Another Haunting By Yva.  Maybe she’ll fill us in on her creative process and the nature of Maggie Maunt.
She was a mother now – again, really – with more than herself to take care of. There was a den of kits waiting for her, hidden deep within the recesses of their little burrow. She was a sly thing, and so she chose a place beneath the great oak, where the gnarled, twisted roots would hide the entrance to their sanctuary. Her brood of five was as safe as any forest-born mother could make them.

It was late, the sun was creeping past the horizon, bathing everything in a wash of orange tinged gold. Dusk was for leaving the den, for hunting, and so she abandoned her babies to sweep through the underbrush, her narrow nose pressed to the ground. It was easy to catch the hare’s scent, to follow it to the glade deep inside of the forest. The brown creature didn’t hear her approach, instead nibbling on its meal of grass, seemingly oblivious to the red predator lying in wait.

She slinked forward, her tail low to the ground, waiting . . .

Waiting.

POUNCE.

Her teeth were around its neck as her head worried back and forth. Skin was flayed wide, blood flowed, a bone snapped. Within moment she had herself a suitable meal, a hearty meal even. Her family normally fed on mice and rats; to catch a rabbit was a rare prize – one that would keep them sustained for days.

She lugged the hare back under the cover of shrubs, darting from shadow to shadow, her eyes flicking everywhere. Unless she was careful, larger predators would try and steal her kill. The biggest dangers were the owls, who would wake soon and swoop down with their great wings, their greedy talons grasping for any meat they could find. She’d felt the sting of their claws before, in her back, and she knew better than to risk their wrath. It was best to move before they became a threat.

Luck was with her this day, though, as she brought the hare through the twisting maze of roots and into the foxhole. She dragged it to her babies, opening its belly and offering the succulent meats. They dug their noses in, greedily scarfing down the offering, tearing at sinew and devouring the organs. She joined them, taking her share of the fine meal. It was tasty and fresh and so very delicious. She ate until her jaw was bloodied, until the carcass was picked clean.

She sat on her haunches to clean herself, wiping her paw over her face. The kits settled down into a heap of tired, one furry body piled on top of another, sated and content thanks to the hunt. She licked her fur, pausing to open her mouth wide, a tremendous yawn escaping. Her eyelids drooped. She thought to take the hare out of the den before it polluted their home, but a strange fatigue had settled into her bones, making her weary. She staggered over towards her brood, settling down beside one of the kits, a potent lethargy washing over her.

Sick. SICK.

The knowledge of a wrongness made her lip curl, a rumbling growl starting in her throat. Something was a threat, something like sickness was overcoming her. She eyed the hare, wondering if it was bad meat. Its dead eyes just stared back at her. The desire to move the kits was strong now, to relocate away from whatever was causing The Bad Thing, but she was so tired her head dipped forward. She draped a paw over the smallest of her young, her bushy tail curling around its body.

Move. Move away. Bad thing.

She knew she should, but she was just too tired.

*****

Death in large numbers. My specialty.

She drew another line in the circle, connecting the glyphs with red chalk and music. No, not music, humming. A song. The song, her song.

“Great magic is needed. Greater still if I can . . . “

She thrust the chalk away and stretched. It was growing hot in here, it always grew hot in her ritual rooms, and the office which had once been fine carpets, a finer desk, and shelves of books had been stripped for her work. The rugs were rolled, the desk was now in the master bedroom, placed in front of the cathedral windows to overlook Dalaran. The books were on other shelves in other rooms. She’d made this place a sanctum. The walls were covered in runes and wards, each meticulously placed to optimize the flow of her magics and to keep her safe. Relics and oddities occupied the rest of the space. She peered at a Faceless One’s tentacle, a bone from a frost wyrm, the tusk of a troll shaman, the pendant of a Winterfall High Chief.

