Now that the illusory barrier had been destroyed, Sylvie had no difficulty even pinpointing precisely where its creator was hiding. Daemon and the others therefore had to do nothing but follow her directions, reaching the entrance to a large cave within a few hours.

"Here we are. The imbalance in the magic that had spawned that barrier came from here."

"Looks like a typical place where a witch would hide."

"I agree. And I guess it goes without saying that the idea of going inside doesn't appeal to me at all."

"Don't worry, you won't go in there. Only Lady Valera and I will go. You, Passe, and Verus will stay here and guard the entrance, in case any of those demonic beasts are still around."

After all, taking an expert cleric with you was the best solution if you had to deal with a witch, and the two monsters, as much as they cared about their friend, were more than happy not to have to enter that decidedly threatening cave.

As for Verus, he tried to ask to be allowed in too so he could protect Sylvie, but was eventually persuaded by Daemon to stay behind and assist Drufo and Passe in guarding the entrance.

"These will help us not lose our way." Sylvie said making a couple of magical fires appear, then they both ventured inside.

If the cave might seem small from the outside, once inside the two adventurers immediately realized that it was actually gigantic, and they only had to take a few steps before the light coming from the entrance disappeared, leaving them immersed in almost total darkness.

«Let's walk close to the edge, always keeping one hand leaning against the wall. That way we won't get lost."

"Agree."

Two steps behind Daemon, Sylvie tried to maintain eye contact at all times, but her bulky bishop's robe hampered her movements even more than it had on the way through the swamp.

"Do you think there's another one of those barriers?" Daemon asked seeing that they were getting nowhere, no matter how much they walked.

"I don't think so. But I admit that I had never felt such a great power as what I feel in here. This Witch must really be something out of the ordinary."

Suddenly Sylvie tripped on a slippery rock, and when she got to her feet Daemon seemed gone.

"Master Daemon? Where are you? I don't see you anymore."

"I'm right here, in front of you." she heard in the dark. "My magic light has gone out."

"Stay where you are, I'll join you now."

The girl set off again, still following Daemon's voice who kept talking to her at a distance, telling her that he had found an exit from the cave that had led him to a sort of grassy clearing surrounded by high cliffs.

"Master Daemon, I see a light."

"You're almost there. I'm here waiting for you. Just keep walking."

By the time she reached the exit however, instead of Daemon, Sylvie found herself faced with the startled faces of Drufo, Verus and Passe.

"What are you doing here?"

"What means, what are we doing here?" said the kobold "You told us to keep an eye on the entrance."

"The entrance!? I was walking towards the exit on the other side, and I'm sure I always went straight. We walked for almost an hour."

"An hour!? Lady Valera, you've been in there less than five minutes."

"And by the way." said Drufo "Where is Daemon!?"



I knew something was wrong long before I realized that Sylvie's voice behind me was just an illusion, and that in reality I had probably been talking to myself all that time.

In the end, I had once again gotten myself into a tangled situation from which I now didn't know how to get out.

I wasn't actually worried, nor did I fear for my life. By now I was sure that the Witch's intent was not to kill me, which she could have done at any time if only she wanted.

So I decided to play his game, clinging to my will with all my heart and bringing all my senses to the maximum. At this point, immersed in that darkness that the magic globe could not illuminate, the awareness I had of myself and of my being was the only thing I could be sure of, and I wanted to hold onto it.

Without ever taking my hand off the damp wall, I continued to advance, until I arrived with a certain astonishment in front of a sturdy closed door made of wood and iron.

"Okay, Witch of my boots. Let's see what you have in store for me."

Opening the door, I found myself in a sort of classroom, illuminated by an unreal light that entered through the closed windows.

A child sat alone in the first row of desks with his back to me, immersed in study; he wore a cadet's uniform and black cloak, and had the white ribbon of King Louis pinned to his tricorne.

It is the uniform of the Brienne Military Academy.

Since I could not have suddenly returned to my world I concluded that I was witnessing the materialization of an event extrapolated from my memory; so that little boy must have been me when I was studying at the academy.

At the time I was a very problematic kid, even less inclined to compromise and self-control than I would have been when I grew up, and I was often punished for blatantly answering teachers or breaking someone's face.

But I couldn't help it, I had to be like this.

I was only the son of a notary from a region that until the year before my birth was not even part of the Kingdom of France, far from home and thrown into a school where the humblest of my companions was the son of a marquis.

I was already lucky that they only called me Little Corsican, but most of the time the names with which I was labeled were far worse.

So I forced myself to be strong, and never allow anyone to consider themselves superior to me for anything other than individual talent, in which I had decided to become the best of all.

