The witch's library was not even remotely her entire collection, but it was still a treasure trove. It was a different system of magic from the one I practiced, but as a reference it was excellent. It mostly operated on the principle of creating links between entities and using them as conduits. Mana was used to shape and structure energies, but the main mechanism of action was through forced bonds between the 'essences' of things. This was especially good for manipulating emotions and memories, even duplicating and transferring them.

Among the more central magics was a method of cloning someone by using another person's body as the base.

I think this would be easier to explain with an example. So, say there was a mage named Mallory and he captured a girl named Jane. With this method, Mallory would overwrite the original information of Jane's body, slowly killing her in the process, and turning her body into a copy of Mallory's physical self.

After this was done, and Jane's brain had been reformatted to match Mallory's, Mallory could transfer his soul right over and have moved into a new identical body.

This wasn't a very useful magic by itself, as scarring, age-developed brain patterns, worn out cells, and whatnot would be copied over as well. If Jane were younger than Mallory, Mallory's new body after cloning would not be younger. Even worse, transferring souls was a dangerous and complicated process that caused some damage to the soul and had increasingly severe side effects the more you did it.

Now, if Jane happened to be an elf, this would be different. Elves have magic in every cell, in every drop of their blood. They are born with it. That magic is what constantly repairs any damage to their bodies, keeping them ageless after they reach adulthood.

Jane's body would be formatted into a copy of Mallory's, but his new body would be loaded with the regenerative magic of the elves. While it would be originally identical to his old body, after he transferred his soul over, it would begin to age in reverse.

Soon, Mallory would be young again, with a brand-new, unaging elven body.

I hope this is making sense. It's a complicated process, but that's the general idea behind it.

A mage can perform this process both on himself and on behalf of other people, so essentially, when this knowledge was widespread, it was accessible to anyone with the right connections.

For example, it could've been offered to the wealthy, politicians, and even people who performed well in the army. Elves would've been sold for high prices. You'd only need to capture a couple of them to afford the procedure for yourself.

All it'd take to get most countries on board was a solid campaign to dehumanize the elves, made easier by historical prejudice. Then, it was a convenient trip to a life of eternal youth with no disease to all the go-getters out there.

The resulting war had been predictable.

Thousands of meters below ground, there was a dark room made of carved stone. The room only had one resident.

Cuffs glimmering with dimensional locking sigils were clamped around his every limb. Mana restriction stakes pierced through every bone in his body.

In contrast to the many chains that bound him, he was a frail figure, with barely any fat or muscle on his frame. If not for the air of power in his bearing, he would look as though he belonged on a hospital bed.

And still, he was locked down there, alone in the depths of the earth.

Food was dropped down a long, narrow shaft. There had been some talk of inducing a stasis, but that would require constant human proximity to maintain, which was far too dangerous.

There was good reason for this. With a few seconds of interaction, that man could make most people obedient to him for life. Obviously, this wasn't because he was just that likeable a person (although he could be incredibly charming). The man called himself Monthu and he was a black magician of considerable power.

He had been trapped in the darkness for centuries.

Although rarely used, the room had a single entrance—it was closed with metal doors that were several meters thick. Even after all this time, Monthu hadn't been able to put a dent in them.

Now, he heard the sounds of them being drawn open.

A tall figure stood in the doorway. He was well-muscled, with brutal features, and blue eyes that seemed to glow in the gloom.

"Are you real?" Monthu asked.

After centuries alone, his hallucinations were often quite detailed.

"Yes," Johan replied.

"Then get me out of here."

Monthu's request was accompanied by as much compulsive force as he could muster through the restrictions, the mana intricately woven to compensate for the lack of volume.

"Nice try," said Johan, "but that isn't going to work."

Mana restriction stakes were less effective against black magic, especially for a mage that had years to adjust to them, but they weren't so useless that a person with so many sticking out of their body that they looked like a porcupine could subdue a top class magician.

Monthu shrugged.

"Worth an attempt. What brings you to such a remote and, presumably, hard to visit place? I don't think you've come for the pleasure of my company."

"Couldn't I have come for the pleasure of your company? You seem like an interesting person."

"Don't mock me."

"I'm not. I simply want to talk to you. Of course, if you want to do something different, I'd be happy to oblige, but it might be hard for you in that state."

Torturing a helpless prisoner who had already suffered for centuries would be a unique sort of experience, but any information gained could be quite unreliable. This was especially true considering Monthu's personality.

