Reborn as a witch in another world [slice of life, isekai] (ch. 85)
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.
--
Chapter 85. The Correspondent
I was still dazed by Lily's smile of admiration when Lenora walked into the kitchen. She didn't look like someone who had slept through the afternoon. Her eyes didn't have a hint of tiredness in them. And the rest of her face was taut with resolve. “I've decided,” she said.
Lily and I frowned.
“I'm going to learn witchcraft,” she said.
My frown disappeared and I looked at her, dumbfounded.
“I'm glad you came to a decision,” Smokewell said with a hint of pride in her tone.
I felt like I'd entered the theater after the interval. “What's going on?” I said.
Smokewell explained to me. Lily and I gasped and turned to Lenora. “You have malice in you?” we said in unison.
The woman blushed as if we had just caught her on a secret date with a lover. “I just found out,” she said.
“Don't you think you should take some time to think about whether or not you want to become a witch?” Lily said. “Madam didn't start training us formally until we were sixteen. Before that Miss Elsa and I were just allowed to mess around with witchcraft.”
“She is going to do the same,” Smokewell said. “She isn't even in the initiate echelon yet. She won’t be considered a witch until she breaks into that threshold.”
Lenora looked at the cat disappointed. “You mean I won't be able to punch through steel like Lily or summon shadow servants like Elsa?”
“Not yet,” Smokewell said, deadpan. “And we don't even know what your malice is yet.”
“Well then, where do I begin?” Lenora asked nervously.
Her nervousness morphed into a look of distaste as Lily and I handed her our notes that Smokewell had made us take since we broke into the Initiate echelon. “This is what witches do? Study?” she said with a downturned mouth.
“Good luck, Nora!” Lily said excitedly.
While Lenora warily eyed the bundle of notebooks we had handed to her, I stepped aside, making my way to my room. “I'm going to be heading out for a bit. Something important to take care of,” I said.
--
Beth Lewis was a bartender at a cheap public house downtown named Vash's. I knew her because I had gone searching for someone exactly like her. Sweet but rational, helpful but cautious and always in need of money. I used to infiltrate her workplace and sit at the bar, staring into my glass of gin and stealing glances at other patrons to eavesdrop on their inner thoughts. I found more than a few sad sacks, down and out on their luck and trying to drown their miseries in booze.
I had almost given up on my search one night when I was the last patron left. I was starting to consider going to another cheap public house but I decided to stay for one last drink. And the bartender didn't give me a cold look but a smile and poured me another gin, even though it was almost closing time.
She had short sandy brown hair, green eyes and button nose. No matter how hectic the night got, I'd barely ever noticed a crease on her waistcoat nor a stain on her white sleeve. And even though she looked only a couple of years older than me, she wore a wedding ring on her finger.
Of course I had asked her about it, “So does your husband come to pick you up after work?” I gestured at her ring.
She had given a nervous chuckle and stared at the wedding band. If only he'd cared enough to not leave, she had thought before giving me her polite, professional smile and saying, “No he doesn't. I live close by so I don't have to trouble him.”
I smiled at her calmly and nodded. It seemed like a story as old as time. The man had left to buy milk long ago but the woman kept wearing the ring so she could keep the other knights in shining armor at bay. I said, “I'll get going now. Or I'll have to pay my son's caretaker more for staying longer.”
“Oh, you are a mother?” she said with a look of surprise. Probably got knocked up young like me, she thought.
I held back a grin. There it was. Single mother, serving drinks in a not so good part of the town. “Of course,” I said. “The little demon has kept me busy ever since she was born.”
“Oh, I know what you mean. But children are still a blessing,” she said as she escorted me to the door of the public house.
Our footsteps echoed across the empty building. I paused a few feet away from the door, my back was still turned to her. “Beth,” I said, “I'm looking for someone to do a little job for me.”
“Job? Of what kind?” she said.
“Something really simple,” I said. “I'm ready to pay a thousand steambolts for it.”
I saw her surprised reflection in the plate glass door in front of me. A thousand steambolts?!
“You want me to find someone for you?” she asked cautiously.
I turned to her. “How about you do the job for me?” I said.
“Me!” she blurted louder than she probably intended. This doesn't seem right. No job that pays that well can be safe.
I grinned and pulled out a pouch from my reticule. “Five hundred steambolts,” I said and handed it to her. “You'll get the remaining five hundred after the job is done.”
She hesitantly took the pouch and peered inside and saw the glinting steambolts from within.
“W-What is the job?” she asked nervously.
“You'll have to receive some letters for me,” I said. “Next time I come here, I want you to hand it over to me. Due to some circumstances I can't really correspond with some people directly. Would you be my correspondent, Beth?” I asked.