“No, no, no, and no.” It needed to be something else, something greater than small trinkets and old, tired foci. She reached instead for her ritual dagger, one she’d taken from a vrykul witch. Its ruby hilt gleamed in the gaslight. She peered at her reflection in the steel – all of her reflections actually. The way the blade was cut, she could see three of her own self in its gleam.

“Jak, darling?”

She lodged the dagger into the wall at eye height and walked into the living room, sweeping her heavy hair to the side. “Would you help me undo this?”

“Hmmm?” He looked up at her from the chair by the fireplace. His feet were propped on an ottoman. His chest was bare, his legs were covered in comfortable pajama bottoms almost the same blue hue as his eyes. A snoring felhound was wedged in the space between chair and footrest, beneath his knees, though he didn’t seem to pay it much mind.

“This bloody dress. Would you free me, please?”

“I suppose.” He put his book aside and padded across the room, taking his time with the intricate laces. His fingers brushed over every patch of exposed skin. “Whenever you wear this I have to help you out of it. Such a chore, really.”

“Laborious, I know. But there’s work to do, so you’ll just have to suffer.”

“Oh? What have you wrought his time?” He let go of the robe, pressing his lips to her bare shoulder. It fell to the floor and she kicked it aside, now wearing nothing save for a black slip that flitted around her knees.

She led him into the room to show him the new circle on the floor, with its red and purple and white lines. There were tiny glyphs in each segment, drawn and colored with painstaking care. She stepped across the outer band and into the center of it. Her fingers flitted and a soulstone appeared, the cold glass a solid weight in her palm. She placed it in the middle.

“Hand me the dagger, would you love?”

He nodded, jerking it from the wall and handing it to her hilt first. As she turned it over in her hands, the blade aimed towards her palm, he frowned.

“Have a care, would you?”

“Of course. It’s just a little blood, Jak. Honestly.”

“Mmm.” He eyed the runework, his mouth forming the old, arcane names of the shapes he recognized. Some he’d helped her craft during Jolstraer’s ritual, and he smiled at the artful weaving of his ways and hers. “All frost work this time?”

“Yes. Looking for a maelstrom, a storm. A witch storm for the Wrathgate.” She pulled the blade over her palm, watching it flay her skin open, all pink and red and white on the inside. Blood filled the wound and then trickled down, slithering over her fingers to drip onto the steel.

One drop became three in the reflection.

Witch storm of ice, three fold the power of a blizzard. Imagine what you could do with fire and arcane. A storm of that proportion would be beautiful, nigh unstoppable.

“Possible,” she rasped, watching the blood on the blade. “So very possible.”

“What is?”

She dropped to her knees, an enormous grin splitting her face. One bloody palm touched the trigger sigil, and the circle began to glow as she fed power into it. She amassed her magic, and with a few carefully uttered words of an incantation, it flared to life, so bright it was hard to look upon.

“Imagine,” she licked her lips, beginning to laugh. Magic flowed up her arms and over her chest, casting dancing lights against the pale porcelain of her flesh. Her back arched as it sizzled along her spine. “This circle integrated with one of fire and one of arcane. Imagine it, the storm and what it could do. Imagine that magic.” The feedback from the circle surged into her, and she collapsed forward, now on her hands and knees, her breathing ragged.

“I imagine that would be impressive, but how?” She swung her eyes up at him, and they were glazed and unfocused. The purple haze swathing her body became blue and white swirls as the shadows gave way to frost and winter.

“Stonemantle and Crownsilver,” she managed, crawling across the circle to him, her bloody palm leaving smears on the wooden floor. “We could do it, we could . . . it’d be . . . “ He helped her stand, and when her knees began to quake from the magic drowning her, he swung an arm around her waist and held her upright against him.

“It’d be what,” he said, sweeping a lock of hair from her forehead.

She pressed her hands to his cheeks, forgetting her bloody palm, forgetting everything but the magic and the possibilities and the man standing in front of her. “Amazing,” she said against his mouth a moment later. “Bloody amazing.”