Rebecca opened her eyes but she couldn't see anything. That wasn't correct; it was more accurate to say that she could see everything. The endless void stretched as far as she could see, it was true emptiness. She felt like she was floating in space but it felt more like being submerged in some sort of liquid.
"Am I dead?" she asked herself.
She didn't have to answer that because she instinctively understood that she had died. As she looked forwards into nothingness, she got lost in her thoughts.
She didn't know how long it had been since she had arrived at...purgatory, but it had been a while. As she became wary of time, she began to contemplate her life as; there was nothing else she could do.
"Did I live a good life?" the question came up in her mind.
Rebecca was an orphan and lived in the streets, always anxious for the next day and the next meal. Then her life took a full 180 turn. The prophesized saint, the princess, took a fancy to her, thus her life became extra-ordinary, and the princess became her savior.
She remembered taking etiquette classes and perfecting her form as she wanted to be her princess's perfect lady in waiting and she did, she became the perfect maid. But, that changed when one fateful day, she could only watch as her princess was taken away from her. So, she took up the sword, that she so hated now, to protect her one and only.
Every drop of sweat, every slash of her sword, and every night she couldn't move thanks to her training; she gave her all for the princess. Then, came the captain, the only one stronger than her; an actual prodigy. He gave her new the fire to work with which she got stronger, now that fire was extinguished; submerged in the bottomless ocean of doubt, self-loathing, and hate.
One day the demons struck the land. She was barely 20, not even a sword expert but she fought. She fought to protect the princess, to protect her friends. Yet everything she did was overshadowed by the captain. That jealousy turned to hatred which lasted years but it was quenched embarrassingly fast. She let out a chuckle at those days.
Rebecca laughed to herself as she remembered the turn of events. "Those days were fun" she reminisced. But that inferiority complex never subsided. As she began to grow, she was happy but, she whenever she looked at the captain she realized that he was always stronger. No matter what she did, she realized that she would never be able to beat the captain so, her complex grew.
Soon, that complex got to her and she gave up. She stopped swinging her sword. She lost her path. She was now walking into nowhere, sliding into a bottomless pit of nothingness, and she was powerless. She couldn't do anything, and she knew that, hoping for the end of the war so she could stop and again rediscover herself, and be someone else... someone better. Be someone who didn't want to run away, someone who didn't hate her previous ways, be someone who could be able to look at her loved ones and show her real self to them without worry. She wanted to be whole again.
She sighed.
"They loved me so much, yet...I wanted to run away from them...their love, their efforts; the responsibility...I hated it. They gave me so much yet I never returned anything and I even wanted so much more...I asked for more."
"I wanted to do many things after the war ended." Her words stopped there.
She had long since given up the way of the sword something that she had sworn would never happen. In fact she had become sick of it. At some point, she just wanted to live for herself. She felt incredibly guilty when that thought came up. After all she was implying something bad about the princess, her savior, the one she wielded her sword for.
She had given up the way of the sword but she never gave up on her friends. She only fought in the war for so long because of them. She had always hidden herself from them just because she was afraid what they would think of her. She did not want to be separated from them. So, they only saw that side of her, the side of her that had already died, and until her death they never knew her hidden thoughts. She wanted to tell them everything once the war was over, but now all of that had gone down the drain.
"I wonder if they would hate me if they knew my thoughts." she asked herself as she bit her lips. Guilt filled up her stomach as she began to indulge her thoughts more and more.
The more she thought the more she became guilty so, she changed her question. She did have a lot of time on her hands after all.
"What would I have done after the war?"
She imagined a decently big house by the Cliffside overlooking the sunset with the ocean breeze on her body. She let out a small chuckle as she seemed to remember somethings from her past.
She imagined more, she imagined the princess's wedding with the captain.
She imagined more, she imagined the tea party with the elf mage and the alchemist.
She imagined sparing with the barbarian one last time.
She imagined...
A single tear seemed to leave her eyes and trickle down her face, a sudden sigh ended all her imaginations. She was dead after all. She looked back at her life again, the memories with her friends, her master, and the knights, who she thought of as family.
She seemed to remember cursing out the elf about aura being superior to magic, drinking half to death with that war-crazed barbarian, being the unwilling lab rat for that demon of an alchemist, the thoughtless bickering with her master, and the countless fights with her captain.
She laughed a bit.
