Agatha Harkness's Arc

Chapter 11 of 21

Agatha stepped to the edge of the breathing hole. Pink and green light turned around its rim of fur and root. Alicia was gone. The dark middle waited. Agatha's magic had grown slow since Ursula took her name. Her wards sagged. Her manor no longer stayed quiet. To fix that, she needed her name back. She gripped her candelabra and dropped into the hole. She fell without falling. The tunnel folded around her. Then her feet met wet stone. She stood behind Ursula's shelves, inside the sea witch's lair, where tangled growth hung from the walls and lanterns burned green. Jars lined every shelf. Each held a small light. Each light made a thin, screaming sound. Agatha covered her ears and searched. Her own name would sound like her. She walked the row, listening past the wailing. Near the end, one vial pulsed. She knew its voice at once. It was hers. Before her fingers closed on it, black smoke gathered on the shelf. It thickened into a clinging, dripping mass, like soot mixed with tar. It carried a stink of rot. Ursula's trap. Touch the wrong jar and the corruption spread. Agatha did not touch it. She whispered to the smoke instead, the way she once whispered lies to three courts. "You want the jar beside you," she told it. "The bright one. Take it." Weak as her magic was, a lie cost almost nothing. The soot slid sideways and swallowed a different vial. That light went out. Agatha snatched her own jar and ran. The shelves shook. Ursula's voice boomed through the water above. Agatha climbed back through the folding tunnel, the screaming fading behind her. She burst out into the forest, soaked and gasping, the vial clutched to her chest. She did not wait. She carried the jar to a stone altar deep among the trees. Candles ringed its carved face. Runes glowed along its edge. She had built it long ago for work like this. She pried the vial open and pressed the small light to her lips. Warmth flooded her. Her name came home. She felt her magic snap taut again, quick and sharp, the way it should be. The air around her hummed. Far off, she sensed her manor's wards pull tight and steady, sealing the quiet back inside its walls. Agatha laughed, alone in the dark. Her name was hers. Her wards would hold. Peace was hers again. Then the water in a nearby puddle stilled to a mirror. Ursula's face rose in it, furious. "You took what was mine," the sea witch said. "A thief pays double." The reflection sank away. Agatha stood dripping by her altar. She had her name and her magic. But she had made an enemy of a goddess, and the sea remembered everything.