Confusion.

That was all she had been feeling for a while. In her defense, Joe had high hopes from the witch. Joe had hoped against hope that she’d finally get a damn clue on some mysterious goings-on in this world. That was why she had gone through all the trouble of dragging her tired ass through the Grimm canyon and wading through the nightmarish forest to reach the heart of Sandora! ‘This isn’t what you signed up for, dumbass!’ The irrational, sleep deprived side of her mind seemed to be saying. Joe had been ignoring that side for a while, but every now and then, those traitorous thoughts would slither back in her head like a poisonous snake.

Joe wanted answers from the Witch dammit! And now, standing in the cottage of that very Witch of the West, Joe felt as if she just found more questions than answers. It was a truly lousy bargain.

Someone should have put up proper notice somewhere: Looking for the Witch of the West? Well gee, did you know that there were two of them in that forest?!

Actually, all things considered, Joe should have figured that things would come to this. The more she found out about this world, the more headache-inducing it became. And the worst part was the fact that the more she learned, the more questions popped up uninvited into her mind. The girl stared up at the smiling face of Sandy, her body itching to ask twenty different questions about the previous witch in thirty different ways.

What was Sandy’s master like? What did she eat? What magic did she use? What did she think of other humans? How come she, a Scaledfolk, agreed to take a human for an apprentice? Why did Ivy take an apprentice in the first place? Was this Witch of the West a permanent profession or something?!

Joe swallowed the unnecessary thoughts with some difficulty. According to Sandy, she only had six more questions left. It would be unwise to jump head-first into things that she didn’t know about. Her immediate concerns revolved around getting out of this world ASAP. Anything else, Joe firmly reminded herself, was a distraction.

The kind of distraction she didn’t need right now.

“Well, I hope that put some things into perspective for you.” Sandy cleared her throat. “The sole reason that I am able to live in this forest of Sandora, is because my own master had vouched for me. She was an eccentric for sure, an odd one out even amongst her own kind. But as an individual, Ivy was undoubtedly one of the most intelligent and accomplished people in the entire history of Triciella. The others could not even dream of defying her.”

There was a melancholic look in her eyes. But somewhere in that look, one could see a tinge of hidden pride. Scaledfolk or not, Joe realized with a jolt, Sandy still held a genuine affection and admiration for her old master. It made her wonder, just what kind of a person this Ivy had been, to have shaped the life of the current Witch of the West standing in front of her.

Deep in the recesses of her stupid, naïve heart, Joe realized with a pang that she would have actually loved to meet the previous witch of Sandora.

“Yes, I think that I understand your circumstances more clearly.” The girl finally said, steeling her heart and mind to focus on the present. “However, I believe there’s still a part of my previous question that is left unanswered.”

She tilted her head and threw a deliberate glance at the last occupant of the room. Nero must have sensed the hostility in the air, because his own eyes snapped back towards her, wide and bewildered. As if he couldn’t believe that she was still aware of his presence in the cottage.

“There is another person in this room who seems to be impervious to the Scaledfolks’ magic. I think that I should know how and why that is possible, Sandy.”

The man in question pushed himself off the wall he was resting against. He hadn’t spoken a single word, but Joe could sense the nervousness rolling off him in waves. She wouldn’t feel guilty for his discomfort now of all times. Not when he had withheld so much from her already.

Her words made Sandy chuckle. “I guess you aren’t one to be fooled that easily, eh? Nero might have been a seasoned warrior of Triciella, but even that man can occasionally slip up in front of a young girl. That’s what he gets for underestimating everyone, I suppose.”

“Sandy, please.” Nero groaned.

Joe ignored him. “It matters not whether he underestimates me or not. It matters not if he is some hidden bigshot in Triciella. But what matters to me is that not only has he had been intentionally withholding the truth, but he has also lied to me even after I had decided to blindly trust him all this time.”

“Well well, I am most curious.” Sandy’s cautious grin had a razor sharp edge to it. Her eyes darted towards Nero and back at Joe again. “What has he done that made you accuse him so?”

