After recovering from my injuries for three days, during which I bore the Witch’s unpleasant nature without complaint, I set outward again, through the human countryside to the edge of the Garadin Desert, at the far end of which lay the Capital, the city of my enemies.

Despite my distaste for the human people, I must admit that the human lands are very beautiful. There are hardly any predators anywhere, their lands are bathed in sunlight every day, and the air is clean and free of magic. I suppose one price for the great power I have ascended to is the loss of the ability to live simply and freely, as do the children in the human villages. They carry out their work in their fields for the sole reason of survival, without any grand purpose or ambition. Yet they seem so carefree as they waste their lives on these trivial things, content to beat the ground with sticks each day anew, to gather each night and drink rotten fruit juice, to build their muddy straw houses with their broods of children, half of which will die before reaching adulthood, and the rest surviving only to carry out the same meager legacy as their ancestors. It perplexes me to no end that the humans are content to live like this.

They require coins in exchange for food and shelter each night, little slivers of metal with crude carvings, each identical to the next. It seems the only reason these coins are valued is because other humans value them, which of course is very silly. It is as if they have all chosen to believe in a lie, and in doing so the lie has become truth. Of course, outside of the human lands, their lie means nothing. Naturally, power is the ultimate currency. Still, in order to acquire these coins, I performed acts of service for various residents of each village I passed through. They were very simple, very easy things, such as transporting boxes across the village, or collecting herbs in the forest. I used no magic, but that is no matter—the real difficulty was the humiliation of having to perform such menial tasks for such low people. Yet I was strong enough to bear it, and collected enough coins each day for three meals of human food and a place to sleep.

My intrigue in human customs extended to their rotten fruit juice, which they claimed was a potion that made them happier. It did not make me happier. As far as I could sense, there were no magical effects whatsoever. Conversation with humans was equally perplexing. I spoke with a human who, after a long and seemingly pointless conversation, in which she grew increasingly frustrated at my lack of understanding at human conventions for implicit language, finally told me that she wished to engage in sexual relations with me, if only I would give her ten copper coins. I told her that I did not have any need of an heir at this time. She said she did not want one either. “Why then shall we engage in sexual relations?” I asked, and she went away fuming.

I asked occasionally about the children who had defeated me, although here in the human lands they were called the Hero Party. It seemed they were heralded as prodigies in their respective fields who went around attacking and robbing nonhumans, although most humans referred to the practice as ‘protecting the kingdom’ and ‘restoring peace’. I did not see how conquest and violence was ever a proper tool for the restoration of peace, although I was hardly in a position to talk. At least I never claimed to spill blood for any cause other than my own. I asked why the Hero Party attended the Royal Academy if they were more capable in battle than their instructors, and received answers such as ‘I’m sure they have a good reason’ and ‘Let us not doubt the wisdom of our kingdom’s saviors’.

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Regardless of the reason, I was glad they were all socially accessible in their school instead of wandering the world or living in seclusion like many of the strong choose to do (although I still hesitated to call anyone with their level of skill strong, despite their victory over me). I did not think it likely that they were taught the Power of Friendship at their school, or else every human would use it. However, if I could get close enough to them that they would share their secrets with me, it would not matter where they had learned it from.

Humans are frivolous, social creatures—they share thoughts and posessions like water from a spring. Once I earned their trust, I thought, it would be easy to acquire the knowledge I sought.

I traveled through their countryside for several weeks, during which I refined my human mannerisms and speech—learning how to slouch in a chair, squat on the side of the street, laugh in their harsh laughs, construct lines of thought in their wild, ever-tangential ways. By the time I reached the edge of the Garadin Desert, I could passably mimic drunkenness, engage in a shouting match with a stranger I bumped into on the street, and generally knew when to thank a human or not to.

I am proud to say that it took me only thirty minutes, without assistance, for me to decipher how to arrange passage across the desert with a caravan. One only needed to locate the leader of a caravan and request permission to join them, providing a small fee as requested by the leader.

That said, it was significantly harder for me to secure a spot in a caravan than I thought. I watched, perplexed, as caravan leaders readily accepted others immediately after rejecting or ignoring me. Many would not even listen to a single word I intended to say before shooing me away or asking me to leave them alone with apologetic looks on their faces. It was only after one caravan leader told me, “Get you gone, beggar, and find some other lout to leech from!”, that I understood that the reason they would not look at me was because of my clothes: dirty, torn, and rancid from my two weeks of travel. Indeed, I had noticed that the humans’ treatment of me had worsened during the last week of my journey, and now I saw why. Humans are truly a strange people, who place utmost importance on seemingly arbitrary things. Nevertheless, I was in their lands now, and their laws and customs held power over me by virtue of the number of their followers alone. I unclogged sewers on the edge of the desert for a week before I had saved enough money to purchase a new set of clothes.

This time, I soon found a caravan, and entered the desert—the one obstacle before I reached the Capital—a little over three weeks after my supposed demise. I thought, then, that this would be a simple, painless crossing, and that humans were easy enough to handle, once their peculiarities were understood correctly. This, as it turned out, was in error, for there is no end to their foolishness, and quarrels are the primary pastime of their kind. Yet it was here, amidst that foolishness, that I truly began my instruction on the human heart.