Anna's Perspective
The scent of dust and sweat filled my nostrils as the sun beat down on my face. It was warm and comforting but the surprise of how outclassed I was lingered.
I blinked as my vision slowly returned.
The familiar training yard of Lord Edo's prison realm stretched before me as its dusty ground littered with wooden practice dummies could easily be observed.
The fact that they all had Darren's face still creeped me out. and scattered weapons.
The air hummed with a mysterious energy and a subtle vibration that still made me feel on edge every time I returned here.
"Well, now you've seen someone who can use Body Ki." The familiar voice of the Sword God Emperor came to my ears. "I think you came at a bad time if you wanted to keep the situation a secret, though." Lord Edo continued with his deep and resonant voice cut through the silence. I turned my head towards the sound of a wooden sword snapping from stopping short.
My heart pounded in my chest.
Darren stood there with the wooden katana around the length of a Daito and he was using it for training.
He held it aloft and was frozen mid-swing.
His eyes were wide with disbelief and fixed on me.
His mouth opened and closed, words failing him.
"Anna?" he finally choked out with a voice so full of shock and relief that I actually felt physical pain.
The feeling of De Ja Vu was stong this time, but I needed to ignore it.
The person who I loved more than anything and hurt more than anything-
To save him...
To greedily keep him.
He was here.
My heart pounded rapidly in my chest as a hammering rhythm against my ribs. I felt blends of emotion that flashed so quickly through my mind that it made me want to be sick. I finally settled on the feeling of relief and nervousness after what felt like an eternity.
A chill flooded my veins.
He's here.
But I hurt him.
The thought echoed through my mind as a cracked and fragile vase that continued to shatter in my mind and repeated all of my insecurities and then replaced them with acid only then to move back to relief. The backdrop of the swirling chaos of my emotions burned and soothed in equal measure.
It threatened to consume me.
He's alive.
Darren.
I love him.
I hurt him.
He is my everything.
I needed to do it!
I could have found another way!
He stood there, frozen mid-swing with the wooden Daito length katana aloft like a banner that showed off the empire that was the relentless training he'd clearly been undergoing. His eyes were wide with disbelief and had locked onto mine. His mouth opened and closed as words failed him in the face of what he clearly thought was impossible. The sight of him, solid and real, sent a wave of warmth washing over me.The warmth chased away the lingering chill of the erasure I had foreseen.
"Anna?" he finally choked out as his voice thick with a potent mix of shock and relief that resonated deep within my own chest.
I felt a painful echo of the emotions swirling within him.
A nervous smile bloomed across my face. "Surprise?" I breathed as my voice shook with nervous desperation and fear.
What if he hated me for what I did?
What if he never forgave me?
Screams of doubt and self-blame pounded against my subconscious mind.
How could I explain? How could I possibly convey the sheer, soul-crushing terror I had felt?
The agonizing glimpse of a future where he was simply…gone? Erased.
A void where his laughter and his soul-filling warmth never existed.
An empty hole in the world where his unwavering presence should have been.
Lord Edo's voice came as a deep and resonant rumble as it cut through the charged silence. "Well, now you've seen someone who can use Body Ki. I think you came at a bad time if you wanted to keep the situation a secret, though."
My gaze flicked to Lord Edo with a silent plea for guidance, But in his piercing golden eyes were the feeling of only hope of my success and nothing else.
He continued to merely offer a wry smile and a subtle tilt of his head towards darren acknowledging the tangled web we had woven to save him and unwilling to help.
Darren's brow furrowed with confusion that clouded his features. He lowered the wooden katana, the tip resting against the further portion of dusty ground. My contemplation of how long a daito was in the hopes that I wouldn't have to say anything were dashed when dareen spoke.
"Anna…what…what are you doing here? How..." He took a hesitant step forward as his eyes began to search mine while seeking desperately for answers.
I forced myself to breathe and to anchor myself to the present. The chilling vision of his erasure and the gaping void it had left in my heart continued to be felt as it still lingered with a phantom ache.
He's here now, I reminded myself fiercely. He's alive. That's all that matters.
"It's a long story," I said, my voice regaining a measure of its usual playful tone. "One I'm not sure you're ready for just yet." I offered him a reassuring smile that trembled and shook hoping it masked the turmoil still churning beneath the surface.
Beside me, Jessa emerged from the shadows as her white and gold kimono shifted from an indistinctly colored enchantment.
It continued to shift back to gold as it flowed behind her as an excessively stark contrast to the muted tones of the training yard and my bright pink set.
Her amethyst eyes glittered with a false amusement that I could tell hid a terror and fear equal to mine. A hint of mischief played at the corners of her lips but it was a mask and unnatural on her face. "Besides, Darren," she drawled as her voice was only half-full with a false cheer that would never convince anyone.
With her characteristic sass, she spoke again as she continued to hide her absolute terror. "don't you think you have enough on your plate already? Learning how to not die, and all that?"
Darren's gaze shifted between Jessa and me, his confusion deepened as he opened his mouth to speak.
It seemed that Lord Edo could not watch a 12 carriage pileup turn into a smashed thoroughfare and his voice cut all of us off.
It seems he had caved and decided to help.
"Indeed," he boomed, his tone authoritative and assured. He tried to fill it with an unmistakable note of finality. "There will be time for explanations later. For now, Darren, your training continues." He gestured towards the waiting practice dummies as their wooden faces bore an unsettling resemblance to Darren himself. "Show Anna what you've learned. Show her that you're not the same talentless boy she remembers."
All of it backfired.
