'Johan' walked over and squatted in front of me.

"What's wrong? Come here. Everything will be okay."

The absurdity of his general attitude aside, he couldn't have had his memory erased by Ares. Never mind the part where it was always obvious he remembered everything, she had been dead at the time. While she did have her posthumous plans, this wouldn't have been part of them.

But that didn't matter. I was reaching forward, ready to take his hand.

Logic wouldn't help me in this. I needed something stronger. The last remains of my rational consciousness scrambled frantically, trying to find something to allow them to break free from their position as a spectator. The window of opportunity was rapidly closing.

Then it came to me. Ritual was strong here, as strong as raw emotion. And Johan and I had been consistently doing the same thing whenever we met, for several years. By this point, it could be considered a ritual of sorts. All I needed was to invoke it.

I grabbed his arm, pulled him down, and slashed at his throat with my knife. The real Johan would not have been phased, but the witch wasn't expecting it. 'Johan' managed to spring back, but not without injury. I took the opportunity to stand up and move in to attack again.

The witch could barely keep up with me in her natural form, let alone when operating unfamiliar human body as a puppet. She had to loosen her control over the hallucination and resort to using a version of Johan drawn from my subconscious. As soon as she did that, 'Johan' became a much better fighter.

But he was now an entity that moved according to how I imagined he would. Unlike the real thing, that made him predictable. I was simply fighting myself. Normally, I wouldn't be able to put my full trust in my intuition against him. This time, I could treat my intuition as gospel.

I let an attack that I knew was coming slide past me, taking the opportunity to throw him off balance. Smoothly, my blade glided up from under his rib cage into his heart. Anti-magic prevented him from healing himself. The illusion shattered with his death.

The witch took a few seconds to recover. I didn't need them.

She recollected her senses in time to see the mana restriction stake I stabbed through the center of her chest. She coughed up a mouthful of blood.

"Thank you," I said, "That was... enlightening."

I thrust the stake in deeper, pinning her to the ground. Blood welled up around it.

She forced a smile.

"Glad... to be of service... darling."

I admired her dedication to maintaining her condescending flirtatious outlook even after being fatally impaled.

The mage was strong. Far stronger than he had any right to be. Never had she imagined that she would taste defeat and death at the hands of one who wasn't even a tenth of her age.

She had seen many glimpses of his past, but something didn't add up. Was it a coincidence? Either way, it had killed her. And still the mage looked at her with those freezingly cold eyes.

"What... the hell... was your mother... thinking, creating a monster like you?"

The mage knelt down next to her.

"Honestly, I don't know either. But you don't need to worry about that. I can only keep you alive for so long with that wound, so let's not waste time."

She knew what he meant. The mage intended to pry every bit of information he could out of her. It would be excruciatingly painful for her and incredibly undignified. She would be kept in a state between life and death for several days as all her secrets were clawed out.

Nagina had lived for centuries. She was the last of her kind. Such an end was unworthy of her.

She opened her mouth, hissing a bit of laughter. Then she bit down and her fangs pierced her own jaw. She shot more and more venom into her own bloodstream, feeling her heart pump the death around her body.

It was a highly potent venom. The mage was not a healer. With this much toxin in her system, he wouldn't even be able to keep her alive for more than a couple minutes, let alone the days he would need to violate her mind.

The mage smiled ruefully when he realized what had happened.

"I should've thought of that. You are a snake. Good job, I suppose. You've won your own death."

Nagina nodded. It might seem like a shitty prize to most people but she thought it important.

Hers wasn't a gentle poison and it was doing its work. It felt intimate, dying like this. A wedding within her body to bring forth her end.

But she wouldn't just disappear quietly into the darkness. She glanced over at the mage's elf companion, who was lying paralyzed but conscious. She looked confused and scared, although she still had spirit in her eyes.

Very well. This would be her revenge.

"Mage who has killed me, I have a gift for you," Nagina hissed, "Do you know why elves stay hidden in their little forest?"

The mage was interested. Curiosity was a common weakness for his kind.

The elf-girl, finally recovering herself, asked, "Isn't it because we are heavily hunted by slavers due to those perverts who desire us?"

Nagina chuckled, but it came out a choking cough.

"Was that... what happened to you? You were lucky, honey. Whoever captured you... didn't know what they were doing. You think the race with the strongest warriors in the world... needs to cower in fear... of a few wealthy perverts?

