Currently, she existed, but not even she understood to what extent. Her mind had stalled in the darkness, and she couldn’t do anything but stare pointlessly into the darkness without being able to think straight. Luckily or unluckily for her, this didn’t last for too long. The darkness only lasted for a moment before the sun started to rising on the horizon.
When she saw the sun rise, she noticed it wasn’t alone. There weren't just one but two suns. Once her eyes adjusted, she could feel coldness gripping her limbs as it tried to drag her down. As if not wanting to be seen, she had the impulse to curl up into a ball to at least make herself smaller. They weren’t suns, it wasn’t that they were giving off light. They were the only color in the darkness that gave the false impression of a light. Each one was the size of a celestial body.
Before she could recognize how or why, she was dropped back to earth as she fell to her knees with tears in her eyes. She gulped air without care for her current appearance or the attention she was gathering from her apparent actions. Jessica didn’t do much but stood up and started moving towards the inn. Her actions were strange, but she didn’t bother to turn around or speak. She just moved as fast as she could without drawing any more attention. It could be attributed to the heaven’s looking out for her, because she didn’t leave anything in her room.
The thought didn’t even cross her mind until she was already a mile from Green River. She couldn’t help the tears that were threatening to escape from just thinking about what she just experienced. Throughout her life she had done many things, had many brushes with death, only never had she ever felt so powerless before.
In every experience with death, she had been horrified. It was never a good feeling to feel an existence of unquestionable authority. Just by being near, it sucked everything away from you. Starting with the positive before allowing the negative to reach a climax of fear turning into dread and despair from being unable to stop it. Once the negative emotions started to get siphoned off, you were left with an emptiness that only brought a short burst of desperation mixed with untold despair.
Even in that cell the boy came from. She had felt similar emotions, those were emotions being shoved onto her and overwhelming her own. A brush with death was more sinister in nature. It didn’t overwhelm you, instead it was so powerful that it couldn't be easily explained. Akin to being around someone that made you sad or angry, slowly as you were forced to stay in proximity, seemingly unintentional. Your sanity and patience would be drained, and all that remained would be extreme levels of sadness and anger. As the negative emotions simmered, they multiplied exponentially.
The process was similar, however the methods were as far as heaven is from hell. The aforementioned happens far slower and less obviously. Death is a being of an unquestionable higher level. What should take time happens nearly instantly without losing a moment. The details of the process are amplified to a hypersensitive state that makes you experience hours, days, or possibly years in a matter of seconds. Meaning, a brush with death can be an experience of years, and that brush might only be seconds in reality. Each second meant you had to stand the burden of experiencing it for years.
Such experiences were so far outside the norm, it was questionable how anyone can go through them without side effects. She could feel herself starting to overdraft her mana. She forced away the panic as she continued to move at a much slower pace. It was only after two days of continuous moving that she finally couldn't hold on any longer. Finding a hidden spot, she lay in a tree with both of her hands gripping her daggers.
During the entire process, the boy had not said a word. He could feel her emotions and could guess a bit of what happened. As he continued to probe the gaze, he felt it move for a moment before disappearing all together. The short disappearance of being stared at was followed by Jessica entering a strange state. It happened almost instantly, nevertheless it lasted far longer for her. The instantaneous change was too high of a level to happen all at once. During the time, she froze, and her emotions exploded before the gaze left the two, leaving no trace. He knew something had happened.
If he had to guess, his existence had been discovered. It would explain why when the gaze left him, the pressure didn’t completely dissipate. He could still feel it, just not directed at him. They should have followed his connection to her. He didn’t know why the effects of the gaze were so different. But he knew that his existence drew attention to Jessica, resulting in this. He could feel her mana reacting to the experience she had gone through in that second as she started to sweat profusely and groan as she hardened her grasp on her daggers.
Using his hand, he rested it on her head as he used his mana to bar her mana from disturbing her sleep. He could feel through conversations that her consciousness came from somewhere in the head. As he had been paying attention to her the entire time, he was quick on realizing that the mana from her heart started to pool towards her head. It was then that she started to show signs of struggling even in her sleep. Therefore, he theorized that if he soothed while preventing the mana from entering her head. This could protect her consciousness that desperately needed rest.
The problem lay in the most effective route. His soul was housed in her arm. If he moved to her head to block the mana it would likely cause conflict in the beginning. To use his mana body to send mana into her head directly caused a different problem. Since she was asleep, he didn’t bother with his appearance. Thus, his clothes started to become transparent as his body started to lose its defined edges. He had to focus on priorities.
As he started to succeed, she was showing obvious signs of release. Her grip before was so tight that her fingers on the grip of the daggers had turned white without any blood. As cracks silently started to appear in his mana body, he finally saw her fingers starting to show some color. He didn’t stop, as the soothing might have stopped her mana from going out of control, it didn’t mean it had actually stopped. The second he let go of his control, she would once again start to experience what she was going through. Since it had gotten under control, he disappeared and used his mana through the mark, as the damage to her and him would be lower now that it was under control.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Eventually, when she really did open her eyes. The sun was in the sky. She didn’t stop to pounder on this, instead she thought on the move. Jessica didn’t find problems in the sun still being in the sky. She had no doubts, she wouldn’t sleep that long. The problem was that the sun’s position didn’t make sense. Glancing down at her arm, she didn’t ponder too deeply. With a good night’s sleep, she could move with more speed. Having learned her lesson, she didn’t go too fast. This progression continued on for a considerable amount of time. The two moved east for that considerable amount of time.