“O-Of course!” She nodded eagerly. Receive letters for 500 steams? That's two weeks of rent for me!
“I'm grateful.” I smiled and walked out.
After my last encounter with Hopper, I was feeling wary of using him as a means of communication with my clients. I needed a correspondent who knew as little of my job as possible and was loyal to money without being greedy. Also, she hadn’t seen my real face because I only ever met her with the enchanted mask on. So Beth seemed like a good candidate.
And she had done her job well. She hadn't asked any needless questions and kept our transactions discreet.
Vash's public house was nearly empty when I walked in because it was still just afternoon. Beth smiled at me as if I was visiting for the first time. I asked for a gin and a paper napkin. She poured me my drink and slid the paper napkins which concealed an envelope under them. I finished my gin, paid for it, discreetly grabbed my envelope and left a pouch of five hundred steambolts as a tip for Beth's service.
“Visit again,” she said as I walked away.
--
The letter was from Eugene Cuthbert, a steel tycoon in the small town of Ironwatch. Sydney Canning's friend and my latest client. Cuthbert was facing problems back home.
A bunch of thugs had appeared in his city and were slowly gaining notoriety by armed robberies, murders and had recently dipped their toes in the business of extortions and blackmail. Currently Cuthbert was their main target. And he wanted me and my friends to deal with the gang.
I opened the envelope on my tram ride back home and read the letter. It was short and sweet and didn't beat around the bush.
They have threatened to storm into my house and hurt my wife and daughter. Are you even going to help me or not?
I sighed and folded the letter and slid it back into the envelope. I'd been meaning to help Cuthbert sooner but there had been two problems in his complaint. Firstly, the gangsters had never been reported to the Internal Police in Ironwatch. Because the police got a cut from everything that the gang made.
Secondly, the gang also had guns. In Ravenwind, there were only two ways of getting your hands on a gun. You either go to a black market or you become a devotee of the Temple of Steam Elemental--if you advanced to a certain level of devotion in the eyes of the temple, the temple granted you a gun.
Since the gang was fairly new, it was obvious they couldn't have gotten a gun from the black market. But the fact that they were devotees of the Steam Elemental and their partner in crime was the Internal Police itself made them a different kind of formidable.
I'd received Cuthbert's first request for help a week ago. I wasn't really well equipped to go up against gun totting bandits. But now that I had the curse channeling paper dolls, I could finally deal with the problem in Ironwatch.
When I arrived back home, I went straight to my room and pulled the dolls and my hexonomicon from my reticule. I titled a page as ‘curse channeling dolls’ with a crowfeather quill. And under the title I wrote four sub-headings:
The head.
The arms.
The torso.
The legs.
Then I drew the enhancement ritual pattern on the floor with my ritual knife and placed the dolls and my hexonomicon in their respective slots within the pattern. “I yearn for the knowledge to command the walls that surround me. I yearn for the knowledge to command the ground that I walk on. I yearn for the knowledge to command the roof that hangs over me…”
I kept chanting as I circled the ritual pattern three times while bleeding a single drop on the dolls each time. After the last circle was complete, I bled on the pentacle on my hexonomicon. The ritual pattern glowed a bright orange. The dolls caught fire but didn't turn to ash. They turned red instead.
The blood I had dripped on my hexonomicon had disappeared. And smoke rose from the pages of the closed book.
I opened the smoking book and checked the page titled curse channeling dolls.
Under each sub-heading, new words had appeared.
PRIMARY SPELL: ………
The ritual had been a success. Before I'd enhanced the dolls, I would've needed to tear each body separately to activate their powers. And every body part had the same activation spell.
But now that the dolls were enhanced, I could activate the dolls in my vicinity without having to manually touch. And they were easier to use because every part of the doll's body had a separate activation spell.
I picked up my crowfeather quill and began to fill the blank space in front of “primary spell”.
The arms of the doll formed weapons out of the surrounding when activated. The legs hindered movement of the target. The torso of the doll was most destructive because it would kill the target through explosions from the surroundings. And the head had the most unique attack because it involved illusions.
I wrote an activation spell for each and shut the hexonomicon with a satisfying thud. I slid the red paper dolls back in my reticule and walked out of my room.
“Lily, grab your gear. Madam, we are leaving in a couple of minutes,” I called out as I came down to the living room.
The girl and the cat arrived in less than a minute.
“Where are we going?” they asked in unison.
“Ironwatch,” I said. “To finish an overdue job.”
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Posted Dec 19, 2025, 6:10 PM UTC