Dreams are wet and cold.
Deep within the sleeping consciousness of the Great Witch, Snow, the normally peaceful Witch Island was torn apart by curtains of flame.
These were the memories she least wanted to revisit — roughly twenty years past, when a fleet of human ships had exploited the Witch Clan's generosity and goodwill to land on the island's shallows.
The witches had offered fine wine and healing herbs. What they received in return was poison and blades, wielded in the name of purging heretics.
"For humanity — judge the heretics!"
Fervent fire burned in those human eyes. Their silhouettes overlapped with those of the witches in the firelight, and one by one, the friends and kin who had always been by Snow's side fell.
Snow didn't understand.
Why had Hana — the Great Witch of the Earth — and Kaze — the Great Witch of the Water — and Tsuki — the Great Witch of the Fire — all chosen to abandon resistance and go into hiding?
They had seen it. They had seen the fate written for the Witch Clan. And yet they had spoken of how humanity, compared to the witches' naive and gentle nature, was the race with the greater future.
Because the Witch Clan carried a flaw they could never overcome. A flaw they shared.
A single tree cannot make a forest.
And so Snow — youngest and most exceptional of the Great Witches, a mere hundred years old — could only watch, helpless, as her people were wiped from the earth.
Had she not stumbled upon those two children who became her reason to keep going, she might have already thrown everything aside and launched herself at humanity in a one-woman war of revenge.
— In the beginning, Snow had taken in the two children with entirely calculated intentions.
Just as she had used the substance called a witch's factor to reshape the human girl named Meruru into a killing instrument.
But the boy was different. Just as she was about to do the same to him, she had hesitated.
The reason was simple: the boy was not human. To do such a thing to the surviving orphan of a people she had no quarrel with — how would that make her any different from those humans?
And so Snow had relented.
Good enough, she had thought.
In the end, she had failed to overcome the very flaw the other three Great Witches had spoken of — the one endemic to the Witch Clan itself.
It was almost laughable. Unable to even commit to revenge without discrimination — proof that hatred, for all that it was supposedly life's most profound emotion, could not sustain her.
Her original plan had been to raise the two children to adulthood, see them wed, and then quietly slip away.
To take her revenge on humanity. On the organization known as the Holy Church.
For the sake of those two children's growth and wellbeing, she had even woven a grand illusion with every tool of magic she possessed, sustaining a false prosperity on that isolated island for sixteen years.
But as time passed, she found herself growing weaker —
Weaker even than her desire for revenge. Her heart kept whispering: what if we could just stay here forever — me, Shaya, and Meruru?
"No… stop… ugh…!"
The snow-haired girl jolted awake in her dream, those pale blue eyes flying open.
"That dream again…"
In the library, the evening light was too bright.
Cold sweat had soaked through the thin, translucent white silk bodysuit she wore, now clinging to her skin in a damp, uncomfortable press.
"Hm… just as I thought. If you keep wanting what you want, you probably can't forgive yourself either…"
The Great Witch slumped against the sofa's back, the last tremors of the nightmare still flickering in those pale blue eyes.
Sixteen years. She had never moved on from this wound.
Since surviving the massacre, picking up those two children, and erecting a false illusion boundary on this now-desolate island — this dream had clung to her like a parasite, never intending to let go.
Always reminding her that she could not walk away from her hatred in selfishness.
She stretched out her hand and slowly traced the Sharingan set into the core of the spell-array on the table before her.
The boundary's reconstruction was in its final stages. Once this core stabilized, Shaya and Meruru could live their lives in peace beneath an even more seamless illusion.
She had even gone so far as to construct a magical double of herself — identical in personality and intelligence in every way, lacking only the ability to cast magic — to avoid the "fake death gets discovered" problem she'd discussed in the chat earlier.
Snow counted the days. It was almost time.
[Spreading Witch Factors: Good morning, everyone.
[Spreading Witch Factors: I want to ask everyone something. If you carried a grudge on behalf of your entire race — what would you do?
[Moon Princess]: ?
[Moon Princess]: Quite the heavy topic for first thing in the morning. Did something happen, Great Witch?
[Spreading Witch Factors: Nothing happened. I just felt like asking.
[Spreading Witch Factors: It's not hard to talk about. The "mission" I mentioned before — it was because long ago, my people were destroyed by outsiders who took advantage of our kindness. As the only survivor, I want revenge.
