The Witch of Thornvale Chapter 7: A Different Kind of War

The Witch of Thornvale is a literary portal fantasy featuring two distinct characters. It allegorizes Ludwig von Mises’ Six Lessons.

If you missed the first six chapters of my serial portal fantasy, The Witch of Thornvale, you can catch them all right here. Below, you’ll find Chapter 7, where Drake Ridgeback and Eirwyn Starweaver will continue their misadventure.

If you’re a fan of the Six Lessons from Ludwig on Mises, this tale will begin to look very, very familiar to Lesson One.

Chapter 7: A Different Kind of War

Thorns tugged at Drake’s sleeves. Thin vines wrapped around his ankles like the woods meant to drag him under. Each footfall sank into black loam that a recent rain softened. The brush closed in with every step, dense enough to block the sky.

Branches clawed Drake’s chest and slapped across his face. He pushed forward without breaking stride. Behind them, the village receded into the trees.

Eirwyn moved ahead, cloak grazing the underbrush, her stride low and deliberate. Every few paces, she stopped. One hand reached up to the treetops, fingers skimming bark. Her eyes flicked toward the limbs above, tracking sway, reading tension in the branches like a soldier anticipating an ambush.

She turned into the wind, lips parted, as though listening for voices that traveled on air.

Drake followed through the knot of saplings and ferns, breath tight in his chest. The hill sloped upward, the ground unstable with gravel and half-buried roots. He climbed, his sneakers grinding soil into mud.

At the ridge, he exhaled like he’d just finished a marathon. “That place felt worse than war.”

Eirwyn’s toes shifted in the moss. She turned her head partway, just enough for the wind to catch her hair. “It is war.” Her voice struck like flint.

Drake watched the mist drift across the hollow below. It crept low to the ground, easing upward until its moisture wrapped around his shins.

They continued onward, sneakers and bare feet pressing forward into the unknown.

The brush gave way to a jagged stone shale layered in slabs. Moss clung to the cracks and pale lichen patterned the rock. Eirwyn climbed first, her fingers catching edges, each motion fluid and exact.

Drake’s palms braced rough ledges. He pulled himself up beside her, sneakers scraping the stone until he reached the shelf where she crouched. The forest below stretched wide, with mist curling through the canopy. From up here, the silence felt thicker.

Eirwyn sank to the ground, knees folded tight to her chest. Her breathing slowed in rhythm with the wind whistling across the ledge. She leaned against a tilted stone slab, eyes scanning the sky through the twisted branches overhead. The slow grind of survival unwinding, one breath at a time.

Drake lowered himself beside her, back to the rock, elbows propped on his knees. Sweat glued his Sabres shirt to his spine. His heart slowed from a gallop to a crawl. The climb drained him, but not nearly as much as the silence between them.

Eirwyn reached for the clasp at her collar.

The blue material came loose with a soft snap, falling open just enough to reveal the edge of her ribs. Her hand slipped beneath the fabric, fingertips brushing something dark beneath the skin.

Drake turned toward her, words half-formed.

Then he saw it.

A brand. Faint, but brutal. A jagged rune carved just under her left side—blackened, split by scar tissue. The lines didn’t match the neat etchings from the shop mirror. This mark looked torn. Botched. Like someone had tried to break her and missed the kill shot.

She rubbed the scar like it itched. The motion looked automatic, as if her body had memorized the pain.

“Malcor’s people nearly caught me once,” she said, voice low. “I escaped.” Her fingers traced the edge of the rune. “Most don’t.”

Drake stared, chest hollowing. His words caught in his throat and stayed there.

“My parents hid me in the root cellar. They told me to wait until morning. Said they’d come for me once the sun touched the garden wall.” Her lips pressed together. “I heard my mother scream first. Then my father. I didn’t leave the cellar until the next day. I stepped over their bodies.”

Drake shifted against the stone. The cool rock pressed against his spine, anchoring him.

“They set fire to the place. Not to burn it down like they usually do; just to smoke me out. When I was forced out, they grabbed and tried to brand me, but I fought them off.” Her hand left the brand and dropped to her side. “I’ve been moving ever since, with no full nights of sleep.”

A breeze picked up, pulling strands of hair across her face. She pushed them back without thought. “The worst part isn’t the running. It’s the waiting. The wondering which stranger’s going to turn me in. Who watched me too long, and who saw the glow when I risked some magic.”

She turned and her eyes met Drake’s. “People think war is armies, banners, and blood in the dirt. But it starts quieter than that.”

Drake leaned forward, elbows on his knees. The fire in his legs from the climb still burned, but his body barely registered it.

“It starts when survival becomes guilt. When staying alive means leaving others behind.”

Drake’s eyes lingered on the rune, then he looked away.

He sat forward, arms resting across his knees, fingers curling into the creases of his shorts. The lichen on the stone beneath him flaked under the weight of his sneakers. Mist drifted past the ledge, tugged by a wind. The silence pressed harder now, no longer a reprieve but an expectation.

He stared past the tree line, past the twisted branches and the thin gray horizon bleeding into the canopy.

“My world has all the tools,” he said, voice sharp and low. “Every device and platform. Instant access to more information than you could process in ten lifetimes. We’re drowning in it, and no one uses it.”

Eirwyn turned, slow and deliberate, cloak slipping back across her shoulders. Her knees tucked close to her chest, arms looped tight. The brand across her ribs vanished beneath the fabric again.

Drake exhaled hard through his nose. “You speak out, and the algorithms bury you. You question anything, and they shove your face into a wall of noise until you fold.” He rubbed the side of his jaw, fingers catching against stubble roughened from sweat and cave grit.

“They don’t need enforcers. They have metrics, ad dollars, and social shame. You lose your job for wrongthink, you get flagged, shadowbanned, and de-platformed. In some places, your bank will cancel your account.” His voice cracked at the edge with raw and sour frustration. “They don’t send men with swords. They just flip a switch.”

