Sinha and I sat at the dinner table after he had set fire to the corpse near the lakeshore. He had asked me to bring some firewood that was in the inn, as I wouldn’t be needing it until winter had set in. When I returned with the wood, I found that the body had already been covered with a large pile of dried leaves and twigs. From the footprints on the ground, it had appeared that Sinha hadn’t moved around much: so how had those things been gathered? I also noticed the insignia on the back of Sinha’s coat. It was a red circle with eight spikes emerging from it.

We left the area soon after the fire had been lit. The method of lighting the fire had been yet another oddity. Sinha had removed a golden tinderbox from his coat, had taken a handful of greyish powder from the box and sprinkled it liberally over the body. By the time the powder had landed on the body, it had already begun to spark and flare up. It was as if the powder had been lit merely by the rubbing of Sinha’s fingers.

As soon as the reddish-yellow sparks landed on the dead leaves, there was a crackling sound followed by smoke, as the dry material was set alight. Small flames began to lick at the leaves and run along the length of twigs, causing the fire to spread rapidly. Finally, Sinha had dusted the rest of the powder off his hands with a flourish, causing more sparks and more flames on the parts of the heap that were not yet on fire. I could feel the heat of the flames and smell the stench of the corpse slowly charring.

In the cabin, I could clearly hear the distant crackling of the flames. The lake wasn’t too far; sometimes, when I had a free day, I would go fishing there. This cabin had been thoughtfully chosen: it was situated at a good distance from the other settlements and had many enviable resources around it that many would… kill for.

“Have you decided?” Sinha asked.

Suppose I were to answer that I wasn't sure how many more tricks he had up his sleeve to get me to believe him? I already knew there was something not quite normal about this man, but I feared that declining the offer wasn't an option.

"Do you always take so long to decide the fate of your targets?" Sinha asked amusedly, as he reopened the same book he had been reading before. “It seems quite out of character for you."

"What do you know about me?"

“A fair bit. I know that you do care about any living creature. So why are you hesitating now?”

"I care about the reasons. I am unconvinced about your mission. Why would someone of your strength and wisdom need me to do anything for him?”

“Certainly,” Sinha read from the book he held, “There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never care for anything else thereafter. Do you agree?”

I fell silent. A long time ago, I had said something eerily similar to a boy who had asked my advice before he was required to enlist in the King’s army for the war in Nihata. That had been over a decade ago. Now when I pass by his village now, I don’t see him. He had no family so no one there who could tell me what had eventually happened to him.

“Ernest Hemingway.” Sinha interrupted my thoughts. “And no, you do not know this person. However, if you take up my mission, I shall enlighten you.” Sinha closed the book and put it back inside his large coat. As he did so, I managed to catch the title of the book: ‘The Complete Works of Hemingway’. I had never heard of this name. Was this Hemingway a Court Scholar, I wondered.

“Very well.” I resigned myself to the task.“When is the task required to be finished?”

“When you are strong enough to accomplish it.”

Sinha looked at the ceiling. “Aesop is watching. He should recover your memories just about now.”

At first, I had no idea what Sinha was talking about. And then I realised he was referring to last night, about which I now somehow had images in my mind:

I recalled the feeling of the cold dark chamber.

I could see a woman with magenta eyes. I was talking to her.

I could hear and understand what was spoken between us.

Her name was Moira.

But that was not all. It was not possible for me to have done some of the actions that I had begun to recall:

I could see Moira through a window thousands of yards away.

It was as if I were an eagle stalking a mouse from the sky.

There was a white rotating circle that followed my gaze and directed my vision, making this sighting possible.

Strangely, there were some highlighted details along with this white circle.

I had known Moira’s name even before our conversation...

As I retraced the steps in my mind to understand how I had got to this moment, I eventually arrived at the widow’s hut. The conversation was clear in my mind. Although I had spoken the words and had done the actions that I was recalled, I could not see the purpose in any of it. It was as if I had been possessed by a demon and had done its bidding.

“There has long been a rumour that Moira resides in Clementine Fortress.” The widow said. “But no one has lived to confirm the tale.”

“If you find her and swear fealty you are sure to be rewarded.”

She then gave more precise directions and was very excited to be sharing this information with me.

I would not have talked to someone in this manner, and would most certainly not have asked the following question:

“And what if you were to kill her?”

To that question, the widow’s face had twisted in horror. She had immediately begun chanting loudly while looking wildly in all directions. She had backed away into her hut and, before slamming the door shut, had screamed at me, her eyes bulging and teeth bared in a snarl:

“GET OUT! NEVER COME BACK HERE, OR I’LL SKIN YOU ALIVE!”

Odd woman. Although I had recognised her chanting: she had been speaking Sa’rahain, a language spoken by witches. I had heard this dialect on many occasions in the past when I had chanced upon ‘witch’ burning. These were ungodly events, with a complete lack of remorse shown by the people that surrounded the witch: they truly believed that it was an evil entity that was shrieking in pain, and that the pain was richly deserved.

Nonetheless the women, and sometimes men as well, screamed these words at the top of their lungs. The crowd stood and watched as the words shouted were pierced into our memories. Immediately after the brutal burnings, there was a huge round of celebration: if everyone was drunk, it would be easy to purge those images from their minds.

The few who were familiar with those words had had explained to me their meaning. They had taken the curses seriously and had invited priests to bless both them as well as the ground where the remains of the witches lay. Sa’rahain was supposedly an extinct language, yet the priests were taught as a means to defend themselves against a speaker of that tongue.

Witches had their specific deities. Depending on the traits and beliefs of a coven, they either believed in the same being or in a different abstraction of the being. Was Moira one of these deities?

Then came more memories:

I looked past the border of Carthon. As I left the forest, I effectively left the country and stepped inside the territory of Nihata. I saw pillars of stone and glass in which people lived, and carts that did not need horses, that sped through streets marked with poles emanating fireless light.

I have slayed beasts that have only been spoken of in legend and collected the bounty from the aristocrats of Carthon, whom I did not know, and yet exchanged pleasantries with.

But most disturbingly, I met people who… cannot be killed. They shrugged off stab wounds as though they were nothing. And they possessed powers that should not exist.

What were all these memories? What were all these events?

“I shall not be at your beck and call, nor will we be companions. When you need assistance, I shall be there to guide you; to counsel you.” Sinha raised his index finger and placed it on the table; his nail digging deep into the wood. “Starting now.”