7 Witch Intelligence Agency

"Move forward to space to investigate the real cause of the increased speed of our sun's gradual death."

The immortal king's words kept on reverberating in my mind as I consolidated my artificial body under the illumination of LED light in the main virtual conference hall of the Border 3 Sanctuary.

This place was previously named as Border City 3 by His Highness Roland but we manage to change it over time. Thankfully.

I really don't understand why there should be 'three' when there's no 'two'.

His Highness' lack of naming sense faced a great deal of opposition from the sisters until he finally capitulated with resignation.

To date, Border 3 Sanctuary had developed into a vast modernized subterranean city exclusively for the sisters working under the Witch Intelligence Agency led by myself. The earliest members were our own Taquila witches liberated from the God Punishment Army's husks.

I reminisced the past nostalgically; His Highness was the one who ambitiously developed the organization. However, he insisted that I should run the agency independently to observe our neighbors of different species from different continents, whether they are hostile or not. As what he mentions, "Knowledge is power".

Now I've understood his intentions. With me at the helm, the sisters are more at ease and can easily work things out efficiently. He is very farsighted as usual.

How should I say this?

As a witch, I have always able to sense a crisis when it was coming. I think it is my own sixth sense working. This inherent ability had saved me many times.

This time, after listening to His Majesty's words, the throbbing was intense.

From that, I know it will be different. Not sure it is in a good way or a bad way.

What can I do if the enemy was so strong until we can't beat them?

This time, could His Majesty find a solution with his knowledgeable thinking?

For the first time in so many years, I don't feel confident.

...

"How is it? What did His Majesty say?" A lady in royal blue dress urged. Her hair was long and tied to the back of her head into a ponytail.

Any signs of Pasha's inner turmoil dissipated without a trance from her face. She looked serene as usual again. Uncertainty in a leader will affect the people around greatly.

"Celine, can you please not be so eager? It is very unbecoming of you." Pasha was helpless with her colleague's sprightly attitude. It demeaned their status as the ancestor king's Witch Intelligence Agency's Elder Witches.

Celine blinked her eyes a few times. She snorted lightly and jumped towards Pasha. Pasha did not evade her lest she might really let herself fall and scraped herself.

She knew the frivolous attitude of her colleague. She became so cheerful after they won the Battle of Divine Will, saying now that she was free, she could research whatever she wanted.

Pasha suspected that she was having these episodes due to extreme grief from the loss of the main carrier. She was the most attached to it. She was fragile and seemed like she got a screw loose somewhere.

Pasha heaved a heavy sigh and let the senior witch did whatever she liked.

Celine laughed while hugging Pasha mischievously. She pulled Pasha to one of the two empty seats at the forefront of a big round table in the middle of the hall.

Alethea was already seated and waiting for her with a grim expression.

All three of them sat side by side on one small part of the conference table while the rest of the table was devoid of chairs. The center of the table was hollow. In the middle, a small main "VIRCOF" was fixed on a three feet high steel pillar.

"VIRCOF" was a revolutionized invention that merged a few sigils together. The functions of bridging long distance communication, motion capturing, and 3D-like representation made it possible for them to be connected with all the agents at any time, as long as the invention was charged with enough power.

Obviously, all these inventions were made possible by Celine but the weird naming came from His Highness as usual. He called it in short for virtual conference, whatever that means.

Pasha took a short while to organize her thoughts.

She began narrating the tasks given by the immortal king and his conjectures. Both Celine and Alethea's expression became more serious by the minute. They too, were already aware of the disturbance that happened in the empire. Roland's conjectures made them felt uncomfortable and threatened.

"We must complete this task as soon as possible!" Alethea proclaimed. "We're not doing this for His Majesty, but it concerned the preservation of the witches."

"Then, let's mobilize all of our agents from each continent. This is the time to use our widespread intelligence." Celine suggested.

Seeing both of her colleagues' agreement, Pasha took out a thumbdrive-like device and pressed the glowing red button at the side. A 3D diagram of the planet appeared at the middle of the empty space at the center of the round table.

At each of the planet's continent, three to five red dots appeared on the virtual 3D globe at differing locations.

The three senior witches waited silently in the large conference hall.

They were waiting.

...

Leila was a merchant.

She had been trained into a merchant from the day she took her first step as a toddler. She became a refugee when she lost her parents ten years back from a big fire. Her mentor took her in. She was her parents' good friend.

