Still deep into the night.
Arianna was still walking. The only source of illumination coming from the moon above her head.
She didn't know where she was going to. She didn't know where her unit was. She didn't know if she was getting closer or farther away. She was completely clueless.
...
It watched her with great interest. She was a lot stronger and perseverant than most humans.
It was a soul servant. As a soul servant, its job was to follow the soul.
When a physical being died, their soul energies were released. The soul energies were very unstable and chaotic. The Death Squad would immediately come to retrieve the soul. When they retrieved the soul, they would send the soul to the Multiversal Reincarnation Gate. The soul would move through the gate where it would be transformed into another soul and become part of a different race.
The multiverse was a number of strings intertwined with each other. The strings were similar and yet not similar with each other. Each string had several veins running through them. One of the veins constituting the existence of many different galaxies.
So a very powerful demon in this lifetime could become a peasant human in another lifetime.
To prevent such from happening, the demons created soul servants. Out of the souls of many races were soul servants formed.
Powerful demons had soul servants so that when they died, the soul servants could retrieve their souls and stabilize it. The souls that soul servants retrieved would then be kept in the Hall Of Souls where it would go into hibernation. After a millennium, the soul would be transferred into another more powerful body.
It could be said that demons were greedy, but one had to understand that they had only one archaic enemy and that was the gods. They needed to be preserved so that they will able to win The Divine War.
Most of the time, it was always assigned to accompany demons and in rare cases, witches and the other intelligent races. But never had it been assigned to accompany a human.
The human was very ordinary so why did her soul need to be preserved? That was a question only its superiors would be able to answer. For now, it had one job and that was to follow the human wherever she went.
…
Arianna was still walking. She was oblivious of the darkness around her. At this rate, even if she managed to get to her unit, she would need at least four days to mentally recover. Her state of mind was currently at its weakest and she was beginning to have paranoid delusions.
She was still limping and had not realized that she had fallen prey to a pack of wolves.
In the night, the eyes of the wolves shone a bright green color. They locked onto her.
She looked around. She had a feeling that something was staring intensely at her. She was still looking when her eyes caught onto a pair of small, shiny, bright green, marble-like floating structures. She blinked and looked again. It was still there. Only now, there were many pairs. She smelled that horrible lupine smell that were characteristic of wolves only.
Her heart skipped and she subconsciously took to her heels. It was when the wolves started chasing her, that she realized that she hadn't thought it through and had started to run to rashly. She should have calmly slipped away. But now wasn't the time to think, only to run.
She ran the fastest she could, but how was she a match for four four-limbed animals. Four strong wolves against an injured human. There was only a slim chance of outrunning them.
They caught on to her very quickly and the wolf at the front bit at her outer shirt, tearing it off completely. She was now only on the inner shirt. Her sprained ankle made her fall and that moment, two wolves jumped over her.
Now there were two in front and two others behind. They were staring at her with killing intent. These wolves were a lot bigger than normal wolves. They seemed to have a consciousness but they were not werewolves. Something between an animal and a real werewolf.
She sighed and took in a deep breath. There was probably no way out in this one. She had survived in the swamp only to die a few hours later in the hands of a pack of wolves.
She stood up. In the darkness, she couldn't see much, so she didn't know where to run to. She just kept staring at those green marble-like eyes praying in her heart that they would let her go.
A wolf lunged at her. She lurched sideways. Even if she died, she had to at least fight for her life. She almost stumbled, but she balanced herself quickly and dragged her brutally damaged ankle along with her.
She made to run again but she slipped on some loose soil and started falling down. It turned out that she had fallen down a cliff. Three of the wolves narrowly escaped the fall while one_the one that had been ahead since had fallen into the cliff. It had picked up too much speed and couldn't stop in time.
Arianna was slipping down the cliff, her body hitting rock after rock after rock. The slope was steep and rocky and so her skin was scraped. She looked down and vaguely saw something.
"Ahhh!"
About 10 metres away was a sharp cliff edge. There was no way she would survive such a sharp fall.
It took about 10 seconds, before she fell off the edge. She started falling, thinking she would die but she managed to grab onto a branch growing out of a small shrub.
"Huh-uhh, Huh-uhhh, Huh-uhhh." Arianna desperately gasped for breath. One by one, fat drops of tears slid from her eyes.
The branch couldn't completely support her weight and after some minutes, it started cracking. She looked around but couldn't see anything. She was in an abyss. There was total darkness.
The branch became more unstable. She stretched her left leg to the side to feel around. She wanted to know if there were any stepping stones that she could reach to. There was none. She stretched her right leg to the side and performed the same action, but still there was nothing.
The branch became even more unstable. She held onto the branch with her right hand and with her left hand and aid from her teeth, she tore off a button on her shirt. She threw the button to the left but missed. She tore off another button and threw it in the same direction. After three seconds, she heard a clinking sound which meant that the button had hit something, but it was too far away.
The branch had snapped at its edges and was starting to shake. She tore off another button from her shirt but her hand was too fidgety and the button fell. She tore off another button and threw to the right and she immediately heard a clinking sound. A stepping stone was close and she could jump onto it.
She approximated its position, took a deep breath and jumped down to the right. She landed on it and her left foot slightly slipped. The area of the stone was small so she stood still for a moment.
Her shirt had only five buttons and she had removed four. There was only one left.
'Life is unfair.' She thought. If she had thrown the first button to the right, she would have saved the other three.
Now she had only one left. She tore it off with careful hands and threw it to the right this time but there was no sound. She squatted down and felt for the area of the stone she was on. It wasn't very big but it was wide enough for her to sit on. With that, she sat down and closed her eyes falling asleep.
She had suddenly lost the will to return to her unit. Right now, all she wanted was to survive.