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Rawiya
“Do you think this was an acid spell, or fire?” Rawiya asks Amity in a whisper, poking a stick into the goopy puddle that’s all that’s left of the melted Maw’s tentacle between them. The two witches squat huddled over the spill, maintaining a respectful distance so as not to breathe in any potential fumes. Amity wearing opaque nitrile gloves that make her tawny skin beneath look a waxy white. Rawiya’s own warm brown hands ungloved; not enough of them to go round, so Amity’s on collection duty. The entire scene cast in an eerie, otherworldly jade from the aurora of extra-dimensional light overhead. Marrowmont’s downtown core a shell of what it was, towers rent and shorn, debris littering the streets there’s been no chance to clean with the Maw’s assault ongoing; the beast never seeming to tire nor slow.
Two days since the Maw slipped free of its cage, and they’re still no closer to definitive answers about how to fight it. Other than the not terribly reassuring knowledge that only the Maidens are immune to the Maw’s hunger – to being absorbed by the Maw like everything else it touches. Which is why the Maidens have been focused on holding the beast at bay, leaving everyone else who didn’t evacuate free to contribute through less physical means. Though the city’s surviving witches have lent their strength to the cause through various spells that seem to have at least some effect on the beast. Nothing strong enough to kill it yet, but Rawiya’s confident they’ll get there with enough research. Her years spent as a librarian before Amity recruited her into the Bell and Candle Book Club coven having taught her well the reward for diligence and tenacity.
“Also,” offers Amity, “did the spell work while it was alive, or after it was severed?” The Wampanoag witch forgetting their safety protocols to scratch at her nose with an errant, gloved thumb. The nitrile gloves meager protection in any case. But the combined covens – united after the death of the Harrow House coven’s head mere hours after the Maw tore its way into their reality – ran out of what little proper protective equipment there was to hand within a day.
Rawiya tilts her head, trying to think over a loud crashing noise erupting from somewhere down the street. “I guess it—”
“Time to go,” comes Hulngal’s rumbling voice from a dozen feet overhead. The not-quite-goddess’s sudden distress breaking Rawiya’s concentration.
