The swamp is very lively tonight as opposing to the coastline. The wind howls as it races through the trees, the calls of nocturnal insects shriek across the bog, and even the plant life seemed to be alive as their roots bathe in the green water and mud below. Amongst all of the chaos, a lone pony silently wades through the shallow muck, seeking the legendary witch that could solve his problem. His black and navy suit that he wore to the meeting was now torn and moist from the branches and deeper parts of the swap in which he walked through. Dorch has grown quite tired from all of his walking and wants to return home after an hour of trudging through the bayou with no benefit to reap.

“This is sickening,” the angry unicorn mumbles in disgust, examining how much vegetation was now attached to his hoof. “I have been nauseating myself for who knows how long, and I have nothing to gain from it. I might as well return home to think of another plan to control Trihearth.”

However, just before he was about to turn around and leave, a faint orange glow of light catches the corner of his eye. He looks to his side to see, at the horizon in which he could see, what appeared to be a candle’s grow amongst the darkness of the swamp.

He declares, “Have I found it? The home of the witch, is it where that light now glows?”

Quickly, he runs towards the warm glow, not minding all of the water and insects now being splashed all over his body. As he comes closer to the light, a very small wooden cottage producing the light soon forms from the darkness. It is suspended above the water surface by four tall tree trunks, with the only way to reach the balcony where the door stood either having to fly or teleport. Upon reaching the base of the house, Dorch notices that the main building itself was no bigger than two prison cells, with the balcony talking up a third of the space. He doesn’t care at the moment and quickly teleports onto the balcony of the hut, facing the closed thin door.

Slowly, the dark stallion lifts a hoof and knocks the door. Knock. Knock. Knock. No response is given from whatever from inside, if there was anything inside. The sir patiently waits for five minutes, hoping that the pony he needed was just asleep. The door doesn’t open. Defeated, the filthy pony knocks the door once more, praying now more than ever for a response.

Knock.

Knock.

Knock.

The unseen interior remains quiet. Dorch, now being a combination of both furious and exhausted, turns his back to the cottage and prepares to head home.

“Who goes there?” An old mare’s voice calls from behind the door. Dorch immediately turns back around and tries to fix his attire before responding.

“My name is Sir Dorch,-”

“Son of the emperor and empress of the Pearl Kingdom, I was expecting you.”

“You were? How do you know me?”

“You know the answer already. That is, if you truly believe it…”

“Are you, Medicine An Uisce, witch of the swamp?”

“Such an ugly name, 'witch', I prefer being called a medicine mare.”

“So you are her?”

“Depends, do you believe in such ‘fantastical’ beings such as her?” For a second, Dorch became silent, dumbfounded as to how she knew what he said if the legends about her weren’t true. “I see that I have caught your attention, do you believe that Medicine An Uisce is real?”

“I do ma’am, shall I come in?”

"..." The old sounding mare on the other side doesn’t respond.

Instead, the door creaks open towards Dorch ajar. The sir takes it as a sign of acceptance and slowly opens the door, only to be awestruck at what he sees. From what on the outside looks like a cramped, wooden cottage, inside, it is a large metal room as large as a royal throne room.

“...But how? How is it smaller on the outside, yet bigger on the inside? No feat of magic could ever do this.”

“There’s a lot of things out there that you don’t know about, things that you could never even imagine in your oddest of dreams.” The blue unicorn looks around the door to finally see the witch that has been talking to him. She was a sickly green coloured pony with black zebra-like markings and wings of a pegasus, dressed in ragged brown cloth that looks as if it hadn’t been washed in decades. The large wings were tattered and dirty, with the edge covered in a brownish mass of fur. Her eyes were as red as fresh blood, her stiff mane and tail bore black and white stripes, and what caught Dorch’s attention the most, a pair of white fangs protruding from her top jaw and a dark mole below her right eye.

The stallion becomes disgusted at the sight of her, but quickly reclaims his composure and asks, “Did you do this?”

“You should know the answer, that is, if you truly believe.” Dorch soon remembers why he came here in the first place and changes the subject on the spot,

“That isn’t the main reason why I am here, I require help to-”

“To perform some miraculous feat for the prince and princess to split from their love and have them fall in love with you and your sister so that you achieve absolute power of Trihearth. I know.”

