The yellowing leaves rustled, the wind blew, and the clearing behind the cabin spat Muribana out of the forest. She looked exactly like she did in the recording. Just a ragged, gray, old witch. "What is it?!" she said across the clearing, but it was as if she were standing next to us, and thin yellow rings orbited her left hand. Her voice was creaky, but her tone was playful for now. Adam put his hand on my shoulder, and suddenly we were standing in the middle of the clearing, 3 meters from her. The wind blew behind us as we seemed to move. Muribana stopped, and Adam said to her friendly: "That last bit was rash. They're noticing. What they did to you." "And who do you have here this time?" she asked and looked at me. "The police," he answered, almost annoyed. Muribana nodded understandingly. Adam said wearily: "What did those two in Prague do to you?" "Oh," she didn't want to elaborate, "they didn't respect work, so I wanted to teach them a lesson."

"How long did you give them?" he asked. "For the animal's lifetime. I put the boy into a horse and the girl into a chicken," Muribana said. "What?" I couldn't hold back. "She put their souls into animals. That's the local economy. A chicken or a horse that understands what you're saying. Enchanted horses are the local Teslas, you tell them where to go, and they'll take you there themselves, because there's a former person inside. That's what the Hindus copied a long time ago," he explained to me. "But that's illegal. This is still Earth and Poland, Polish laws apply here..." I started, but Adam interrupted me: "Actually, they don't." I took a breath and said: "But when she was in the Czech Republic, she was in the normal world. I can't help it, it's murder." "So what?" she said in a way that implied I couldn't ask anything of her. Then she pretended to yawn. She put her hand to her mouth, but it was just a trick. She immediately turned it on me. As if something was pushing me from the front and someone from the back, she hung me 3 meters back and 2 meters in the air. Her elderly face cleared with malicious pleasure. "Arrest me, little man," she challenged me. In fear and surprise, I blurted out: "I admit, it's no use." "So we understand each other now?" she said to me more sternly. Adam did nothing. I was waiting for him to do something, but he did nothing. Muribana then snapped her fingers into a fist, and I fell to the ground like a pear. I already thought I had broken my spine. It hurt like hell. "Ouch, damn it. My back, it's probably broken in half," I said. Adam didn't pay any attention to me, didn't even turn around, and just said to Muribana: "Give me a guarantee that you'll bring them back, and I'll disappear." "Hmm, and what kind? As long as they're not back, they just won't be," she said. "You could, for example, borrow one of your valuable items, and when you bring them back, I'll give it back to you," he suggested. "Hold your horses, little man. That wouldn't work," she said calculatingly. Adam thought and said: "Right, what about my new invention. Programmable magic. A spell that, once cast, costs nothing to maintain and only activates when a condition is met," Adam said. "Show me," she said.

That bastard pulled out his wand and pointed it at me, at me, lying there with a sore back. "If I touch my left knee at any time, I'll turn to stone. If I touch my right knee, all curses will be lifted. If I touch my left shoulder with my RIGHT hand, the spell, as it's set, will be erased," he said with the wand pointed at me. "Wait! What are you doing?!" I shouted at him. He didn't care about me. The second thought that flashed through my head was that it didn't sound like a spell at all, so he was probably pulling Muribana's leg, which calmed me down. But then that bastard touched his left knee. And... and nothing. Well, I don't know anything anymore. I woke up inside the witch's cottage. I saw her watching me with interest, her hand on Adam's left knee. "Nothing," she said. "Nothing," Adam confirmed, and then he touched it, and I didn't know what was happening to me again. I came to for the second time just a moment later. I was starting to understand, and I was quite uncomfortable. They both noticed my frightened expression, and Adam touched his left shoulder with his right hand. Then he touched his left knee again, but nothing happened. "You see," he continued the conversation with Muribana, and added: "It's not the magic of an enchanted item. It's a condition inside magic. It will work for you when you buy one of my modified wands. And you can't steal this one from me because you need one tuned to you, otherwise the condition won't work just for you." "Alright, but what do you want from me now?" the clever Muribana asked. "First, I want to use it on you. You won't be cursed, in the true sense, it will be a guarantee that you'll return all borrowed souls," Adam told her. "And the sanctions?" she asked further. "The death penalty, probably not. What do you think?" Adam asked her. "I won't whip myself, who do you think I am..." she told him. "Someone who stayed at the top of the wizards and was the best of the best. Once I discovered this... you're not anymore," Adam reminded her. "And that's all?" Muribana began to consider. "One more thing. I want to study you. I want you to come to my lab for a week and let me do further research on you. I've done it on myself all the time, but I'm just one specimen, and you, so powerful, almost as powerful as me, it will work well on you. Your ability to manipulate quantum fields is... amazing," he told her, and she said slightly annoyed: "Don't bring up your new language. Erm, that doesn't seem like a good deal." "I'm offering you power. In exchange for guaranteeing something you probably already do automatically and helping a colleague to understand magic so he can create more of these interesting things," he said confidently. Muribana was tempted and said: "Do you think blindness is a good punishment? With my power, I can manage without sight." "Yes, but once it's in the condition, you won't restore it with your power," Adam warned her. "I know. And what would you suggest?" Muribana asked him. "Loss of your power to my benefit. It shouldn't be possible. Maybe nothing would happen, but I'd like to test the limits of what's possible," Adam told her.

