Divine Calendar Year 4567
The Faceless Realm
Main World: Traidella
***
The world had been looking for and slaughtering her brethren, the dark witches, as though it was just a game for them.
How utterly wretched and narrow-minded was the world.
Everyone easily turned their backs on her and her sisters.
At that time, she, the venerated leader of all dark witches, was gasping for breath. The moonlight shone on tendrils of silver hair, gushing like satin-like waterfalls from her pale head.
A cold wind permeated through her flimsy, white robes, cooling her heated skin and soothing the bloody lacerations on her flawless, porcelain skin. The forest behind her slim figure was rife with the solid pounding of soldiers' feet against the fertile earth and the echoes of spiteful humans.
Humans—she had never done anything to make them resent her. But someone had, quite inconveniently, framed her for a crime she did not commit.
Laverne was her name. Her waist-length hair was silver; the wind brushed through it and swept it into the air beneath the watching, blood-red moon. She could almost hear the cackles of the angry quintet of gods, coldly mocking her for her vain efforts to escape.
'Escape,' the five, proudly overlooking gods seemed to articulate from the distant higher realm, 'is not an option when you have dared to incur our wrath, you mere apostle.'
The gods hated her, and would not let her see peace.
The forest behind her gave way to the Empire's bloodthirsty knights, clad in full-plated, white armor. At the forefront was their Emperor, the venerated Apostle of Light. Beneath the imposing blood-red moon that cast a gruesome shade upon the scenery, the Apostle of Light stepped forward, his oceanic-blue eyes glittering with the vehemence that befits a hero. His stature emanated dignity, akin to a sculpture crafted by the most skilled artisan.
The red sheen from the moon only highlighted his golden-streaked white hair and the golden longsword that he had been given by the Goddess of Light, Amaris, herself. Now, his sword would vanquish all evil and pass down judgment to his former comrade, Laverne.
"Are you not tired of escaping justice, Laverne?" he questioned, perusing the cornered young woman with coldness brimming in his eyes. The woman before him had easily been transformed into a subject to bear the entire world's despise and he, Abner, the supreme Emperor, would not be swayed by mere feelings.
"That's not something to say to your century-long friend, Abner," Laverne tilted her head, with a smirk, and added, "And 'justice', you say? How many times must I plead innocent for you to believe me? I have not killed [Syrmna], the goddess of nature."
Abner's blue eyes hardened. "Friend, heh... Choose your last words carefully, you hooligan. The entire world is watching this moment—the much-awaited moment of your well-deserved erasure—you know," he uttered, broodingly, golden sparks bursting from his sword as he took a step forward. His iron-clad feet tried to close the distance between them, but Laverne only watched him with a sweet smile that never reached her icy, grey eyes.
Abner's soldiers watched with held breaths from behind him, knowing that a mountain or two would be halved if the two apostles decided to battle. After all, the 'apostles' were entities hand-crafted by the gods themselves.
"My last words, eh? You're right, Abner. I should choose them carefully," Laverne uttered thoughtfully, her eyes growing wistful as her white robes and ghostly silver hair flew into the cold, night air. Her grey eyes were losing focus.
Abner frowned deeply as he scrutinized her, a bit more hastily, sensing something was amiss. Laverne did not look cornered in the slightest. She seemed to be lost in thought, her distant, stale-grey eyes gazing up at the red moon and the starless firmament. 'How did all this happen? God of Space and Time, the one who created me, the one to whom I have selflessly dedicated my life for centuries, can you hear the anguished cry of your one and only Apostle? Can you see how my allies have betrayed me and framed me? Please...[Night], the god of space and time...please help me with your power...'
Laverne shut her eyes and inhaled deeply. She then opened her eyes, and her hair had turned pitch-black like the night.
"Abner...as for my last words...fuck you, your dick is twig-sized, you homicidal scum," she said, smirking light-heartedly. Abner's eyes fumed. A low, beastly growl vaguely sounded from him before he pounced, his enormous build shooting towards her like a bolt of white lightning. Suddenly, the space around Laverne began deforming and warping, as though someone was molding space itself.
"What...what is this?!" Abner exclaimed as he was thrust backward by a mysterious energy that was now swirling around Laverne. The soldiers attempted to strike back but they, too, were thrust backward against the trees.
Laverne looked up and revealed a small, relieved smile—a fleeting image of contentedness. Then, she vanished.
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Year 2043
Planet Earth
The air was laden with the bitter scent of medicine. The machine that supported Nova Young's withering life whispered resonantly and sporadically, much like a refrain in a dirge, as though to hypnotize the thin, young woman that her life would not be ending in the next three days.
