It was not a joke anymore.
"I must succeed…
I must… no, I will succeed!" repeatedly, Hubert said as he closed his eyes and entered his mana mind.
The eerie silence and the unending abyss greeted. As the unending and eternal darkness surrounded. A small fear lit up in his heart, the fear of the eye from before, daemon.
But even then, he clenched his fist as the ache of his heart overpowered any lingering and existing fear. Not even demons could touch him now. Yet a girl's word did.
"I don't need your plea…" he recited, almost a whisper, slightly slumped downward.
"Focus," Tianna reminded.
Then her presence was gone.
"Yes, master," Hubert answered, his voice roaring, his glance sharp, his brows curled as he looked forward, the endlessness awaited. His muscles were relaxed, step by step, progressing forward.
"Void is complex. Present yet absent, existing yet nonexistent. The void is an element not made of essence but one that absorbs essences of this world. Let it not conquer you and let it not remove your existence in this world, but conquer it as you do, it is a slave to be enslaved, not a slave that rose to the seat of a master. But even the slave isn't there and the master isn't there," Tianna's voice of reading from the book, echoed in his mind, over and over like a recording.
"Master, be safe," Hubert hoped as he advanced to the forever darkness.
This time, it was serious, no more jokes would be thrown and no more time to be wasted. Hubert had only one goal, understanding, so that he could control his element. So that even the demons and his enemies feared him.
So that he could approach his friends and ask them for forgiveness.
So that he could be normal.
Yet the eternality of the abyss seemingly had no end. The demon wasn't here, he knew, as he felt the circle of darkness orbiting and encroaching outward from him. The fact that he understood might be his end.
He was the center, there was no edge, never an edge.
Nothingness was in him, and he was nothingness.
"The essence of the void…?" he asked himself, something that was mentioned repeatedly in the boring and dragging books about the element. Written by the only person with the same element as him, a person who was hundreds of years before him.
"How could nothingness, a void, emptiness, have an essence," he questioned. It didn't make sense, nothing made sense.
But he continued onward, his master's order was clear, and his resolve blazed in his body. A resolve of an unquenched thirst for knowledge, a desire for understanding.
Time was ticking slowly.
It was dragging as if it were stuck to an anchor.
Steps turned into the tens, then twenties, thirties, forties, fifties, then a hundred, two hundreds, three hundreds, four hundreds, then thousands. Thousands turned into tens of thousands, tens of thousands turned into hundreds of thousands, and hundreds of thousands turned into a million steps.
Hubert looked around at the count of a million steps.
"Ha… Ha…" even tiredness affected him as confusion took control.
Those steps were quick, fast, and uncounted. But it was as if it were detailed and concisely written, and counted in his brain. The brain that was exhausted from all the thought and unclearness, especially for the understanding he sought of.
He never arrived at the destination.
"What does… void… mean?" he asked himself.
Emptiness, he knew the answer, it was simple.
"But why… why couldn't I… reach it?" a realization.
"Master…" he called, hoping for her voice to answer, yet he knew, even in him, she was protecting him.
"Hubert…" a voice called.
"Demon…! I will not be tricked by you, begone!" Hubert replied to the voice that wasn't there, a hallucination.
Doubt filled him, unknowing of what he searched for, it was simply a void in his knowledge.
"The only element that isn't made up of essence, bu-but how?! How could such a thing exist?" he pondered and pondered.
The answer came not to mind.
The darkness was silence, unchanged since the start. He asked them in his path, but they never answered, they never gave a heed unto his words.
"Wh-who's they? They?"
It was weird that he called the darkness they.
"They…? But, isn't the darkness… me? This is my mana mind after all, how could it be about them," he questioned, only then realizing what he meant by his own words.
A conversation with oneself surely drove him crazy, but more importantly, it became a trigger for him.
"I-If… the darkness was not me, then, who called me at that time?" Hubert asked himself.
"I did," Hubert said.
