"Lady Ecli?"

The leaf of an herb fluttered with a draft. The tunnels frequently got such winds, being widely unaired and having badly-placed-in-hindsight entrances that let in gusts. He was used to it, but still shivered as the breeze pressed against his back like a dozen cold hands, shoving him forward against his will.

"Lady Ecli...?" he called out again, more cautious. He took slow, skittish steps down the tunnel, regretting each one, crossing growths of illuminating moss that cast a pale shadow on the low, stone walls. They seemed to watch him somberly as they bore their rich, green glow.

He knew that Ecli was having one of her worse days. Having known and worked for her for a fairly long time, he could feel her bad mood even far from the tunnels—he could wake up, mind still fogged with the remains of his dreams, and know she was in one. It was a sense that had soaked into him after being exposed to her so much, so far proven to be as consistent as a weathervane. But he couldn't run away from the storm that would be facing her. He didn't get paid to flee from his lady.

That day was the latest in a long line of consecutive 'bad days' for Ecli; days when the air holes of the tunnels wafted smoke that would make the nearby animals panic and/or faint on the spot, when she requested the more dangerous of ingredients to use, when an enraged yowl or crazed laughing would echo from Ecli's lair and scare off nearby onlookers.

Every part of him screeched to drop the plants and run. But he couldn't do that. He couldn't afford to. He couldn't show weakness on a bad day lest Ecli fire him, and Mirror Realm forbid he should forget to bring her requested items (even if half of them were squirming in their containment and made him feel guilty to condemn). So he swallowed his fear and tried not to cough it back up as he approached the dark wood door of Ecli's laboratory.

The place had been built a few years after Ecli showed up, seeing how she wasn't given the necessary levels of concentration—mental or physical, as the whole kingdom now knew the terribly large range of a Firen spell broken loose from its jar—in any other normal abode in the city. From her lab she could cook up anything. Including a bad temper.

He steeled himself silently before laying a hand on the door and gently pushing it open, the hinges letting out the slightest creak. They sounded like a mourning cry.

The doors opened to a semi-circle shaped chamber with tables almost all along the edges, those tables in turn overrun with various papers and ingredients. Cabinets hung above them, filled with glass jars and vials carrying various liquids. Most of which were either bubbling, color-changing, or glowing. And frequently both. The clay floor and packed-earth walls were colored differently in select places, and a vein of stone ran along the left flank - presumably from a failed Earthen spell.

A yellow-colored fire pit sat at the center, crackling as if unaware of Ecli's terrible aura of the day; an upside-down dish on the ceiling collected the smoke it burned and piped it through the metal tube leading through the ground and into the world above. A convenient design. It was a shame it couldn't funnel away the extra heat a color-tinted fire made as a side effect.

The light cast a gold shadow on his face that highlighted his freckled nose and soft face. Golden strands of short, thin hair fell from his scalp in all different directions, looking lightly fluffed. He appeared younger than his age, being fairly short and scrawny and with the wide, green eyes of a cautious child.

"Lady Ecli, I've brought the items you requested..." he called into the room. It carried the hint of an echo. His shadow was framed in gold by the light, and it shone off his eyes as he looked about the room for any sign of the woman.

Ecli did not show herself, which made him all the more nervous. She was usually the first to talk, even on a particularly nasty day when absolutely nothing else could make her any angrier. She would always manage a light smile for him, something that would forever strike him as peculiar. Ecli seemed to do nothing but give. Give magic, give assistance, give a positive demeanor. He internally wondered when that void of loss on her part would strike back.

The thought hit him that she could be out. She had to get out sometime, right? This was probably one of those times. Tenseness instantly dropped from his shoulders like a dropped cloak; he walked across the room with a much more defined bravery. Even if she did have a soft spot, she was still scary when angered.

A shadow of sorts followed him, swishing across the smooth, earth floor as softly as a fluttering moth.

The assistant set the basket of items onto an empty space on the counter, scooping up a few leaf escapees and tucking them back in. They left traces of powder that dirtied the cut-scarred, stain-splattered wood even more.

On a normal day, he would encounter her at some point and be given more instructions; fetching more ingredients, holding something down, the occasional spell practice. But that market visit seemed to be it.

