this the Underworld?”
“What did you expect? A dark realm? Perhaps Urai’s volcano, where I would sit on a throne? Now, climb on.”
“On you?” I asked and my voice shook, as did my hands when I pulled the dress up again.
“The bed. I won’t sleep with you without consent. Who do you think I am? A human?” He roared with laughter and lifted me next to him. “And leave that thing off, it messes up the barrier. You can’t use what you didn’t bring down here.” Stripping me of my gown, he swallowed down the rest of the wine.
“You’re Veymor? Lord of the Underworld?”
He was right, I had expected it all to be different, terrifying. Artists and storytellers portrayed him with horns and a dragon’s tail, yet he was perfect.
“Are you here to steal my time? Certainly looks like it. What are you, stupid?”
“Got something else to do?” I barked and couldn’t believe that I possessed the courage to address a God in such a rude way.
He arched his eyebrows and stared into my equally black eyes before changing his expression. The corners of his mouth dropped. He relaxed his face when he got a clear vision of mine. “Not really, but what do you want?”
“I want to know what it means to be a Witch, what else I can do, besides speaking my intent into reality and hoping it worked?”
“Well, you also descended to the Underworld. What else is on your mind? Powers to destroy your enemies or get revenge? It’s what you girls usually ask for.”
Remembering the rope around my ankles and the fire beneath my soles, anger awoke inside of me. I wished death to those men and misfortune to those who wronged me. “What would it take?”
He grunted. “Would watching them die change anything?”
Instead of offering a deal, as warned, he listened to me and my worries. How scared I was, to reveal my identity by accident and have to run away again. How afraid I was to lose the one friend that I gained. All because they expected me to be a Mage. The horror I had gone through seemed more and more insignificant. He was right. Though it would make me feel better, the death of those men wouldn’t solve my problems.
“Who says you aren’t a Mage?” he asked, rolled on his stomach and closed his eyes. “I bet you haven’t even tried.”
“I don’t know what there is to try.”
“Neither do they, that’s why they study so much and get trapped in it.”
He laughed about it, but I liked the idea of reading every book there is, studying all plants and their properties. My stomach prickled in excitement, and I was ashamed for calling the God of the Underworld to listen to my whining.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
“What?”
“Thank you,” I said louder, “for listening and telling me all this.”
He got so close that I felt his breath on my face. “Shit, you really mean it,” he laughed. “You’re the first one to thank me.”
“Are there more of us? You mentioned girls that came before me, where are they?”
I saw the answer in his face when his smile disappeared. He was horrible at hiding what he thought.
“To be honest, I don’t think there are any Witches left. I can’t know for sure, but it has been over a hundred years since one of you came down here.”
A tear rolled down my cheek, and I released all tension in my back that I tried to uphold to