[Spreading Witch Factors: I've noticed I've been a bit… lax lately. So I wanted to hear everyone's thoughts.
[Moon Princess]: Oh — your people were wiped out? You never mentioned… ah.
Remembering what the Great Witch had said about the illusory boundary, Kaguya pieced together a rough picture of the backstory.
[Moon Princess]: Mmm, I don't really have experience with this kind of thing — maybe ask someone else…
[Lord of Lands Between]: I support your revenge, Great Witch.
[Lord of Lands Between]: If you already have the power, go and let your hatred loose. Exterminate the clan that destroyed your people — every last one.
[Lord of Lands Between]: Then build a new order in the aftermath. Ensure your enemies never rise again.
Marika responded without even an @, and within seconds. Unusually quick of her.
[Moon Princess]: Hmm, isn't that a little extreme?
[Moon Princess]: Great Witch, I remember you and [Aspiring] debated this in the chat before? I more or less share her view — if you feel your current life isn't so bad, you shouldn't have to force yourself…
[Definitely Not a God]: Foolish false god — retract your shallow words. This is not extreme.
[Definitely Not a God]: So long as justice prevails, even if the world burns, a kind people has the right to take revenge against any race that wronged them.
[Moon Princess]: ?
Excuse me, who are you even?
[Definitely Not a God]: You who are lost — tell me. Against what vile race do you intend to exact what manner of revenge?
[Definitely Not a God]: Though my body has long since rotted on the throne, and I cannot offer you material support — my spirit will stand with you…
Somewhere. A Hive World. The Sanctum Imperialis. Atop the Golden Throne.
After scrutinizing this inexplicable object that had appeared before her — something that read like a wish-granting plot device straight out of a M41 pulp story — the withered and decaying Monarch finally concluded that it was not a new trick from the Chaos Gods.
Because its arrival had genuinely solidified her fading, fractured consciousness — giving her back clear thought and the ability to speak again.
The Chaos Gods she had crippled were incapable of that. And it would offer them no advantage, only harm.
Of course.
The Monarch assessed her own current image: a black-haired, brown-skinned girl of perhaps fourteen or fifteen, absurdly young. Then she looked at the rest of her identities — still shattered, still incomplete — and fell into thought.
[Queen of Britain]: Revenge against another race?
[Queen of Britain]: Does the Great Witch's world also have something as contemptible as certain breeds of fae in mine…
[Spreading Witch Factors: It's humans…
[Spreading Witch Factors: I want revenge on humanity. I want to destroy humanity.
[Spreading Witch Factors: [Image]
The image was from the night the Witch Clan was wiped out: humans in religious dress, carrying long blades, slaughtering the witches they had poisoned into helplessness — though to look at either side, there was no visible difference between them.
[Queen of Britain]: ?
[Moon Princess]: ?
[Definitely Not a God]: ?
[Moon Princess]: Wait — Great Witch, when you say destroy humanity — you mean the specific people who committed these crimes, not all humans, right?
[Moon Princess]: ...Right?
The chat fell briefly quiet, the Great Witch's silence making her position perfectly clear.
But the matter wasn't over yet:
[Many-Headed Monster](Admin): Kill!
[Many-Headed Monster](Admin): Only one can survive. No matter how many there are — just one survivor is enough.
[Many-Headed Monster](Admin): [Great Western King religious garb + horned head.jpg]
[Lord of Lands Between]: How rare for the Admin to speak. That said, our definition of "human" here may differ from yours, Great Witch — so I can't really take a position on that.
[Lord of Lands Between]: But I will say: if I were in your position, Great Witch, I wouldn't just go and destroy humanity on my own — I'd bring my children along to help.
[Lord of Lands Between]: Which goes to show, Great Witch, that you are still far too kind.
What kind of creature are you?
The young-faced Monarch suddenly realized she had guessed wrong. Apparently, things that looked human were not always human — and things that were not human could, in fact, sometimes be.
[Moon Princess]: [Excuse me, ma'am.jpg]
[Moon Princess]: Hold on! I suspect some of you are having cross-channel conversations. Let me work through this…
The debate and commentary in the chat came thick and fast — honestly, the busiest the group had been since its founding.
While the Great Witch was reading through the chat, caught in a moment of indecision, a voice sounded from just outside the library doors:
"Mother — are you awake?"
To be continued…