Page 32 of Monster Lover

“Now let’s find that bed.”

***

The loud blast from a horn shook Daemona from her deep dreams. She almost fell out of her narrow bed. The trumpet sounded again.

“If this is someone’s idea of a joke, they are gonna pay,” she growled as she slipped a robe over her shoulders and went to the window.

“What is it?” Harlin asked, still lying in bed.

“I’m about to see.”

A trio of small fat witches sat in a rowboat in the center of the waterway. They were cloaked and gray, but long green noses peeked out from their hoods, and they were cackling amongst themselves as one blasted the trumpet again. Daemona saw the witch’s cheeks expand like bloated flesh, then release as the rotten instrument shattered the early morning silence like breaking glass.

“Hear us, Tall Town! You have done yourselves a grave misfortune by taking what is ours!”

Daemona glanced at the other windows. She thought she could see a few folk peeking from behind their blinds, curtains, and shutters, but no one dared face the witches openly, not even these three plump ones far below in a rowboat.

“We demand that you return the child apprentice to us! As well as those murderous interlopers that robbed us! AND,” she emphasized, “a full year’s tithe worth of grains and foodstuffs for our larder.”

Daemona couldn’t actually hear anyone, but her gut told her there was a collective gasp at these demands. Such harsh taxes would surely break these people.

“Bring them out and give them to us or suffer the consequences!” They cackled again.

Daemona threw open her window and shouted, “The hell they will! I’ll give as good to you as I did your foul sisters!”

The witches were shocked, but quickly their faces returned to a cruel malevolence.

Daemona then noticed that Ivy and Ghul Lykos had thrown open their window as well to meet the threat eye to eye. Ivy’s long golden braids catching the wind above her massive breasts. So she wasn’t the only who got some last night.

“You think you can stop us, you traitorous daughter of the Nether?”

Daemona frowned, grumbled, and ported down to the witches’ rowboat amidst them. The witches were shocked and leaned back in surprise as Daemona punched a hole in the bottom of the rowboat with her daggers. She blinked away just as they regained enough composure to try and snatch at her.

The rowboat spouted murky water from the center bottom as if from a blowhole. The witches cried out as they were suddenly ankle deep. They stood up and snarled aloud and cast a spell to try and patch the hole.

“This isn’t the end. We’ll be back!”

An arrow sunk into one of the hags, down to the fletching. She tumbled back into the boat, and the hole spouted more water.

“With one less!” cried Harlin. “Begone!”

Ivy looked to Harlin and nodded grimly. The two witches rowed away with a wretched muttering between them.

“We better discuss our options,” said Harlin.

Ivy added, “I’ll gather the townsfolk. They need to hear this too.”

The party met on the floor of Ivy’s, joined by a throng of townsfolk. Voices of dissent flooded their ears.

“You shouldn’t have done that!”

“We will be ruined!”

“They’ll come for us all now.”

“We should hand these folks and the witch girl over now!”

“String ‘em up!”

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