Joan couldn’t help but stare, a hand over her mouth when she watched the armor fall to the ground. “Does it hurt?” she asked before she could stop herself.

“Sometimes,” Gil said. The woman was, well, definitely not what she’d expected. She’d imagined a great, fierce warrior behind that armor.

Instead she was a woman who looked like she was suffering the late stage effects of some terrible disease. Dark veins covered the majority of her flesh, she had terrible scars all over and her hair was so thin and matted it looked as if it was going to fall out from a stiff breeze. She was so bony Joan half expected them to crack when she took the armor off. She could barely believe the woman could stand anymore.

Yet not only did she stand, she moved with ease, even once the armor was off. Under the armor she wore thin garments that seemed to hang off her body. She walked through the doorway and into the stone hallway.

Joan walked after her, but stopped by the armor. She stared at it, unable to stop herself for a moment. Something about it felt…

Right. As if it was calling her. The parts she could see on the inside looked shimmery and black, like obsidian. She couldn’t help herself, she knelt down and reached a hand out towards it.

A hand grabbed her wrist with far, far more power than it looked like it could possibly have. “Don’t,” Gil said.

“What?” Joan asked.

“You can’t handle it,” Gil said. “It’ll eat you alive if you try.”

“I… I wasn’t going to--”

“The gods don’t like it, anyway,” Gil said. “Come along.” She let the hand go and started walking again.

Joan gave the armor one last fleeting look before turning to walk after her. How could someone who looked like they were on death’s door still be so strong? What was Gil?

------

Joan froze in place, unable to anything but stare in awe. The gods. In all their magnificence. The Peacock and Phoenix, their bodies made of shimmering jewels. The Lion and Unicorn, bodies of flame and lightning. The Boar and Swan, bodies of water and ice. The Toad and Wolf, bodies of stone and iron. The Goat and Griffon, bodies of gales and tempests. The Snake and Tortoise, bodies of light and warmth. The Snail and Scorpion, bodies of darkness and mystery.

She could envision statues of them, though if they were from her past or something she’d concocted she didn’t know. But she had never seen statues like these. As if the gods themselves stood before them, eternal, magnificent. Awe inspiring. Joan wanted to fall on her knees in humble reverence, but she couldn’t even move.

“Bit overdone, to be honest,” Gil said. “But I feel that sums up the gods pretty well. Are you coming?”

“What is this place?” Joan asked softly, for fear of raising her voice. She tried to walk, but she couldn’t get her legs to move.

“The Last Hall,” Gil said. “Millenia ago, no. World’s ago, this was where we could go to talk with them. Ask them for help. As close as you could get without already being dead. You should be proud, you’re probably the only person still alive who has seen this place. Not that there’s much left to see. They can’t take the direct approach anymore, they gave that up long ago.”

“What about you?” Joan asked. “You’re alive.”

“I’m not a person,” Gil said before glancing back. “Are you coming?”

“What?” Joan asked. “How are you not a person?”

“I gave up being a person long, long, long ago,” Gil said. “Lifetimes ago. It’s a lot easier than you’d think.”

“Is that why you’re so… uhhh…” Joan asked before quickly lowering her eyes. She swore she could feel the gods watching her. Were they?

“Yes,” Gil said. “I’ve had lifetimes to strip away my being and become this. I’ve become very good at it. It becomes a little easier each time.”

“Am I going to have to?” Joan asked.

“I doubt it,” Gil said. “I’m not sure what you are or why I kept you with me, but you still seem pretty mundane. The important thing is finding out what and who you are. Because if you can come in here, well…”

“Well what?” Joan asked.

“You’re obviously not a god,” Gil said. “You wouldn’t be able to move.”

“What? A god? I thought you said they weren’t here anymore?”

“This world’s aren’t, at least not fully,” Gil said before giving a sigh and shaking her head. “I wonder if we’ve had this conversation before? It feels like we have. I can feel a headache growing.”

“I’m sorry,” Joan said. “I’ll stop asking questions.”

“It’s fine,” Gil said. “It’s what I’m supposed to do, anyway. A part of me still wants to. Our gods don’t manifest here anymore. They can’t. It’s the price they had to pay. There are others but… they can’t manifest fully either.”

“They abandoned us?” Joan asked softly before, very slowly, starting to walk towards her.

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

“No,” Gil said. “Some might see it that way. But that’s not what happened. They didn’t have a choice if they wanted to save us. Everything has a cost, in the end. Come along. They aren’t watching. They have more important things to watch right now.”

Joan gave a small nod and slowly started walking forward again. “Sorry,” she said to the statues as she passed.

“Trying to wrap your mind around the thoughts of a god is enough to bring madness,” Gil said. “I know probably more than anyone else in our world and even I can’t fully grasp what they’re intending anymore.”

“Anymore?” Joan asked.

“I could, once,” Gil said. She walked past the statues towards a stone archway. “But then we won. Now nothing makes sense anymore.”

“You won?” Joan asked. “Isn’t that good? I mean, then the world will get better, right?”

