“So, like, the lone wolf thing, is that—” “Wolves are pack animals,” Howl interrupts with a glare. “Lone wolves only stay that way if they die before they can find a pack to take them in. I don’t hunt alone, kid, I just don’t like being around humans unless I’m getting my hands on good food and good booze. I’ve got plenty of companions.” She reaches down and scratches her pet wolf behind the ears. The wolf’s name is Fenris, I’m pretty sure, and she has a pair of birds named Huginn and Muninn. There’s a bit of speculation on the forums that she’s from Germany or further north, but her accent is light enough that I can’t be sure. “You said ‘humans,’” I note. “Is that excluding other witches?” She curls her lip. “Horsepiss and hubris. A human with magic is a human with magic, not whatever the Syndies and the Cotters want to believe they’ve become. I see no demigods here.” Howl’s voice is low and throaty, a little rough, but I don’t mind listening to it. Kira Kira and Sweet Tooth are entertaining, but they don’t compel me. Harlequin unnerves me. I want to solve Howl and find what makes her tick. “You’re very interesting,” I tell her, leaning on the bar counter and smiling. “Everyone wants to know where you’re from, what you want, and why you’ve come to this part of the world.” “People are too bloody nosy,” she mutters, continuing to pet her dog. “The only way I let people know me is in the biblical sense. You want to know my deal? I’m not from around here, I want food and booze and sex, and I came to this rotten place on my own damn business.” Prickly. Alright, different tactic. “Fair’s fair. But you called me over for a reason, so what is it? What does the mysterious Howl want with the new kid in town?” “Wanted to take your measure,” she answers curtly. “Not often I meet another dreamer.” My gaze sharpens. “You have my attention.” Howl has the remnants of a meal in front of her: thin, flat strips of steak—only a few of them left now—and the scooped-out husk of a baked potato. She picks up a piece of meat and tosses it to Fenris, who snatches it out of the air with shocking agility for an animal that looked half-asleep a second ago. “I won’t say much around the vipers, but now you know something about me that few others do. I’ve got a question for you, in turn: what do you think of these witches and their factions?” I chew my lip and consider how to answer. I think she’s probably looking for an answer that aligns with her own disdain for the powers that be, but she might see through a lie and judge me worse for it. “I think they’re fun,” I say honestly. “Before I became a witch, I was a fangirl. Coterie, Visage, Vanguard, Syndicate, I think they’re all fascinating—I think everything to do with magic and those who use it is fascinating. I’d probably enjoy a month or two with Visage, or getting to know Sister Nature and the Minotaur up close. They could be useful to me. That’s how I feel.” Howl finishes her meal while I talk, chewing her steak thoughtfully. She washes it down with more beer, which arrived sometime during our conversation, and she takes her time drinking before she says anything in response to my little speech. One of the skeletal waitstaff takes her plate. She watches me in silence, head tilted and one of her long ears twitching, and then she grins with a vicious glint in her eyes. “I get it. You’re one of the real monsters, aren’t you?” She laughs. I resist the instinct to freeze up, forcing myself to stay calm and visibly unbothered even as my mind races with questions. What does that mean? Why does she think that? What does she think she knows? “How’d you come to that conclusion?” I ask, injecting mirth into my voice. “Don’t worry about it,” she dismisses with a wave. She gets up from her seat, the wolf rising with her, and starts walking off. “Be seeing you, monster girl.” Before I can say anything else, she slips through a door that wasn’t there a moment ago and vanishes deeper into the Ossuary, down some hall of creaking bone. That’s three people who have recognized on sight that I’m having a weird dream. Three people who are probably having the same dream, though only one described it. And now this one, this wandering witch, seems to have learned something else about me just through observation. I need to figure out that trick, at least enough to defend myself against it. Laughter from the other side of the bar pulls me back to the present. I still have three more witches to get a read on before Ferromancer arrives and we proceed to the final phase of tonight’s itinerary. Priscilla, Riddlemaster, and Wavecaller. One Syndicate and two Coterie witches. Unusual to see those factions mingling, given their opposing views on the pact. Femur’s pet conspiracy theory is that they have some sort of backroom deal running, like the militant and public arms of the same movement, so he’d be delighted to hear about Priscilla and Riddlemaster drinking and laughing together. Of course, that’s probably one of those little