Monstergirl Witch Arc Pt. 01

Monstergirl Definition: Witch

Old Ermor Medical Classification: Theratofemina Sortiarius (the nomen Maleficarus voted against 127 to 120)

Description: The Realm of Monstergirls and their essence called Demon Energy can have strange effects on humans. Used pragmatically by dark elves to control, satisfy, calm, and heal their human slave population, the monstergirl demon energy can have other unforeseen effects, such as transforming human women into succubi if the victim is overloaded, giving them temporary or permanent monsterish mutations, or even changing human women into monstergirl species according to temperament and nature. Rarely used due to being a monstergirl dooming the person into consuming human essence throughout their lives, this subtle variation of mamono, namely "Witch" is barely tolerated in human lands. They are often hunted in big cities but respected and feared in isolated villages.

The Witch.

A normal Human female using magic is *not* a witch, and killing one is considered murder even by the most xenophobic, monster-hating Lescatian polities: everyone has standards. Ever since the Monstergirl Transformation event cast by Agrat to save mankind by tying the fates of monster folk to humanity, witchdom has become something entirely different.

Extensive magic use has its risks, the myriad waves of mana across the planet correspond to many concepts, from mundane to profane, from erotic to prudish. Therefore, human lands and laws tie magic to strongly regulated schools, rituals, and elemental devotions.

Sorcery not adhering to the laws of Ars Hermetica written by the Lescatian Empire, or its global equivalents like Zhong Guo's Five Elements, or Bharati Sadhana practices are dangerous: such unorthodox sorcery practices (derogatorily named "witchcraft") tap into unregulated paths of magic, some of them tied to erotic arts and Agrat's manipulation of sexuality, life-strands, and gender. And eventually, the human women using them become slowly "corrupted", changed with uncontrolled, chaotic energies of ether touching, or skirting Agrat's Global Sexual Monstergirl enchantment. Men become warlocks, derived from the old Ulmisch word for "deceiver" and get treated with the same hostility as witches.

Said human women may lose their humanity, waking up one night as witches, or may deliberately become one.

The Monstergirl Empire of the Reik embraces these women as equals and gives them full rights, allowing human women in their lands, even slaves and prisoners to study for joining if they wish. It takes a studious, sexually libertine, yet disciplined mind to become a witch, so many prisoners of war cannot, or will not consider; even slave labor is preferable to losing humanity for some. Such sorcerous mamono stay in the Reik, use human essence by having sexual intercourse with men, or siphon essence from prisoners and overweight slave women for a quicker method, the latter being beneficial to both if the witch has no qualms about buying slaves from dark elves.

Since they are the closest to baseline humans, some charitable and kind witches venture and stay near human lands to help their fellow once-upon-a-time-kin, often in terms of herbology, apothecary arts, and potions. Always hiding from clergy and Inquisition who hunt demon energy presence relentlessly, witches pity and dominate ignorant peasants who need a healing potion, help in childbirth, or other medical issues about women.

After all, ignorance and fear lead to hatred. Perhaps "the witch", an old word for "wise woman" may alleviate it in a hamlet overlooked by human feudal reach of healers. And perhaps, in some generations, the "Wyche" may be tolerated, or at least, understood.

*-*-*-*

Anon remembered the ugly duckling. Once upon a time, the village had a newcomer family. An ugly, intelligent, yet kind daughter came with them. Anon thought she was somewhere between six and seven years old, ignorant peasants never having counted the children's ages. She was clever, yet awkward, slightly hunchbacked, and had a hole on the right side of her mouth.

They had cast her out of the village for being a bastard, an ugly girl with a big nose. Boys and girls loved to pelt her with rocks and fruit. The village treated her with disdain, little more than a slave, and beatings were common.

Anon hated it. When he tried to interfere, he was also beaten and bullied.

Not many can accept in the world that children can be monsters, perhaps more monstrous than the Elves, Dwarves, Gnomes, Lamia, Arachne, and Dark Elves they detested.

She didn't last when her parents disappeared. One day she was gone, some say dark elves took her, or even the villagers sold her to the wandering dark elven lady who looked down on humans yet visited them occasionally with her orc and Red Oni bodyguards to trade. Anon knew the village sold criminals, widows, and orphans to her to be slaves.

Some solidarity for humans it was, claiming to be anti-monster yet sacrificing their downtrodden to monsters.

*-*-*-*

It had been two decades.

