Mist Hag

Mist Hags do not arrive so much as become noticeable. A lantern gutters on the river road, the wet wool on your shoulders grows heavier, and somewhere ahead a woman is humming a tune you are almost sure your grandmother hummed. By the time you think to be afraid, the fog has already taken your measure and found it generous. These are the Fey hags born of low cloud, drifting damp and the gray hour before the early bells, and they keep company with every ford, marsh and bell tower the weather has ever forgotten to clear.

They are bargainers first and horrors second, which is the cruelest order to meet them in. A Mist Hag will offer a lost traveler a dry hearth, a warm cup and a shortcut, and each kindness comes with a price written in a hand too fine to read until the chit is due. She is fond of handsome strangers and flatters them shamelessly. Several have gone home swearing they were only asked in for a bit of company, and the Mist Hag would agree. She simply never said whose.

The Army of Light despises them, since Gilded Magic burns off mist so tidily, and the scorched edges of certain bogs show where the crusade has tried. The mist returns by the next dawn. Villagers in the Heartland leave a saucer of milk and a copper bit on the doorstep when the fog comes in thick, and swear it is only for the cat.