When Alice woke up, she felt... empty.
Her wounds were serious: she lost an eye, and the internal damage from the monster's attack was probably even more dangerous.
She lost an eye... Alice pressed her hand against the terrible wound, making sure she would never see again with her left eye.
She laughed weakly.
"I knew something like this would happen. I hope there exist someone capable of fixing this, but I doubt it."
Killer didn't bother to give a reply.
Groaning because of the pain, Alice somehow managed to stand up on her feet.
The first thing she sensed was the smell. An horrible smell. The second things she sensed was the dreadful sound of flies.
The third thing she sensed was the dead body of the monster from last night. That simple sight made her vomit.
The creature was an humanoïd twice the size of Alice, and looked simply grotesque. Unholy. For some reason, the skin of the being was blue, and he possessed two mouths, and four arms, each equipped with dreadful claws.
There was blood and viscera around the monster, and a big hole in his chest.
It looked as if someone shot the abomination with a rocket laucher.
But Alice knew the truth.
Although her memory was blurry and what happened last "night" seemed dreamlike, she knew.
Alice looked at her fist, and then at the dead body of the monstruosity. How did all of that made any sense ?
"Killer, how did you do that ?"
She revieved no signs from Killer. Maybe she was still sleeping ? Alice didn't really understand what sort of being Killer was, so maybe that was the case.
Or maybe she was listening, but chose to not answer.
Alice forgot Killer for a bit, more concerned about other matters. She was hungry and thirsty, and she decided that this was her priority.
Luckily, there were a lot of berries in the grove. Normally, Alice wouldn't have eaten those because theses berries could potentially be poisonous, but she was too hungry and tired to care.
The berries tasted really bad, but Alice ate them anyway.
For her water problem, she resolved it simply by going near a fountain she saw earlier.
The water also tasted really bad (Alice even thought she was drinking piss), but, again, the young girl was too tired to care.
She even used it too wash her face, which, in handight, was an horrible idea since she had an injury here and the water was filfhy.
The chances of her getting some sort of illness, beetween her right arm's wound, the one in her face she just washed, the food she ate, and the water she drunk were now... pretty high. And, with no hospital around, dying because of that potential illness wasn't put of the question. Alice's health was in danger.
"I should probably just end my own life instead of waiting for a painful disease to do the job."
Alice expected Killer to react to those words, but her mysterious helper just stayed silent, turning this into an akward moment.
Truth be told, at some point, Alice stopped being suicidal. Maybe she really wanted to meet the other Lightbringer or the Godess before dying, maybe Killer's bravery inspired her, maybe there was another reason. Alice wasn't sure.
She inwardly shrugged, before continuing her little exploration of the City.
Just exploring gave her plenty of informations about what this place once was.
For example, just from the style of the houses, Alice was pretty sure the technology here wasn't any more advanced than the technology of the medieval era.
She wondered if it was the same in all of the Sky, or if some towns were way more advanced than other. Sadly, to know the answer of this question, she would have to explore more Rooms.
And for that, she had to escape this one first.
So she explored.
The streets of the City, the houses... Alice explored.
She found nothing. And no one.
It didn't even looked as if there had been a war here, or everybody flew. It straight up was as if everyone just disappeared, one day, and never reappeared.
The City of Flowers... was similar to the Forest of Glass, in a way. Once, it was a happy place, but now, there was no one left.
By walking randomly, Alice stumbled upon a peculoar building circled by trees, one that wasn't a house, and wasn't a normal shop.
It took some times for Alice to realize that this was an armory.
She entered the building with caution.
Here, she found a lot of things. Things one would expect to see in the armory of a medieval era city.
There were swords, a tons of swords. Some longs, some shorts. There were also a lot of other weapons: spears, maces, battle axes, hammers, whips, tridents, daggers, bows, crossbows, arrows... There were armors, as well, varying greatly in terms of weight, protection, and style.
Alice smiled in delight. One of the reason Killer struggled so much with her fight, besides the fact that she couldn't see and that her opponent was far stronger, tougher and faster, was her lack of weapon.
Alice tested a lot of weapon, and came to the realization that a lot of them weren't a good choicr because she wasn't strong enough to propelly use them.
Most weapons were heavier than they looked.
In the end, Alice settled on a dagger.
Although her range would be much shorter than with a shortsword, it would also be way harder to carry and use compared to a dagger.
She could even throw the dagger if she needed to.
Among the daggers, one caught her attention immediatly, because it looked fancier than the other, and even had some runes written on the blade. In a language Alice didn't knew, of course.
It also looked less rusty than most of the other weapons here.
Alice would have like to try wearing one of thr armor, but theses armirs were obviously not adapted for a person of her size, which was truly heartbreaking, because some of them looked really cool.
Alice was about to leave, satisfied with her new dagger, but then, something caught her gaze.
A sword.
A sword with no traces of aging on the blade.
A sword that truly was magnificient.
A sword so big no human could use it.
She had seen the sword before, but now... something seemed different about it. Drawn like an insect by a flame, Alice approached the strange sword...
... And got swept away in a strange dream.