Stefan feels slightly more confident, even with the new power obtained, the past trauma he's been through with her breaks him down mentally, but he manages to gather himself up.
"It's now or never… if I fail this, I fail my entire life, I have nothing else to live for anyways… "
After about 3 minutes he reaches his home. He looks at the gate for a few seconds. He gains a sudden burst of rage and kicks the iron gate down, sending it flying 5 meters in front of him. He sees his mother come from around the corner, clapping her hands. He watches closely as he realizes that she has a spiky red aura on her right hand, but it feels uneasy to look at.
“Well done, I awaited the cat's arrival, I was going to take that storage for myself, but now that you useless mutt got your hands on it I have all rights to kill you. Orange, get his ass.”
From the sky, an orange colored humanoid entity slams into the ground and cracks the concrete from the impact, the energy from the impact forces Stefan to hop slightly into the air, the entity grabs the iron gate and smacks Stefan with it, Stefan gets knocked back into a neighbor's steel fence and bounces off it into the ground, he gets up quickly, his nose bleeds from the wild smack but the rest of his body seems to be just fine, he sheds a tear from the pain and clenches his teeth, the orange entity jumps with the gate in it's hands and goes for a slam attack, Stefan notices it quick enough to dash out of the attack, he takes a better look at it. It appears to be a perfect clone of him, but with shades of orange instead of his colors. Stefan sweats slightly, he notices a sharp rock next to his foot from that got flung there from the impact of the ground slam, he picks it up in a heartbeat and throws it into the clone's eye, the clone blocks it with it's hand on perfect timing, it pierces it's hand perfectly and stops a millimeter away from it's eye. Stefan starts to think of a plan as he's trying to calm himself down and not allow fear to take over. Orange tries to pluck the stone piece out of his hand, Stefan notices that the gate broke into different pieces, he rushes and grabs the closest piece, Orange eventually plucks out the piece from his hand, Stefan doesn't hesitate and lunges towards it, Orange dodges the lunge perfectly, spins and stabs his arm with the stone, kicks his knee then hits his chest with it's elbow then shoves him away. Stefan gets knocked back about 6 meters, he lands on the ground and slowly gets up, but he doesn't get to raise his sight because Orange comes quickly and kicks his head into the concrete, then grabs his leg and throws him in front of the house, Stefan lands next to the broken gate, slowly picks up an iron bar to defend himself and tries to stand up while panting heavily. His mother is watching with a teasing smirk, she starts to clap her hands.
“I didn't expect you to have so much durability, you surprised me. Orange, stop playing, send him away.”
Orange throws the rock just like Stefan did but targets his throat, Stefan blocks with the iron bar and it gets pierced, barely scratching his throat. Stefan quickly moves the bar with the rock away from his throat, he sees this is a weapon enhancement, he dashes tries to swipe Orange
“Now, drop the thing.” said his mother
Orange drops a crystal on the floor then dashes away, the crystal pops into a portal, Stefan doesn't have enough reaction time to change the course of his dash, he enters the portal halfway, he tries to dash back, Orange kicks him in the face, Stefan drops his weapon and enters fully through the portal, after that it closes fully. Stefan tries to reach out for the portal but it closes too soon, he looks around him, it appears that he's been transported into some sort of white void. The sky has a slight shade of gray, which allow you to tell the difference between the ground and the sky. Stefan looks around, the void looks like a barren wasteland, he feels the ground with his palm, it feels like an extremely lifeless material… that somehow makes him very uneasy. He quickly takes his hand off the ground while releasing a gasp. He's left in total awe, from very, very afar mountains of rock can be seen. Small stones are spread across the flat ground, Stefan looks around for anything to go to, his entire body feels extremely uneasy, as if it wants to evaporate, except for the part covered by his hoodie.