Anon was a grown man now, yet the village's ever-not-so-present healer was surprisingly not around. Who would bother with such a village after all?

He needed a potion for his ailing mother, who couldn't stop coughing. It is unnecessary to discuss the anxiety and pain following such a sickness in Anon's household, nor to describe it.

And he had learned that there was a "Wyche", a "woman-who-knows", who had arrived from the West, cavorting with devils and monstergirls, who became like them, lewd, beautiful yet "evil".

They said she charged people of their souls and lifetimes for power, for magic, power, or eldritch medical powers.

Old women and spinsters spat and made signs to avert evil when he asked. So he set off into the forest, with his leather militia armor, a short sword, and what little money he had, to look for her.

Anon wandered for a long time, following the tracks of secretive women scurrying home from a particular trail clutching potions and poultices. Women from nearby villages passed him by, faces covered. He could swear some were the women who scorned him for asking about a "witch"

Hypocrites.

Shaking his head, he kept walking, and by dusk, had found the "wych"'s lair.

It was a house, set in a clearing after passing what seemed to be a mountain of brambles and tight treelines which seemed to hide a glimmer of light. Anon pushed the last branches aside to see a clearing that seemed magical.

Anon found a hut with what seemed to be chicken legs sprouting from its sides which seemed to be curled up as if the house was a roosting hen, surrounded by patches of fluorescent mushrooms, wisps, and tiny sculptures of gnomes, surrounded by a wall of trees that seemed to be almost alive, acting much like a curtain.

It was peaceful.

Surely that wasn't a witch's dark home?

Were witches even dark?

What were they? Healers? Traders of magical artifacts?

Anon had to know. There was a witch, a "Wyche", or in old human tongue, "Woman-Who-Knows", and her abode was right before him. He approached gingerly, with nowhere to hide, all he could do was avoid windows' lines of sight.

Quietly crawling, for there was no open door, no light saying "open for business" he decided on sneaking in to take a peek.

Anon reached the outer wall of the witch's hut, and very quietly, raised his head to line his eyes up at the bottom of the window to look inside.

The living room was lavishly decorated and had many small vials, beakers, and bottles lined up in cupboards.

In one corner, he saw the witch.

It was a small woman, wearing an oversized, black wizard's cap...

...

...and not much else.

She was dressed either like a luxurious prostitute, or a noblewoman ready for a tryst with her lover. It made no sense: she lived in the middle of the forest amongst ignorant bumpkins, ripping them off for magical potions and poultices, often about childbirth, health, and sexuality.

The witch lounged on a strange, wide divan, her back turned to him. The furniture had no armrests on either side, and a small table before she had a book, a bowl of what seemed to be snacks, and a small candle set under the metallic teapot sitting on a small silvery pedestal.

The witch wore a luxurious set of lingerie, her robes and cloak hanging from a small wooden pole with wide beams to prevent wrinkling. Anon could see from her back that she wore a black corset (presumably with a bra), and underwear that was too revealing from behind; he didn't know what a thong was. Probably devil-women of the night wore such revealing underwear to bewitch men.

Her erotic lingerie also had garter belts, if he could name them in his ignorance, straps that held thigh-high stockings to warm her beautiful legs.

And Anon could not stop staring. Her ass was right in his line of sight, round, toned, two cheeks hugging the triangular silken thong as it disappeared between those two, dimpled, beautiful asscheeks like sacred chalices.

If he only knew how the witch's features slowly twisted from amused indulgence to an annoyed frown as she slowly pretended to turn a page, mumbling an arcane syllable. She felt his presence.

*-*-*-*

One of the spells a witch employed was "voice manipulation". It was a handy spell, a combination of aerial and earth spheres to blast soundwaves into a specified location.

Properly chanted, it could also hold a short sentence on delay, to be blasted on command.

So as Anon screamed in abject horror and jumped back, the witch didn't even turn back, chuckling to herself.

When Anon was staring at the witch's beautiful bottom, revealed in all its glory, he was caught unawares as the witch's beautiful, yet incredibly loud voice boomed in his ears, and his ears only, loud enough to make his head ring for several minutes and blur his vision.

"DIDN'T YOUR PARENTS TELL YOU IT'S IMPOLITE TO STARE AT A WOMAN'S ARSE WITHOUT HER PERMISSION, IN HER HOME'S PRIVACY NO LESS?"

With a horrified shriek, Anon flailed around, trying to find out if someone snuck up on her. The witch on the other hand kept chuckling without looking back, ignoring the screaming Anon rolling on the grass outside as she refilled her cup.

