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@anne_the_noob14  @urwen-starial

Alright, here is the first half. Enjoy!
<p style=”text-align: center;”>He Will Come</p>
                The prison of Tyastin city was neither particularly kind, nor particularly cruel, but of course, like with all prisons, everyone of sound mind preferred to steer clear of it. It stood just outside Tyastin city, a lone stone structure encircled by a deep, wide moat.

Guards marched along the ramparts, throwing an occasional glance down at the murky waters that guarded against an all-too-easy prisoner escape. The city could not afford to supply the prison with magic-using guards, though it certainly would have made the prison much more secure. However, it did hire just one magic user to live at the prison and put his abilities to the task of discovering and preventing prisoner mischief.

The normal guards, when they heard that a magic user was coming to serve at the prison, were confident that he would be an otherworldly, off-in-the-head nut with spiritual face paint.

“If he torments us for his own amusement,” one superstitious guard grumbled, “I will slice his blasted throat in his sleep.”

“This isn’t last century,” one of his friends reminded him. “Magic users are not evil— at least, not the majority of them.”

“And the unpleasant ones are witches and necromancers,” another guard chimed in. “They usually just sulk in their dank lairs, thinking up schemes that they never execute.”

“Since when did you become a loreman of magic users?” the superstitious guard asked crossly.

“Last night,” the third guard quipped.

“Say what you like,” the first guard grumbled. “Do not cry to me when you are lifted through the air like a puppet on a string, or you are unable to draw your sword from its sheath when you need it most.”

One can imagine how surprised they were when they met a man of nearly forty years, with average features and average clothes, who introduced himself as the hired magic user; unless you were told beforehand, you never would have guessed that he had any remarkable abilities.

“It appears that you worried for nothing,” the superstitious guard’s friend chortled. “He who was supposed to be a madman who ‘torments us for his amusement’ is as ordinary a man as my brother!”

After one week of the magic user’s employment, a young guard approached him, granted, with a small amount of trepidation.

“Hello,” he said bluntly. The man gave him a friendly smile, and replied, “Greetings. What is your name?”

The young guard replied, “Owl.”

“‘Owl’?” the man repeated, smiling again. “Strange name. My name is Eleor.”

Owl smiled, relaxing a good deal; so the man was as normal in personality as he was in appearance.

There was a slight pause in the conversation, until Eleor said bluntly, “There is a witch prisoner coming in today.”

Owl started, and exclaimed, “A real one?”

“Of course, a real one,” Eleor snorted. “And it is witches, not wizards, that have the exotic appearances.”

Owl asked, “When is she coming?”

“I already said ‘today’,” Eleor replied, and pointed down at a road leading to the prison. “Should I have said ‘right now’?”

Owl peered down, and saw a wagon with an enclosed metal compartment quickly approaching the moat.

“You are a magic user!” he exclaimed. “How else could you have known that the witch was coming just now?”

Eleor, amused, suggested, “Mayhap, the prison manager told me that they were bringing a witch in at the tenth hour of morning?”

He patted Owl’s shoulder, grinning, and climbed down the stone steps from the ramparts. Owl blinked after him for a moment, surprised.

~

Owl, along with Eleor and another guard, was appointed to guard the witch. Many thought that Owl was too young for so important a job, but those who knew Owl best fiercely insisted that he was no child, and he was just as capable as any other guard.

When Owl took his post in front of the cell, he caught sight of a shadowed figure, sitting bolt upright in the back of the small stone room. Chills ran up his spine and through his fingers, and he felt grateful that Eleor was present.

The magic user stepped right up to the cell door, held up his hand, and murmured a few unfamiliar words. Owl blinked as he felt something; a rippling pulse, a bizarre cross between physical and mental, was the only way he could have described it.

The figure in the cell abruptly fell onto its side, and Owl shuddered as he heard bouncy, high-pitched giggles.

“Oh,” a feminine voice chuckled, “you are a good wizard. So strong.” Another string of bubbly titters.

Eleor stood next to Owl, and said quietly, “She is now unable to utter any word in the draconic language. Should she try, she would find herself quite mute.”

“He’s so clever!!” the ever-obscure witch exclaimed. “Tee-hee-hee-hee! If I can’t speak draconic, I can’t make spells, and I can’t escape! And that is a very strong spell. Isn’t he such a strong wizard?”

With startling abruptness, she threw herself against the bars of her cell, and the torchlight shone on her. Owl stared.

Almost everything about her was varying shades of white. Her long, unbound hair was as pure white as a cloud under the full blast of sunlight, her skin was a not-so-bright shade that was closer to the matte color of milk, and her wild, staring eyes were, in fact, a delicate silver. Even her dress, which was torn, burnt, and dirt-smudged in all places, had once been white.

The only thing that was not white about her was her thin lips. They were a sinister dark red, as if she had used ladies’ lip cream -or blood- to paint them. Those lips were pulled back in a wide, ominous grin, which she directed at Owl.

“But,” she said, still happy as a child on Hollyway day, “your wizard is no match for him. Ohh-ho,” she guffawed, “when he comes to rescue me, he will smite you all with his fast thunder, and his weapon of death!”

She giggled at the thought, and Owl glanced at Eleor for help.

“She is rambling,” Eleor murmured. “The kind of magic she uses broke her mind. Wizards do not dabble with evil demons and fouler magic, while witches and necromancers do. As you can see, it has an effect, on both mind and body.”

“But it was worth it!” the witch exclaimed, and poked her face through the bars as she chuckled. “I am white, so, so white, like sea foam! But I’d rather be white than not have him.”

“Filthy witch,” the second guard muttered. “Chances are, she’s talking about the Underlord.”

“Perhaps,” Eleor murmured, gazing at the prisoner studiously.

“I loved him from the start,” she stated proudly. “He was sad, so lonely when he came, but I loved him, and then he loved me!! He loves me so much, he will come and smite you all with the power of Xenox!”

She dissolved into giggles once more, and the guard, clutching the hilt of his sword, exclaimed passionately, “Blasphemy!! She defiles the name of Xenox with her heinous words!”

“Stay your hand,” Eleor warned him. “She might be speaking the words of a foolish girl who tampered with something she did not understand. Or she might be speaking of a real, flesh-and-bone magic user, a dark one at that.”

Owl prompted, “And you think that he will come to rescue her, just as she said?”

“It is difficult to tell,” Eleor sighed. “Again, she might be rambling, but we cannot take that for granted. We ought to exercise caution until her execution.”

“Execution?” Owl repeated.

“Aye,” the other guard grumbled. “She is responsible for the deaths of sixty innocent lives, maybe more. Thank Xenox that she’s going to be executed.”

“Oh, I’m not worried,” the witch said airily. “He will come.”