With a melancholic and somber smile, she remembered her last moments. Her fight with Lilith... she couldn't deny that during that fight she felt her fire being re-kindled.
"I hope-"
Her unfinished words seemed to eat at her. For some reason, she felt as if she was missing some pieces to the puzzle that was her mind, her soul, her reason. But, all of that was overshadowed by this feeling that she couldn't describe.
Those words made her mouth feel bitter but, she couldn't seem to stop herself from remembering them. She seemed to feel warm as tears began rolling off her eyes. It was somewhat ironic that only at her last moments in life she felt alive again. She wiped her thoughts and with a somber smile.
.
.
.
She looked back at her life. She saw a few things now as opposed to every details like before, only the things that mattered to her. She saw her life only through the events that made Rebecca, the human, not Rebecca, the grand master.
"I don't know if I've had a bad life. If this was some kind of play I'd definitely hate it though. Haha..."
She said out loud as her voice slowly dissipated in the endless void.
Who knew how much time had passed, she herself had given up and had stopped counting. She had come up with many scenarios in her head that would never be fulfilled. And each time, her thoughts always wandered towards her sword, her life's path.
"Was I too much of a sword-freak? Why do I always think of my sword? I hate it, I hate even thinking about it... so, and why do I still reminisce?"
Her thoughts were stuck on that topic like a moth being stuck on a flame.
.
.
.
"Have I ever….hated the sword?"
After an unspecified amount of time of lingering on that topic, she finally asked herself the question. Well, she wasn't in a particularly dire situation to have to answer the question, she was dead after all.
She remembered the first time she held a sword, its weight almost made her fall over. She remembered those helpless smiles her colleagues gave her as she struggled to even lift it up. She remembered those times, she spent training. She trained so much that she had made imprints on the training ground, as she ran on the same spot all day long, every single day. She eventually became strong enough to lift the sword and began perfecting her form. When she became the strongest in the academy, then came the captain. She had that new fire that raged in the face of defeat, so she trained harder.
But, it seemed no amount of training prepared her from the despair she would face. A demon terrorized the town she once held dear, confident in her swordsmanship; she fought it only to realize it couldn't be killed no matter what she did. All her training wasted, and it wasn't because she wasn't strong. She was strong enough to be recognized by the empire, but the only reason for her defeat was her body.
She would later regain her confidence after meeting her master and learning more things about swordsmanship that would make her rise further into the realm of geniuses.
"Ack!!!"
It seemed those memories brought her pain.
"Who would've thought I could still feel pain. Hah!" she let out a small laugh as she rubbed her temples and stopped thinking.
"After all that pain, I...I promised myself that I would never give up on the way of the sword, I promised that I would become the strongest. I-"
Her words trailed off.
She knew she had broken all those promises. She knew she had tarnished her master's name, her master's pride. She thought back at her at her promise, she had made it when she was barely 20, before those demons terrorized the world, before they destroyed everything she held dear.
Then the answer she desired, she didn't ever hate the sword. She was burnt out. She needed a break. After years of jealousy, envy, self-loathing; she just needed a well-deserved break. But, who knew how long that break would be. Days, weeks, months, or years? Well none of it mattered anyways, she was dead after all.
"HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA~~~" She let out a long sigh, even in death she still worried. But, she had no choice; there was nothing else to do other than to be worried. She looked at the endless sea of the void.
.
.
.
Nothing.
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.
.
"If there is a god, I hope my next life will be better." she said out loud. As the thoughts passed by she remembered Lilith's final words, the words whose ends would never be heard again, for some reason, but she quickly shook off her confusion.
For some reason, she felt tired again. She felt…empty.
.
.
.
Suddenly the great nothingness was filled with something. It looked human but as 'it' came near her, she realized that 'it' didn't have any defining features. It looked like a mannequin without eyes, mouth, ears, hair. She was visibly creeped out a bit but she sensed no hostility from it. She began feeling warm, something was changing in her surroundings, but she didn't realize that. All her focus was on that being.
.
.
[Your wish shall be granted.]
.
.
A voice rang in her head when suddenly; the emptiness she had felt was replaced by drowsiness. She felt excruciating pain in her head, like as if it was going to explode, she felt as if her entire body was lit on fire, but the only thing her mind felt was fatigue.
And that was all she felt then, amidst the pain; in her head and her body; she only felt tired.
'I did not know dead people felt tired.' she thought her last thought as she became herself no longer.
[I hope you live a better life]