Reborn as a witch in another world [slice of life, isekai] (ch. 71)
Blurb:
What does it take to turn your life around? Death, of course!
I died in this lame ass world of ours and woke up in a completely new one. I had a new name, a new face and a new body. This was my second chance to live a better life than the previous one.
But goddamn it, why did I have to be a witch? Now I don't just have to be on the run from the Inquisition that wants to burn me and my friends. But I also have to earn a living?
Follow Elsa Grimly as she:
- Makes new friends and tries to save them and herself from getting burned
- Finds redemption from the deeds of her previous life
- Tries to get along with a cat who (like most cats) believes she runs the world
- Deals with other slice of life shenanigans
--
In a few blinks of an eye, there was a massive crater in the ground and something was crawling out of it. A gnarly, disgusting something.
Whatever it was, it resembled a human form only remotely. It had a torso, two arms and legs and a head. And it walked upright. That's where the humanity of that thing ended. Everything else was right out of someone's nightmares.
It had a milky white body that was cracked like ceramic. Golden light seeped out of the fractures, flickering unnaturally. One of its arms was shaped like a massive canon. The other one looked heavy as a mountain--probably the reason why the creature was hunched on one side as it stumbled around.
It's head was like a diamond that was cut at jagged angles. The “face” opening up like a window inside which a prism reflected its light in all directions like a disco ball from hell. A barbed ivory chain that was probably its spine was visible on its back and it seemed to be slowly slipping down further as it kept moving.
Its legs, shaped like massive iron bells, shivered with each step it took. When it screamed, it made my very soul squirm in fear.
The monster hobbled forward, inhuman arms flailing and slamming into buildings with zero grace and maximum destruction. Debris rained like concrete hail. Lily covered me against the lethal downpour like a human shield.
In the meantime, the thing tried to steady itself in its apocalyptic gait, the cannon on its arm fired a bright white light and tore another crater into the ground. I felt a small earthquake rumble under my feet.
As the monster passed us by, my head hurt again. My life should've flashed in front of my eyes at that moment but instead I heard a voice scream in my head: “It hurts!”
I frowned and looked up at the thing that kept hobbling forward. “We should do something to stop it, Miss Elsa,” Lily said, bending back on her knees as if ready to jump into battle.
I nodded. “Summon Opal,” I said. “I want to take a closer look at it first.”
Lily did what she was told and we hopped onto the back of the windcleaver. The familiar launched into the air and flew into the monster's vicinity.
My head throbbed and a shrill whistle kept piercing through my ears. I grit my teeth and focused on the abyss of the monster. It was an unsettling visual. Trapped within the shape of the monster's abyss was a man. Pieces of him, at least.
His head was floating within a gelatin ocean inside the monster’s chest, skewered by a dozen spear-like appendages that held the dismembered skull in place. And that was only the situation with the head. The rest of its body was trapped inside the prism, fixed by the same spear projections. The limbs flailed and the projections moved and that seemed to make the monster's physical form move along with its clumsy destruction.
That was some horrifying ventriloquism on display. One of its arms swung forward and I heard the man's scream in my head again. “Help me!”
Opal reacted with lightning sharp instincts and propelled us out of the way of the attack. I frowned as I realized that it wasn't really an “attack”. It was someone reaching out of the pit of misery, begging to be pulled out.
I told Lily to steer Opal to the rear of the monster. The bare spinal cord visible on its cracked porcelain flesh was slipping further down. “That spine--you think you can yank it off?” I asked Lily.
“I can but I'll need some steady ground to plant my feet on. I can't stand on its back, it’s too unsteady and that golden light that is creeping from its cracks looks dangerous,” Lily screamed back over the roar of the monster and screeching wind.
“At least steer us a bit closer. I think I have an idea,” I said.
Lily signalled Opal and the windcleaver flew in close to the base of the spine where some of its cracking porcelain skin had come loose and the side of one massive vertebrae was exposed. I pulled out the doll that Lily and I had created earlier.
I took a piece out of the leg that was made from the tallow of the first flame and a piece from the blisterthorn resin on the torso. I kneaded the two together until…something was formed.
I aimed and flung the mixture of two materials at the area near the exposed vertebrae. The porcelain skin exploded on impact and caught fire. Another vertebrae came loose. The spine dipped further down. The monster gave a piercing scream.
“Wow that actually worked, Miss Elsa!” Lily yelled, astounded. “Wait, I think I have another idea. Keep doing what you did just now.”
With that she jumped off of Opal's back. I saw her throw a card and Aquamarine, the seven foot frog materialized out of it. Lily yelled a command and the frog shot out its long tongue to wrap it around Lily's waist, holding her up as Aqua planted his webbed feet on one of the bell shaped legs of the monster.
