Really? Forbidden magic? I’ve half a mind to transform you into a garden gnome; maybe a decade or two of decorating my stoop will teach you not to ask me about such things.
Journeying all the way through my bog to this little hut of mine—does this look like the abode of a wizard to you? No? Then why are you coming to me with the preoccupations of some thrice-damned tower academic? Witches don’t do forbidden magic, child.
No, I don’t care what you’ve heard. Forbidden magic is the domain of wizards. They’re the ones who have a concept of it at all. Do you think I send a letter to some highfalutin Witch With The Biggest Hat to ask if it’s quite alright with her for me to toss some extra nightshade in the old cauldron this evening?
Of course not. It’s wizards that categorize and taxonomize their discipline and label this spell Bad and that one Forbidden and some other Double Forbidden. I think they’ve got at least six different degrees of forbidden, actually, each more taboo than the last, and I suspect half their time is spent debating and updating their “Evil Magic Do Not Touch” Tier List.
What, that’s why you came to see me? Because witches are the only ones willing to practice such magic that wizards cannot? Oh, don’t make me laugh, wizards do forbidden magic all the time. That’s why they have so many rules about it, you see; it gives them something to be tempted by. Gets them off to have to crack open a forbidden tome—and believe me, they’re always cracking open their forbidden tomes—while having to be all secretive about invoking dark rites lest their peers condemn them.
It’s your classic Wizard Bullshit: create an elaborate hierarchy of rules and restrictions in order to set the mood when their “reckless passions” drive them to violate their “most cherished codes” in pursuit of power, to then cry out in anguish at what their hubris has wrought when something goes awry! And all for what, a trivial bit of necromancy or a curse or some mind control or such? Ha! You know they’re hard as a rock under those robes when they’re doing it too.
No, we don’t play those games here. I don’t have a subscription to the latest amendments and patch notes to their Thaumaturgical Bylaws. I don’t salivate with barely restrained temptations to manipulate powers “mortalkind must never dabble in.”
Pah! I practice my craft as I see fit, and right now I think that means driving you a bit mad until you flee my bog. It won’t be permanent—I’m not a monster—simply eat an innocent man’s heart before the new moon, and you’ll regain your lucidity.
Now, off you go!