35 – An Understanding

I found the other witch only a few paces from the door when I left. She was leaning against a gnarled old tree, her body partially shrouded in a veil of mist rising from the floor of the forest. I stared at her, my jaw set tight.

I was still annoyed from her attacking me, but more than that… I was even more irritated by that old woman reading me like a book.

She took a breath, closing her eyes, and seemed to be deliberately ignoring how Smoke growled at her. The hellcat’s raven fur stood on end, his tail looking to be almost twice its usual width.

“I wanted to apologise,” she said, but it sounded like it took a lot of effort for her to even say that much. “I… acted rashly, driven solely by what I sensed from you.”

I sighed. “I can’t blame you too much. Back home they would have sent an army my way if they’d seen me walking the road so brazenly.” And had, more than once.

Still, there was some comfort in knowing that my power had not waned. I had shrugged her magic aside as easily as I would have in the old days. Eastern magic wasn’t as different as the locals liked to pretend it was, as it happened.

Though they did like to use their hands a lot more than the wizards back home.

“So… you truly don’t mean anybody any harm?” she asked. She looked at me, one brow raised high.

I let out an irritated grunt. “If I did, we wouldn’t be talking right now. Believe me, in the past I have killed people for far less than what you did. But,” I sighed, pressing my palm against the trunk of a nearby tree. “But a good man doesn’t kill folks, unless there’s a good reason to. And I want to be a good man. Or… at least not the kind of man I was.”

Sometimes I thought about it. How far I had fallen, how I’d let hate and anger drive me step by step across a whole damned continent. When I did die, and it was simply an inevitability even for an immortal, my sins would form a long damned tally.

In truth, nothing I did now would ever compensate for the man I had been.

So, why even bother?

The truth about that was, well…Whatever happened after I died didn’t matter. All that really mattered was being able to tolerate how I lived now.

“I suppose,” Sakura eventually said. “Apologies, again, for all that. I… have had bad experiences in the past.” I saw her grimace, folding her toned arms. “So perhaps I prefer to act before I think, for as foolish as that may sound.”

I knew that look in her eyes well enough. The look of a woman who had endured some great pain and cursed herself over it. After all, I was much the same.

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“Whatever the case,” I told her, “try not to attack me again. Next time I won’t be so reserved.”

“Next time,” Smoke chuffed, raising a paw her way His claws glinted in the stray sunbeams that poked through the canopy of the treeline. “We kill you!”

“Yes, Smoke, that was the implication.”

To my surprise, Sakura offered us a wan smile. “I understand. But know that even though you bested me, there are witches and cultivators far stronger than I on Tsukio. In fact… this southern region is perhaps regarded as weak, in the grand scheme of things.”

“Oh?” I asked. I had no interest in fighting strong opponents, but it would be handy to know where the greater powers of Tsukio lived. If the Snake Flower Sect were anything to go by, the other stronger sects would be the kinds of lunatics looking for trouble.