"That's how you do it!" Grape said patting Axel on the back.
It was the end of the workday, and Axel's plan had only caught a single wild witch, however that made the plan more successful than many other plans made by other scouts.
"Perhaps a plan like this may help in another town, if it is not caught onto," the captain thought aloud.
"I can't believe you're thinking of the next hunt instead of the bonus we're about to get," Apple said with a smile.
The team had already dropped the wild witch off in the Conformatorium, and they were walking to the pickup point, so they could head back to the castle.
"More money if plan works better," Lettuce pointed out.
"The only thing I'm think of is lunch," Artichoke said.
"Can't blame you, though missing lunch was a worthy sacrifice to bring in that man," Grape replied.
"We missed lunch?" Artichoke replied.
"Yeah?" Grape replied.
"I thought we were heading to lunch," Artichoke said holding his head.
"We're heading to dinner, what time do you think it is?" Axel said cutting into the conversation.
"Not sure, my clock's been off for a while," Artichoke replied, tapping some purple creature hidden under their sleeve.
It looked like an imp of some sort, with one large eye that showed the time, and a spiked tail that jutted out towards Artichoke.
The imp had four teeth that seemed to almost touch Artichoke's skin, and it grabbed onto his wrist with two small arms and two small legs.
"Here let me see if I can fix it," Grape said extending his hand.
Artichoke then handed over the imp watch to Grape. Grape then began to fiddle with the tail, causing the clock on the eye to change.
"How did you get your watch to be several hours behind?" Grape asked.
"I guess I just slept on it funny," Artichoke replied.
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"To catch a wild witch is a great help for the coven," Lilith told the group of six, "And the help you have given the Emperor's Coven shall be given back to you," she said stretching her hand out.
Axel and the others were standing straight in front of Lilith where they usually got their normal paycheck.
'I guess catching a wild witch gets you a little more fanfare'
"Now leave here, and remember that tomorrow is another day, one in which you will help the coven!" Lilith announced.
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The next day, most outside missions were canceled, leading to many scouts being stuck inside the castle.
Axel was using this time to stay in his room and study magic. He was currently reading a book on how witches used to use magic in the wild days
Wild magic books were supposed to be banned, but the library inside of the castle was restocked by scouts, scouts stocked based on shipments and didn't really look at the books.
So that led to Axel getting his hands on the book he was reading now.
When he heard about the break today, he was confused to say the least. After all, why would the Emperor's Coven stop just because of some rain?
But Axel followed with the flow and got time off, which is when he looked outside and saw that the rain was boiling.
'Another travesty in God's forsaken realm'
He had to be careful while reading, not just because the book was forbidden, but because he was reading the book right next to a wax candle on a pan to collect the wax.
According to the book, witches used to borrow magic from the Titan to cast spells, how they did this was apparently lost to time.
It was either that, or the Emperor's grasp on the information of this realm was much stronger than Axel first imagined.
However, something annoyed Axel, it was the Titan.
'It seems that this world pray to this Titan over the Lord Almighty'
Axel still wasn't sure what this Titan was and why the people prayed to it. To wild witches the Titan was synonymous with magic itself and the freedom it represented.
Whenever his book would talk about wild magic, it always had pictures of witches being outside.
And now, the Titan was worshipped as a deity that only the Emperor himself can contact.
Axel didn't know whether to be madder at a God that has done nothing to be worshiped, or a man who made the Titan into a God.
His chair squeaked across the floor as he got up. Axle vowed that before he returned to his room, he would know what the Titan was.
Putting on his scout uniform, he walked down the stairs, thinking of where to start.
'Every time I've heard of the Titan, it was in a way that its worship was self-evident, so asking people would be suspicious'
Axel continued his way down the stairs making a turn into the library.
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Nothing but empty praises.
Every book of the Titan that Axel could get his hands on just talked about the Emperor being the one who talks to it, and how the Emperor shows the Titan's will.
But nothing on why the witches of the Boiling Iles worship the Titan.
He knows why he worships the Lord, because he needs to pay back the one who made him, or so parents told him.
Axel got up from his seat at the library and left to go search around the castle. Perhaps there was something around the castle that would give him his answers.
As he walked, he noticed that a group of scouts were gathering around some sort of map. He couldn't quite see the map, but Axel could hear people talking about where they want to be sent while pointing at the map.
Out of curiosity, Axel approached the map. He hadn't been checking maps; he had just been following whoever he was teamed up with.
Axel joined the group in looking at the map of the Boiling Iles.
'Huh, that's funny, it kind of looks like'
Axel's eyes widened as he continued to look at the map.
It was a large humanoid beast had laid down with arms open and one knee up.
And the beast was the entire map, every place Axle ad been, and where he was now was on that beast.
And for the first time, Axel laid his eyes on the Titan that others prayed to.
————————————————————————
Axel rushed up to his room and slammed the door.
He was living on the Titan.
Did the Titan create witches? Were all of his food former parts of the Titan? If Axel was living on the corpse of the Titan, did that break God's first commandment to have no other Gods?
His hand reached underneath his desk grabbing the notebook and pencil he had bought, and he began writing all the new information he learned in it.
'Maybe if I write all of this down, I can make sense of it'
As he feverishly wrote, his desk started to shake, causing the candle to begin shaking as well.
After a few seconds, the candle fell, however Axel hadn't gone quite insane yet so he was able to catch the candle before anything was set ablaze.
With a sigh, Axel was about to place the candle back onto the pan, but that's when he noticed something.
A circular pattern where the candle once sat, it looked much to specific to be made by random chance.
Axel then looked around the room, trying to see if anyone had placed the odd pattern. But as far as he could tell, the pattern made by the dripping candle.
The pattern was two teardrops, placed vertically on top of each other with a circle in the bottom teardrop, all inside of a circle.
Seeing the interesting pattern, Axel sketched it into his notebook.
After sketching, he put his pencil down. And his hand brushed against the pattern.
In an instant, the notebook he was writing in was engulfed in flames.
With panic, Axel quickly stepped back from the notebook and was about to try to pour water on it, when he noticed something odd.
The fire wasn't burning anything. It was hot, Axel could feel it, but the notebook was fine. Not to mention that no smoke was rising from the notebook.
And as fast as the notebook caught ablaze, the fire disappeared. Leaving Axel with many questions.
Nervously approaching his notebook, he saw the notebook itself was fine, but the page the pattern was written on seemed to have degraded into dust.
Picking up his pencil, Axel ripped a page out of the notebook, and drew the pattern once more, but this time he lightly scribbled over it.
Again, Axel touched the pattern, but this time there was no reaction.
'How, incredible'
Axel took the piece of paper and put the paper back into his notebook.
As he did this Axel remembered a book back in the human realm.
In 'The Good Witch Azura' there was a character was able to cast magic using pieces of paper with odd patterns on them.
And what were they called in the book?
'Glyphs. I can use Glyphs'
A smile found its way onto Axel face, for he had finally found a way to fight against the witches.