Chapter 4

I can become stronger

‘Oh, wow… and I thought I was like the protagonist of some novel or something’, I thought to myself.

“Sorry.”, she said in the efforts to console me.

“No, its okay.”, I said.

‘And it’s not like I can be measured by the standards of other people because my body is practically different from their standards.’, I thought trying not to lose hope.

After a minute or two of lingering silence, I remembered the voice in the void. What it said about me being strong enough. That means I have a way of getting stronger, or else there is no way an entity strong enough to save me from certain death would demand something from me.

At this new revelation, I thought about the stone the old lady gave me and how it absorbed my consciousness inside and how I could see the stars in the darkness just like the old lady told me to imagine.

I picked the dark stone from the ground and focused again as I did before and nothing happened. I concentrated again and again, after some time I was inside the stone again.

‘Yes!’, I thought.

There it was, the darkness that looked like the void, and I could make out some small lights all over the space around me. I tried to reach out to one of them, but the light bolted away as if sensing me approach.

‘What happened?’

I tried to reach again but to no avail. Then I just stared at them from where I was silently for some time.

Then some of the lights started to emit emerald color instead of the usual white color. As I was about to reach to one of the emerald lights, before I could even finish the thought, the emerald light went through my forehead at a speed which stunned me.

‘What is this? I tried touching the lights before, but they were bolting away every time I get close. But this emerald light just went in what seemed like my forehead right in to my soul before I could even finish my thought of approaching!’, I thought.

After a second or two, I could feel my body being filled with warmth. Wait! I can sense my ears, my body…

Then I decided to try pull all the emerald lights, because if a mere thought of approaching it made it go inside my body then trying to pull it with my thought would definitely do the trick.

As I thought of accumulating the green emerald lights, all the lights which were about 2 meters away from me started to come together and create a bigger emerald light source. I tried to pull the light source before it got too big, but instead of going right through my forehead, if came closer near my sternum. I grabbed it by my hand and felt its warmth.

It felt like my mother was holding me in her arm when I was an infant.

‘What is this? I don’t even remember having a mother, let alone the warmth of her embrace’

Then without any more thought I decided to swallow it. The emerald light was the size of the stone the old lady gave to me. After I swallowed the light, I could feel the warmth traveling through my throat to my sternum. Then the pain started.

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If was like I was being ripped apart from inside out. Every part of my body was being ripped apart inside out through the pain. I never felt anything like this in my entire life. Even when those crazy experiments were tearing me apart, even when I was captured and tortured heavily by specialist torturers of enemy forces, I never felt this much pain.

The pain went on for what seemed like hours, and finally it subsided. Then I realized that there was something floating around the center of my sternum. It was emerald color and a grey colored fog like thing was moving around inside it.

‘Is this ether?’, I thought.

‘No, it’s my consciousness, the core of my existence.’, I heard an unfamiliar voice in my head. It was different from the one I heard in the void. This one sounded like a child, or is it a woman?

‘I think I am starting to lose it. Another voice sounding in my head again! Who are you?!’, I said irritated.

‘I don’t know what I am. My only guess is that I am something that used to be a person a long time ago and lost my memory. And I was unconscious until you woke me up. What are you anyway, this is not the body of a human.’

‘Huh… this guy, you can’t even remember what you were and you think that I am not human.’

‘I have memories of some basic knowledge about the world and knowledge about the denizens of this world, and I have no memory of a being like you.’

‘What do you mean?’, I asked curious.

‘I don’t know what you are, but I don’t think your body is that of a human’

‘Are you… sure about this?’, I said disbelievingly.

‘If you think about it, I can’t even hear my heartbeat’, I thought more to myself than the being talking inside of me.

‘I can’t seem to know what you are. In the meantime, you should pay attention to your surroundings. There are people approaching.’, it said with a little concern.

‘Also, I will have to rest for some time, since I just woke up and have no more power to stay conscious.

I wanted to ask what he was and what his name was but decided against it since it can be dangerous not to pay attention to my surroundings.

I slowly opened my eyes and there were three people approaching my cell. The leader was among them, there was another slim man that I didn’t recognize. By the way he held himself among these people he must have a higher position than the leader. His looks were average, and his expression was gentle, but I could see it in his eyes that he was not to be trusted.

The guards opened my cage and the leader reached for the rope and tied my hands behind my back. He then pushed me hard and I stumbled and fell face first to the ground. He looked like he was exerting as much force as he could, however, the strange thing is that the power he seemed to exert on me and his expression while he was pushing me didn’t match the power I felt from his push. It was weak, like really weak. My fall was an act to make them look down on me and to make them let their guards down. It’s also not a good idea to stand out too much.

He then grabbed Lyna and tied her the way he tied me. And then he approached lady Belma and he looked at her with disdain in his eyes.

He said, “It’s about time we got rid of you don’t you think? We don’t need dead weight in our village, more so people like you who go against the leader.”, then he pierced through her heart with a spear.

Lyna’s eyes widened with terror, she was choking as she cried her eyes out. Lady Belma looked at me with pleading eyes. It was clear what she wanted to tell me, ‘Save my granddaughter.’

I simply nodded and turned my head away. The old lady helped me in my stay here until now. She didn’t deserve to be treated this way. But I can’t do anything for her now. The only thing I can do is to get revenge for her when the time comes.

The leader grabbed Lyna and he carried her on his broad shoulder. He then looked at me and said, “Get stepping, pretty boy.”

I did as I was told. We followed the gentle looking man to the mountain. I could see a building at the top of the mountain. We marched up the mountain for about 30 minutes and finally reached the building. I could’ve simply escaped on the way to the mountain but I didn’t know what awaited me on the top of the mountain. It could even be an opportunity for me, and there is also Lyna. I can’t leave her die here alone, I have to save her because the least I could do for lady Belma is to fulfill her dying wish.

From where we stood, the building looked a small house, but when I looked down the cliff side of the building, the building extended down to about 100 meters. There was an old man waiting at the entrance of the building holding what looked like a bowl in his hand.

When we reached the place where the old man was standing, the old man splashed something green he was holding in the bowl. Then the crude man pushed me and Lyna next to the door and said, “be a good sacrifice for the great king and protector of the mountain.”

And then the door opened and something pulled me and Lyna to the inside of the building and the door closed.