secrets I can’t share without violating the sacred law of confidentiality—the guarantee that witches like Kira, Priscilla, and so on can be themselves in this space without fear. I order a drink from the bartender and purge the previous round of alcohol from my body. Bombshell was the one to walk me through that trick, and I cannot express in any number of words how delightful it is to be able to cancel an edible on a whim. I’m here to drink socially, not get drunk; my alcohol tolerance is a lot higher as a witch than it was as a mortal, but a third drink in my system would be tempting fate. I shift my attention to the other witches at the bar and listen in on their conversation. “—meat-brained, empty-headed dimwits!” screeches Riddlemaster before pounding back what looks to be her eighth shot of the night. Priscilla pats her shoulder and chuckles lightly. “You really have the worst of it, darling.” The Syndicate witch swirls a glass of red wine and idly sips from it. The drink looks nearly untouched. “Of course I do!” the Coterie witch hisses. “The worst power those bastard cats could cook up, and do my ‘teammates’ care? Of course they don’t!” Riddlemaster is local, while Priscilla’s home turf is relatively unknown but speculated to be somewhere in Seattle. I’ve heard of both, but I know much more about the former. The cat-eared, dark-haired, gold-adorned witch has a sphinx theme so obvious it makes one wonder if that’s really her power or some clever piece of deflection, but once you’ve seen any fight she’s been in it becomes pretty clear that level of trickery is beyond her. Riddlemaster’s signature power is the ability to trap people in projected mental landscapes until they can solve her, well, riddles. The problem with her power is that it’s based on the victim’s perception, not her own; if someone gives a wrong answer with enough confidence and belief, the phantasm considers it just as solved as if someone gave the right answer. Which means her power completely fails to work on magical girls that are smart enough to solve it correctly—like Striga, for example, or her teammate Herbalist—and on magical girls too dumb or stubborn to realize their answer is wrong. Y’know, like Thunderclap. The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement. Priscilla is a much more mysterious character. She’s one of the small handful of Syndicate witches that act as the “faces” of the organization, speaking to the public and making appearances while the rest of her comrades operate from the shadows. It’s known that her power has something to do with poison, but everything else is shrouded in rumor. She’s the type to wear red cocktail dresses and shining pearls, and you could almost mistake her for going untransformed if not for those too-green eyes and that serpentine tail. As Riddlemaster continues her ranting, Priscilla looks away for a moment and I catch a glimpse of absolute boredom on her face. I make eye contact with her and wink, then raise my glass and call over, “May I join in?” “Make yourself at home,” she drawls, interrupting Riddlemaster’s speech. “Riddles, darling, you might one.” I sidle over and take a seat next to the Syndicate witch. “Archon,” I introduce myself. “I’m new in town. You’re Priscilla and Riddlemaster, correct?” The cat-eared witch raises her empty shot glass and awkwardly clinks it against my half-full cider. “You’re alright, new in town,” Riddlemaster praises, the words falling out of her drunken mouth. “Beat that bitch of a bitch of a fucker, with the axe! Wish you’d caved her goddamned skull in.” When she’s not slurring her words, the venom and fury comes through loud and clear. “I see you’ve been making your rounds,” Priscilla says with a calm, too-precise smile. “You’re quite the prolific networker for such a fresh arrival to our circles.” I throw her a roguish grin in response. She has me pegged as an opportunist, I gather, so I’ll lean into that angle. Syndicate witches probably admire a bit of shameless amorality, right? “I like to know my options. Everyone here has something to offer, and I’d be a fool if I didn’t sample the menu before grabbing a plate.” Priscilla casts a glance toward the quartet around the television screen and asks, “Is junk food to your taste, then? Or are you not a picky eater?” “I’ll pick those goddamn eaters,” Riddlemaster mutters, getting lost in a fresh glass. “Cannonball!” she shouts the name of another heroine. “How is that a burger!?” Engaging with Riddlemaster doesn’t seem particularly productive right now, so I ignore her rambling and focus on Priscilla. “Should I be surprised that a member of the Syndicate has contempt for the witches who play for Visage?” I keep my grin up and my posture relaxed, like we’re two contemporaries making fun of a third. “Syndicate, bah. Such a crass name,” Priscilla laments. “I suppose that’s what happens when your opponent controls the media.” Funny. I’ve never heard of the Syndicate pushing back on that label. Is it a battle not worth fighting, or does it serve their ends to cry censorship? “Do you have a name you’d prefer I use?” I ask, genuinely curious. Priscilla sips her wine and smirks. “There are as many names for our organization as there are members. The truest, I think, would be ‘the Yet Uncrowned.’ It is our great purpose to one day prove that title false.” “‘Uncrowned’ has a nice feel, a good sound. But how true is it, really? All I’ve ever heard of your organization is talk of a new twist on old crime. I’m getting the sense you’d call that propaganda.” I sip my own drink, watching the other witch closely. Priscilla lets out a quiet, almost dainty laugh. “The greatest obstacle to our message might be a lack of education in the layperson; tell me, are you familiar with the works of the philosopher Plato? Or of his teacher, Socrates?” Ah, so she’s a poseur. “Before my time,” I joke, before more seriously adding, “I’ve heard bits and pieces, but I’d hardly call myself an expert. Socratic method, Platonic ideals, and that’s about the extent of it.” All of it picked up from arguments between Femur and Mordacity, of course—including the detail that Socrates didn’t write shit. “A step above most,” Priscilla assures me, keeping any backhandedness from her voice. “Allow me, if you will, to share a bit of their wisdom. In Plato’s Republic, he writes of an ideal form of government: a society ruled by a philosopher king, one versed in all studies and forming his administration from like-minded and like-educated peers. What Plato did not know—could not know, being born in such a foundational time of history—was how vast and multifaceted the well of knowledge truly is. An average human lifespan is not nearly enough time to learn all that is truly required for the perfect ruler that Plato described.” Priscilla pauses meaningfully. “But a witch is immortal,” I say as prompted. “If not slain in battle, we’ll all live for the decades and centuries that would be needed to attain such heights. Some of us even have powers that can shorten that work, learning the knowledge of a lifetime in a few short years. That’s your meaning, yes?” Priscilla’s smile takes on a warmer cast. “You understand. Think of what could be accomplished in a hundred years under the firm hand of a witch queen and her court of the learned. It would be a golden age for humanity. Thus, it is our moral obligation as witches to rule over our lessers and guide them away from their own… depravities.” I keep myself from reacting visibly to that last word. “Magical girls are also immortal,” I note. “If their side of the war could be defeated without killing or disempowering them, would you rule alongside them as peers?” Her lip curls. “They lack the will to power. In those who eagerly self-define as heroines, the morality of weakness has triumphed. They think very little of submitting themselves to the madness of the masses, and so shrivels their will. Strength is wasted on those without the drive to make use of it. Their kind have no place in humanity’s future.” “You fascist pig,” snarls Wavecaller, who was apparently not as unconscious as I had assumed. She lifts her head off the counter and glares daggers at Priscilla. Riddlemaster also must have assumed her colleague was unconscious, because a flash of guilt crosses her face before she starts stumbling over her words. “Whoah, hey, uh, let’s not throw that around so—” “Fuck off,” Wavecaller snaps. “I take pity on you one time and spend my fucking truce night keeping you company, and you start drinking with that reptile bitch?” “I—I didn’t—we were just swapping s-stories—pity?” Riddlemaster’s eyes start to water, and then in a flash she bolts to her feet and runs off. I once read a rumor that Riddlemaster tried to join Visage first and was rejected for terrible stage presence, so she came slinking to the Coterie and begged for their protection. It seems her colleagues didn’t warm to her anymore than Visage did. I almost feel bad for her, but not really. Priscilla sighs. “What a delightful woman you are, truly. A paragon of your breed.” “Go on,” the Coterie witch sneers. “Call me a mongrel. A degenerate. You know you want to. I know what you are, so don’t even try to hide it. If it wasn’t for this place’s protections I’d take that head clean off, truce or no truce.” “Unlike you, I see no value in such petty, wasteful insults, nor in such senseless violence.” Priscilla smiles with sickly sweet insincerity. “People like you were killing this world long before the Jovians showed up,” Wavecaller hisses. “You don’t deserve the power they gave you.” “I think I’ve had quite enough of your childish taunts,” Priscilla says with a forced yawn. “I’ll be going after the ‘teammate’ you so rudely chased off. Have a pleasant evening.” She rises, makes to leave, and catches my eye one more time before departing. “I hope to see you again, Archon. Don’t pick a side too hastily.” And then she’s gone, leaving me alone at the bar with a villainess still fuming.