Joe scoffed. The witch was acting as if it wasn’t her damn business, but Joe would bet all of the money in the Winsten household that Nero and Sandy had known each other for a long time. Long enough to plan everything about this meeting down to the very last detail.

What they hadn’t planned, however, was Joe Stuart herself. They undoubtedly knew about Joanna Winsten the villainess, but they didn’t know jack diddly squat about the new outsider who had landed in Joanna Winsten’s place.

“I believe that I’m the one that’s supposed to be asking the questions.” Joe coldly replied. She held onto the righteous anger stewing in her heart, refusing to be intimidated by the witch this time.

The old hag narrowed her eyes, clearly surprised by the sudden spike of stubbornness from the girl. A flicker of understanding passed over her eyes; she let out a sigh of resignation.

“I understand. But as for your question about Nero, I’m afraid that I cannot answer it.”

Joe froze in her place.

“Why the hell not?!” She howled angrily, stomping her feet on the floor. This was ridiculous! This was pissing her off! This wasn’t what they’d agreed upon, dammit!

The witch gave her a wry smile. “Because it is not my secret to tell, Joanna. I know that I’d agreed to answer exactly eleven of your questions, but this one thing… I cannot. It is something that you should ask the man himself. By the way, that was question number six.”

Joe gritted her teeth in annoyance. It wasn’t like she hadn’t even tried that. But every time she had asked something, ‘the man’ in question had merely given her one of his endless supplies of mysterious smiles and moved on.

“Fret not.” Sandy said, as if sensing her thoughts. “No matter what had transpired between you, I assure you that you can trust Nero. If there was anything he had withheld from you, then it was only because he didn’t believe that it was time for you to know it yet.”

‘You don’t get to make excuses for Nero.’ Joe had almost blurted out. She held herself back in time. There was no point in antagonizing the witch. The woman was her best bet to find a way back to the modern world.

“I will leave the two of you to talk alone. It seems like you have much to discuss among yourselves.” Sandy must have felt the air of awkwardness around the pair. She pushed herself off the chair and bustled out of the room in heavy steps, slamming the door shut after her.

-------------------------------------------------------------

Nero had been sneaking worried glances at her for a while, Joe realized. For a tiny heartbeat, she felt a wave of uncertainty wash over her. But she unceremoniously shoved it aside before it could cloud her thoughts, and tried to summon all the anger in heart. The anger was good. The anger gave her courage. And Joe didn’t have much of the courage to begin with.

“Well, anything you would want to say, Nero?” She began testily.

The man flinched at the sound of her voice. A part of him was wary; a part of him was ignorant and confused (how the hell had he dropped his guard?!) and a part of him wanted to deal with this the same way he dealt with everything else: by remaining blissfully apathetic all the way.

But the final part of him, the stupid (guilty, guilty, guilty) and hopeful part which reared its head every now and then, already knew that this was a conversation that needed to be had. He had to deal with the mess that he had created himself.

“What is it that you wish to know, milady?” Nero ran a tired hand over his face; the sooner they got it over with, the better. “Nero will try his best to —”

“Drop the act, Nero.” Joe cut him off abruptly. Her eyes were narrowed in distrust. “And don’t call me ‘milady’ now. I want to hear the truth from the real Nero, not the one that speaks in third person speech or giggles at random intervals. I know that it’s an act. I have seen you speak normally when you’re too stressed to put up your guard.”

This got a dry chuckle out of the man. Trust the girl to pick up on the most trivial of things. “It’s understandable why you’d think of it that way, mila— I mean, Joanna.” Her name sounded strange on his tongue. “But my manner of speaking isn’t an act. It started out as something like a coping mechanism. It was deliberate on my part, but somehow it stuck.”

Coping mechanism? Joe momentarily faltered at his words. What was it that he needed to cope against? He was a well liked, well respected ex-soldier who was blessed with good health and a fairly comfortable lifestyle. Did Nero even have anything to worry about?

