She held a cane in her hands. A simple motion, a strike against the floor, and the entire illusory space shattered. Thousands of tiny shards, like mirrors that had once held memories.
My memories.
No, not mine at all, theirs. What I wanted to steal, like someone else's breath. What I wanted to call my own, without any right or reason.
She stood, holding the cane like a victor's banner.
And in her gaze, no desire to fight. No, not at all, she hadn't come to battle, but to conquer. Crushing, without remnant. Grind to powder, scatter the ashes over her domain, like the dust of a tiresome experiment. As if I were a pig, and she disdainfully couldn't stand the filth.
It seemed she wasn't planning to linger. Though I understood her, who would want to stare long at something so repulsive?
"Tell me in more detail, what was that memory and what did it mean to you?"
There it was, a request that sounded like a command. I wasn't exactly thrilled to recount everything I'd once lived through. From the outside, this whole ceremony looked like I was her slave, forced to dig through my own memories to entertain the mistress. But strangely, I didn't fixate on that. Because this was a game, and a game doesn't tolerate violations.
"What exactly do you want to hear from my lips?" I asked, as if I hadn't heard, as if I hadn't understood.
"Don't play dumb (though maybe it's not playing)," the witch said with a slight bitter aftertaste in her voice. "I'm curious. That memory is yours and not yours at the same time. It belonged to Yahweh. The path we witnessed."
That mountain. That journey. That mission. Not my memory.
"Why then were we watching his life, not yours?"
"Stop," I interrupted her. "You're talking as if you had nothing to do with it. Aren't you the one choosing what the memory will be?"
"You're right," she said. "But I can't know which moments of your life were the deepest wounds in your heart. Too bad, I so want to touch them and make them even deeper."
And no matter how it sounded, her voice held not lies, but genuine craving. A craving for pain, but not her own — mine.
We kept talking. Where's the rush when time doesn't exist here? There was no beginning, no end, no clock hands to remind you you're still alive. And maybe that's what irritated most of all.
"It's amazing how inconstant you are," she said. "You don't want to see me, but you keep dragging out the game, as if I were your own desire. Ehe-he-hee."
That laugh again. Irritating, ringing, venomous. Laughter that stretches eternity, like a snake coiling around the throat.
"It was a remnant of the past, where Yahweh and his companions headed to the mountain," Enua began.
Realizing the real game had started, the witch dropped her ceremonial pleasantries.
"And who was the person living on that mountain?" she asked. Calmly, like a teacher checking homework.
"The Elder," I replied shortly.
Confession of ages. Throughout human history, people were born whom fate destined for a special path. A thorny path, a sorrowful one. A path before which others fell, but you had no right to stop.
They were called heroes.
They were given a mission, not by gods, but by people.
They were humanity's hope. Legends said heroes appeared only when the world stood on the brink of ruin, when eras crumbled. When people died out. When hope became a luxury.
And every hero sought the one who knew most of all — the Elder. Not an old man, no, but one who carried knowledge, who saw the future. They foretold, and their words always came true.
The hero's main mission — find the Elder. The one who would tell of the coming threat.
"What happened next?" the witch asked with a light, almost theatrical smile. "Did they find him?"
"When they arrived..."
Pause.
And suddenly a scene flared before the eyes. A shard of memory came alive.
He was dead.
"The Elder had been killed for unknown reasons," I said.
"Unknown to them," the witch corrected. "But not to you, you were watching. You saw everything. Name the killer."
The name of the one I'd encountered more than once. The name that always returned, like a splinter. Foreign, yet close. Close, yet distant.
The killer's name...
Avaley Le Fay.
"Bingo!" the witch drew out, triumphant.
And in that instant, I felt heat envelop my body. I looked down and saw a blade piercing my right shoulder.
"AAAAA!!!"
A scream tore free, like a flash, ripping through space. But it wasn't space trembling, everything was. From her laughter, from that horrific, mad laughter, as if she'd just hit the jackpot of fate.