“Does that world look better to you?” Gil asked, her voice cold and bitter. “No, that’s not… sorry. You don’t know, do you? You don’t remember anything about that place?”

Joan shook her head. “What’s wrong with the world?”

“It’s dying,” Gil said. “Tainted. Corrupted. Cursed, I suppose. The final death cry of an evil god who desired to destroy everything and devour it whole. It even tainted Arta before--” She stopped for a moment before taking a deep breath. “A dying animal will lash out erratically, the same stands for the gods.”

“Arta?” Joan asked, a small rush of sadness washing over her. “I… I think I know that name. It doesn’t feel… nice… though.”

“It’s not,” Gil said before walking through the archway and seeming to disappear.

Joan gulped, readying herself for a moment before stepping forward through it.

Joan let out a gasp, her eyes going wide. She had known so little in her short time since awakening, yet this only made it seem somehow more infinitely tiny. She could see eternity. Every soul, every life, every monster, every home, every person, every single thing that had ever existed. It surrounded them on all sides, eternally moving, shifting, washing over and--

A hand covered her eyes, blinding her for a moment. “Easy there,” Gil said softly. “It’s probably a bit much to take in, huh?”

Joan just gave a light squeak.

“Everything, everywhere,” Gil said. “Everytime. Utterly useless. You’ll learn to block it out. Or you’ll go mad.”

Joan just gave another whimper.

“Just try not to think about it,” Gil said again. “You’ll find it makes it easier. It takes something truly divine to make sense of this.”

Joan gave one more whine.

“I’m going to take my hand away,” Gil said. “Just keep walking, tune it out.”

“What if it’s important?” Joan asked.

“What does it matter?” Gil asked. “There’s too much for you here. Some of it is important, but there’s a lot of things that happen that will never be important for you. Snapping your mind in half trying to comprehend them does no good. Most seers can see only the barest, smallest portion of this and their minds crumble the more they understand it. You have no chance of understanding it.”

Slowly the hand was lifted off her face and she tensed up. However, after a few seconds she found it rather easy to tune it out. There was so much, more than she could imagine. Yet it could all so easily blend together. Too much to make sense of so if she stopped trying, it just became a weird background noise.

Gil started walking again and Joan followed behind her. “Why did we come here?”

“I need to find out what was lost,” Gil said. “Why I had to go to that city. Why Korgron and I had to fight. What I destroyed. If I succeeded or failed. Then I need to figure out what I’ll do next.”

“You can sort through this?” Joan asked.

“No,” Gil said. “But there are things I can do to it. You probably can, too.”

Joan stumbled slightly, staring at the woman. “What? Me? How?”

“You’re here, aren’t you?” Gil asked. “You can’t be here, yet you are. So something is going on and I need to find out what.” She then stopped and then promptly sat down. “Close your eyes and relax.”

“Relax? Here?” Joan asked.

“If you desire answers, yes,” Gil said. “What was stolen from your mind is still there, just trapped. You just need to guide it back to the surface. If you can’t even try, then you may wait. I don’t know how long this will take.”

Joan nervously gulped but, very slowly, sat down on the ground. She tried not to focus on the fact she was sitting on everything. Rock, dirt, grass, bodies, people, monsters, stars, air, water, wood, fire--

She drove that away and closed her eyes. Trying to focus. Was everything truly there, hidden away in her mind? It couldn’t be that easy, could it? No, if it was then surely Gil wouldn’t--

Wait. Was Gil just saying that so she’d shut up for a bit and the woman could focus? She really wanted to doubt that but the longer she thought on it the more sense it made. Right? Or was it more of everything playing with--

Then everything stopped. At once. It all disappeared, surrounding them in silence and darkness.

“Uhhh, what’s going on?” Joan asked.

“I don’t know,” Gil said softly, her voice filled with worry. She slowly got to her feet, looking around. “Don’t move.”

“What?” Joan asked. “But—”

“Don’t move,” Gil said again. “I’ll be right back.”

“But—”

“Don’t move!” Gil yelled before she ran away, disappearing into the nothing.

Joan sat there, alone in the nothing. It was nothing, truly. She wasn’t even falling, there was nothing to fall through. It was as if everything had just ceased to exist, all at once. Yet she was trapped in the middle of it.

Then suddenly a strange, cloaked figure was standing in front of her. She didn’t know who they were, but something about them was so familiar. As if she’d seen them a million times. They reached out a hand and offered her a small silver string. Joan started to reach out to take it, but then stopped. Something told her if she touched this figure, something terrible would happen. Instead she held out her hands to the figure, palm up.

The figure dropped the string in her hand. A moment later, the figure was gone. Not disappearing, more as if she was never there to begin with. She looked at her hand but it was completely empty. What in the world happened? She moved her hand around from side to side, but the string was gone. Why had--

Then pain. So much pain. Everything came back at once and, with it, misery and suffering. It felt like she was burning away, melting under the heat of some great fire that tore her apart from the inside out. She clutched herself, begging the pain to stop, but it refused.

Mercifully, while the pain only seemed to rise, burning her away, it finally became too much for her to bear.

Her vision faded away slightly before consciousness did.