There was something about Nero’s expression that stopped her from pursuing the matter further. A sudden wave of embarrassment flooded over the girl. She shouldn’t have thought like that. It was unbecoming of her, a grown-up person from another world, to jump to conclusions about a man she’d barely known. Joe had only ever been a tiny part of his life. Maybe, like everyone else in this world, Nero had his own demons to bear from the past.

A tiny part of the girl hoped that someday, he’d open up to her as well.

“When I had first asked you to take me to the Witch of the West, you had acted as if you didn’t know her at all.” Joe told the man, “You said, that you didn’t know if you could fight against the witch. You had acted as if you were like any other normal human of Triciella, who was scared of entering the forest and even more scared of the witch. When the truth was that you could easily come and go through Sandora anytime you wanted.”

Nero said nothing. If he felt guilty about it, his face didn’t betray anything.

“Not only that, I realized other things as well.” Joe continued, undeterred. “You chose to go through Riseindell even though we could have easily reached Sandora from the Winsten manor. We could have simply followed a flock of bubblebirds flying Westward at early dawn and avoided the Devil’s Dews, couldn’t we?”

“I had explained the reason to you, my La— Joanna.” Nero swallowed. “That shortcut is treacherous. There are bandits, and the hidden traps laid by them all over the —”

Joe cut him off again. “We could have avoided the bandits. You definitely know your way around Sandora, don’t you? Judging by fact you and Sandy seem to know each other very well, you come here often, yes? Don’t you dare tell me that you take the long route via Riseindell every damn time! Because I bet you don’t! You use the shortcut from the Winsten manor, that’s what you do!”

The man lowered his eyes to the ground, suddenly more interested in his travelling boots than the girl standing across the room.

“And you know what that means? That means that you know your way around that ‘treacherous’ path! You know where the traps are placed! You should know how to avoid them! And that isn’t all there is to it! I saw your battle with the bandits tonight. I saw the way you fight! It didn’t matter if there were twenty of them or thirty, you could wipe the floor with them without breaking a sweat! There’s no way that those bandits who lurk around that area do not recognize you! You, a fearsome ex-soldier who could fight them off with bare hands, should be someone they wouldn’t dare to cross! Hell, if I were a bandit in that place, I would know better than to cross your path, even if I saw you riding across my turf in the dead of the night!”

“This entire trip was planned. Down to the exact time and the route we had taken.” Joe flashed him a mocking grin. “Did you think I wouldn’t notice? How you perfectly managed to get your horse ready for the night, how you knew exactly which guards would be stationed at the gate, how you had a perfect plan and ruse ready even though you had merely suggested the offer to me that very afternoon? How you planned to meet Nathaniel at his inn, which was conveniently open that time of the night, even though his first words were, and I quote: ‘Hey, I’m real sorry but there’s no room available’, when surprisingly, there wasn’t a single customer at sight? How you knew that there was a hamlet called Mirlock which, not only had a competent doctor, but one who would treat us without asking any questions at all?”

“Tell me Nero, what would I make of that?”

The man in question finally lifted his eyes to look at the girl in front of him. She was panting for breath, but her expression held the same look of fierceness that he had seen moments ago. Nero would never admit it, but he was nothing short of impressed at her deduction. Sure, he hadn’t been as meticulous in his preparation as he would like, but the girl had taken a string of seemingly unconnected dots and made a perfect explanation out of them.

Perhaps Sandy was right after all. This person, this outsider had what it takes to break the shackles of their perfect world. They didn’t need a hero. What they needed was an ordinary human who stubbornly kept persisting and questioning everything under the sun.

But for that to happen, they had to get the girl to their side. No, they needed her at their side.

Nero’s voice was low and measured when he spoke, as if he was actually scared of angering her anymore. Joe scoffed at the thought; he was the last person in this world who would worry about something like that.

