The Devil's Cursed Witch

“Regardless of the reason, I have a feeling that in tomorrow’s council meeting, he will probably agree to send her to the human villages. The farther, the better,” Cornelia commented.

“I am thinking the same,” Leeora confessed. “That child is still traumatized. If Sire decides to send her among another bunch of strangers, she will probably be warier than she already is. I don’t know what will happen to her. The thing is, once she’s sent to the outskirts, I will probably have no chance of meeting her ever again.”

Though the villages on the outskirts of the kingdom were technically part of Agartha, the races didn’t treat them as such. Neither the leaders nor the ordinary residents dared venture into the human territory, mostly because they were people who had experienced how cruel humans were before. The centuries-worth of hatred accumulated between their races was hard to resolve.

Though Leeora acted kindly in front of Ember, it was only because she considers her a pitiful child. She would rather avoid human beings if she could. If Ember was to be sent to the human villages, Leeora would never see her again because she would never come to the territory of humans.

She felt like her heart was sinking with worry. It was not even long, just barely more than a week since she knew this human, but she felt attached to her like a mother.

“I hope the humans will at least treat her well,” Cornelia comforted her.

Leeora sighed helplessly. “Still, even if Ember angered him…”

“I am sure he must have his reasons,” Cornelia agreed, “but this is not the way to handle things. That poor girl…”

Leeora let out a bitter smile. “Perhaps many of us have forgotten but the King…if we are to think about it, he’s been considerably more civilized after living in peace for the past few decades. What he did could be said to be ‘moderate’, and he did well controlling his anger. The younger generation born after the war probably could not imagine how the King was like before, especially against humans.”

The High Elder of the Wood Elves had known Draven even before Agartha was founded, and she had witnessed his countless feats that earned him the name of the ‘Devil’. In fact, Leeora was one of his earliest acquaintances, and among those living in Agartha, probably the one who knew him best.

On the contrary, Cornelia Grimm was a young witch only a few centuries old, and she had only started being the leader of the witches after the Monarch left Agartha. Thus, she’s listening intently as Leeora reminisced about the past.

Leeora continued, “I know he has done wrong but what can you expect from a man who lived for thousands of years without knowing where he had come from, the one who had kept on searching for his identity and the reason for his immortal life but he never found any answer and the one whose hands were always covered in blood in order to protect others.

All he had seen countless deaths—both the death of his enemies and the people he cherished. The last bit of warmth and emotion in him probably vanished the day back that particular human betrayed him.

That human- the one he trusted the most but… in exchange for giving a single human the benefit of the doubt… was the death of his people. The ones who were like his family for centuries, he saw them as a pile of dead bodies, and he burned those bodies with his own hands.”

Leeora felt her heart breaking as she recalled what happened in the past.

“That pain he felt at that time, we cannot even begin to imagine. The entire clan of the High Elves vanished along with his friends who were akin to brothers to him. The safe haven he had built for his people, it was destroyed in front of his eyes just because of that one damned human.”

Leeora, along with the other council members, had witnessed that cruel night when Draven returned after killing the enemies. He was coated in the blood of the enemies, yet despite his immense strength, he was unable to save them. In front of his eyes were the dead bodies of everyone he tried to protect.

Those who were by his side for centuries… people who he had shared stories with…comrades who trusted him…

In that eerie silence, there was only the sound of his body hitting the ground as he kneeled in anguish in front of those corpses. His red eyes which looked like they were living flames had tears rolling down from them.

A pained scream, like an animal whose heart had been torn apart, mourned his loss.

For the first time in their long lives, they saw the devil cry in pain, the kind of pain that’s worse than a physical one.

Cornelia was but a young witch then, but she had heard from the Monarch what happened. She felt emotional as those words reminded her of those worst days in their lives when they gained nothing but lost so much. “Even her Eminence had to do something that was forbidden to protect us and she had to leave our kind. After she was gone, no one was left who could talk to His Majesty. If only she was still around…”

“Wounds of the flesh can be healed, but for a man like him, the wound of betrayal can never heal. The day he killed that human for that betrayal, he lost his sanity. He no longer trusts anyone and neither does he let anyone get close to him. To him, humans are less than insects. Their existence was best squashed, if not ignored. The fact that he allowed the human villages to prosper in the outskirts was probably his limit. There might come a day when we can forgive humans but he never will.”

Cornelia agreed. “Keeping Ember with you is simply because he believes she is something special, special enough to make him willing to turn a blind eye to the fact that she’s a human.”

“There must be as he is not an unreasonable person. At this point, all I want is for him to make the right decision for Ember in the council meeting and not let his anger cloud his mind.”

After sharing a couple more words, Cornelia returned to the territory of the witches.