From the moment I entered the forest, I knew I was out of my depth. It wasn't a new concept to me; it was in fact what Sei Orlouge had tried to tell me that I couldn't do it, that I wasn't even going to try and do it. I refuted their facts, their carefully laid out logic. The reasoning was nothing new; that was how they trained the mage hunters. Told we wouldn't survive, that our lives were over and we should roll into a grave and die. We were abused physically and emotionally day in and day out, forged into a weapon that could push past the fear of failure.
When you go in expecting to fail; you realise victory is in pushing past the fear and into the realm of the unexpected.
I knew when I entered the forest I had signed my death certificate. Pode had surely expected the Dawnbringers to show up, to fight and prevail against her. What I did was heroic beyond compare, if you were to ask others. I never really cared for the opinions of anyone but one man. The point is, I entered that forest because that was my job. I had only one job in this Thayne forsaken world, and as sure as the forest around me was red, I was going to see it through to the end.
Xem'zund had been the sheer callous brute force. It was easier to deal with strength than the trickery that seemed second nature to the forest around me. The Red Witch was of course more prolific in her illusions and her distractions. She was also a psion of sorts, something that concerned me greatly. While Magic was, of course, anathema to me, so was I to it. If she could get in my head, she would kill me as readily as Sei Orlouge had defeated me back in Ixian Castle. It was hard to accept that I had a weakness, but if there was a singular overwhelming one, it was that to a Psion I was a Drow with a blade.
So, it was fortunate after I had escaped the leash that Sei Orlouge had put upon me that I ran into the criminals, Logan McCloud and Max Dirks. While I was unfamiliar with either of them, their reputation preceded them and proved more than hot air. In the end, they helped me on my last step of the journey. While I could never beat her by myself, the forest being the ultimate fortress I now had a chance to help defeat her by herself. I had managed with the blood of the Kargoosh to enter into a glade and in doing so shattered the barriers around the other forest glades. The sudden disruption of magic had to form a beacon, and now I stand in the clearing with the Red Witch herself.
And she is smiling at me.
-Excerpt from Memoirs of a Mage Hunter
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