By the end of the first year, I had mastered the skills and knowledge of the last year students, and especially in mathematics and physics I could easily place myself on the same level as my teachers.

And obviously neither the said professors nor the noble parents of the pupils I looked down on liked this; so they agreed to give me arbitrary low grades just so they wouldn't have to admit that a notary's son was putting his foot down on the best French aristocracy.

They hoped to break me, but they only made me more determined; and that college-born determination would stay with me throughout my life, urging me to always do more than my opponents expected.

The door behind me opened again, and a handful of older students entered the classroom, encircling the old me; they acted as if they couldn't see me, but since it was an illusion that didn't surprise me.

"Hey, Corsican." their leader said. "Tell me, who do you think you are? I warned you not to score too high on the last test. Now, because of you, my father will make me spend the whole summer studying books."

"It would have been enough for you to study a little more."

Suddenly, I remembered.

That was the day when I had taken one of the greatest satisfactions of my life. The day Finance Minister Necker had visited the academy to attend the last math test before school ended.

Obviously in front of the Minister, a solid man who hated the privileges of the aristocrats as much as I did, the professors hadn't been able to do their usual tricks, with the result that for the first time I had obtained a grade worthy of my efforts.

"You have a great future in front of you, boy." he said shaking my hand. "I will remember you."

Too bad that his daughter Anne-Louise had a completely different opinion about me, and we had disagreed since our first meeting that very day.

As for that group of bullies, they were the lackeys of that arrogant Gudin, the son of the Marquis La Sablonnière.

Seeing him so blustery and arrogant, I almost found it hard to recognize the same officer who would one day be distinguished by numerous acts of valor in my Grande Armée.

I had held him in my arms in his last moments of life after a cannonball had taken off his leg.

Our friendship had just begun that evening, after we had beaten ourselves to such an extent that we had to spend a week together in the infirmary.

On the one hand, he had been forced to recognize my talents, on the other I could not fail to admire his charisma and his leadership skills, which, although inferior to mine, made him capable of inspiring his subordinates with a strength that went beyond his being noble.

A strange gust of wind carried those figures away like sand while the room literally transformed around me, assuming the features of my studio in Fontainebleau.

This time I had no difficulty recognizing the two individuals engaged in a heated discussion around the desk; one was me at the time of the Consulate, the other my brother Luciano.

Unfortunately, unlike the previous memory, what I was now about to relive was burned into my soul.

It was the day I had revealed to him that I had given a mandate to the chief of police Fouché and the minister Talleyrand to begin the procedures for calling the plebiscite that would have ratified my passage from the role of Consul to that of Emperor.

On that occasion, my brother and I almost ended up slapping.

Luciano was prudent and brilliant, but he did not understand the need I had to be able to place myself on an equal footing with the other Kings and Emperors of Europe.

Now I knew it had been a mistake not to listen to him: one of the many regrets in my life.

I didn't think the choice of becoming Emperor was wrong, but perhaps he was right when he said it was still too early, and that I should have handled it more carefully.

In my view, it was the just reward for my efforts and the best way to further my purpose of reordering the world. But the world had seen only an ambitious provincial, and its rulers just a threat to be eradicated by any means.

The glory of Austerlitz, the subjugation of Prussia and Tsar Alexander kissing my butt were events still to come, but in reality maybe that was the exact moment when everything started to fall apart.

"You're pathetic." I said to the old me as he watched in silence Luciano who sadly left the room.

My relationship with him had never been the same after that and I had begun to listen to the wrong people, progressively distancing myself from those who genuinely cared about me and really wanted to help me make my grand vision a reality.

A new gust of wind took that vision away too, replacing it with another, and for a moment in the midst of all that smoke, screams and flames that I saw appearing around me, I had the impression of having ended up at the deepest and hottest point of hell.

Looking out the window of the imperial palace, the old me watched with wide eyes and incredulous expression the city of Moscow transformed into an immense ocean of fire.

Rather than let me conquer it, Tsar Alexander had preferred to make it the largest open-air pyre the world had ever seen; and that was but the beginning of the disaster that was about to fall upon me.

"Look, you poor idiot. Here's the result of your megalomania."

If at that precise moment I had realized that there were people willing to sacrifice anything to be able to stop me, the disastrous retreat across the steppe that would have taken almost all of my army had made me understand in the worst way that there were goals that perhaps not even I was able to achieve.

I immediately chased away those unworthy thoughts.

I can do anything!

In fact, having left the discouragement behind me, I understood that if I had made a mistake it was certainly not in the intentions that had guided my actions, but rather in the methods with which I had pursued them.

My aspiration to put the world in order and to put an end to all wars in Europe and in the world was the noblest and most just of all.

