Tsuki fought for dear life to free herself from the hunter’s grasp, but its joints were locked and didn’t bulge. The world shifted around her as pain and the fear of death became the only representative of the girl’s existence. She wanted to escape from this fake reality; nothing she saw or felt should be real, she screamed. The stars were falling as the end of time presented itself. This unbearable weight had to be heavy blankets, she cried; it was a nightmare which she wanted out. But why were those sheets of warmth suffocating her? If only she could be a liquid that seeped into the cloth and escape the claws of this cruel world! Instead, the reality of life froze her body solid as a vice tightened around her until cracks formed inside and out of her as if she was a broken mirror.
Swirling light drowned her sight and suppressed her view of the monstrosity. It was like paint dripping down from the celestial vault above - like rain crying from heavy clouds. Her mind tried to hide reality as it became overwhelmed by its over-extended senses. The vile smell that was insupportable had its intonation lowered like a decrescendo until musical hints of flowery bloom teased her nose. All the while, the thrumming of noise from all over the place mixed into one singular perfume expertly crafted the be like a gust of summer breeze. The girl tried to lose herself in this kaleidoscope of lies and deceit until she could hear a little voice, she knew too well, whispering in her left ear: “Don’t give up now, Tsuki.”
“TRANSMUTATION!!” She screamed, as if it was the last thing she was able to do, and activated the spell that was implanted in her brain.
She was only able to make things shift around, but the mess of colors and sounds assaulting her mind interfered with the spell. Blue and red mixed and made green: it wasn’t how color worked, but in that instant of madness, it was. She saw a ball of light and shifted it into a songbird. With the green which she turned into a sheen of grass and the bird whose song made the grass grow into barbed spikes, she tried to push her creation into the spinning branches holding her.
She then felt a gust of wind, not knowing she was thrown by the hunter and thinking she was now swimming in a river, made herself a cocoon of water. The girl didn’t know what she had done and before she was taken into the gate, the now burning hunter of Tindalos shot one of its rods at her which got stuck in her right shoulder blade.
Sensing something blocking her arm’s movement as she swam in the river, she tried to shift it left and right by transmuting it around until she felt no discomfort.
Then, darkness came when she touched the gate as sudden pain shattered her mind…The twirling madness was cut short before she could fall into its profound sweetness and protective care.
❀
The girl’s eyes opened upon an endless sky of raging thunders and blinding fires. She laid on her back and glanced at the dark pulsating walls that were as distant as the stars on a clear sky while chaotic matters of all kinds fell like a hail of destruction. The molecules in the air kept changing their states at impossible speeds and even creating things Tsuki had no idea existed. Magic danced freely in this room as large arrays of runes controlled the heat and pressure in localized pockets.
Waves of all kinds – sound, pressure, electromagnetic, and such – were produced from those changes in matters and all assaulted the girl in a hellish superposition. As light should have blinded her, heat should have turned her to cinders, radiation should have destroyed her cells, and pressure should have crushed her body, they were blocked by a transparent shell surrounding her. While those might be blocked, a multitude of spells that were constantly launched her way managed to pierce the shell. They crashed toward her with the power of a dying sun and drew blood and flesh… But Tsuki wasn’t the one wounded. Above her, acting like a heavenly aegis, was a godly spirit veiled in ethereal leaves and ice crystals.
The spirit’s skin was translucent, allowing the red of its flowing hair to be seen going on and about in the distance with its impossible length. Two flowery branches sprouted from this being’s forehead of which colorful petals fell like snowdrops and hid teary red eyes and a set of sharp teeth digging into bleeding lips. This was Yuu in her real form. The spirit’s skin was flayed and dry as runes-like chains moved under her flesh to singe her from the inside while scars were strewn everywhere, the most gnarly being her open chest, her bleeding neck, and her left arm maimed to the bone.
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There was something awfully odd when looking at this spirit and it was that Tsuki was unable to say for certain if she was alive or dead and whether she was real or false. Just as someone can look at a rock and say with certainty that it wasn’t alive yet real, it was impossible to do the same with Yuu. And for Tsuki who was doubting the reality of everything a moment ago, this insidious feeling was making her sick.
Tsuki tried to move but an imposing power forced her to stay put. It somehow cleared her mind as she felt it like a warm wind dancing around her. But as her mind stabilized, she wished to have remained insane.
The cloudy sky she could barely see was instantly cleared up as eyes in the million appeared from nothing. They held in them something profound yet simple. A being who could only be described as a partial idea of what an eye is. It wasn’t gory or disturbing in the least. Instead, it felt like it lacked part of what made an eye whole. On this realization, Tsuki found one of those missing parts: a red line not made from a bulging vein but made from a fractal of other red eyes. The girl was pulled into this image of endless ocular as the explosions and twisting matters became blurry and bigger as if a picture was zooming past them. Dust particles came into her view only to make way for the kaleidoscope of all kinds of possible eyes such that smaller and smaller specks of matter came and left, all too big for eternal magnification. As soon as life left her sight to give way to geometrical complexity with a background of onlookers, so did it leave to present newly blooming flowers made from orbiting probability. She went deeper into this scary pull and saw things dancing by three in a ballroom filled with darting servants and a tapestry of onlookers.
She was pulled in this endless fractal until a warm hand was put over her eyes and with all her senses pushed to their limit, the whisper of a spirit protecting her was the most recomforting thing to exist at that moment. “Don’t look, I’ll make it go away,” said Yuu before talking in an unknown language towards the sky. “Iris, leave before I have to hurt you.”
Her words carried a powerful intent that caused the wall of eyes to evaporate to give way to an endless vault of stars draped in nebulas as far as the eye could see. The only thing protecting the two girls from this scary void was a transparent web of crystals. But this protection didn’t last long when fleshy wings sprouted, like trees, from Yuu’s back and reached the sky; creating blankets of dangling flesh that protected against the constantly fired spell and breaking the calm sky; a rain of broken crystals fell down the earth.
As the air was sucked from this jail, alarms rang far and wide. Yuu had broken the ceiling of her jail and flew outside into the void of space with Tsuki in her arms. The pressure and cold that should have destroyed the young girl’s frail body were lacking as if scared to anger the escaping goddess. While she could always escape, Yuu stayed locked in to avoid the wrath of all those that were scared of her. So now, even if she went back to her cell, she had proven she could get out at any moment and wreak havoc as she pleased. Even if she didn’t want to do so, she was simply too dangerous to others. As such, the empty void of space was instantly filled by beings teleporting after hearing the call to arms. If they couldn’t seal this goddess who can spread inexistence in her wake, putting the living in a fate worse than death, their only choice was to defeat her…This meant in return that the only way for this spirit to protect Tsuki was by defeating every single one of those heroic entities.
Both parties stood in place until the first battalion was formed and battle ready. Even Tsuki could taste the fear coming from this myriad of champions who only wanted to protect those they loved. She stood as an outsider on this cruel battlefield on which no one was in the wrong and felt like crying, knowing good people were about to die because of her. The implication of everything was too big for this naïve girl who wanted to detach herself from reality again. “Look,” said Yuu in a calm and demanding voice. “That doll, the one controlling it is the one behind your separation from your girl…So look well and remember what you are about to see. To confront it, you will have to reach a similar height one day.”
Yuu sounded sad while she caressed the young girl’s head with fingers that melted with the emptiness of space. She knew who the doll was as she was wounded by the same person; a ruler of a kingdom she once called home. Many mistook her for this mad princess who only cared about power, leading to many misunderstandings. Even if she knew who the culprit was, she had no way of defeating her, Hanna the princess of Green Gale, – how simple would it have been if it was anyone else – only Tsuki could.