"Resting by my fire. Looking deep into its flames. My mind must have been somewhere else. Far beyond these plains. I am suddenly aware of a pair of eyes staring at me. I turn around and behold the most ugly thing I have seen. The woman standing in the glade like a shadow in the night Points her wretched finger at me with a wretched smile. And she asks me in a voice that sounds as if it's been so long since she spoke, if I seek magic, then I should come along. I'm but a man. Mortal a man. But she leaves no footprints in the snow. Still I follow on to where she is going. For she has promised me magic if I follow on. She takes me to a part of these woods few have ever seen. Where the sun surely won't reach, still the ground ominously gleams. She says she's seen me coming and that she knows where I'll go. But befor I leave, she says there is this one thing I should know. She offers me the ability to take a fatal wound. Every cut by sword or spear will be absorbed by her tree-womb. This magic will remain until it's time for me to part with this mortal world. And all she'll claim is my young heart. I'm but a man. Mortal a man. And I'll need all the help I can get. So I give my heart to the woman of the dark. With or without it... my life is not over yet." Wing of bat and lizzards eye. Dust of a star fallen from the sky. Tears of a virgin and the cum of a god. Thirteen drops of an infants blood. A twist of a cat's spit and oil of the moon Stir for a while a very soon. A salve to be applied upon the chest close to where the heart beats strong. "No pains will occur when her hand is pushed into my flesh. She'll slowly draw my living heart out of my open chest. She'll place my heart on the pit of the snake and behold the years go by. Hers to keep from the moment when the time has come for me to die."