But made blind and proud by too many victories, I deluded myself that I could bring it to fruition as strong and unstoppable as a hurricane.

The truth was that I was the architect of my own failure.

By taking too many things for granted and convincing myself that I was invincible, I had dug my own grave; and when I had understood that no change, especially the most momentous, can be made overnight, it was now too late to try to remedy it.

And that lesson alone was more important than all the memories of my previous life combined, because I was determined to build my new vision upon it.

Whether it was to eradicate decaying monarchies or stop the coming of a Demon Lord, the ultimate goal always remained the same: to create a better and peaceful world, in which there was neither war nor suffering.

Robespierre was right about one thing. A new world can only be created over a pile of corpses. And if it's my destiny to raise that pile and damn my conscience, so be it! Whatever the price, I'm ready to pay!

My gaze turned towards one of the doors of the room, from which a voice seemed to be calling me.

I opened it without hesitation, finding myself as if by magic walking on a stone walkway suspended hundreds of meters in height that connected two tall, narrow towers built on top of a rock ridge overlooking the sea.

I didn't recognize either the buildings or the landscape around me, but since I saw the ocean everywhere I turned my eyes I concluded that I definitely ended up on some uninhabited island -in the heart of the North Sea, judging by the cold-.

Before the very strong gusts from the ocean managed to throw me off, I advanced until I entered the tower in front of me, arriving in what seemed to all intents and purposes an alchemist's laboratory.

A black-scaled lamia sat at a bench across the room smoking a strange pipe, such as I had heard in my old life to be very popular in the Far East.

"Welcome." she said pushing away from her face a strand of her very long wine-colored hair. "I hope my poor abode isn't too humble for someone of your stature."

"The Witch of the Rocks, I presume."

"I don't like that nickname. I find it in bad taste. Just call me Kali."

Like a true lamia she almost looked like she was trying to seduce me, keeping her generous balcony and her provocative curves on full display, barely covered by the sheer semi-transparent robe she wore.

"Anyway, you're a really interesting guy. I've never seen anyone go through the most unpleasant memories of their life and come out with that contemptuous and self-confident look."

"Why exactly did you want me to see those things?"

"Consider it a kind of test. Anyone who doesn't have a spirit strong enough to challenge their demons is not worthy of my attention."

"I made peace with those demons a long time ago. But if you've looked into my memories you'll know why I'm here. I need your help to eradicate the plague in Basterwick."

"And why would you want to do that? Do you want to save the inhabitants of the city? Do you care about that girl's fate? Or perhaps just because you need them to accomplish your goals?"

"I'm not a saint. And I've never done anything in my life that didn't involve personal gain. On the other hand, if I want to save this world from the Demon Lord, I can't allow myself the priviledge of acting selflessly."

"Do you seriously think you have the skills to do it?"

"I can do everything, if I have what I need to be able to do it. You and your acquaintances are what I need right now. Nothing more, nothing less."

"Usually, when you ask for a favor, you try to be more diplomatic."

"You don't strike me as the type who appreciates hypocrisy. Besides, you wouldn't have given me a chance to get here if you didn't want to help me, or am I wrong?"

The lamia's blood-red lips curled into a mischievous smile, and her long, forked tongue hissed out of her mouth for a moment.

"What you're looking for is right there." she said pointing to an ampoule resting on a table. "An extract made from herbs and mineral powder. A single drop in hot water and all patients will make a full recovery. Of course it's free."

I picked up the bottle without further ado.

"There is one thing I don't understand. Since you've looked into my memories you should have understood who I am and where I come from. You may also be a witch who is said to have lived for over a thousand years, yet you don't seem the least bit surprised."

"Maybe you're less special than you think."

"You mean there are others like me?"

"This world is located at a very important crossroads of time and space, so it is quite common for souls from other worlds to reincarnate here after death. However, you are the only one I know who has retained memories of his past life. So yeah, I can say I'm a little surprised."

I was almost sure that the bewitching enchantress knew something about Faucheur or who he really was, but I decided not to waste my breath trying to get her to tell me about it.

"See you soon, Emperor."

"See you soon, Witch. Something tells me we'll meet again."

"Who knows. Maybe it will happen sooner than you think."

As soon as I crossed the door of the tower on the other side of the bridge, I found myself again in the cave, a few meters from the exit, with old Passe and the others who, seeing me advancing towards them, gasped.

"Praise the gods, luckily you are safe and sound. What happened?"

"I'll try to explain it to you, but I don't know if you'll believe me."

"Did you meet the Witch?" Drufo cut him short

"Even better. I have the cure for the disease. Come on, let's go back. We have a city to save, and a revolution to win."