The blood she collected, she had mixed with hers in a bowl, the shard of claws she had ground to powder form and mixed with the blood.
After which she added everything she needed to make the candles in a bigger pot and mixed the blood mixture in the boiling mixture.
She wove strands of her hair with his own to make the wick for the candle and when she was done, and the candles had cooled down and formed, they were black in color.
She gathered all twelve candles, took a plain cloth and wrote strange letters upon it with her blood, then she wrapped the candles in the cloth.
"Sire, I'm afraid I shall need your assistance again." She says and from where he sat doing nothing in particular, he stared at her with an empty gaze.
"The ground in which I shall bury these must be dug by the accursed himself." Lies… but she wanted to mess with him. Even if for just a little. Even if he didn't know she was messing with him. She wanted to have a little fun for herself.
"Hand me a tool and I shall—"
"I'm afraid you must do it with your bare hands, sire. It is to show your sincerity and how much you wish to lift the curse."
"To whom exactly am I showing my sincerity to?" His question put a halt to Lydia's inner fun for a moment for she also wondered the answer to that question.
"T-to t-the spirits—" It was half question, half statement. And she prayed he believed her.
"Ah, I see." She let out a sigh of relief as he didn't question further on the matter. "Where shall I dig?" He asks.
"A-Anywhere is fine."
With no more questions, he rose from the log he sat on, crouched down and began to dig. Lydia watched him dig with his claws and could not help but remember the dead boar earlier. She could not imagine how the boar must have been torn apart just like he was tearing into the ground now.
Once again, she dreaded the beast before her.
When he had dug about two feet into the ground he looked up at her as if silently asking if he was to continue.
"T-that is fine." She says and crouches down next to him. She puts the candles in the ground and begins to cover it up with sand. He did the same.
And as they covered it up, his hand rubbed against hers again and again and their eyes would go up as if to check if the other was looking and she'd instantly tear her gaze away from his.
And although it was hard to see, an unconscious smile played on the face of the beast.
"What happens now?" He asks.
Lydia rises to her feet, slapping the dirt from both her hands, "Now, we wait." She says.
He rises from his crouched position and sits himself back on the log and wonders out loud… "Now what manner of things can a beast do with a witch in a forest for three days?" And Lydia shuddered in fear of what he planned to do with her.
Her head did some instant calculation, her eyes widened and her hands instantly covered her body and her mouth screamed, "No!!"
…
"So thy words mean that truly, no part of the north has been conquered yet?!" The beast asked and Lydia could see the pure shock in his odd eyes.
When he had first asked what he could do when left alone in a forest with a witch, she had sincerely thought he meant to devour her like he had done the boar.
However, much far from her expectations, he made her sit across him on the log of wood and she taught him history. All of which he had missed over the three hundred and something years he'd been locked up inside the cave.
"Aye. According to what my mother told me and the things I've heard, we have been losing battles for decades. If six wars were fought in seventy-two lunar months, the highest we would win is two out of six wars." She explained.
"Impossible!" He could not believe it. How could his Azroth be at such loss?!
"Verily I say to you Sire, it is quite possible and it has been happening. As we speak, last I heard was that the current war we are fighting is being led by a certain General Obadiah and that if he loses this war, the northern emperor will completely take over the entire south."
It was a war that would define the fate of the south, a war that the people were fervently praying was won in their favor
"How is that even possible?" He just could not imagine it. Such loss was never heard of before his time and neither was it possible in his time.
His predecessors never failed so he never lost a war either, thus he was certain his successors would follow the victory pattern laid down by their ancestors and become great rulers and winners of battles.
But this, this was not what he expected at all.
"It is Sire, for the northern empire has been eating away at the south little by little for decades, conquering us, village by village."
"Hold on, when ever did the north unify to form an empire?!"
"Ah, the north, the west and the east, they now have empires too. According to the history books, after the unification of the south and Your Majesty's disappearance, the other regions feared that the unified south would come after them and would easily take over their lands if they were separated, so they came to an agreement to unify."
In his time, it had taken his blood and sweat to unify the south, waging war against unwilling kings and causing them to bend to his will. But the other regions just came to a simple agreement? Without fighting any battle? They unified in peace?!
The world had changed.