Having reached a checkpoint, she started to move off the beaten path and started to move through small side branches. At first, there was still a semblance of a road. Slowly the path started to become more dirt, following this pattern, she reached a point there was no longer a path, and they were strangely in the middle of a forest. Her speed had also changed, and she was slowly moving at a gradual pace where her steps started to become heavy. The boy could feel a number of emotions flowing out of her, even while trying to bottle them up.
Jessica was very good at keeping a straight face. Unfortunately for her, he didn’t need to read her face to have a peek at her emotions. He could probe them from her consciousness. The reason he had such a high elevation of her ability to keep a straight face was that she had a large variety of emotional mood swings. Slow and steady, she didn’t seem to have a type of disorder. Instead, she appeared to simply be a young emotional person. He had never been healthy in this regard, therefore he could only admit that she appeared this way in his mind. She had all sort of fun and entertaining thoughts and reactions that he could feel to a small degree.
These were things he had given up and abandoned. No longer did he have these short bursts of emotional outbreaks that would spike and leave his control for a slight moment. Feeling like a wet blanket, since forever ago. His emotions only came and went chaotically. Even the rare outbursts he would get were not logical and could come from thinking about fashion, while his emotional outburst was because of finance. For this reason, he felt envy for even the struggling she was going through at this very moment.
Finally, her steps stopped slowing and became stable. Her stride wasn’t equal like the man that showed up by the fire. Similar to a pendulum, her steps varied while there was a constant amount of force being applied in her steps. Showing no hesitation, she moved through the forest as there was a tiny clearing between a small cluster of trees before meeting a large, dense cluster of trees. In fact, this cluster was anything but naturally, as there were no roots or foliage, and instead it was a wall of pure trunks.
Finding a hole in the wall was a gate of sorts being guarded by two handsome men. Even this was an understatement as to the boy that had appeared behind her at some unknown time. The two men were similar in style to statues he had seen in his old world. They had chiseled features that appeared to be able to stand the test of time. In the same fashion, the two wore very little emotions on their faces. In fact, if it wasn’t for the motion in their diaphragm, it was hard to know if they were just real looking statues or living creatures.
The two only glanced at her and didn’t show any other reaction. They continued to silently stand in front of the gate. At each of their sides were a sheathed weapon and a bow on their back with a quiver. Once inside, everything changed. It was similar to what he would expect from a remote village. The houses were spread periodically and were made of wood. What surprised him was the monotonic architecture. It looked like a housing project, as every single house was nearly identical.
As they moved through the small village, it became apparent that only the children running around laughing and giggling could be considered normal. The children would run around and when they saw Jessica they would smile politely, but there was an infinitely large rift between them. The adults that they crossed path with never once looked at her, while the only emotion on their face was shown when they happened to glance at a child or two. Nevertheless, the emotion was faint but very genuine.
Making him feel worse was that this village was absolutely disgusting. He couldn’t even begin to describe how much of a travesty this place was. Even when it didn’t matter to him anymore, he was still tempted to scream at the sky in anguish, why the fuck were they all so attractive? Was this a village of gods? Even the atrocity that was occurring to the person he was bound to, he still couldn’t control the hatred on his face as he glanced at the children that were already showing signs they would take after their parents.
Seemingly sent from the angel that was her mother, a small young child ran up to Jessica with the sweetest smile before grabbing her hands and jumping up and down, “Jessica! Did you bring me any?”
With a bit of a guilty smile on her face, she couldn’t help but speak softly to the child, “I am sorry. I came back in a hurry, so I wasn’t able to bring any.” Seeing the sad expression the little angel was making, she couldn’t help but smile slightly, even after the revelation that she didn’t bring what she wanted. The little girl didn’t let go of Jessica’s hand as she held it regardless, “Don’t worry. The next time I come back, I will bring double what I usually do.”
Hearing this, the girl was about to get excited again when there was a shout from a nearby house, “Aderyn! Leave Jessica alone. Just looking at her, you can tell she is tired. Let her rest, you can go bother her after she has rested.”
As proving that all of them were hateful beings, the boy could see that the mother was somehow just as rage inducing as the rest of them. He was a male before so it didn’t make sense being jealous at the woman who, unlike the rest in aside from appearance, at least faked a smile to show some sense of emotion. Still, it was clear that she was faking the smile, not with malicious intent. Just like the rest of them, it appeared that none of them had emotions. Not enough to go around.
Squeezing Jessica’s hand once before letting go. She waved with a bright smile on her face before going back to their house. Grabbing a basket, she helped carry it inside with her mother. Once they were gone, Jessica moved to the back of the village, where there was a lone house without another one. While it wasn’t as bad as being the only house in sight, it was clear there was a large divide between this house and the rest. Even more so when the house was different.
With small differences between all the rest, they all followed a similar format. This one wasn’t drastically different, nevertheless, when in comparison to the rest it was like looking at a tabby in a group of cheetahs.