After she left, the forest returned to silence. Until —
"My, my. How could someone leave something with this much sentimental value just lying here on the ground?"
A pale, slender hand lifted the book that had been discarded on the forest floor — the one used to hold the formula and materials. The voice was performatively reproachful, but the delight beneath it was undisguised.
On the other side.
"Note to self: unnecessary talking should be kept to an absolute minimum going forward."
She thought back to the sound of her own voice when she'd issued that threat. She'd been directing it at that insufferable woman, so the tone and emotion had all been right — but the unmistakably feminine quality of the voice still unsettled her. It was the kind of voice that, in her previous world, would have been worth money — but hearing it coming from her own throat felt strange no matter how she thought about it.
"And as for that woman — since she didn't show herself earlier, she'd better not show up now either."
She quietly said a small prayer. Much as she wanted to kill that woman with her own hands, she had to acknowledge she was very likely outmatched. Everything she knew, that woman knew too — but the reverse wasn't true.
So all she could really do was hope the church, which had made that woman so cautious, would be useful — and take care of the revenge on her behalf.
She walked for a while. With nothing happening, her thoughts drifted to the eyeball- and finger-shaped special materials she'd just obtained.
"Surely no one actually uses these to brew a potion."
She recalled her two past experiences brewing a potion: no matter how many solid ingredients went in, the final product was always a liquid — not a trace of residue left behind.
She genuinely couldn't decide whether to be disgusted.
"Pity there's no internet. Nowhere to post the question and horrify people."
She let the thought go without dwelling on it. That kind of problem could wait until it was actually relevant.
A little further along, remembering that it had been more than fifteen minutes since the second Assassin's death, she took out the magic mirror and performed necromancy with the same question. Looking at the mirror — which showed an image barely different from the first Assassin's — she recorded in her mind what the residual spiritual energy now felt like in her inspiration, and intended to wait a while longer to see whether it would stabilize or continue to decay.
Considerably lighter than she had been, she made it back to the outline of Moen City in only slightly more time than a quick pace would normally take.
Once inside the city, however, her initial intention to go straight to the church gave her pause. It wasn't anything complicated. She'd simply realized she'd been thinking about this too simply. Everything else aside — if a church member asked about her background, what would she say? That she used to be a large man named David John?
She pressed her hand over her face. Even imagining the scene made her cringe. And the question would inevitably be asked face-to-face — there was no way to sidestep the moment, unless she gave up on reporting that woman entirely.
"Now I understand why that woman wasn't being careful just now. This takes serious courage."
For someone prone to wishful thinking, dying might genuinely seem preferable to walking into a church with this situation. After all, this was one of those choices where the damage to yourself was measurable and definite, while the damage to the enemy was anyone's guess. And that was before considering any future retaliation from the cult — just getting through the church's initial interrogation alone would be far more acutely painful than being spotted by an acquaintance while cross-dressed.
"What do I do?"
Retreating meant swallowing an unbearable humiliation. Advancing meant forcing herself through total social death. Faced with this dilemma, she found a third option surfacing in her mind: run. Far and fast — leave Ruen entirely.
Could she actually escape a cult of unknown strength?
She couldn't resist forming a mirror and performing a divination for her most difficult decision yet:
"My act of fleeing Ruen right now will face a lethal threat related to Tina Edith."
The question and seven repetitions were instructions to her own spiritual energy — to bring back insights related to this — so whether she spoke aloud was irrelevant.
After the seventh silent repetition, she watched the answer form in the mirror — several words in Ruenish. She abandoned every last shred of wishful thinking. The result: Considerable danger.
This meant the probability of being caught was significantly higher than successfully escaping. Since the divination concerned only her own safety, interference was unlikely — certainly not something that woman could manage.
"Fine. You're the one forcing both of us to go down together. If I don't get to be comfortable, you don't get to stay alive."
After a long silence and an exhaled breath, she thought of the way that woman had handed her the Witch formula — the shameless, undisguised gloating in every line of her face. She made her final decision: give that woman the most profound lesson of her life, even if the price was steep.
Of course — taking stock of her current appearance — she could at least change into less conspicuous clothes before heading to the church.
There was no clothing shop open at this hour, naturally — but for a Witch with a library of mirror-related spells, this barely qualified as an inconvenience.
Walking toward the Anjelka District, she resolved casually along the way to use "Ais" as a name for now. She'd originally considered something more fun — "Tifa," for instance — but thinking of the "Caesar" precedent and of other transmigrators who might exist in this world, possibly even right now, she decided playing it safe was wiser.
No particular significance behind the name. She simply went through the common women's names in Ruen and chose the one whose pronunciation came closest to the word for "ice" in the English she'd known before transmigrating.
After finding a shop that sold women's clothing and carried more than just skirts, Ais pressed her hand against the window and spread her spiritual energy through it, then traced in her mind the symbol of a door.
Immediately, in her occult sense, the ordinary windowpane felt like an unlocked door. She pushed lightly — and her hand passed straight through the glass. Her hand, however, did not appear on the other side.
Remarkable — though she wasn't as astonished as she might have been. She'd already had one round of wonder to work through.
Entering the city and encountering its various mirrors had already made clear to her that her sensitivity to reflective surfaces had reached a thoroughly unreasonable level. Whether her line of sight was blocked or not, she could sense the location of every mirror surface within roughly thirty meters. She could directly tell whether any given mirror was reflecting her at any given moment.
This particular ability apparently wasn't worth a single mention in the Witch potion's knowledge — so she'd only discovered it after entering the city.
She stepped lightly through the window.
She found herself in a region that looked blurred and dim in every direction, as if she'd stepped into the surface of a reflection — and yet it held her weight solidly. This was the Mirror Realm behind the glass, described only minimally in the potion's knowledge as exactly that — it was, as the knowledge indicated, not infinite. The space near the entry point was more open, becoming narrower the further it extended, until it tapered into a dark, deep, indeterminate tunnel.
Not quite like a real world, she intuited. She had no intention of entering the tunnel — both her inspiration and the potion's knowledge agreed it was dangerous.
She moved to another entry point similar to the one she'd come through, and — unable to resist curiosity — performed a divination to check whether throwing a piece of ice would pose any danger.
Getting a negative answer, she condensed a piece of ice, then used black flame on it for caution's sake. After confirming the treated ice had lost its abnormally rapid spreading property and that she no longer had control over it, she tossed the piece of ice toward the edge of the Mirror Realm.
It met no resistance. It vanished soundlessly, completely — as if swallowed.
Curiosity satisfied, Ais tried pushing her head through the second entry point — and found herself looking, as expected, into the clothing shop.
"Experience really is the best teacher."
Feeling she'd learned something new, Ais stepped lightly into the shop and gave herself a satisfied nod.
Author's Note (this chapter): Ais looked around. Even with Night Vision, everything was indistinct, blurred. This place, which the potion's knowledge referred to simply as the Mirror Realm, was, as stated, not infinite. The space near the entry point was more open, narrowing with distance until it became a dark, deep, indeterminate tunnel.
Wait, in Cycle of Destiny it explicitly describes the characteristics of each Witch Sequence — Franka at Sequence 6 still had to pray to the Primordial Witch to enter the Mirror World. Self-entry requires at least Sequence 4. 😂 Author reply: What Sequence 4 allows is transportation through the Mirror World — like how a Traveler uses the spirit realm to move. What she's doing here is just entering the small Mirror Realm space behind a mirror. That's different.