Wren the Fox Witch

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As she entered the decaying church, Wren’s footsteps echoed across the empty chamber, and her shadow melted into the darkness. She stared up at the tall gray columns webbed with cracks and grimed with ice and bird droppings. She looked left and right at the dimly colored starlight falling through the broken stained glass windows depicting men in strange armor and women in strange dresses, all kneeling in prayer or peering up at the shattered sky. And all the while, the foreign words and names whispered in her mind with their own exotic flavors and magic.

Europa. Vlachia. Targoviste. The Church of Saint… someone or other.

She gently ran her fingers over the arms of the long benches covered in scraps of wet paper and clumps of dirty snow. At the far end of the church was a raised platform with a naked marble altar dappled in shadows, and beyond it stood a tall statue of a man between a woman and a boy, all in gray stone. Black shadows clung to the rafters overhead, a cold breeze sighed through the broken windows, and a thick carpet of aether mist glided across the floor.

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