“How do you know-”

“What has happened in the past and what will happen in the future that I cannot see? A simple pair of potions that I concocted a century ago.”

“How have you been able to keep alive for so long?”

“You know the answer already. Do you want it? No. Now how about we keep matters relevant to your situation.” The old witch then chokes a disgusting old laugh from the pits of her bowels, having irritated Dorch once more with her wit and his urgency.

“Quite… Can you just help me so I can leave you at peace?”

“I can help you, for a price.”

“What is this price you are referring to? Bits, gold, silver, spices, fame?”

“No, to give you what you desire, all I desire is six drops of your blood.”

“Several drops of my blood? Why do you ask for such a small, yet unusual price?”

“You best keep your head out of other ponies’ business. Speaking of which, why do you wish to intrude the love between two lovely ponies?”

“Don’t you know the answer?”

“I do, but do you know?”

“What type of ridiculous question is that? I am tired of your tomfoalery and I demand your services at once.”

“Fine,” The old hag snaps, “shall you pay the price?”

“I shall.”

“Good.” The zebra pegasus swiftly turns to the center of the metal chamber and walks to it with Dorch following behind. In the center of the candlelit room, lays a large metal cauldron, twice the size of Dorch and three times of Medicine. Upon peeking over the edge of the pot, the unicorn sees that it is filled with boiling clear water.

The witch meanwhile, reaches behind the cauldron from her guest’s view and pulls out a small glass bottle filled with a familiar looking white fluff. With the bottom secured in her left wing, Medicine pulls out the cork lid with her right wing and pours the fluff into the water, causing the liquid to turn an opaque white, all whilst chanting,

“A tuft of cloud…”

She then flies to one of the many dark wooden shelves mysteriously attached firmly to the iron walls and pulls out a crystal ball with a rainbow coloured liquid flowing inside from the top shelf. The medicine mare hovers back to the cauldron and smashes the ball against the lip of the black bowl, shattering the crystal and leaking the rainbow liquid into the pot, turning the white liquid into a swirling pool of colours.

“A bright rainbow’s glow…”

She then flaps over the tub and ducks her head into her wing and bites it, causing the floating mare to wince in pain. Medicine jerks back, causing three of her darkest feathers to be torn from her body and trapped in her teeth. She spits out two of them and lowers over the pot with the one feather firmly planted between her lips. The old mare then swirls the feather around, mixing the contents of the cauldron, turning the liquid into bright pink fluid, now boiling heart bubbles instead of circular ones. She then spits out the final feather onto the metal floor next to the pot.

“Stir with the pegasus feather of a virgin, quickly, not slowly. Serve to two ponies thou aren't in the know.“

“Is it ready?”

“Almost, it is usable now, but with a special ingredient, I can add one more influence to the spell that shall make sure the love stays forever. It ‘tis an added security of sorts.”

“What is it?”

“A scale from the body Aspidochelone. You have one.”

“I do?”

“When your mother was bearing you, she drank a scale of the beast, crushed in a powder and added to her drink. It is in your blood now, which I require sixty six drops of.”

“I thought you only required six from before.”

“The first six drops ‘tis for payment. The sixty six is what I need if you desire to make sure that the potions effects will never wear off. Do you want this special bound, or do you wish to risk having the potion fail and you being caught for this conspiracy, destroying you, your family, your kingdom, and even making your father disappointed in you? The only thing separating victory from this grave risk is sixty six drops of your blood. Do you wish to make that added payment?”

“…Fine, I accept.” Immediately, Medicine An Uisce swoops down and bites Dorch’s leg, sinking her sharpened fangs into his flesh and veins. The stallion screams in pain and terror, too much in shock to do anything else as the mare penetrates his upper front leg. And just as quick as she bit into his leg, she lets go, with her fangs now as red as her eyes. As Dorch’s leg now bleeds a small river of red liquid, the witch swoops around the room and comes back with an empty bottle in her hooves.

She lifts the petrified pony’s leg and holds the bottle underneath it, counting every drop of blood that rapidly drips from her victim’s hoof and into the jar. Upon reaching sixty six, she pulls the bottle away from the leg and pours the few milliliters of liquid flesh into the cauldron. As soon as the last bit of blood slips into the pink liquid, the entire pot bursts into a black vat of swirling liquid with ghoulish streams of gas steaming from the mass. The candles scattered across the rooms flicker out one by one, leaving Dorch with no visibility and only to hear the mare’s final chant.

