They came to another space but the air was even darker here. It was impossible to see any detail and everything–whether it was one of their own companions or a rock or a scrabbly ivy root–all of it was reduced to depthless shapes of darkness. The boy fumbled around his person for a flint and steel to make a fire if they needed it. As he did, it occurred to him that the fetch-creature’s original suggestion to burn the ivy out didn’t seem so bad now. Maybe they could set fire to it, even if just to block pursuit? Or would that risk cutting themselves off from escape? If they were in a dead-end and didn’t know it, they might burn to death within the ivy-tangles.
But before he could draw a spark, Caewen’s voice was whispering in the blackness, and a feeble blueish light guttered itself into life in the air. She was working a witching-light and it was hovering a few inches from her fingers. Her eyes shone faintly too with weird-fire, ghostly, flickering. The light of the sword added a little of its luminance to the air as well.
There was no way out of the place. Far off sounds of pursuit still followed, and then there was a nearer thump and thud as if something large were coming towards them through the stone and ivy tangles. Then, a crashing, smash of noise erupted out of nearby ivy and a huge shape emerged. It was skeined in leaves and tendrils of green, and it was lit with ruddy firelight from behind. The thing shook itself off and stood upright. It was a huge, fat she-boggart of prodigious size, with a great, tooth-filled and frowning maw, and yellow-red eyes that were cunning and darting. She wore elaborately decorated rags of rough brown hemp, and had a belt with half a dozen carven stone heads and leather pouches, animal skulls, and other, weirder things dangling from it. Ochre paint encrusted her skin in whorls and jagged lines.
She hissed out a long breath then spoke. “Who’re you lot then?” she husked at them. “Who’re are you lot that goes trampling about my stairs and ways?” She squinted at them with one eye and then opened it up hugely until the red eyeball looked fit to pop out of its socket. “Who’re you?”
Caewen raised a hand towards the great creature, and crooked her fingers at it, but the she-boggart pinned her with a sharp gaze–sniggered, as if at a private joke–and spat a single word. There was a thrum in the air and Caewen made a sharp noise as if she’d been stung. When Caewen looked angrily at the she-boggart the creature only smiled and said, “Don’t be a fool. I’ve witching-crafts older and more potent than anything you could dream of.” She eyed Caewen. “Just try another spell if you like. Just try to put a fey-stroke on me, or conjure weird-fire, or a fearsome glomarye, or whatsoever it is you’re thinking of. Just try it. I’ll turn your cantrip back on you and gut you with your own spells. You hear me? Don’t think I won’t do it in a flash. Believe you, me.”
“I believe you,” said Caewen after a pause.