Anya was in a very bad mood. She was left with no choice but to stop and dismember hundreds of demons in a brutal killing spree. It was simply the only reasonable method to relieve this much stress.

Her opinion was that killing sprees shouldn’t be forced like this. Instead, they should flow from the heart, like great art. Using killing sprees simply to deal with stress was really just crass, boorish behavior.

But since she couldn’t harm the one who caused this problem, she could only imagine his moronic face superimposed on these lesser demons as she ripped out the spines whole and used them to whip their families until the bodies collapsed into bloody chunks. It wasn’t her most impressive work, but she was pressed for time, so quality had to be sacrificed.

Some time after the 1,000th kill, her rage subsided enough to think more rationally.

First, take stock of the situation. A weak, cowardly human worm has hijacked my lovely house through base deceit and trickery, forcing me to flee before he has a chance to further abuse my True Name. He pretended to be a moron until I let my guard down, and then took advantage of my trusting nature. Even after I offered to provide him both food and shelter for 969 years, he just threw my generosity in my face. The worm was actually a vile, cunning snake.

No good, my rage is rising again. Need to calm down. Imagine his face, crush a few more skulls…

…

There. I’m functional again.

So these are the current issues to solve.

#1, He knows my True Name. Because he is a snake, he might be tempted to sell the information to the first demon he talks to. Naturally I cannot let him approach any population centers. Also, because he has no mental defense magic, any psionic can pull it from him. I must set a new goal to cleanse the continent of psionics soon to prevent this scenario from occurring. Alternatively, I could wipe his memory somehow or annihilate his brain, but that may trigger issue #2 or #3, respectively.

#2, I am forbidden from hurting him. I can’t cut out his tongue, poison him, or sew his mouth shut. This limits my options considerably. I think I am disallowed from causing even indirect harm, which means I probably can’t let him starve while he is chained. If I can find a way to silence him without triggering the condition of ‘hurt’, that will be ideal.

#3, I am forbidden from murdering him. Though I do regret the loss of his high quality Mana, it’s much too dangerous now for him to live. He will need to die accidentally. I could start by loosening the logs on the cabin roof, so that a wonderful accidental death of log crushing might occur. I could also herd some vicious lesser demons near him, and hope they catch his scent by accident. Maybe I can give him a bomb, tell him it’s a portal generator, and suggest obliquely that he might be able to get home if he can ‘fix’ it. If he’s not a moron, it shouldn’t explode, so hopefully that will be interpreted as an “accident”.

#4, I’d like to know how he learned my True Name in the first place. If he learned it from someone else, I have a bigger problem. If he learned it himself through some bizarre wormlike human ability, that would be preferable. If I could acquire that ability, I could use it to learn the True Names of some of those arrogant Devil shitheads. For now this is a secondary issue, however. I have no intention to be seduced by Greed.

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Most of my short term problems should be solved if I can somehow prevent him from speaking. Then it should be safe to be in his presence again while I wait for my chance.

In the long term, this plane is full of nasty deaths for snakes like him. He won’t last a week without my active protection.

I should be able to find a scroll of ‘Mute’ in town. I’ll feel a lot better when he can’t speak with that forked tongue. If only I could just cut it out, it would be so much more convenient, but fate is ever unkind to the beautiful and the generous.

Anya finally decides on a course of action, and starts running towards the nearest town, called Narth. With a comfortable jogging speed of around mach 1, it doesn’t take long to reach the gate.

Let’s make this quick, she reminds herself, before looking towards the magic shop. Lower the chance that some freak coincidence happens, and this spirals further out of control. If anyone finds out I’ve been Bound, or worse, follows me back to that snake, I’m in deep, deep shit. Sometimes it’s a pain to be a gorgeous, all-powerful celebrity.

Unfortunately, counter-espionage was not Xiuhcoatl Zyanya’s most effective skill, and she was off her game today. She didn’t notice she is observed by a certain shadow at the moment she leaps high over the town wall with a robbed ‘Mute’ scroll 17 seconds later.

Incidentally, 17 seconds was way more time than she’d intended to spend. Otherwise, she probably would never have been marked. In the middle of the robbery shopping, she felt a series of tugs on her demon heart, followed by a series of smaller shocks. She was immobilized for 15 seconds with nausea, double vision, and deafness, while the shopkeeper shouted trite stock phrases like “Help, thief!” and “Stop right there!”. Of course, when she regained movement, all he shouted was “blERGHH!”, which was much more interesting, especially as he impressively managed the shout as an airborne severed head.

True, she could have paid for it, but it would have taken so much time, and she has very important shit to do.

For example, planning a gruesome accidental death for the snake who was almost certainly responsible for nearly causing her to vomit in public, and eternally tarnishing her celebrity.

Actually, it didn’t really matter if he was responsible or not.

Even if she can’t kill him, she can at least casually start to reveal his repressed memories. The damage that created the memory has already been done, so bringing them up is arguably a form of ‘healing’ instead of ‘hurt’.

Let’s carefully ‘heal’ the snake at the first opportunity with focused psychotherapy.

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