Her mentor was the one who taught her about the witch nation in Neverwinter, a glorious city for humans in the east. Each day, she was fed with tidbits, trivia, folklore, believes, and history of that empire.

The one that intrigued her the most was the tale of a witty founder of the empire; a Roland Wimbledon.

He was portrayed as a deified human for his long life and extremely intelligent mind. He was even dubbed as the only warlock who had received the Goddess smile upon him. If not, how can he be this awesome.

Leila even heard that this founder used some kind of method to extend the life of his spouse. He even managed to make his spouse to be able to bear a child! A witch bearing a child! It was unprecedented! How miraculous! The tale must be heavily exaggerated!

Nonetheless, in her heart, Neverwinter had become the place of her dreams; she felt connected to it. One day she will surely go there. She hated this forsaken land. She didn't feel belong here, only a heartbroken sadness.

She could see how proud her beautiful mentor was when she was talking about her homeland. She was a human witch, travelling the globe with a merchant's identity.

That's the respectful way of saying it. The truth was, she was more like an arm's dealer and a smuggler.

Contradicting her beautiful delicate face, she had a black belly, a trashy mouth, a stupidly sensitive nose (she spanked my butt for tasting the pudding she hoard in the chiller, damn it, I just gave it a lick on the surface), and a pension for starting trouble.

Shhh! Not too loud! That old witch would've caught her from just thinking about all this.

Leila suspected that her power must be clairvoyance.

Leila kicked the brittle concrete away after she daydreamed for a short while outside of their base.

She hated the air outside; it was filled with the smell of smoke, gunpowder and rust from a prolonged civil war.

She placed her splayed palm on an unassuming overturned flowerpot. A scanning light in the form of a horizontal soft light appeared and flashed past.

"Password?" A soft robotic voice was heard.

"Aunty Helen is a troll." She shrugged and repeated the password nonchalantly.

The rundown half collapsed door opened with a click. She came face to face with Helen who was coincidentally standing at the back of the door with a fake smile plastering her face.

"Ah! Aunty! My beautiful, lustrous, divine Aunty Helen, what can my humble self do for you?" Leila didn't realize her trashy mouth was just the same as her guardian. After all, she learned from the best.

Right now, she can only bootlick the witch until she forgot what Leila said just now. She had been too impulsive yesterday; she was so angry with Aunt Helen until she changed the password to vent.

Aunt Helen flicked her fingers on Leila's forehead in between her bull-like two horns.

"Idiot. You think I will forget just like that?"

Leila grinned ingratiatingly. "People said, magnanimous people don't sweat the small stuff." She tried to grovel herself on Aunt Helen by using a piece of rotten cloth she found on the floor and dusted her Aunt Helen's body.

Instead of cleaning it, she added more dust to it, while making the witch's face twitched.

Suddenly Leila saw a small red light blinking from within Helen's side pocket.

Realizing Leila's attention was pulled towards her side pocket, Helen turned her head to look at the same direction. A surprised expression fleeted her lovely face but soon disappeared without a trace.

"Let's go in. It's getting late."

Huh? I thought she going to beat my butt again before giving me a random chore as a punishment.

"Err...okay." Leila followed Helen into the base timidly.

"Make sure you return to your room immediately and stayed there until tomorrow. Contemplate what you did wrong and how to remedy it." Helen ordered her charge imposingly.

Leila heaved a relieved sigh and followed Helen timidly, two paces behind her. In normal conditions, she would've been punished to do a 24 hours horse stance (who did that in this day and age?), or to mine a kilogram of gold, or to steal a piece of candy from a chief's grandson, or become a bar maid for two months, just for a small mistake if she wanted to return back to the base.

Some random chores she was tasked to do take months to complete, while some others nearly costed her pitiful little life. Her guardian was erratic in nature, and the random punishments made her insane!

The nearly collapsed front door was closed tightly. A lot of dirt and old wares cluttered across the walkway, masking the actual underground tunnel five meters away.

Helen opened the camouflaged trapdoor and jumped into a square compartment the size of a closet with Leila.

After the trapdoor automatically closed, Helen took out a thumb-sized device and used her magic power to energize it. It gently glowed in the dark.

Leila felt the familiar fast moving downward motion as they descended at a fast pace into their underground base.

It stopped halfway to let Leila entered a tunnel before it plunged down into the darkness. Leila walked briskly into her own room and closed the door obediently.

"Aunt Helen is an angel today. I wonder why???" She whispered happily.