Chapter 27: Misaki Arashi - one month ago
Misaki drove her bicycle home after classes. These thirty minutes per day were the only ones she had to herself. Her headphones were playing an audiobook. The narrator was describing a battle of heroes in a showdown.
Archmage Sanders was the last one standing against the severely wounded Demon Lord. He had a choice; use his remaining magic to end this all, or heal his allies, just enough for them to survive. The Demon Lord had a similar choice - use the last bits of waning divinity he had left to curse Sanders and die, or try to flee with his tail between his legs.
It was a stalemate as both aimed their staves at each other.
“Go, and never come back!” - Sanders made his choice.
The Demon Lord smiled. An Ant was threatening him. Would he still consider himself a demon lord after losing his army and running away like a coward? NO! No one ordered Him!
“Mashta SAKAN! Curse you to the seventh generation, so your children will betray you and each other and you never know peace!”
Sanders saw the divine circles on the staff of the demon lord but used healing on his allies instead of protecting himself. If that was the price to save his friends and defeat the demon lord. It was worth it.
Misaki drove on the bike lane through the intersection. The moment she noticed the truck, it was too late. She didn’t try to brace herself. At that moment, she didn’t care. A second later her body lay on the ground motionless. She saw a puddle of blood forming under her face as her vision turned dark.
…
“It's time for you to wake up, my child” - a gentle female voice made Misaki open her eyes. She was lying on something soft; it felt like clouds made out of cotton and looked like them. She looked around. A beautiful woman offered her a hand.
“I am Noritz, the goddess of death and rebirth. Unfortunately, you have died, but I am here to guide you to your new life.” Her face was covered in a veil, making her features vague.
Misaki grabbed the offered hand and stood up.
The sky was bright, but the stars were brighter, making them clearly visible in the cherry sky. The goddess in front of her wore clothes akin to ones of a Christian angel on a Renaissance painting and emanated a visible golden aura, engulfing Misaki in warmness.
Misaki touched her face and tried to use the offered hand to stand up. The moment she touched it she felt air entering her lungs, she pleasantly shivered as if she just learned how to breathe again. It felt like a new life was breathed into her.
“So I have died. So where am I?”. Her voice was confused as she looked around.
“You are standing between worlds. On a crossroad. But Heaven or Hell is not something destined for you.”
“And what is?” Misaki didn’t question much about what was happening.
“You were chosen. You will be summoned to another world to become a hero. Here, I will grant you a divine boon. A blessing that will aid you in your new life.”
“Choose someone else,” Misaki responded categorically. “I don’t want to get summoned, or be a hero.” Misaki was shaking her head as she sat on the cloud which acted like a chair. She was sobbing.
“Why are you crying child?” Noritz gently patted Misaki’s head, kneeing to get their faces on the same level.
“I thought it would end. I don’t want to go to another world to be miserable there too! I just want this all to end!” Misaki covered her face with her hands. Noritz thought for a few seconds.
Goddess pursed her lips. Ryu has been sending her mentally broken people for quite some time, but this was too much even for her. It was hard to tell what the dragon was trying to achieve. Was he assuming she was going to fix them all with her divine presence?
“You won’t be. There are people on the other side expecting you.” Noritz was cut off.
“I don’t want to be a hero. I don’t want others to put their expectations on me. They will just put me in another cage.”
Noritz knew that this was the case for most of them and people who payed to summon Misaki were extremely generous.
“If you want, you can end your life here and now.” Noritz dropped a dagger on the floor. “Not anyone gets a second chance. Don’t squander it. But if you plan to squander it anyway, just drive the knife through your own heart, and that would be my blessing to you.” The dagger unsheathed itself and flew up in Misaki’s hand.
Misaki looked at it and grabbed it with her two hands driving it into her chest without hesitation, her face twisted with pain. A second later Her lifeless body fell on the ground and blood poured on pink clouds.
Noritz looked at the girl and returned to her desk, approving and declining rebirths of souls, as the pile decreased. A minute later she went back to Misaki’s body and pulled the dagger out of the girl’s chest.
“It's time to wake up, Misaki!” Noritz pointed her hand towards Misaki, whose wounds had closed.
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Misaki woke up with a sharp inhale and a cough, the leftover taste of copper left her mouth. This time the shivers she got were not pleasant at all.
“Huh? What? Why?” She looked at herself in shock, her hands and chest were covered in her own blood, and Noritz was in front of her, but the aura of warmth was no longer emanating from the goddess. She touched the place her wound was, but there wasn’t even a sign of it left.
“Congratulations, you have successfully killed yourself in the presence of a goddess of rebirth. Are you happy now?” Noritz sounded harsh and patronizing. Misaki still felt the phantom pain of the cold dagger piercing her heart, her body was cold, and she felt like she lost a lot of blood, but that feeling was quickly waning. “I don’t have an eternity to spare, I have thousands of souls to send to their rebirth. If you don't choose a boon in three minutes, the ritual will finish, and you will get transported anyway.”
