The Sleeping Forest Witch (1)
The conversation had broken down. From every direction, creatures resembling centaurs—their lower halves fused with tree roots and trunks, their legs transformed into the limbs of four-legged beasts—charged forward. Their armor, their weapons, their appearances, and even their genders were all different, but they shared one common trait: every single one of them wore a face twisted in agony, weeping tears of blood.
"You call killing things like that 'mercy,' right?"
Pinocchia fired a wire rope, wrapping it around the front legs of the lead centaur. As it crashed down, it became an obstacle, causing the centaurs behind it to trip in a chain reaction. She sprinted forward, crushing the heads of the fallen beasts one by one under her feet.
"That crazy bitch!"
Gretel fired an arrow made of pure light, aiming for Caroline, but large leaves floating around the lizard's head acted as shields, deflecting every shot. If the witch had offered to let them go in exchange for Pinocchia, they might have considered it, but the Sleeping Witch viewed the siblings as a greater threat than the mechanical doll and had launched her attack. There was no room for negotiation.
What on earth does she see that makes her think we’re more dangerous than a machine? The shadow hidden beneath the shining starlight? So what?
Gretel couldn't fathom it. If there were a light that shone without casting a shadow, wouldn't that be even stranger? Heat existed, so cold existed. What was the big deal about having a shadow under the light?
I don't know, and I don't care! If they attack, I'll just attack back and kill them! Hansel will take care of everything I don't understand!
She abandoned the difficult philosophical contemplation. For a hunter, the only philosophy needed was knowing not to kill pregnant beasts or those too young. For Hansel, for their future, all she had to do was pull the bowstring, aiming for the space between the enemy's eyes, and drive her blade into those that got too close. Setting aside all doubts and worries, Gretel fired arrow after arrow.
While Gretel burned with focus, pouring everything into the fight, Hansel grew cold, his concentration split between the battle and his own analytical thoughts.
The son and daughter of Robin Hood, warriors blessed by Tinkerbell. What else do we have? What is it?
After parrying the thorns aimed at Gretel with his dagger, he saw a rat with mushrooms sprouting from its body leaping toward them at neck-height and threw his dagger without hesitation. Gretel fired an arrow at the target he’d struck; the creature, already reeling from the dagger, was skewered by the arrow and sent flying into the forehead of a monster—a creature that looked like a giant rabbit, though it was impossible to tell if it had been covered in plants or if the plants had transformed into a giant rabbit.
With that, the latest wave of reinforcements ended. The offensive, which utilized the twisted forest’s disposable monsters, had been a chaotic mix: human-shaped entities, human-plant hybrid centaurs acting as cavalry, and various beasts with bloated bodies or unnaturally sharp claws and fangs.
There were lynxes with strange, mushroom-like growths all over their bodies—creatures that sprayed toxic spores instead of blood when cut, making them dangerous to fight up close. There were hedgehogs hiding behind other monsters, firing needle-thin thorns that were invisible to the naked eye unless they were about to strike. Hansel observed the characteristics of the enemies Caroline sent, analyzing them once by sight and twice by their attack patterns, all while pondering what this "shadow" beneath himself and Gretel could possibly be.
There’s still too little information.
If there truly were some ominous existence lurking beneath them, Robin Hood, their father, might have ignored it because he couldn't bring himself to harm his children. But Circe—no, the returned Tinkerbell—should have noticed. If this were a fragment of the poison from the apple the Snow Queen had fed the world, Tinkerbell, who had faced the Queen directly, should have recognized it and been on guard. Or, perhaps, since the siblings had no memory of her but she claimed to have met them before, it was a level of threat she could afford to overlook, and only this forest witch was reacting so sensitively.
Some detectives could piece together a perfect puzzle from scraps of information, but Hansel lacked that kind of miraculous deductive power and intellect. If he tried to branch out with faulty inferences based on insufficient data, he would only repeat errors and wrong answers until he collapsed. So, he decided to leave it at the realization that a suspicious shadow was lurking beneath their footsteps and ended his ill-fitting detective act.
Now, how do I kill that thing?
Caroline, the Sleeping Witch, was repeating the sequential deployment of troops. A full-scale assault was hindered by the forest's terrain, and it wasn't suitable for striking at the siblings, who fought in a triangular formation that covered each other's blind spots. The arrows and daggers that pierced through the minions' offensive were deflected by the leaves floating around the witch. They needed a change in means or strategy, but Hansel couldn't think of one. So, he asked the piece of high-tech civilization that didn't belong in this world's era.