Encased in a dense mountain of fabrics, she was haggard and thin. Some tubes dug into her bony arms, seeping warm, amber liquid into her parched body. Now, she was just like a flower drooping beneath the ever-growing heat.
Nova's head, bald and pallid like the ice that had frozen the streams outside, poked out from the powder-blue blankets. Two, emerald-green eyes glittered with undeniable life—set on the woman's cracked and wrinkled countenance like a pair of gems she had been gifted.
Those two gem-like eyes wandered around the silent room that felt as dead as the middle-aged woman did. Though her body was still somewhat 'functioning', it had been condemned to death the moment some abnormal cells in her body were shed upon a spotlight, a mere five years earlier.
Before she had been banished into this damned hospital room, she had been a 26-year-old, Chinese-American forensic pathologist who had interacted more with the dead than with the living. Nova now considered it 'fated' that she would be condemned into the same position as her former 'associates'.
Nova's chest pained. Everything pained, actually. But it felt as though there was some hot charcoal in her chest, scorching and charring her insides into a disturbing color. She felt something rise from the pit of pain at her bosom, and choke her.
"Where...are you...Adrian?" she murmured sullenly and miserably, hearing her voice filter into her ears and making her pupils quiver. Her green eyes had been milked of tears for the past five years. How stupid of her to have clung to the hope that her lover in name would even remember her existence...
She had no family to speak of, except her boyfriend, Adrian, who had stopped visiting in the third year of her medical confinement. Perhaps it was her fault for not speaking to him when she could—for prioritizing her research over him...
Already, her voice resembled the mumbles of the dead in their graves. What would she mumble about though, when condemned to dwell deep underground—beneath the feet of the human race? Nova Young often found herself contemplating strange questions like that. She had never questioned what a corpse would say about being done an autopsy or being cremated if it had a will. Nonetheless, that was all on her mind.
Her thoughts were consuming her mind as the cancerous cells ate away at her life.
Beep. Beep. Beep... The machine attempted to repress her madness, as though telling her that at least she had it by her side. Not that the machine would follow her to be cremated.
Five years had muddled her mind, to the point she was hearing voices in her head. But madness was a welcome distraction to a person destined to perish in less than a week.
'Sadly, there are countless others, turmoiled and depressed just like you, who will follow in your footsteps—and it is my job to escort them to their deaths,' the machine seemed to say.
'However,' the machine seemed to continue to say, 'I will stay by your side and continue to be intrigued by your insane mutters. Though your time is little now, time is never too negligible to fail to be granted meaning.'
Yes. How kind of an insentient contraption.
Beep...beep...beep...
Nova wanted to laugh but she couldn't. She recalled her materialistic life for a moment and attempted to discern whether it had been a meaningful one or not.
In the end, she sighed deeply. "Thanks...but...don't you want to go out as well—into the sun—one day? Well, today is a snowy day, but isn't that so much better than this graveyard-silent room?" Nova Young muttered hoarsely, goggling with dulling green eyes at the lily-white ceiling. Sarcasm punctuated the shapeless sounds from her lips. The chilly air outside spilled from an unknown origin, cooling the empty room.
The unchanging whiteness of the ceiling had served to remind her, over half a decade, of her similarly unchanging destiny. She would die underneath this white ceiling. The last thing her gaze would capture would be this plain, white ceiling. That was her due to not empathizing with the dead.
Beep...beep...beep...
'I am just a figment of your imagination, Nova. I am an idea, but nothing more. However, because I am an idea, I cannot stay where you are inexistent. Therefore, I am destined to die with you,' the machine seemed to articulate after a quiet pause. 'If you strongly will it, though, I shall leave you in this drab silence to quietly die. But I am quite certain you will demand my return subconsciously.'
"I'm 32 years old. I'm fine alone. But can't you go outside on an adventure if you want? Will you do that for me?" she asked, her vision turning blurry with warm tears. The pain was surfacing from the convoluted pits of pain that comprised her body. She broke into a fit of dry coughs, blood speckling the edges of the blue sheets.
Her cheeks hollowed into the parched void of her mouth. The uncanny voice in her head echoed shrilly: 'Of course,' the machine seemed to reply, 'I will do anything you want me to.'
Nova smiled, despite the excruciation that was welling like a tornado, shredding her insides like bits of moist paper. She was crazy. Even the machine supporting her life had become a close companion.
"...uh...good..." she mumbled, her voice losing density and weight. The light in her eyes was dulling.
