When both Dai’s and Sarah’s gazes met, a spark was ignited and a memory of the past started before their eyes.
———
-The Rhimbüs, a place where souls wait for Judgment from the Gods, its form varies from person to person depending on their true nature, someone might see a beautiful and endless flower field, while others might see places destructed by countless wars, with even the Emperor, beloved by the Gods was there, waiting for his Judgement.-
After his death, his soul remained in The Rhimbüs, waiting for, what he thought, would have been a quick process, but something went wrong and he had to wait far longer than expected, with his version of The Rhimbüs going from a beautiful city full of people to degrading into a city of pure hatred, where he was the prime victim. He was ready for any punishment because he failed to create a place where humans could be self-sufficient and didn’t need any help from the gods in the future, that was his job but a selfish Zonniki ruined everything and remained unpunished. Mixed feelings were filling the Emperor’s mind, from one side he wanted to call the gods, requiring an answer and the immediate death of the traitor, on the other side, he felt betrayed and didn’t want to have any contact with them again, but this was quickly being replaced with anger and thirst for revenge. Or maybe…he just wanted to spill blood, maybe those rumours about his past were true, maybe he seriously wanted to kill, make everyone suffer and that war was an excuse to do that.
‘Was I…just lying to everyone…including myself the whole time?’
That was a recurrent thought in his mind, something that only became worse with time and was going to drive him crazy, to make the situation worse, his surroundings weren’t better, with other souls being in a far worse state than him.
He remained there, waiting, waiting and waiting…
———
One day, a spatial-time fracture was opened. He thought it was his time to be judged, but, to his displeasure and surprise, 3 Zonnikies and one Wanderer came out of the Fracture. The Zonnikies had their faces covered with completely white masks and their clothing was the same as a human would wear, which was weird to the Emperor since they had to wear something that could diversify them from the ones without powers, but even more bizarre was the presence of the Wanderer since interaction with other beings was prohibited to them.
One of the Zonnikies stepped forwards, he was of big stature, had a low fade haircut and was wearing a work light blue shirt, blue pants, thick soiled beige shoes and a black coat over his shoulders.
“So, this is The Rhimbus…” he said while looking at every soul and sniggered when his gaze passed over the Emperor, that looked at him surprised.
“What…are you doing here…Samriel?” he asked.
The guy with the mask promptly said “I’m just here to deliver important news. While you were here, waiting for your judgment, we, Zonnikies fought alongside the Wanderers to defeat a common enemy, the Gods! We have done this to free all of us from these useless rules they gave us!”
“No…this is impossible. You…” tried to say in disbelief and Samriel nodded, understanding what he wanted to say.
“Yes, we defeated the Gods, our creators. They have fallen into a slumber and with this…” he raised his arm towards the sky to have everyone’s attention “I announce that there will be some changes to the Rhimbus. It will now be divided into different “zones” where other Zonnikies will take the place of the Gods and judge you, but…” he then lowered his arms. “...since our abilities aren’t the same as the Gods, it will take some time to apply these changes.” hearing this, the souls started getting enraged and impatient, wanting to return to a normal life, but Samriel's answer was able to calm them down immediately.
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“I know you are angry, I understand very well. That’s why, you’ll get the chance to start a new life…from now” After saying that, a bright light illuminated every soul and as it went off, every single of them disappeared…apart from the Emperor’s soul.
“You will remain here.” Samriel said while pointing at him “Before you ask with that pitiful voice of yours, it’s because you were with gods and their helpers don’t deserve any freedom.” Immediately after, chains came out of the ground and wrapped around the Emperor’s soul, taking away from him every possibility to move and speak.
“Look at you. You were useless before and now you are basically nothing without your powers. I still don’t understand why they chose you…maybe because you are an idiot and easy to manipulate” after a brief laugh, he resumed speaking with a serious tone.
“Goodbye, my friend. Have a nice and long rest.” Samriel saluted and went through the fracture followed by the other Zonnikies and the Wanderer for last, and then the fracture closed.
The Emperor was alone now, he couldn’t move, he couldn’t speak, he couldn’t think or dream about being in other places, but he was all alone for a long time.
—Meanwhile…—
When Wanderers die, their body dematerialises and becomes one and the same with spatial-time flux, that’s what happened to the Witch after being killed by an assassin sent by Samriel. She knew that it was going to happen but she couldn’t do anything because they can’t change the future just because they know it…but was it truly right? Couldn’t there be an exception? Again, she didn’t know and it didn’t matter since she was dead. She could feel her body being fused with the flux and all the knowledge was passing through her but couldn’t do anything with it, she could just watch as time was passing and her mind was slowly disappearing, that was her fate…but she still couldn’t accept it.
She remembered the Emperor, the first friend and boyfriend she ever had, but it was a long time ago, even before being born as a Wanderer. It was when the First World was created, the Gods’ first attempt to create humans that could be auto-sufficient in every way possible through the use of something they already had, the soul and its extension, the aura. But this process had a lot of risks and simply giving away the knowledge to everyone would have killed the world sooner, so they decided the play it slowly and only hundreds of humans became the first Zonnikies. Unfortunately, she wasn’t one of them but just a normal human who lived as a soldier in a rural city, working hard to get enough money and buy medicines for her father. But was still happy for having that kind of life, not only because she learned many valuable things from the father, but also because she wouldn’t have met the Emperor otherwise…but she can’t remember anything else. The only thing she remembered is when she was reincarnated as a Wanderer and then discovered that the world had been reset because of some problem with those first Zonnikies, one of them rebelled against the Gods for their absurd rule, that person was Samriel; history repeated itself. She couldn’t go back in time to my situation to retrieve her lost memories or do anything else, she could only follow the flow of time and wait for her mind to disappear…
‘Yes, maybe it’s for the best-’
“No” A woman’s voice interrupted his thoughts “You still have a lot to do.” I felt like someone had grabbed my arm and my body was coming together, piece by piece.
The Witch asked “Who…are you.?” she could only see a bright light in front of her
“This doesn’t matter now. We’ll see each other again in future, but for now, I’ll send you to the Rhimbus, where you'll find who you are seeking so much. But I’m too tired now, so you won’t have much time, be fast.”
The light blinded her for a second and when she got her vision back, she was in the Rhimbus and, since she wasn’t dead, she could see the true form of that place, absolute white, like a blank canvas ready to be used by the souls waiting there, but weirdly enough, there was just one of them and as soon as she recognized it, she started running towards it.
—???’s POV—
The Witch got closer to the Emperor and once she was close enough, she touched his soul with her black arm to use her powers as a Wanderer and recreate his physical body, meanwhile, the Emperor was looking at her, she looked familiar but couldn’t remember. As his body was slowly forming, the Witch suddenly stopped and started coughing blood. There was someone behind her but there was no time to see who he was because the memory abruptly stopped.
———
Dai was looking at Sarah’s face as blood was coming out of her mouth and weird lines of diverse colours were appearing on her face. A guy with orange hair and the same weird lines on his face had stabbed her in the back with his fingers.
He sighed “I can’t leave you alone not even for a second uh? Well, it doesn’t matter anymore. You should have continued acting stupid.” the guy said with a look of superiority.