“I know that it hardly matters this late in the game, but I shan’t make any excuses anymore.” There was a tinge of remorse in his face, but Joe ignored it and focused on the righteous anger thrumming through her veins, “Everything that you’ve said till now is true, Joanna.”

“I know that it’s true, dammit!” she gritted out. “I’ve had a lot of time to think about it. What I want to know is— why?! Tell me from the beginning! Tell me what you know!”

‘This may end up getting ugly after all,’ Nero thought wryly. But the person who was standing in front of him right now wasn’t that tiny slip of a confused girl anymore. The man knew that he wouldn’t be able to get out of this one anytime soon.

“When you’d asked to see the Witch of the West, I needed to know that you were truly different.” He began, crossing his arms over the chest. “I pretended to be afraid of the witch, to see what you would do in the face of rejection. I wanted to see if you’d abuse your position of power. The original Lady Joanna Winsten, for one, would not think twice before ordering us to take her to the witch, our own circumstances be damned. I wanted to see if you’d do the same.”

Joe heard a quiet gasp in her head. The villainess residing in her head had acted exactly the same as Nero had predicted. One would wonder if the Lady ever had the pleasure to listening to any of her servants speak up their mind about her attitude in her very presence. Apparently, this was the first.

“It would seem that I had passed you little test.” Joe replied stiffly.

“Yes, it would seem so.” Nero cracked a small smile. “I was glad. And yes, I had the planned the trip all along. I had planned the rendezvous with Nathan as well. I had also intended to stop at the Hawkins’ place in Mirlock. The only thing that I hadn’t planned was, ironically, the ambush from the bandits in Grimm Canyon.”

“But those bandits didn’t know you.” Joe pointed out. “It only means that those bandits weren’t from here in the first place.”

“No. I am guessing that they were part of another gang from the Casterwing mountains. The bandits from the mountains rarely ever come across the smaller villages. What I would want to know is: why would they come down all the way here just to ambush a couple of travellers crossing the canyon?”

“That’s why you came to the conclusion that someone was paying them.” The girl realized. “Paying them specifically to attack us in the middle of the night!”

“Yes. And on the top of that, those bandits were too disorganized. Too clumsy. As if they weren’t used to their surroundings. It would make sense that they had laid plans without too many preparations to make some quick cash, thinking that their victims would be easy game.”

Joe didn’t exactly have the luxury to think about that. She was busy trying not to die, you see. But now that she’d heard it from Nero’s own mouth, it was beginning to make more sense than a mere hunch. The girl sighed tiredly. It hadn’t even been a month since she came to this world, and someone already had it out for her.

“Well, why didn’t you take us through the shortcut from Winsten manor?” Joe asked him again. “Seems like the person who paid for that shitshow predicted your plan beforehand. We could have avoided all that if you’d just taken the more— ahem, ‘treacherous’ path from the beginning, yes?”

Nero actually winced at her words.

“You might not believe it right now—” he scratched his neck, eyes darting everywhere but her frowning face, “But I had a— err, good reason for that. I had taken this long road because there was someone I wanted you to meet, milady.”

Joe glared at him.

“Uh, I mean— Joanna.”

“Who was it?” The girl was now beginning to feel a twitch in her face. The entire shtick was more complicated than she’d thought! “Why would you go through all this trouble just for some silly meeting?! Couldn’t I have met this person later? What the hell is it about?!”

Nero gave her an apologetic smile. “I’m afraid that I cannot answer that first question, Joanna. Rest assured that you’d get the answer very soon.” He held up his placatingly when he saw her glare again. “As for the other question, I believe that it might be a little difficult for you to grasp right now. I needed you to meet this person in order to stop something from happening, you see?”

Joe found her frown deepening. “And what is it that you’re trying to stop?”

Nero’s voice was soft when he answered her, almost like a whisper. “The spell of time. Joanna, it may sound incredulous, but— this world and its timeline aren’t linear. This world isn’t normal right now. We have been constantly looping through time since ages ago, unable to move forward anymore.”