The Occult Wars had raged for centuries. Nations were rent and people were scattered to the far reaches of the world in search of respite and peace. The Followers of the Blinded Eye, The Witches of Mist, The Swaying Tower of Cognition, among countless others had each fought against one another for supremacy. Yet their powers and resources were not limitless and eventually even the greatest of them fell into ruin. As the great powers fell, the people began to rise up against the lesser powers and eventually they drove all but one into oblivion.

The sole practitioners of occult magic to remain were allowed to do so only because they had never taken part in the Occult Wars. Instead, during those dark years, they spent their time plying their trade just as they had done in the days before the war. Their hovels were well known and often treated as a sort of neutral ground. In fact, they had been the setting for some of the more significant surrenders and treaties had taken place near the end of the Occult Wars.

For all of its singularity and importance, they never sought for renown or reward, just for the right to continue on as they always had done. And so it was that the members of the Coven of Minor Inconveniences endured the long and war torn years and emerged as the sole practitioners of the occult arts.

All of that history and mystique was what had attracted Merithed to the coven in the first place. However, wanting to join and actually being admitted were two entirely different things. Everyone in Merithed’s town of Bucklebrass knew where to find their hovel, just on the outskirts of the marshes between Bucklebrass and Tinston.

Merithed had heard all sorts of tales from others who had gone seeking to join the coven, only to be turned away, or else being given some fantastical task they couldn’t accomplish. Even with all of that in mind, Merithed would not be deterred.

“Mom,” she said the evening following her twentieth birthday, “I’ve come of age and I want to join the Coven of Minor Inconveniences.”

Merithed’s mom paused in her work of repairing a piece of broken crockery to look at her with a flat stare.

“Well it’s about time,” she sighed. “I wondered if you’d ever go.”

Merithed blinked. She’d expected an argument, or at least some questioning over why she wanted to join. Her mothers patent acceptance was utterly unexpected.

“I…you mean…you’re alright with it?” Merithed stammered.

Her mom cocked an eyebrow.

“We live in a small home, Merithed,” she sighed, “and I’ve been kept awake most every night for months now, listening to you prattle off your little incantations. And this,” she went on, hefting the broken dish, “is only part of the results. So yes, if you going off and joining the coven means I don’t have to keep dealing with all these minor inconveniences, I give you my full blessing.”

Merithed blushed beneath the slight reprimand from her mother at all of the various inconveniences she’d been summoning into their home, but the thrill of not having to argue over it overwhelmed any real sense of guilt.

“Thank you mom!” she exclaimed and rushed forward, embracing her mom briefly before flitting off to her room to pack.

Truth be told, her traveling pack was already mostly prepared. She’d been so worried that her mother wouldn’t let her go that she’d stuffed most of her clothes and things into it the night before in case she needed to run off in a hurry. As it was, she added in a few more things, an extra pair of walking shoes, the fragments of the first cup she’d broken through an incantation, and rough map she had of the surrounding area, including where the coven’s hovel could be found.

“I’m off then,” Merithed said and waved her mother goodbye.

“I’ll be here if it doesn’t work out,” her mother called after her, “love you!”

“I’ll come visit when I can,” Merithed replied and then stepped out into the waning light.

Really, she shouldn’t be leaving this late in the day. It wasn’t exactly a short walk to the marshes but she was too eager and excited to wait for the next day to set out. The road leading out of town was mostly barren of travelers by this time and she hurried along, muttering various curses and blights as she went. Nothing serious, of course. The Coven of Minor Inconveniences never dabbled in anything evil or objectively harmful. Instead, Merithed left little bits of inconvenience in-potential, as she liked to think of it. Someone’s wagon wheel will become squeaky as they pass by this place. Hiccups will interrupt someones conversation, and so forth. All of it was just practice of course. As a member of the coven she’d be tasked with more specific jobs, to inconvenience other people, specific people, and usually in very specific ways. That was, after all, what people went to the Coven of Minor Inconveniences for.

Some people used the coven’s services as a sort of joke on friends or family. Others used it to get even with someone they were in a feud with. It was a somewhat strange sort of business, but people kept going to them and the coven kept operating, opening new hovels from time to time as their services continued to gain popularity, particularly in favor of other, more tradition means of settling differences. Everyone agreed that being inconvenienced in minor ways was preferable to older, albeit simpler forms of retribution. Killing one another had been an especially common means of getting even.

