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"Please, please be fast enough," Heila whispered as she released her whip and pulled a vial of concentrated willow bark tea from a loop on her war hat. There wasn’t enough here to serve as more than emergency medicine for a single person or to dull pain for half a dozen people with minor injuries, but she didn’t intend to force the dark, bitter liquid down her opponent’s throat.

She only needed it to serve as a guide for what would come next.

"With power stored in willow’s veins,

Where nature’s mercy soothes all pains,

Let every branch pour forth its heart,

Till gentle cures tear flesh apart,

Let healing’s flood rise swift and strong,

Till peace becomes death’s endless song."

Despite the dire nature of her current circumstances and the deadly threat posed by Ropati and his men, moisture gathered in Heila’s eyes as she used magic that she’d told Amahle she hated learning.

"It’s wrong to use healing this way," Heila had protested when Amahle demonstrated the difference between a using a few small drops of numbing tincture on a feral rat after diluting them in water and the heart-stopping effect of giving the rat twices as much of the pure, undiluted medicine.

"Dead is dead, sugar," the older witch said, using her spider-like limbs to remove the deceased rat so she could focus her attention on Heila.

"There is a line between cruelty and mercy, and it should rarely be crossed, but a man who dies of an arrow to the heart does not envy the man who died from the blow of an ax. Dead is dead."

"But if I use a healer’s arts to kill," Heila protested. "Then who will trust me when I come to heal them? How... how can I grant mercy to my enemies when they don’t need to die if they see me use my healer’s arts as a weapon?"

"One day, you will be a great witch, little Heila," Amahle reassured her.

"Your deeds will be known, among your allies and your enemies alike.

But so long as you prepare to fight the humans and their Church, I doubt they will pay attention to anything beyond the horns on your head and the hooves on your feet.

So pay them no mind and do what you desire. Their thoughts do not bind your hands."

At the time, she wasn’t sure whether she believed Amahle or not, but she was at least willing to learn, even if she privately thought she would never use such magic.

The difference between medicine and poison could be very, very slight and often times, it was simply a matter of dosage that determined whether something would bring about a healing miracle or a deadly curse.

Now, the willow trees in the grove shook, swaying their branches and offering up thousands of tiny glittering motes of energy as she gathered up more than one hundred times the amount of healing essense a man could endure and blew it on a gentle breeze toward the burning cultist.

Defeating a spell like this, for a trained sorcerer, and particularly a sorcerer with the power of wind or flames, would be far too easy.

And yet, because Ropati had opened himself up to the flow of energy from his dying underlings, he was left vulnerable, unable to filter out the toxic overdose that flowed into his pores and smoke scarred lungs along with the energy he received from the minions he’d callously sacrificed.

Ropati had always imagined that when death found him, it would be accompanied by the searing pain of volcanic flames as he offered his body to the primordial flames of the earth, deep within their mountain home.

Yet now that death finally found him, it wasn’t pain he felt, but a calming, blissful numbness that enveloped his body and mind like a warm, cotton blanket on a cold winter’s night.

Power surged and flared, running rampantly out of control as soon as the cultist leader lost consciousness.

The ground beneath his feet seethed and boiled as the soft earth of the willow grove dried out and crumbled away, revealing bubbling, boiling sands of the arena floor, now hot enough to melt and fuse.

Flames engulfed Ropati’s body as he collapsed, his charred remains trapped in the rapidly cooling liquid glass beneath him.

For several heartbeats, the arena held its collective breath, watching as the infernal energies he’d stolen from his companions raged out of control, seeking new vessels to contain them.

Two of his companions, already grievously wounded by Heila’s icy barrage, offered no resistance as that wild energy coursed through their bodies.

The combination of their frozen wounds and their leader’s final betrayal proved too much to endure.

They collapsed where they stood, their bodies withering like leaves on the autumn wind as the last of their life force drifted away like smoke from a snuffed flame.

The remaining five cultists fared better, though none escaped unscathed.

As the stolen power dissipated into the night air, each man slumped to the ground, their skin growing sallow and wrinkled as though they’d aged several years in mere moments.

Their chests still rose and fell with shallow breaths, but the price of surviving their leader’s betrayal had been etched into their flesh, aging them far beyond their years and leaving them too weak to practice more than basic sorcery for the remainder of their lives.

On the first floor, Emmie jumped up and down excitedly while the audience erupted into cheers. "Father, father," she said, tugging fiercely on his tunic. "Can I get another whip? One with nine tailes, like the Willow Whip’s lash. Please father, please, I won’t ask for anything else all year!"

Inwardly, the veteran gladiator groaned. He had faced down countless champions on the sands of this very arena, but against this foe, he felt as helpless as a hornless kit, completely unable to defend himself against thos soft, pleading eyes.

"We’ll see what father can find," he said, reaching out to ruffle his daughter’s hair.

He was certain that within a day or two, the vendors outside the arena would have new replicas to sell.

But maybe... maybe this time he would have to find something less impressive than the chain whip he’d bought his daughter the first time.

Nine tails looked impressive, but without any kind of witchcraft to guide them, it felt like a disaster waiting to happen and he couldn’t bear to see his little hayseed injured while she struggled to learn such a difficult weapon.

"But wouldn’t it be better," he said as he spotted a trio of merchants cheering nearby. They were the first people that Lady Nyrielle had met with yet they hadn’t been invited to High Lady Erna’s private box to watch the fight from the best seats in the arena which should mean that they hadn’t been elevated beyond his means to approach.

"Wouldn’t it be better if father could find a way for you to meet the Willow Whip?" He said, giving his daughter a confident look.

"Can you? Can you really?" Emmie asked, bouncing up and down enough that she was able to meet his eyes directly at the apex of her jumps. "Father, please, please, I’ll do anything, I’ll even..."

"Hush now," he said as he scooped her up into his arms. "Wait until I have results before you offer up something. Come, let me see if these fellows would be willing to make an introduction..."