And that was just what he needed. He couldn't take any more orders from Ecli since she had up and gone, and he had a few other things to attend to that day, things he listed up in his head in preparation to leave and boy how he wanted to get away from here—

A cold, unearthly substance crawled up his leg. It pooled halfway up his calf, at the top of his boot, before diving in and submerging his right foot; wrapping around it like a ribbon or a deadly, icy snake.

He had enough time to gasp before a feeling of spikes digging into his skin ensued. They snared him like barbs and jerked his foot out from under him, holding him upside-down before a pair of venomous eyes.

His own eyes widened and he tried to speak. 'You're here, Ecli?' 'What is this, Ecli?!' 'What are you doing?!' Another tentacle wrapped his mouth as it was half-open and gagged the words before they could surface. More needles pricked deep into his tongue.

The eyes were soon joined by a wide, crazed grin. "Well. You came back quickly. ...but ah, what was I to expect from you?"

More brands of the prickling substance—he could now identify it as dark magic—continued to coil their ways around him seemingly at random. His chest, his left wrist, his left knee, his right shoulder. Their jabbing brought a pain that sliced deep into him, but the gag on his face kept his voice locked - incapable of screaming.

"You," Ecli started, walking a slow circle around him but keeping him locked in midair, "a person too naïve to understand what a witch like me intends. A human no more aware of its surroundings than the most blissful, obvious sheep. You didn't notice a thing about my orders, didn't you? What they called for. What they could add up to. What they could result in for you, your obvious self, and this whole unaware town." She paused, silent and seething. "...ah, well. I suppose that's what I like about you normal people. You don't know what's about to hit you until it's an inch away from your skin."

Tears watered in his eyes, fear and pain and betrayal combined. He had been used as a guinea pig in spell testing before. Though with his permission, and with knowledge in advance that they wouldn't do a thing to actually harm him. But this was different. This was the malicious magic he had seen on enemies before. And dear Mirror Realm did it hurt.

The gag began coiling down his chin and around his neck, helping its brethren in encasing him entirely in dark, harming magic.

"You know, I think I'm going to miss you," Ecli muttered with a hint of fake sorrow in her quiet, emotionless tone. "Or your human self, anyways. Can your magicless little mind figure out what I intend to do to you?"

Abruptly, he was dropped. The dark magic, having spiked him in every possible area, slithered off of him and receded into the shadow of Ecli's cloak—hiding from the gold light of the fire. One took a moment to tear off a long strip of fabric from his shirt off, though he was too busy gasping for breath and coughing the taste of magic off his tongue to really care about it.

He wanted to run. To flee. Get help, find a soldier, get away from this witch he had served for so long. But he felt frozen. His limbs wouldn't respond. It occurred to him that the dark magic might have literally seeped into his bones; keeping him tense by its wielder's command.

Ecli kneeled by his side and set an open jar on the ground next to her. She dunked two fingertips in the fluorescent, copper orange liquid within it. "I bet you don't," she teased. "Shame. You won't even get a look down this cliff you're getting shoved over."

He couldn't manage the strength to squirm away as Ecli traced patterns down his side. Lines and dots of a foreign language only magic-gifted people could come to understand, squares and circles to words of doom that he wished desperately to avoid. They felt warm against his skin, like he was too close to the fire.

The witch flicked the remaining potion off her fingers and blew on the words scrawling his side; they hissed with heat at her breath and burned into his skin like a slave band. He yelped again, much more in pain.

Through squinted eyes, he could see Ecli stand up and pluck her mixture from the ground; he noted with distress that it was a rather large container. Enough to embalm words on every person in the kingdom. He also noticed ribbons of coppery light steadfastly wrapping him, starting from the tracing on his side. "Ecli..." he whispered.

"Genesis," Ecli responded, breaking out into mad laughter as she threw the wooden doors opened and slammed them shut behind her.

Genesis blinked tears from his eyes. These were the ribbons of magic that a curse generated, extensions of a powerful magic he couldn't identify. It wove itself in a constricting power over him, pressing on the invisible wounds he already had—where had that dark magic gone? He prayed to whoever was listening that it wasn't permanent...

The betrayed assistant let himself black out, his last image being of his tears getting wrapped by the copper ribbons. They hissed upon contact and left tabby-like marks.