"N-no, you are not me," Hubert replied.
It was a shadow, a shadow formed with a form of his form. The shadow was far and gray, dark and lifeless. An exact copy, or perhaps, it wasn't one.
"I am you," the shadow said, straight and devoid of tone and emotion.
"You are me? No, you are not," Hubert refuted.
The shadow walked forward.
"I am you," the shadow told.
"You are not me!" Hubert refuted again.
The shadow walked toward him, his eyes blank with a lifeless pupil.
"I am you, Hubert. I have always been you and you've always been me, I am you and you are me. But I am not weak and a coward," the shadow said, his words like a dagger even when his tone was still.
"What did you say?" Hubert asked, his voice pressed hard.
"Coward. I am you, but not a coward, be me, Hubert,"
"Be you…? You're not a coward, you are with power then?" Hubert asked.
"Yes, I am power, I am nothingness, I am void," the shadow replied.
"Ha… nonsense! You are not me, I am weak and a coward, as you said, but you are not, so you are not me… right?" Hubert asked, his tone began changing.
"I am you, I am power, nothingness and void. Be me, Hubert, be me so that we can defeat our enemies. Be me," the shadow said convincingly.
"Then, show me, I dare you! Show me that I am you, and you are me!" Hubert challenged.
Then the shadow pointed his index finger toward one of Hubert's limbs, specifically the left arm, beneath the elbow.
"Vanitas,"
Emptiness struck.
Hubert turned his eyes to his arm. It was gone.
"What?"
His whole lower arm was gone.
And there was no pain.
"Yo-you, this is the power I hold?"
"Yes, I am you and you are me, be me, Hubert. Show the world our prowess, show the enemies our prowess, show the friends our prowess," the shadow spoke again, his tone unchanged.
It was bothersome and irritating, but Hubert's sweat trickled and etched in his eyes was a swirl of emotions. Emotions he couldn't control, emotions that were new and a stranger to him, emotions that deepen his confusion.
"Be… you? Why?"
"I am you, I am power, nothingness and void. Be me, and you will be me and I will be you. You will know of our prowess, show the world of our prowess of void,"
"Power…? Power, huh? Void in my hand… ju-just how strong will I become?" he muttered, all the possibilities were thought, the choice was in his hand.
The decision awaited.
"Yes, Hubert, power," the monotone shadow said.
"But… what use is power? What use is it in the face of my problem, a problem that I made, one that I caused by my own hands, which you offered to place power on! Ju-just how much…" Hubert responded, the dialogue was coming to a conclusion.
"Just how much destruction will I cause? Even when I wielded none and was hated, tormented and outcast by those around me, I still found a way to destroy my place, a place I had, one that had the chance of being a home to me. Then…
What good… will it do for me, huh?"
The shadow replied in silence.
"You, "Hubert", answer me… Goddess damn it, answer me you cheap copy!" Hubert lunged forward, his hand grabbed the shadow's collar, the same cloth the shadow wore as him.
The shadow stood still, unanswering and unbothered.
"Answer me!" Hubert demanded the answer.
"..." no answer was given.
Hubert loosened his grip over the shadow's collar.
"Ha… that's what I thought," Hubert exhaled, turning around, facing not toward the shadow.
"What do you desire, Hubert?" the shadow asked, his tone and voice detached from Hubert's feelings.
"What do I desire? You don't understand, do you? You tempted me and offered me power, yet you don't know of my problems.
Problem that ached my heart, that kept me awake at night. One that I thought about over and over until I felt that I'm becoming crazy and delusional.
How would you feel when you look at others and their friends and hallucinate that it was you and your friends, the same friends you pushed away with these hands?" he raised his hands, one with finger, the other still missing, and shook it.
"You won't understand, "Hubert", you never will. This burden of mine isn't something as easy as power or strength could solve. No one could, not even the Goddess, let alone me,"
"I will solve, trust in me," the shadow offered.