He looked around and then grit his teeth.
I knew we were in trouble.
I observed as Darren's eyes narrowed and his jaw tightened into a grimace of anger. The wooden Daito-katana in his grip trembled slightly and began to crack with the hilt as the epicenter. I witnessed as his inner turmoil churned and boiled over.
"NO!" The word echoed through the training yard's unnatural lighting. It was like a crack against a stone wall that echoed the shattering of the upper half of the wooden blade he was holding.
The unnatural silence of the dreamscape began to shift as our mental landscapes affected the training space. The fabric of the false reality around us rippled as the images of our shared and now destroyed hometown shifted into my endless field of training dummies. Then the world shifted into Jessa's blood-soaked lakeside hut flashing into a disorienting shudder that simulated a small earthquake.
"You need to tell me what's actually happening! What do you mean I was erased?! Last time I checked, you ceased to exist! I thought I had to go on an eternal quest to avenge your final erasure or recover you from a timeline that no longer existed! Now I have no idea what is happening! explain!"
I grimaced as my violet hair shimmered in the light of the training ground. I opened my mouth to speak, but Jessa stepped forward with a scowl and narrowed eyes. Her white and gold kimono rippled as she moved. She stepped forward with fury until she was in Darren's face. Her amethyst eyes flashed with anger.
"Don't you goddamn talk to her like that, Darren! A thousand days of death, and this is what we come to? You demanding ans-"
"JESSA! SHUT UP!" my voice cracked like a harsh whip, silencing Jessa mid-sentence. "He deserves to know. But don't berate him for not knowing what's happening!"
I turned back to Darren, as my silver eyes overflowed with the tears of my agony. With a deep, agonizing sadness, I began to explain. "Darren…" I began hesitantly as I fiddled with the hems of my sleeves. My voice cracked with as many emotions as I could muster. Hope, despair, love, sadness.
The tempest filled me and I finally spoke.
"Originally, Jessa and I were the only ones selected. To be…Sword God Empress candidates."
Darren blinked, his scowl deepened slightly.
I nodded. "When Lord Edo told us I…I saw it." I closed my eyes for a long moment, as I relived that terrible vision "A vision. A horrible glimpse of the future. If we accepted it would erase everything! The entire timeline where we had ever met! Our time at the orphanage! The time we met when you saved me from those bullies!"
My voice trembled, and tears fell from my eyes. "I couldn't bear it, Darren. The thought of never seeing you again…it was unbearable! It tore me apart!"
In the corner of my eye I saw Jessa as her anger began to subside.
She approached and placed a comforting hand on my shoulder. "We both saw it," she added, her voice softer than Darren had ever heard it. "But I saw a second future, too."
"I saw a future where you were so powerful you could easily erase the prime devourer and it terrified me when you wouldn't even look at me. A future where all you had left was Anna and I was the friend who you barely noticed! That kind of future wasn't what we all wanted, right? Or at least It wasn't one I could bear. I just- I couldn't!"
I nodded as I wiped away the tears that streamed down my face. " Lord Edo said we had five hundred attempts. So we went back into the loops…hundreds of times. Each day we came up with a plan. To…to push you to your mental limit. To unlock the willpower and aspects that Lord Edo was looking for. In the hopes of keeping you from being erased. Keep myself selfishly away from a world where we had never met and you never loved me."
"We died. Over and over, twice as many times as you." Jessa added, her voice flat and devoid of emotion. "Trying to orchestrate the perfect scenario. To force that damn prophecy to trigger. Do you know how many times I had placed that book in your pocket and you never even noticed it? Five hundred additional times. For you. For us. For Anna. For a relationship that might not exist."
Jessa paused for a moment as her face turned from an unnatural stillness to a bawling mess and raised her voice in a shout of agony. "On the 499th loop we got desperate!"
She paused again and met Darren's gaze directly as tears streamed down her face. "I…I fell in love with you, Darren. Around the three hundredth loop the first time around. I'm not sure if you know how hard that was but it was agony! I'm not a good person anymore and I'm horrible at showing it, you know? It nearly tore me apart, but at least I knew the truth. Even now I don't even show it properly. I'm just-" I approached her and drew her into a hug as she shifted her weight awkwardly. Her eyes began darting each way before snapping back to Darren's. "We agreed to…share your relationship. On the five hundred and fiftieth loop- on the second set of five hundred- you know- fiftieth of UGH!"
She shook her head sending tears shedding in different directions. "Anna and I…we talked. A lot. We both love you, Darren. In different ways, but- but we both want to be with you." I turned from Jessa's shoulder to stare in Darren's direction. All of my hope and wishes were placed into that one pleading look as I stared into his eyes.
Darren stood there with a stunned and gobsmacked expression on his face as if I had slapped him with a fish or something equally absurd.
The weight of our words and the sheer magnitude of our sacrifice- the wish for a three way relationship with me and his best friend.
I could see as it pressed down on him and began crushing the anger and frustration he had felt only moments before. The flickering images of the dreamscape faded, replaced by the stark reality of their shared pain, their unwavering love for him.
I could tell he was panicking and then something snapped.
"I'm…sorry," he whispered as his voice sounded like he was choking. It was full of emotions I couldn't identify with any amount of certainty as those two words left his lips.
The katana slipped from his grasp as it clattered against the dusty ground. He turned away, unable to meet our gazes as the weight of all of our shared suffering too was much to bear. With a sudden surge of will, he forced himself to wake and disappeared from our sight.
I fell to my knees and began to cry and sob in earnest.