23 January 2024

“Remind me. Why are we here again?”

Isaac lifted an eyebrow and smirked at his friend. Phillip was currently knee-deep in muck, and the odor of the swamp didn’t help improve his mood. “Didn’t I tell you? There’s been reports of a pair of witches around here. What kind of prince would I be if I let my people suffer such things?”

“No, I get that part.” Phillip grunted as he jerked one foot free. “What I mean is, why are we here? Don’t you have an army specifically to take care of stuff like this?”

Isaac hopped over to another dry patch of ground. “Why? Don’t think we can take care of it?”

Phillip responded with a flat look. “Isaac, we’re fourteen. What, exactly, do you intend to do if there really is a witch?”

For a very long moment, Isaac didn’t respond. “Did you know? This report was very strange. A large number of otherwise credible people have encountered these ‘witches’, with all sorts of strange, almost unbelievable stories. A bald man started getting his hair back, only for a number of local pets to start losing patches of fur. A family spends one year nearly destitute after a visit, only to get a double crop the year after that.”

Phillip squelched another step forward. “Yeah, okay. And?”

“The strange part is, no one can agree on what they look like. Youn, old, frail, stocky… There is only one detail that never changes. One of the witches is closely associated with green, and the other with pink.”