“Double, double, toil and trouble, fire burn and cauldron bubble. You shall be the eternal bond of two ponies’ fates. If one pony fails to look at his or her lover in the eyes for a twelve of a moon’s life, then the lover shall be transformed to a creature of thy master’s design. The lover shall pursue her once love until he or she finds him or her, even at the cost of however many lives and homes gets in the lovers way. The transformed lover shall only survive when consuming upon the love which binds two ponies together. Heed my prayer master! Bring me the liquid to define a fate! I call forth the authority thou shall bring me this magic! I call for you, Aspidochelone!”

Upon finishing her chant, the candles relit and Dorch, now bleeding slower than before, gets to his three clean hooves and looks into the pot. He looks over the edge to see that the liquid has returned back to its pink state before the blood was mixed. He then looks towards the witch, now examining the two holes on his lifted hoof.

“What did that chant mean? What did you do to the love potion?”

“Love potion?” She disconcertingly replies. “What I have concocted was a love poison. Now, lend me your hoof to give me your payment.”

The unicorn follows the mare’s orders and stretches his hoof out to her, where she already has an empty bottle ready beneath.

“Poison? What’s the difference?”

“If the two lovers disconnect eye contact for an hour’s time, then they will transform into whatever the spirit of the master’s blood desires, and must require an essence of love to feed upon to survive.”

“A monster? You mean that Crystal can turn into a monster if I lose eye contact with her for an hour?”

“She will, so I best suggest you make sure she keeps eye contact with her lover.”

“You mean me?”

“No.” Medicine snaps.

“What?”

“You will not be the pony to drink the poison with her. She shall gaze into the eyes of the prince of the Metal Kingdom as the two drink my brew and become locked in a stare of love.”

“Are you mad? I want her to fall in love with me, not the stallion who’s already going to marry her!”

“Don’t fret, I have a plan in which you shall succeed in getting you control of all three kingdoms. I already have your payment now, so all you need to do now is make sure that the princess and prince keep staring into each other’s eyes after they drink the poison I shall offer them at the festival tomorrow.”

“But why don’t you just give me the brew and I take care of everything else?”

“Do you not trust me?”

“It ‘tis not that, it’s just that I would feel better if I was the pony handling the potion.”

“Well I would feel even better if you follow my plan and let me handle my poison.”

At this point, Dorch was now infuriated with Medicine’s banter and challenging of his authority.

With the two bite marks on his leg now clotted and the blood that had poured out has now dried, he stamps his hoof onto the thick metal floor and shouts, “I am the one in charge, I command you to give me that love potion this instant, you witch.”

“How dare thee!” The witch hisses back while arching her back and wings to make herself look taller. Medicine leads the now terrified Dorch into a dark corner of her chamber and leans into his face, making sure he was able to only smell her unclean breath. “You have no idea of what I am capable of. Maybe I could breathe fire this instant and burn you alive. Maybe I can summon the forces of Tartarus and have them pull you through the earth and into their domain of suffering. Maybe I could just bite you in the neck and suck out every drop of your blood in a minute. You do not know. Now, you shall follow my orders to receive your just rewards. Do I make myself clear to thee?”

“…”

“Do I?”

The scared stallion squeaks, “Yes…”

“Very well then, you’ll lead our ponies not in the know to me during the festival, I shall have a tent setup and there we shall commence our plan. Try to cover that leg of yours while you’re at it.”

“Y-y-yes ma-ma’am-m…” In one swift motion, the winged zebra grabs a bottle filled with a grey gas from the nearby shelf and slams it between her and Dorch. The jar breaks and releases the gas, obscuring the stallion’s vision of everything, including the walls and floors that he was touching. The smoke eventually dies soon, however, instead of reappearing the witch’s cottage, Dorch finds himself sitting on the beach, facing the ocean.

As he returns home, Dorch ponders to himself, “What is this mare’s plan? I do not know. But my only option now is to trust her. I might as well head home now to rest, the festival will begin in several hours and I must look at my peak in order for Seirbigh and Crystal to not think of me suspicious.”