As night began to fall in earnest, Merithed couldn’t help but recognize how foolish she had been in not thinking to bring a lantern. She tried to make out the markings on her map and then look for the corresponding landmarks around her to make sure she didn’t miss the narrow path that branched off from the main road that would take her to the hovel.

“I think it’s this one,” Merithed mumbled to herself when she came to a promising fork in the road.

It certainly had the right look to it: slightly overgrown, narrow, winding, and bending off towards the western marshes. Even if she was wrong and this was just some farmers road home, she could ask for lodging for the night and resume her travels in the morning.

Upon leaving the main road she at once found the ground on this new path to be rough and uneven. She had to walk carefully not to step wrong since she was liable to trip and twist her ankle in some divot or rabbit hole. She stopped muttering her incantations. This path was already inconvenient enough without her adding anything to it. A few low lying brambles grew beside the path and they caught and snagged at the hem of her trousers.

Before long, the stench of the marshes began to waft up and around her. A mixture of rotting decay and moist earth. Merithed stopped for a moment to take in the smell. It wasn’t exactly pleasant, but neither was it overtly repulsive. The slight dampness of the air began to increase as well now. At first she felt it mostly around her ankles and, looking down, she saw mist flowing like softly moving streams that shone in the moonlight. It was quite beautiful, though the mist soaked quickly into everything it flowed over and her feet were soon cold and sloshing about in her shoes.

Merithed pressed on, noting now the slight hints of magic all about her. The way the path was just rough enough without being too rough, the way the mist wetted and chilled her feet without becoming so waterlogged that she would be at risk of falling ill. All of them just little inconveniences, as obvious as any storefront sign that she as on the right path.

Merithed began going over in her mind the various incantations she knew. She figured that the best way to impress the coven was to show them what she could do. As she thought, a hill seemed to rise up out of nowhere in front of her and she suspected that this might just be some more of the ambient magic effecting the landscape.

The hill would surely be slippery and muddy. She was likely to lose her footing and fall, face first, into the mud, and then slide all the way back down to the bottom.

With that in mind, Merithed pulled her pack off of her back and pulled out her extra pair of walking shoes. Her pack was waterproof and so she set it down on the ground to sit on while she took off her current pair of shoes and swapped them for the fresh pair. She also pulled out of her pack a pair of thick, leather gloves that she had freshly oiled the day before, making them fairly water resistant as well. She would have liked a walking stick but hadn’t thought to grab one in her hurry to get out the door and on her way.

Merithed slung pack back around and onto her shoulders and began the climb up the hill. As she had expected, it was muddy and slick. She used her hands along the steeper parts of the hill to steady herself. Her feet nearly shot out from beneath her on more than one occasion but between her gloved hands and her general expectancy for the situation, she managed to reach the top without too many slips and falls. Looking down at herself she was pleased to note that she hadn’t gotten any mud on herself beyond just her wrists and ankles.

Turning about, she wanted to look down the hill she’d just climbed and see what she could of the surrounding countryside. When she looked, however, she instead was met with a flat marshy plain. The hill, if it had ever existed, was gone. What was more, there was a squat little hovel just a few paces from where she stood. The windows were glowing from candlelight within and a woman stood in the doorway, watching her.

“Hello,” Merithed said eagerly as she hurried over to her.

“You’re earlier than I was expecting,” the woman said with a slight hint of annoyance.

Merithed suppressed a grin. All the way up the hill she had been muttering her incantation that would cause guests to arrive at inconvenient times.

“I thought it would be appropriate,” Merithed replied, still a little out of breath from her climb.

“Indeed,” the woman said and she gave a slight wink. “Now come in.”

“Just like that?” Merithed asked. “No tests or trials or–

“I have dinner cooking and it’s nearly done,” the woman told her. “If we linger out here it will burn.”

“Oh, that’s perfect,” Merithed said as they entered the hovel, “I haven’t eaten since midday.”

It was then that Merithed saw the pot cooking over the fire and realized it would just barely be enough to feed one person.

“The other members of the Coven of Minor Inconveniences are all out this evening and so I only made enough for myself.”

“I see,” Merithed said.

The woman smiled, though not unkindly, as she said, “You will understand that it will be your turn to be inconvenienced as I eat my meal and you will just have to wait and watch.”

Merithed returned the smile and nodded and the two women stayed up long into the night getting to know one another and discussing the many inconveniences they had caused and Merithed eagerly anticipated her induction into the coven. She knew she had left home rather abruptly, and she’d have to see about going back and visiting her mother as soon as she could, though when that would be, exactly, she couldn’t be sure. From the sounds of it, there would be plenty for her to begin doing here.