Eirwyn blinked slowly.

Drake leaned back against the stone, spine scraping moss from the wall. The cold bled through his shirts.

“I started a blog. Under a pen name. Wrote about the things no one wanted to touch—real liberty, actual decentralization, and what happens when you let institutions define morality.” He stared at his hands. “It took off fast. People started reading, sharing, and every time I logged in, I thought about using my name real name. One they’d recognize from my sports writing.” His knuckles whitened. “But I didn’t. I kept using the name Sion Fawkes. A voice behind a wall. It was freaking cowardice.”

Eirwyn shifted her weight. The stone cracked faintly beneath her heel. She watched him, eyes scanning his face, measuring something behind the words. “You still chose to say something.” Her tone cut clean, like a blade honed against truth.

Drake looked over, and caught the fire behind her stare. The kind that doesn’t burn the skin—just the excuses.

He looked away first. “I could afford to. That’s the part I hate the most.”

A single raven cried from somewhere below the ridge. The sound echoed upward, hollow as a threat left unanswered.

The dying sun peeked from behind the clouds through the gap in the trees and cut sideways across the ridge, bleeding through veils in streaks of blue and silver. The light sliced—cold and sharp, dragging long shadows across the stone outcrop where Drake and Eirwyn sat.

Drake rested with his elbows braced on his knees, eyes locked on the gnarled forest below. The quiet rustle of leaves, the distant cry of birds shaped like nightmares, and the wind carving its path through branches like it had somewhere better to be.

Eirwyn’s cloak fluttered behind her. She stood, one foot braced on the rock ledge, arms folded across her ribs. Her toes curled slightly into the lichen-streaked stone as she looked out, not like someone appreciating the view, but someone tracking what might try to catch her next.

Drake broke the silence first. “Your world shackles the body. Mine shackles the mind.”

Eirwyn turned, slow and deliberate. “You said your people live surrounded by light. With tools to see the truth. And yet…”

Drake’s lip twitched. “They look down at the chain and call it jewelry.”

Eirwyn stepped down from the ledge, her feet scraping over loose stone. She crouched by a knot of exposed root and ran her fingers across the bark. “Here, the Crown brands you. They come with steel and fire. Everyone sees the threat, and knows what it costs.”

She turned her hand palm-up. The scar along her ribs caught the light again as her cloak shifted. “In your world the cage is invisible. That makes it harder to break.”

Drake stared past her into the forest, brow furrowed deep. His voice came tight. “Here, they beat your body. There, they buy your soul.”

Eirwyn rose, hand falling to her side. Her cloak flared slightly in the wind, the blue material stained at the hem with moss and grit. She gazed into the treetops, where faint birdsong called like an echo trying to remember its source. “It sounds like they pay in comfort. And they accept the cost because the collar fits snug. Because it doesn’t chafe right away.”

Drake shifted, and rocks rolled under his sneakers. “They say you’re free, as long as you obey. They’ll let you scream—just not too loud. They’ll let you fight—just not where it matters.”

He stood and paced to the edge of the overlook, arms folded across his chest, fingers twitching near the logo stitched across his sleeve. “They built a prison, then handed us the blueprints and told us we were architects.”

Eirwyn’s expression didn’t change. “The conscripts. At least they know they’re slaves.”

Drake took a slow breath, eyes locked on the trees far below where fog drifted. “People back home think submission is civility. They think obeying orders makes them virtuous.”

His voice sharpened, a knife edge dragging through each word. “They stopped farming, stopped building, and stopped fixing things themselves. They wait for the State to solve hunger, hate, and climate. And when nothing gets better, they thank it anyway. Like it’s a god made of policy briefs.”

Eirwyn crouched again, brushing her hand across a patch of dirt. She took nearby branches and merged them into a pile. “Malcor says he protects us. Then he starves towns that forget to praise him.”

Drake turned back. “They say free speech is hate speech where I’m from. But real violence? That’s just unfortunate context.”

Their eyes met. Wind coiled around them, stirring leaves into eddies.

“Fear.” Eirwyn eased herself upward and brushed moss from her knee. “That’s the mortar.”

Drake’s mouth pulled into something too tired to be a smile. “Obedience disguised as virtue. Same walls. Different bricks.”

They stood at the edge of the overlook. Below, the forest stretched wild and tangled, untouched by taxes or tribunals. Somewhere down there, the Crown waited for one of them to slip. Somewhere far away, Drake’s world pulsed with artificial light and silent screens.

A small array of embers ignited from Eirwyn’s fingertips, and a fire snapped low in its makeshift pit, carved into the soft earth beside a cluster of wind-gnarled trees. The flames bit at the edges of half-rotted wood, sparks rising through twisted smoke that clung to the ground. Orange light crawled across Eirwyn’s face as she crouched near the fire.

Drake sat across from her on a flat chunk of rock, elbows on his knees, eyes locked on the fire’s core. The branches throbbed like veins just under the skin—too alive to ignore.

“I don’t want to fight,” Eirwyn said, her voice unwavering. “But running never stops the hunt.”

Drake picked up a stone beside his sneaker and tossed it into the dark. The thunk echoed off the trees like an accusation. “You think people in my world are soft?”

Eirwyn shifted her weight. “They’re slow. But maybe not lost.”

The wind shifted. Leaves overhead trembled. The fire bent sideways for a breath, then snapped upright again. The trees loomed, crowns knotted with black branches that clawed at the moonlight.

Drake looked up, where a few stars emerged through the haze and stared back—clearer than they ever had in Pittsburgh.

Catch Chapter 8 and find out where Drake and Eirwyn end up

This piece initially appeared on The Rogue Scribe.