Knights of Tezoth

- Hmm-m-m, heh-heh-heh! Once upon a time, a curious story happened to one of my countrywomen — she pretended to be human and made an important man fall in love with her. They engaged in all sorts of mundane nonsense typical of your kind, read books together, held hands, strolled and admired the scenery, whispered sweet nothings to each other. But one day, her illusion dissipated, and her true nature, including our ears, long compared to yours, was revealed to his eyes! She immediately tensed up, her face twisted, and she asked him with contemptuous anger, "How did your heart manage to overcome my charms? That should not be possible!" And he said to her, "Life saw fit to endow me with a mind different from ordinary human ones, and I am unable to lose my own will, alas." This answer puzzled her even more than before, and she was practically shouting at him, "So it turns out you knew everything from the very beginning?! What were you trying to achieve by playing the fool?!" And do you know what he replied to her? "I never played the fool; I am a genuine fool through and through." And she said to him, "Are you trying to say that you knew everything, but it was all still real to you? Ha-ha-ha! What absurd words are coming out of your mouth now! Do you not know the nature of my kind?" Ugh, so much emotion in this dialogue, and the ending is just a bombshell! He declares to her, "I know you will never love me, and that like any other human, I am worse than cattle or a toy to you, someone deserving only contempt. But that does not matter, because my feelings for you are true, and I can do nothing about them." Can you imagine? What an idiot! Well, it ended with him being unable to betray his duty to his "homeland" at that moment and throwing himself into the river along with her.

— Truly, a curious tale to hear! I would even call it romantic in a certain shade... Hmm, that probably sounded strange! But still, such an outcome is infinitely better than if that man had used his immunity to separate your friend's head from her body or do something else to her, for instance? The curiosity of our kind often borders on madness. Or the opposite story might have happened, had he not possessed a fortified mind, m? Or perhaps they would have continued coexisting until all his loud "love" turned into the poison of the heart? In our world, only death is a constant, and every pursuit of euphoria turns into vile betrayal.

— Ha, forgive me, forgive me, sometimes the image of a thousand-year-old crone takes hold of my imagination. But the motive is now quite clear to me. The Iron Land is full of such tales and perverted shades of human nature; you will likely have plenty of opportunities to indulge your curiosity.

Lucipheria gasped and pressed her palm to her cheek.

- Sometimes it seems to me that inventing new methods of torture for your kind is excessive; you yourselves, without any external help, always find ways to destroy yourselves, especially in spiritual terms. Accept my condolences, my lady. I hope that in your next life you will be born as something else, perhaps a flower, or maybe a unicorn.