Ariel wasn't aware that he'd ever entered a realm belonging exclusively to the demon, but it was a moot point. "There are parts I don't remember," he said, opening the first two bottles in turn - the whisky and the wine. "It might be because of the opium, but I find my memory is not complete even about periods of my life I ought to know." He had no idea if dying had erased them, if it had been transport to this world, or something else. It had been almost two hundred years, after all. "The first memory I can possibly recall is being en route to China, via Cape Horn and the Straits of Magellan." He had to chuckle. "The ship almost foundered. I almost died at the age of sixteen." In other words, at a time when the only mention of Mephistopheles he'd known had been within the pages of Faust.