She twirled a finger as if drawing a rune and muffled the next blast of sounds, making it more tolerable for his ears.

"Might as well come inside, male. And don't think of running: I can turn you into a frog or a newt. And no, you won't get better."

After an awkward, quiet minute, the witch turned with a bored look regarding the unwelcome intruder. Gesturing with her fingers in an arcane gesture, she started talking to an unseen audience.

"Seriously? Etrigan? Bethrezem? Belial?" She kept addressing things he couldn't see, her gaze focused behind him. "A pervert sneaks into my window and keeps a nice peep-show at little old me and my arse for a good half an hour, and you guys don't even warn me?"

"Sorry!" Came a chuckling, amused male voice from the tree line, as the trees swayed and bent as if apologizing.

The witch kept talking with a resigned voice. "So much for bargain forest daimons. Should have used ruby dust rather than red clay dust with silver, but Agrat's big blue arse, they cost a fortune." She waved a wand in the air, spraying the room with pink glittering magical dust and blowing it outside with a puff.

"Is that because I'm not paying you guys enough mana? Seriously, next time a man like this intrudes, it's back to a tree with squirrels shitting on you!"

"We said we're sorry!" Came another voice from the trees, now sounding hurt rather than amused. "He had no aggressive aura. Not even a pink heart around his crotch-"

"Those creatures can see my...?!" Anon burst into an indignant protest, only to find his voice to go quiet, inaudible even to himself.

The witch frowned, putting a finger to her lips.

"Quiet."

Then she sighed, waving to shut the windows with curtains and standing up to stare at her intruder.

"Don't bother talking until I'm done scrying you." The witch spoke with a smirk and an annoyed face.

Anon's lips froze, his eyes widening.

The witch had a mole on the right side of her cheek close to her lips. Her nose was aquiline, slightly ugly but not too comical. She had a bookish, homely, not-so-aesthetically pleasing face, fit more for a boring clerk or librarian woman in Lescatian Scriptoriums than a mamono.

The rest of her body, however, was the epitome of hourglass beauty, yet showed strength as well, as if she grew up doing hard manual labor before changing her life.

Her expression slowly turned to anger, eyes narrowing with a mild, reddish glow. Her accent was that of Albion Islands, now turning increasingly prominent as she spoke rapidly in anger.

"You kept staring at my arse for half an hour and now my nose? Seriously?" The witch retorted again, her tone closer to starting a screaming match. "I refuse to change my nose, big as it may be..."

...

"Oh, your lips moved." The witch coughed nervously, waving her hands clockwise, and snapping her delicate fingers. "There." She hadn't noticed Anon was trying to answer.

"I was staring at all of you!" Anon indignantly yelped, thrown off-track. "Not just your nose!"

Blundering in a conversation couldn't go worse than that.

"Really?!" The witch replied with a glare, her voice rising in anger as she felt more and more offended at this annoying man's intrusion, with a good mind polymorphing him into a frog and putting him in a jar next to a snake to teach manners. "What other parts did you not like or find too big? My ears? Nose? Chin? Mole on my cheek? Moles on my tits, moles on my pubis? You enter my home, intrude, outside of my working hours where I legally sell supplies to ignorant peasants who tried to lynch me when I was a kid just so their child-"

"Ruta?"

*-*-*-*

An awkward silence filled the room.

The witch's angry posture with her hands on her hips, wand on her right hand flaring as if she was about to cast a spell, deflated like a ripped balloon. Ruta, the once-human-witch, Anon's childhood friend, stared slack-jawed at him, her wand clattering on the wooden floor.

Her angry expression deflated, turning one to confusion, then suspicion.

"Are you some kind of witch-hunter?" Ruta growled, her Albion accent becoming more and more prominent. "Agrat's big blue tits, if you are, I will shrink your cock to the size of a needle and will dump you in a lair of horny manticores."

Witch hunters kept a list of "true" human names of witches to weaken them during fights. Not that Anon knew.

"Ruta...no..." Anon stammered. "I'm Anon, remember?"

The witch squinted, stood straight, and crossed her arms, pursing her lips as if lost in thought. Then, her stare relaxed, realizing the young man before him was someone who stood at her side even for a brief moment. Then her expression turned to one of relief and surprise, and she walked right up to him and hugged him, eyes closed, head on his shoulders, chin resting on his collarbone.

Then her eyes snapped open.

"Oh shit."