"If it's all the same to you, I'd rather avoid any strenuous activities. But your temple is the reason I'm trapped down here. What makes you think I would give you anything you want?" Monthu asked.

"You don't have to. I'm not exactly a proper follower of the temple, but if you're truly resolved, I'll just leave right now. You won't hear another person's voice for—hm, what do you think?—probably fifty or so years?"

Monthly was not so resolved. Johan pulled a spread of food from a pack he was carrying and motioned for him to sit.

"Before you ask me anything, I want your story. I like to know who I'm talking to and why you're here. And make it interesting. I haven't heard a good one in a while," Monthu said.

"Fair enough. I was born on a different world, one that didn't have magic like this one. Eventually, I killed myself from boredom and ended up here. It was the doing of the Temple of Light, of course; they wanted me to be their hero.

"I wasn't really into it until I found out my little brother was here as well. So, like any good sibling, I followed him around a bit. He had set up a nice place in the Iron Kingdom.

"Of course, I didn't want him to forget about me, so I went and had a little fun with the residents of his building. Turned it into a nice makeshift abattoir, if I do say so myself," Johan smirked slightly at the recollection.

"He seemed pretty mad at me. Might've been because of that, might've been because I killed him on our homeworld, but anyway, he decided to drag me into his problems. Wants me to help him get rid of some king who pissed him off."

"And you just let him?" Monthu raised an eyebrow. The man in front of him hadn't seemed like a pushover.

"I figured I owed him one, for killing him and whatnot. He probably anticipated that, so it's not like it was out of disrespect."

As a black magician, Monthu was an expert in understanding and observing people.

The blue-eyed man in front of him almost didn't seem human. Every microexpression that the man showed was perfectly controlled. The fluctuations of his mana, similar in nature to a heartbeat, were precisely regular. Whatever emotion he displayed was exactly what he wanted Monthu to see.

Monthu had no doubt that the man could normally lie flawlessly.

"Then why did you kill him in the first place?" Monthu asked.

"It seemed like fun," Johan responded.

It was only for the faintest fraction of a second, but Monthu noticed it. The man had involuntarily hesitated.

Monthu nodded, satisfied. "You are interesting. Perhaps we can come to some sort of arrangement."

After throwing off the beasts that were stalking us and escaping the cave, Loraine took me towards the elven kingdom.

Unlike how she'd been before, throughout the journey, she was quiet. She'd only respond when spoken to, and even then with minimal detail.

She was making it clear that she did not want to talk to me. We were not friends.

Given that I was blackmailing her with the lives of her entire race, I thought that was very reasonable. I didn't make any pointless attempts to lift the mood.

The kingdom lay at the centre of a strange circular range of mountains. After many days of travel, I saw them rising out of the forest, far on the horizon.

We approached, breaking through numerous magical defences, but the terrain itself proved the most formidable. Near the peaks, the air was impossibly cold. We had to devote all our energy to maintaining our body heat.

I suspected the chill was magical in nature—perhaps some sort of natural formation—as the mana was so thick I could almost smell it.

If Loraine knew what it was, which she probably did, she wasn't saying anything.

I hadn't expected her to.

But when at last we finished crossing the peaks (for there was no route around them) the mana became even denser, to the point where it made what I felt while crossing seem like normal air.

The land was glowing purple.

Magical energy rose like steam from lakes at the bottoms of the mountains.

The lakes were beautiful, like giant gemstones; they ranged in shade from startling amethyst to pale, almost opaque lavender. All of them, however, shared the same purple glow associated with mana-rich minerals.

I had seen most of Earth's famous sites. It had been one of the more pleasant components of my education.

This had included, in one case, lakes formed by the pooling of glacial runoff.

They got their colours, often incredibly vibrant, from suspended silt that the ice ground from the rock underneath.

Was something similar happening here? Bedrock made of mana-stone?

I asked Loraine and she nodded dismissively.

Unfortunately, it seemed that I would have to wait to find someone with whom to discuss the mechanics of light absorption and emission in mana-rich silt. Really, it wasn't the time for that anyway.

The land itself was thriving. The technology seemed primitive and the level of development low. The place was teeming with exotic animals.

However, I did not get the chance to examine it in depth, as soon after we got through the border, I noticed a group drawing in around us. Elves with spears emerged from the woods, encircling us. Unsurprisingly, their weapons were pointed at me.