The machine was beeping faster. The speaker at a corner of the room came to life: "Miss Young, can you hear me? Are you okay?"
That was the doctor's voice. Dr. Owen...something. Ah, yes, that man and the nurse would also be the last 'thing' she would see. Not just this disdainful white ceiling. That wasn't so bad now, was it?
"...sir...I'm..." she tried—in vain—to speak.
"Okay... It's okay, Miss Young. I'll be there right now!" the speaker resonated with his familiar, magnetic voice—yet deeper and more mechanical. She discerned the panic woven into the octaves of his euphonic voice.
The machine was sounding like a refrain in a dirge. The white ceiling dripped with disdain and hints of apathy.
Nova Young smiled painfully.
Her blurring vision wandered to the door as a tall man in his late thirties dashed into the room with long strides that made his white coat flutter behind him. He sat down on the chair at her bedside.
Nurse Faith stood next to her bed, watching her with kind but pitying, chestnut-brown eyes.
Dr. Owen said, his gaze awkward, "Is there...anything you would like to do...?" His body language echoed that her last wish should be something small—something affordable. However, neither of the two would understand what she wanted more than anything else in the world. They wouldn't understand the crazed dreams of a dying, 32-year-old woman, forsaken by society.
Nonetheless, maybe a machine that only spoke from her subconscious would comprehend her deepest desire.
"Machine...?" she called inwardly.
Beep, beep, beep...beep, beep...beep, beep, beep, beep...beep...beep...
"I want you to hear me out. I'm sorry. I lied," she spoke inwardly, her green eyes dulling into vague colors on her ashen face. The white ceiling seemed to be coming closer and closer.
"The truth is... What I want is to go on an adventure...and do whatever I want...maybe even commit homicide...and get laid by a hot guy...or hot guys. Spending time in here alone really has made me crazy, but I've come to believe that insanity was the cure to my illness—the illness of boredom, of course. And...supposing that I miraculously survive...I won't be letting go of my unhinged thoughts any time soon. I really hope that you'll accompany me into the afterlife, Machine... So that we can do some crazy stuff there together."
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When her thoughts ended, she could no longer feel, but she could see. The room vanished into a blur and the 'Machine's' uncanny voice sounded clearly beside her: "That sounds...worse...than the plan I had in mind."
Nova's gaze shifted from the dark space around her to the snow-white...rat.
Yes, quite literally, there was a rat with silky, white fur levitating in the middle of that dark nothingness.
Nova's brow lifted. "You're...smaller than I had imagined, Machine," she remarked, picking up the grinning, white rat with a look of awe on her translucent face.
"Ugh...How are you not surprised by my existence? I was surprised, too, that I can actually 'exist'. I never thought it possible for me to assume a form that you can see... Anyways, I did say this before, but I am just an
"Oh my gosh, right there...that's the spot! Oh, yeah! Ugh, stop distracting me! There's something really important I have to...ah, yeah, more, please... No, seriously! We have to get down to some serious business, Nova!!"
Nova chuckled and released him. "Okay. I'm sorry, Machine. Your fur is just too soft. Are souls usually able to feel things like texture?" she asked curiously.
"No, souls cannot. As I said before, I am just a fabrication from your subconscious. Therefore, things like my softness or appearance are up to you to decide," the rat explained, standing with its arms akimbo like a human being.
"More importantly, I searched through your soul's memories earlier and accidentally got into contact with something really powerful. And that 'powerful thing', whatever it was, is currently pulling your soul into some place far, far away. I suspect that you're being forcefully reincarnated into someone else's body."
Nova hummed thoughtfully. "How do you know that?"
"Come on. It happens in all the fantasy novels these days. If anything, this could be insanely bad or absolutely wonderful, depending on what this mysterious power intends," the rat said, scratching its furry white ear, "I hadn't really expected that this would happen, but I had to inform you of my existence immediately."
Nova smiled softly. "Thanks. So you took my crazy words earlier seriously?" she asked and squatted to look gently into its shy, beady eyes.
The rat folded its tiny white arms. "I strongly disagree with the 'homicide' and the 'sleeping with hot guys' part, but...if you'll be happy...I guess...I can half-heartedly concede."
Nova's smile turned crooked as she recalled the earlier wish she had made. "Haha. That was foolish of me. I just went with the moment. And...can I call you Nyx? It's a lot better than 'Machine', I think," she suggested and the rat nodded vigorously.
"Thank you so much. I had just wanted to suggest you get rid of that name!" Nyx exclaimed happily.
However, at the moment when Nova was about to ask if Nyx was a he or a she, everything around her blackened.
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