"Hey, don't you have any other guns or weapons? Like a machine gun that goes rat-tat-tat, or a flamethrower! Or a railgun, or antimatter shells!"
Pinocchia, who had just sliced a man-eating plant—complete with sharp teeth in the center of its petals—in half with a horizontal sweep of her sharpened hand, asked back in disbelief.
"I do not! My role is usually to quietly slit the throats of mages or put bullets in people's heads, not this kind of all-out warfare! And a railgun? Antimatter? What are those?"
"You're the one who should know! You're a futuristic machine that doesn't fit this era, so why is your fighting style a generation behind?"
"Stop talking to yourself and explain it so I can understand!"
Gretel sighed with a pathetic look at the two arguing over such a bizarre topic while facing the enemy.
"Ugh, good for you two, really."
But she didn't raise her voice to tell them to snap out of it and stop the nonsense. It meant they still had the luxury to bicker and spout nonsense. As if to prove it, the next wave of reinforcements stopped. Caroline had been dividing her forces and sending them in turns to avoid having her own minions trample each other, but that seemed to have been a blunder. She had tried to increase the numbers and variety of her troops out of frustration, only to taste failure.
In the end, Caroline decided to change her method. She withdrew the forest folk and chose to step forward herself. Following Caroline’s thoughts and gestures, the countless monsters and twisted creatures retreated, widening the encirclement. As they pulled back, they even cleared away the surrounding trees, rocks, and bushes, turning the area into a wide-open clearing. It was now a vast battlefield—and an execution ground.
The executioners were the siblings Hansel and Gretel, and Pinocchia. The one to be executed was the Princess of the Sleeping Forest, now known as the Witch, Caroline Roselia. Looking at the scene, it felt like a duel watched by spectators in a wide arena.
The tree-lizard Caroline rode moved forward, shaking the ground with every thudding step. It was an entrance into the arena.
"Allow me to introduce myself. I am Caroline Roselia. The last princess and guardian of the kingdom that sleeps beneath the greenery."
"Robin Hood's son, Hansel."
"Robin Hood's daughter, Gretel."
"Geppetto's daughter, Pinocchia."
Pinocchia had instinctively started to say "Robin Hood's daughter" following the others, but quickly corrected herself. It wasn't a lie, as she carried Robin Hood's blood in her outer shell, but that was only something to say when provoking the siblings; in reality, she didn't think of it that way at all. If she could consider the person who gave her life as her parent, she could define herself as Geppetto's daughter, not just a machine imitating a human. Pinocchia resolved herself.
"Robin Hood, Geppetto. I don't know who those people are, but if you are the only flesh and blood they have left, their lineage ends here today."
Her shattered memories didn't recall Robin Hood, the friend of travelers she had clearly known before becoming the Sleeping Witch, nor did she remember the name of Geppetto, who had captured people for all sorts of experiments. The sands of memory revealed only the murderous intent to kill them, and Caroline moved accordingly.
"Be careful. The fire Robin Hood started earlier has gone out. It was burning brightly in the distance while we were fighting, but now that it's out, it must have been extinguished while we were inside the barrier. Unless that witch uses water, she must have used magic or power to overturn the earth to put it out."
Pinocchia didn't have much information on the Sleeping Witch either. It was a matter that went beyond her original orders, so she hadn't been briefed. From what she knew, those cursed by the Witch of the Small Forest often survived, even if they were subjected to malicious pranks, but few returned alive from the Sleeping Witch. Even if they did return, they were crippled—an arm cut off, or their minds shattered. Because most of them ended up like the humans who had been transformed with plants fused into their bodies, or were swallowed up as nutrients for the twisted forest.
Pinocchia quietly whispered her deductions based on the battle so far to the siblings.
"Then, here I come."
Caroline initiated the offensive.
Kugugugung!
Cracks erupted across the earth. From the surface where countless footprints had piled up the soil, down to the depths where plants extended their roots, and even into the solid crust deeper still—the top moved downward, and the bottom moved upward. Instead of the common method of using water to put out a fire, Caroline used the method of burying the entire place where the fire was burning. She exercised that power now to bury not fire, but things that looked like people.