Misaki barely moved. She looked mentally drained her eyes lacking any glare. “So even here I can't decide what to do with my own life.”
“You decided to kill yourself, and I decided to give you another chance, even though you don’t deserve one. When you are in my domain, you obey my rules.” Noritz was piercing the girl with her bottomless gaze, which she felt even through the veil.
Misaki nodded, still shocked that she died two times and was still alive. Sme moved heavily and clumsily despite her body being fine. She asked herself if she was happy about killing herself, but she couldn’t answer.
“Are you ready?” Noritz asked in a commanding tone and moved towards an ivory table standing in the room.
“Yes,” Misaki looked down. She was always easily giving in to pressure.
“You will most likely be trained as a mage, with your attributes you will become incredibly powerful within a few years, so I would advise against legendary weapons or staves, as they will outlive their usefulness very quickly.”
“Is there something that will make others not put any expectations on me?” Misaki asked.
“That dagger in your heart, I won’t be reincarnating you again,” Noritz replied harshly.
“Something that will make people like me?” Misaki continued.
“Do you want all the perverts in the world to like you? You already look beautiful for a human female.”
“Something that will help me find friends?”
“You were supposed to be smart.” Noritz sighed “If you want you can burn your boon to make someone care about you. It’s magic that can slightly affect the world. It will search the whole planet and call someone to your aid, but it will be up to you to make that friendship. Also, they will have the right to decline your call.” the goddess handed Misaki a small flying crystal.
“This is a Crystal of Authority. You can create an item or an effect or alter reality in the most subtle ways. From it, all other boons are created, but you can use yours directly when…”
Misaki touched the stone, it looked like a quartz, but when she touched it she felt that this small item contained endless magic lines and runes.
The whole planet Earth was connected to the stone, and she was connected to it too. It was like a big screen with a lot of smaller screens and each smaller screen had more of these screens showing a place in the whole world.
The moment she looked somewhere, she was looking through someone's eyes. She saw through the eyes of a bee, a fish, and a bird. This was raw magic, an endless one, and completely unrestrained. The goddess was talking but she couldn’t hear, no… the time around her stopped, she felt lonely looking at the world. She wanted to know if someone thought about her after her death. She wanted to see if her parents or caregivers at least cared, or maybe someone from school. Anyone.
“Is there someone who thinks about me now?” Her will was connected to the crystal, and her perspective shifted, she was not at home as she expected, and any attempts to find it were in vain. No one at her home thought about her at the moment, it was more painful than the dagger through her chest.
She was in someone’s big kitchen in a European style.
“Victory is mine! The machine is just hallucinating again!" - a blond European man in his late twenties spoke with three other Europeans sitting around a big kitchen, drinking beer and eating crayfish. He was looking at something on the screen, so Misaki peeked too.
"There is a 95% correlation between Tokyo blackouts and fatal truck accidents three days prior.
Victims of the accidents;
1. Misaki Arashi: 16, died in a truck accident three days ago. [link to news article] [link to obituary]… ”
She felt a cold thrill run down her spine. For the first time, she properly understood that she was dead, and worse than that the only person who thought about her just saw her name on a screen, she felt sickened.
She tried to grab the mouse to open the link, but she wasn’t physically present in the room. Blondy put his hand to close the laptop and that made her feel even more lonely, as if when the lid would close the last memory of her would disappear, and no one would remember her ever again.
“Of course, no one cares!” She shouted, tears coming from her eyes, and George, as if reacting to her, stopped himself from closing the laptop and clicked on the first link.
“Fine,” Blondy said as if replying to her.
“Hmm… 16 years old kid, that's sad. Died six days ago, poor fella. Wait what? Double Olympics winner. I should check the others. Oh my, oh my. Something is off here”. She could hear him mumbling quietly to himself. “That’s bullshit. No way this is normal by any means.” Geroge looked at obituaries side by side, his fingers tapping on the table. He leaned back looking where Misaki’s point of view was at that moment. She felt that he saw her crying face. Blondy looked at her for a few seconds pursing his lips.
"Guys, I found something strange. It looks like Japanese gifted kids die a lot in truck accidents. Any suggestions?"
Misaki snapped back to the place among the worlds. The crystal lay shattered in her hands; she had just used something so powerful to make one person read her obituary.
“You didn’t let me finish and used the crystal while not connected to Terra Arcana. Before I explained how to use it. I congratulate you. I don’t know or care what you did, but good luck.” Noritz waved her hand as Misaki slowly vanished into thin air.
Noritz slowly exhaled despite not needing to breathe at all. “Making that deal with a dragon was a foolish mistake…”