I realized what Lily was trying to do and kneaded another clay grenade out of the tallow and blisterthorn from my doll and threw it at the porcelain skin, exploding and weakening its grip on the spine.
Lily grasped the spinal cord tightly and yanked it with all her strength pulling it loose. Aqua added more strength to the pull with his own leverage. The spine tore down the creature's back as it dipped out into the posterior. The monster screamed.
I kept throwing more kneaded grenades at the thing. Lily managed to yank the bare spinal cord low enough to make the creature collapse into itself, its huge torso folding down like a quilt thrown on the line to dry. It’s absurd skull pulled back into its own chest like a deformed turtle who tried to retract its head back into its shell and failed painfully.
Somehow, all of that was still not enough to kill the thing. We hadn't managed to decapitate it. We just folded the monster in half to slow it down. The situation was like a nightmare come to life with its bell-like legs holding it upright because of their shape and the monster not being able to progress any further because its own upper half was blocking those legs. And the monster's screams of pain didn't make it any less disturbing.
“Make it stop!”
I winced, covering my ears. I was conflicted on whether I should have let Lily end the thing or should I have just gone ahead and liberate the monster.
The latter terrified and confused me. Last living person I did the liberation ritual on was Oswald. And it gave me a flashback of his entire life. This…thing, I wasn't even sure if it even counted as a “living” thing.
If that dismembered man floating within that deformed body was dead how could I hear his abyss? That reminded me I hadn't used my altered vision on corpses yet. So far, I'd only seen and heard the abysses within the living.
The matter felt more complicated as I kept thinking about it. But I got lucky and heard a voice next to me.
“You made our job easy. We'll handle it from here.” It was a woman in her early twenties. And she was riding a bird as big as Opal. Except, the bird had the head of a woman with jet black hair.
This evening was turning out to be quite eventful for creatures from nightmares. The girl riding the bird, or more like, the girl that stood on the bird's back, full of grace and elegance nodded at me. She had deep violet eyes that were glinting in the night and long locks of dark hair flew out from under her pointed hat.
Another witch.
That's when more of them appeared, flying in through the gaps between the buildings and also the hole that the monster had torn into the ground. Other than the one riding the bird lady (or lady-bird?), all the other witches were flying around on their brooms.
Opal dipped down to land on the road below and Lily walked up to us.
“Was that witch’s familiar…a harpy?” Lily said.
I was gaping at the women flying around on their brooms, quite mesmerized when my eyes happened upon the woman-headed bird again. When the creature made a noise, it wasn't an ear piercing screech. Quite the opposite, in fact.
I wouldn't be lying if I said that it was actually the most beautiful sound that I’d ever heard. Then something clicked in my mind. I shook my head. “It's…it's a siren.”
****
They were witches from the Soulless Sirens coven. As far as I knew they had signed the Regulated Practices Agreement with the government. So in Smokewell's words, they were “dogs on the government's leash.”
But right now I didn't care for any of that. What was unfolding in front of my eyes was even more mesmerizing than what had already happened before.
The witches flew in a circle around the monster on their brooms. While the witch riding the siren familiar flew at the creature from west. The familiar sang its bewitching song and the monster went completely still.
Lily's jaw along with my own went slack.
Then the witch riding the siren familiar raised her hand. She was holding a thin, pointed rod but it wasn’t a wand. She called out to her teammates, “Ladies, A Prisoner's ballad. Now.” Then she waved the rod around.
The witches began to sing. If the siren familiar had sounded mesmerizing. The women sounded like a choir in a heavenly banquet.
Their singing made the air around the monster vibrate. Long golden threads seemed to materialize out of the vibrations, weaving into each other to form an intricate mesh of sound. As the witch riding the siren familiar kept waving her rod the threads flew in patterns that were pretty to look at but also seemed to interlock in perfect geometry.
“She is conducting their music,” I said.
In a few minutes, a mesh of golden threads had trapped the creature inside itself. The witches changed their pitch collectively, their music rising to a crescendo. The cage of golden threads vibrated until it was nothing but a dome of golden light. The monster exploded inside the vibrating prison.
The witch riding the siren familiar finally brought her rod down. The cage disappeared. In its place, remained only the destroyed pieces of the monster that could've levelled half this city in a few hours.
Part of me was impressed. Another part of me felt outshined. Yet another part of me was still not sure what the hell was going on.
The witches turned their attention to us. I felt a lump in my throat. Smokewell's words rang inside my head again, “Dogs on the government’s leash.”
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Posted Sep 17, 2025, 2:22 PM UTC