"The sanction must be high, otherwise, it's pointless, it's a guarantee of justice and a guarantee that you'll never see me here again, and you'll have your peace of mind. What's better for you? Or... choose something else," he told her. "You can't take away my beauty anymore. The ability to walk with power is no sacrifice," she thought. Adam helped her: "Or the condition will be positive. You value your peace. So wherever you go, you'll mercilessly accumulate animals that will scream into your ears in the best way they can. You won't lose anything, and you'll have a chance to make amends." "That's unlikely, if the soul accidentally flies to heaven, I won't get it back."

"That's possible, but it will be the price for actually killing someone with your power," Adam told her sternly. "If I actually killed someone with my power, I don't deserve it anymore. I'll take your proposal," she said. And suddenly I saw that even these wizards have some moral code, albeit shifted from the human one, but they honor basic values. I couldn't help myself and asked: "Excuse me, excuse me. I'm very sorry, but if your conditional magic can do this, couldn't there be a condition where I could also do magic? I don't know, just a little like a lowest-level wizard, right? It's probably nonsense, isn't it? I'm sorry, carry on."

Adam looked at me sympathetically and said, "These are the boundaries I want to explore. But this should be the hardest thing of all. Like I said, I don't know if the condition to take away power will even work. I'm trying to exploit and deceive a system I still don't fully understand. There's a certain setting hidden behind every condition, and I don't know what a person has to meet, how exactly their brain has to behave on a subatomic level, to have abilities. That's what I want to research. And when I succeed, there won't be any need for magic, but it will definitely be possible to do it through technology, some kind of chip in the head." Then he put his hand on my shoulder and added in a friendly tone, "You have back pain, plus blood pressure, cholesterol, and stiff arteries. That's in return for us taking advantage of you, and what would you even need our abilities for? Sure, being able to levitate things is great, but that's not the be-all and end-all." "Yeah, thanks," and I tried to wiggle them around, and indeed, nothing happened. Then I looked at my beer belly and said, "And ah, this, I'd be handsome again." "No, it suits you, you don't even know how much. You're a cop, the wind can't blow you away, and no thief can move you either," he said. I won't pretend it didn't flatter me a little, if only my wife saw it the same way. "So, yeah? I'll go recharge, this will be a more expensive transaction," Adam said to us and disappeared out the door. So, I was left sitting at the table with Muribana. Muribana said, "So, you'd like to be handsome. I can give you even more, strength, youth, extended life. In return, I'd turn you into a horse after you die, and when you've served your time, I'd set you free." "So that's where the idea of devils making these kinds of deals comes from," I told her. Muribana smiled at me in a strangely sly way. Slowly, her right hand extended upward like a snake, and with her palm above her head, she snapped her fingers. Suddenly, a red-black demon with horns, fangs, wild black hair, and glowing eyes was sitting in front of me. She snapped again, and suddenly she was a beautiful and endowed lady in purple dresses that held her seductive cleavage. She had a large brooch on her neck, her face was very pretty. Her hair was red-brown, curly, and tangled in an old-fashioned hairstyle. And for the third time, she was back to herself. "That's us," she told me.

Then the door opened again, and Adam returned with blood on his hands. When he saw how terrified I was, without knowing what Muribana had shown me, he said, "I asked Tomi, he said there was a rabid wolf in the area, so I thought I wouldn't destroy the forest." Smoke came out of his hands, and the blood disappeared. The iris of his eyes was no longer as brown as it used to be, but now it was slightly yellow, probably because he was full of power. "You're just radiating power," Muribana told him. "When I kill a wolf, I take everything, so it didn't die in vain," I told her. "You're back quickly," I told him. "Yeah, it looks like it. We can play with time when we have the power. That's why it's possible to put those two back in their place, and no one will notice anything," he told me as he went to sit down next to me. Then he pointed his palm at me and said, "Hmm, no hidden curses. What did you use your power for here?" "To show him my different forms," Muribana replied. "Oh, I see," Adam said, satisfied.

Then he pulled out his wand and pointed it at Muribana. "A bilateral agreement," he said. "Okay," Muribana said. "I, Adam Shaw, first and foremost, undertake to provide Muribana with a wand that will allow her to create conditional spells and thus strengthen her power. Muribana, on the other hand, undertakes to help me with the research of magic and how it works. Furthermore, she is obliged from now on to always return her appropriated souls back to the correct bodies and time from which she took them. If she fails to meet this condition, she agrees that all her power falls to me, and I undertake to repair the damage, if at all possible, with the exception of a soul that has already left this world. To make the agreement valid, grab the other end of the wand and say, 'I accept.'" Muribana grabbed the tip of the wand and said, "I accept."

A light appeared in the air around the center of the wand, split in two, and flew into both of their hands. "The agreement is done, you can let go of the wand," Adam said. Muribana let go of his wand, Adam stood up and said to me, "So, it's done, when we get back, the dead will be alive again. They'll serve their time here, and then Muribana will jump back and return them." I got up after him and said, "And that's all?" "Yeah," he said and disappeared out the door. Outside, I said to him, all furious, "And the fact that she's holding them here against their will and making slaves out of them?"

"I'm not getting involved in that, I'm not some magical police," he replied and walked back the way we had come. It was already starting to get dark outside. "It's a miracle she agreed to the deal. You can't put that much pressure on her in one day. That's just how it works here, the same as centuries ago," he told me. "We're both incredibly powerful. We don't want to start any more battles, so we automatically make concessions. After all, she pledged to give me her power if she fails. That should be enough."