Prologue

“Connie! Why do you have to be so goddamned stubborn all the time!” Mum cried, smacking the marble worktop in front of me in frustration. She sighed and slumped down onto a wooden stool across from me, running her hands through her brown locks in an effort to calm herself down.

I just looked back at her calmly. I had decided that I didn’t want to go and no amount of shouting and pleading was going to make me change my mind. It had never changed my mind before and wasn't going to change it now.

My mum looked up at me from massaging her head. Her blue eyes glistening with tears “Can't you do this for me? Just this once? I've tried so hard to do the best for you. I try to let you do what you want.” She swiped at the tears and scrubbed her face roughly. My heart cracked a little. I knew how much she loved me and how hard she had worked to bring me up when dad disappeared. “I love that you know what you want, and fight for it so hard, but I'm just trying to do what's best for you. Just give it a go, and if you don't like it, you can quit.” She looked at me with a hopeful smile. “Please?”

I sighed in defeat. “Just this once, mum” I got off my stool and walked around to her side giving her a hug. “Only because you used the Tears of Make Connie Do What I Want.” I smiled down at her and swiped away her tears.

She beamed back at me, standing up and smothering me in a hug. “Great! I'm telling you, Connie. This guy is supposed to be really good. Much better than Doctor Pallson”

I gave another sigh and withstood the hug for a moment longer before I turned and stomped off to my room making sure to slam the door shut.

I still had to show her I wasn't happy doing this after all.

My head vibrated gently against the bus window. The soft sound of the music flowing out of the earphones of the young woman sitting in front of me intertwined with the soft drumming of the rain, lulling me into a peaceful trance. It was rare when I was so completely relaxed. Usually, with my brain firing sparks planning mischievous endeavours and my body thrumming with pent up energy I rarely, if ever sat still. As I watched the scenery go by behind the racing raindrops I thought I should try something peaceful more often. Maybe even get into meditation. I smirked. The only thing guaranteed to make me sit still was a good book, and even then, I could never finish the whole thing without shifting position a few dozen times. I noticed with a little detachment that I’d missed my stop, but ignored it in favour of experiencing this rare feeling for a while longer.

Punctuality is overrated anyway.

I let the moment go on a while longer before the memory of my mum telling me to try and make this work came to mind. I jammed the bell to stop the bus and got off at the next stop. Thankfully, in the city centre the bus stops were every couple of hundred metres so missing my original stop hadn't really made me late.

I walked up to the building that I was supposed to go to, the steel and glass monstrosity was not the normal type that mum normally took me to. Those seemed to be more spiritual, shamany types that liked to work out of little out of the way places where they could act all mysterious. Maybe this would actually be different and work this time around.

The ‘Mind guru’ as the guy titled himself as had an office on the thirteenth floor, which made me a little less certain as to if this would actually help. Not the fact that it was the thirteenth floor, but the fact that he called himself the ‘Mind guru’. I mean, really…

I took the stairs up from the surprisingly small and bare lobby area up to the thirteenth floor. I’m not claustrophobic or anything, I just need to be active. I normally would have cycled here rather than take the bus, but my mum had told me to not show up looking like a half-drowned rat, and since I had capitulated to the appointment, I thought I might as well keep on with the trend and keep giving in. The surprised look on her face when I agreed was almost worth it.

The door to the office was, for some reason, mirrored. A small, plain, white plaque to the side read ‘Dr Ir Gat – Mind guru’, and engraved onto the door were the words, ‘To know onself, one has to see oneself’ typical shrink gibberish really. I looked at my green eyes in the mirror wondering if I really wanted to get into this.

Strands of my brown hair had escaped from it’s ponytail and were framing my face quite prettily. Much better than I could have done had I tried to style it anyway.

I figured since I had come all this way I might as well see it to the end. And if it doesn't go well then I can just not come again and tell mum I told you so.

I pushed the door open and walked into a reception area. The receptionist was a bland looking man with a perfect military style crew cut. He glanced at me briefly from behind a steel and glass desk that came up to my chest. “Take a seat” he pointed towards a row of blue cushioned chairs.

Wow. Weren't receptionists supposed to be all welcoming and stuff?

I ignored his rudeness and took a seat. They were surprisingly comfy. Before I'd managed to wriggle my butt into the perfect spot the door next to the desk opened and a pretty Asian woman walked out. She had perfectly arranged black hair and a smart looking white business suit with red accents. Her glasses were an odd tear drop shape with the pointy ends towards her ears.

She smiled brightly at me walking towards me with her hand outstretched. I stood up and shook her proffered hand in greeting.

“Hello, there! I'm Doctor Gat, but please call me me Ir. And you must be Connie?”

She shook my hand with a little too much enthusiasm than I was comfortable with but I smiled politely at her and followed her towards the door she had come in from.

The office seemed to be a very simple, and surprisingly small, version of the typical shrink offices. Normally they had some knickknacks scattered around to make the place seem cosier. The room was a plain square with bland beige walls with a single painting on each and large clear windows on the fourth which made the room feel more open than it actually was. In the middle was a simple wooden stool and a reclined leather seat with a little desk shoved against one of the walls.

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I nearly stumbled as my trainers sunk into the thick, embroidered carpet. It was a deep, dark blue with a golden circle that neatly circled the entire space, just barely touching the walls.

“Please, sit down and make yourself comfortable. Your mother told me that you'd prefer that this be over as quickly as possible, so we’ll start straight away.” The doctor said, politely waving me to the reclined seat.

I walked to the centre of the circle and lay down in the surprisingly comfortable reclining chair and tried to get comfortable in a position that seemed to be designed to make me feel slightly insecure.