When she pulled back, Anon could see the worry in her eyes, biting her lips as if she let out horrible secrets.

"Did I mention..." Her expression was pleading, slightly ashamed.

Quietly, with an apologetic gaze, Anon nodded.

"Yes."

"Moles on my..."

"Yes."

Ruta hissed, rolling her eyes and looking away.

"Right...Um..." She stammered, biting her lips still. Anon sighed, holding out his hands.

"I heard witches can make people forget."

Ruta, smiling, shook her head after a long, thoughtful silence, her eyes shifting as she considered casting a spell. Then her features softened, and Anon could see genuine happiness and friendship in her eyes.

"No. I think...You, Anon, deserve to know it." Her face brightened. "I feel...better now that I told someone." She gestured to the teapot and divan.

"So...Why did you seek me out?" She smiled and snapped her fingers as another divan instantly appeared across her table. Anon blinked: she could conjure furniture in the blink of an eye!

"Tea?"

*-*-*-*

They lounged facing each other, Ruta not even bothering to cover herself up. Moreover, she would often pause the conversation to deliberately turn around and bend over, offering Anon a pillow or an additional bowl of treats while showing off her beautiful arse without care.

He could swear he saw the faint outline of an erased tattoo on her right asscheek. He also saw the thin suntan line across her neck.

"So what happened, Ruta?" He asked as he sipped tea.

"Those villagers grabbed me and bundled me up when my parents died of Spon Plague, told Lady Mali I was an "orphan to get rid of" Ruta spat out the hateful memories. "They sold a child from their village, me, as if."

"Mali?"

"The Dark Elf."

"Oh..." Anon bit his lips.

"So she kept me around as a servant... A slave maid."

Anon looked down. "I am so sorry." His words were bearing bitter sadness.

"Don't be." Ruta sighed. "Aside from the adulthood tattooing and collar, she treated me... quite well. But, humans do what the dark elves don't like to do, so I ended up serving food, cleaning streets, taking care of chickens, and sometimes even playing with their children..." She sipped her tea, sighing.

"I was a hunched, ugly girl. All the slave girls proudly walked in the streets and wore as little as they wanted, but I just couldn't do that. Do you remember how I looked?" Ruta lifted her sad eyes from her tea.

"Yes." The admission had a bitter taste in his mouth.

"The dark elves just shrugged and made me wear what I wanted, but I always was overshadowed, and small. I just didn't feel like..." Ruta was staring in the distance, absentmindedly sipping her tea.

"...and cried. Cried, and cried every night. The Gods made me like this, stunted and ugly..." She sighed. "Then Lady Mali took me to her office: I was afraid she'd beat me. Instead, she made me sit down, cradled my head, and explained all humans are beautiful no matter what they look like, and if I still wasn't alright, she could write me up for heavier work so I could have magic changes done for pay."

Anon looked down, though he focused on listening to Ruta's words.

"So I did everything, asked to do every scut work those ebony bitch-elves wouldn't do. I worked hard until my body screamed in pain and some more. I worked as a hauler in silver mines, cleaned sewers in off-time, and even worked together with Red Oni girls in construction so that I could get more money, tips..." She looked thoughtful. "I sold cotton crafts from plantation scraps after weaving them with fellow slave girls, tried juggling, begging even: I didn't ask Mistress Mali for manumission, I just wanted to be normal and pretty, not a hunchbacked, uneven-faced freak. I couldn't be a prostitute for human sailors who had to sail back to human lands. I was an ugly hunchback, you know."

"Not a..." Anon, now relaxed, in the company of a pretty witch, let go of himself.

He bit his tongue, shutting up very quickly.

"Not anymore?" Ruta smirked, her friendliness deflating a little.

It was one of the moments named "damned if you do, damned if you don't", as Anon looked down quietly, nursing his cup of tea. Ruta sighed, speaking slower now:

"Well, you don't have to say anything. I was crooked, came out of the womb wrong, methinks..." The tea tasted bitter to Ruta, lost in melancholy. "So I had the worst crippling things healed but still was a slave of Lady Mali. At least I was pretty. But I never "fixed" my nose and chin, and never will." She refilled her tea, eyes flashing with determination: "They are what made me, and my medals of honor."

*-*-*-*

Ten Years Ago:

"She isn't a penal slave, is she?" The dark elf mine overseer scratched her pointy ears. "Why is the busting ass like that then? That girl will bring the Anubis inspector on me for "mistreating slaves"."