"No, the ones they fear... are the mages. Elves are strong, but they are few. They can't defeat a united humanity, with all your numbers... crawling like ants.

"But what could make so many humans willing... to sacrifice so much together... against such a foe? The lustful desires of a few with particular... tastes? No."

"What is it then?" The mage asked.

"Eternal youth."

He raised an eyebrow.

"Black magic... The core is an elf's life... Most records were wiped out centuries ago... But I know how to do it. I'll give the secret... back to humanity. I'll give it to you."

The elf-girl looked horrified. She seemed sheltered, somehow, unaware of their history. But even she would understand the implications.

After an awful war, humanity had agreed to make the ritual forbidden. Memories were erased and records were burned. Magically binding vows were made. Possession of any information related to it was considered a crime of the highest order. Such a treaty hadn't been won without an unimaginable cost. The elves had paid a terrible price in blood.

If the ritual was given to a new generation of human mages, history would likely repeat. It was not really intended as a gift, but as a curse of war. Perhaps his elven companion would try to kill the mage for the sake of her nation. More likely than not, she would fail. Her elders might have better luck.

The mage was intelligent. He would understand all of this, but it wouldn't matter. He would accept the secret anyway. He was proud and insatiable.

"How?" He asked simply.

With her last, rattling breaths, Nagina told him the location of the place where she had stored the records. It was nearby.

"Thanks," he said.

Then, he stabbed her again, this time through the heart, with his knife. He twisted the blade. Blood sprayed everywhere.

It might've been her imagination, but Nagina thought he seemed to be enjoying it.

After that, all her thoughts stopped, forever.

Loraine was nervous. She tried to hide it, but it was obvious.

Her concerns were pointless. I wasn't interested in eternal youth. More importantly, I considered elves and humans to be the same from an ethical standpoint. I would rather not choose a path that would cause innocent people to be sacrificed for vanity.

I planned to read everything in the witch's library anyway, though. It was far too interesting to simply destroy. If Loraine had a problem with that, she could try to kill me in my sleep or whatever. I still wanted her alive, but if she went too far, things would get a bit uncomfortable. I'd rather avoid such a situation. However, sometimes bad things happen in life.

Following the instructions given by the witch in her final words, I opened a passage through the rock and carefully went down, carrying Loraine. She insisted on coming to see for herself what I'd do.

Besides, it wouldn't be safe to leave her on her own in her critically injured state.

We traveled for several hours through twisted tunnels in the stone. Eventually, the tunnels opened into a small cavern. The witch had quite an interesting taste in decor, what with all the stone statues of agonized figures neatly arranged with magically preserved flowers.

I wasn't here for the statues, though. I started flipping through the books.

"What are you doing? We need to burn everything! The existence alone of this magic can cause so much destruction."

I nodded.

"I agree. It's too dangerous. I'll burn it when I'm done."

Of course, I would remember it in its entirety.

"Burn it now! Don't read it first. Are you insane?"

I raised an eyebrow at her and continued reading, ignoring her further protests. She couldn't do much more than bite me in the ankles if she wanted to stop me.

Eventually she went quiet.

After a while, she said, "Oh, I see. You've been playing me all along."

"What an interesting theory."

"You're a much better fighter than you showed everyone when you were acting as an adventurer. Your personality is very different, too. You joined the Blood Wolves at almost the same time as an unknown man conveniently freed me from slavery, which was coincidentally the same group that I ended up joining."

"A strange coincidence indeed. You'd think people would consider being freed from slavery to be a good thing, though."

"And it was. For that, I am grateful. But you only did that because you guessed where I would go, didn't you? You wanted to follow me back to my home."

I shrugged. I did genuinely like her and not all of my intentions came from a bad place, yet I couldn't deny that she was pretty much right.

"It wasn't all to be manipulative. You can think whatever you want. I don't mind."

She paused again to consider.

"I won't give you what you want. I can't. It's too dangerous."

"No," I said slowly, "You can and you will. Your elders will too. You don't have a choice, if you don't want the details of this magic spread across the entire continent. Wasn't one war for survival enough?"

"Don't. You know what that would cost. You wouldn't."

"I would," I said, about as coldly as I could.

If she had any hopes for me as a person, I had thoroughly destroyed them now.

I was bluffing. I didn't think the actions of one individual should be justification enough to start such a war. But from her reaction, she believed that I would do it in a heartbeat. One of the perks of being a mass murderer, I guess.

It was what I wanted, but I can't say it didn't sting at all.

I went back to reading.