The Doctor shifted her stool so she was behind me and next to her desk. This left me with the window to my left and facing a weird looking painting. It was done in a mix of greys and blacks with a winding red thread which made it look like a red ribbon fluttering in a dark foggy night.

“Now, then, Connie” she said from behind my head, which made feel a bit awkward since I couldn’t see her. “Please look at the painting in front of you while I simulate the nerves in your head to help you relax. I have helped a lot of people suffering from situations similar to yours where they had too much energy for their bodies to handle.”

She started to slowly rub at the side of my forehead in a slow circular motion, humming with a soft repeating rhythm. Now, my ‘condition’ may seem to be like ADHD or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, but it’s not quite the same. I do have trouble concentrating, impulsiveness and hyperactivity, but it goes beyond that. It literally is like I have too much energy, there are times that I can barely sit still for fear of exploding and I can go a week without a single wink of sleep without any of the normal ill effects. The drugs barely help; sometimes even making things worse, which is how I have ended up here – with a person who has supposedly seen these symptoms before.

As Doctor Ir continues humming the painting in front of me starts blurring. Huh, is this supposed to be one of those inkblot tests where you’re supposed to find a picture in the mess of colours? As Doctor Ir’s humming went deeper and deeper, the ink in the painting seemed to run and turn into a symbol. I blinked rapidly trying to figure out what was happening as the fingers on my forehead started to feel cold. They dug into my head with a ferocity that left me unable to move my head.

The humming had somewhere along the line turned into an intelligible chant, the deep, bass sound thrumming along the fingers on my head and rippling across my skin. I watch as the carpet starts glowing in time with the chant, the circle eating the light coming from the window and regurgitating it into a dark purple glow.

I struggle helplessly, not a sound emerging from my mouth as my skin starts fading before my eyes, rippling outwards from the claws now dg into my skull, and expanding to what I can see of my skin.

A deep pleasure filled moan erupts from behind me, the sound rumbling through the back of the leather chair from what used to be Doctor Ir. A face appears above me, the features of the Doctor apparent, yet somehow wrong. As if she was being reflected as an almost perfect copy of herself. “Mmmm, so sweet, tasty…” a long, forked tongue flickers out, licking her lips as her eyes fluttered shut in rapture. Her fingers dug in deeper as a wave of pain shot through me, a gasp of pain escaping my lips. Her eyes widen as she hears me, “You’re still aware? My, my, you are a stubborn soul, aren’t you?” A wicked smile appeared on her lips as the pain increased dramatically, my fingers twitched as it felt like something inside me got yanked.

“There’s no point resisting, my dear Connie.” The demon lectured, well at least I thought she was a demon, through what little I understood through the pain. “I’ve already consumed a part of your soul. There’s no way you’re going to live” I struggled wildly, feeling a part of what made me, ME being slowly drained away. There was a part of me that utterly REFUSED to back down, a core of my being that the rest of the ME that was left was built on.

Suddenly, something tore, ripping me from the part of me that she had her claws in, and I fled. Somewhere. Somehow.

I was confused.

What just happened?

I felt lost, broken. Like I had lost something dear to me.

But what could I have lost?

I was always here, wasn’t I?

I looked around me.

Black.

Void.

Round?

Well, I could see everywhere and I couldn’t see what I felt like I had lost. I examined myself. I looked tattered. My perfect green sphere cloudy instead of the normal vibrant green. I was made up of little interlocking pieces of Me. The deep green, solid in the middle was there as always. Stubborn rarely moved after all…

The rest was missing…

Or at least damaged. Like something had clawed me…

I looked nervously around me, looking for what could have damaged me.

There was still nothing there. Just an endless void.

Suddenly my world flashed. The endless black suddenly being filled with white. I gasped in fear. Was this white the thing that had damaged me?

I tried to flee. But where could I go? The white was suddenly all around me.

“DO NOT FEAR, CHILD.”

The white presence soothed me, surrounding me in a familiar warmth. It LOOKED at me seeing deep within at things even I did not know about myself.

“AH, A SOUL DAMAGED BY A DEMON?”

It boomed.

“CURIOUS. IT IS RARE THAT ANYTHING ESCAPES FROM ONE OF THEM”

“AND EVEN RARER IN SUCH A GOOD CONDITION”

“UNFORTUNATELY, IT IS NOT SUCH A GOOD CONDITION THAT I CAN JUDGE YOU ACCURATELY”

It seized me in a grip that paralysed me completely and suddenly I was somewhere else.

“THERE ARE MANY PATHS HERE TO CHOOSE FROM. THE ONE YOU CHOOSE WILL DICTATE YOUR NEXT LIFE.”

The presence disappeared in a shower of golden light leaving me in what appeared to be a forest with a multitude of paths.

I bobbed up and down gently. My green orb was much prettier than all the other shades of green in this forest.

The dirt path that I was currently floating over was a light brown, hard packed dirt. It was clear of any of the normal detritus one would normally find in a forest.

There were six paths that I could currently choose from, three on either side of me. Though each one seemed to split further along.

Some paths were bricked, which was weird in a forest. Some barely appeared to be paths at all. Just a bit of forest that had slightly thinner undergrowth than the rest of it. Though something inside me told me it was a viable path that I could choose from.

The one that appealed to me the most was one that had a shiny, glossy black surface which reflected my gorgeous green orb quite nicely.

I floated towards that one watching my reflection rather than looking where I was going. The path split in two. One turning grey and one turning a bright blue, both still made of the same surface as the one I was currently on.

I looked towards each of them, wondering which one I should choose.

Nah.

I turned right instead, going into the forest.

I never was one for paths of doing as others would have me do.

That was me, I felt. A bold adventurer. Hehehe.