In the distance he notices a few blue shining lights. Stefan appears to be a bit frightened by the thought of what could be there, but he has nowhere else to go, so he decides to go to the light. As he was walking, he takes a look at his arm,he can still feel the part where he was stabbed, but it didn't bleed anymore, he also notices that his hoodie is in perfect condition. He finds this extremely unusual, but he tries not to think too much about it. Stefan keeps thinking about what happened and what he will do in this void. "Now what? I need to find a way out of here, I can't just rot in here and let her live happily, i can't…". Stefan approaches the lights, they appear to be some sort of humanoid entities, made out of a pure light blue essence. They appear to be minding their business, not even noticing Stefan's presence. They have big white circles as eyes and from the top of their heads a flame of the same color as their body waves around. There were eight in total. Two pairs are talking to each other, one is sitting down, with his legs crossed and eyes closed, one is looking around and the rest are walking around randomly. Stefan approaches the one that's sitting down and slowly touches it, his hand passes smoothly through its head. He feels a strange connection between the entity and his hoodie, he gasps and quickly pulls back his hand. The entity slowly opens its eyes, puts its hand on top of its head and grips its flame-like hair and pulls it, shaping itself into a spear and aiming it at Stefan. The entity frowns and speaks up:
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
“You…” said the entity
The entity takes a good look at Stefan.
“How did you even end up here? I have never seen a human in this place before, are you here to exterminate us?”
The other entities suddenly look at Stefan, Stefan gasps and backs off a bit.
“Listen, listen, i just want to get out of here-”
“And why would we believe you? Your clothing feels suspiciously peculiar.”
“If there’s anyone here that wants me dead, that’s you, so i would say we all calm down, please… I don’t even know what you all are.”
The sitting one stands up and draws back its spear.
“We could say that we are souls, and this is a Limbo, the first layer of Hell. We have been rejected by both Hell and Heaven. We ended up in this void.”
Stefan is shocked by the statements given by the entity.
“And… will I ever be able to leave?...”
The souls look at one another then back at Stefan
“We don’t know, little one, but, it’s not like we ever wanted to leave this place-”
“Yeah, we like it here, it’s peaceful!” said another soul
Stefan looks at them with a puzzled expression.
“I would get bored quickly if I were you…” said Stefan, disappointed
“Well… uhm… I guess you could say it can get pretty lonely, but we have each other! It’s not too bad to spend an eternity with… friends, right?”
Stefan’s expression saddens, but then an idea flashes his mind.
“Hey, can you do anything else with your energy? Like for example, the spear you did earlier!”
“No, not really, if i try to do anything else, it doesn’t work, it gets all squishy and soft, unable to use it for anything”.
Stefan looks at his hand and hoodie, then back at the soul.
“Try to place it on my hoodie, I felt a special connection earlier when I touched you.”
The soul does as said, his energy starts to coil around Stefan's left arm up until his knuckle. Stefan touches the coil of energy and he feels it extremely solid.
“Can someone else do the same thing? I think I have an idea.” said Stefan
Another 2 souls do the same and 2 more energy chunks coil onto his arm. Stefan channels the energy's tip and shapes it into a drill then proceeds to use it on the void rock. With huge success, Stefan easily manages to break through the void rock and make it crumble.
“You said that when you try to do anything else with it it's soft and squishy, try to unite those rocks using your energy. “
One of the souls does just as he said, it takes its energy out in a pole shape and sticks void rocks onto it. The energy quickly solidifies and grows sturdy.
“You could try to make houses like this. At least small huts for now.”
The souls are shocked by Stefan's discovery.
“How didn't we think about this before?! said a soul”
“But what would be the use of a house in a place like this?” said another soul
“Do you have anything else better to do? At least you'll be able to feel more like home.” said Stefan
“He's right, when should we start? This seems interesting!” said a soul excited
“Are there any other souls in the void? You could all band together and make something beautiful.” said Stefan
“Yeah, there are, but they're quite far away. It will take some time but eventually we'll be able to make some sort of team.”
Stefan looks around him and notices the mountains he's seen at first.
“Does anyone know anything about those mountains?” said Stefan
“No, not really, they're just there I suppose. No one was interested enough to climb them. Maybe you could?”
Stefan thinks for a second, but eventually agrees.
“Yeah, maybe there's other souls out there as well. I'll go.” said Stefan
“Good luck, see you later!” said a soul
Stefan goes ahead and walks towards the biggest mountain he could spot, despite it very far. After what would feel like several hours of walking, Stefan arrives at the mountain and immediately starts climbing it. To his surprise it's fairly easy to climb it since his body isn't tired and his palms don't ache when he grips onto the rocks. One hour passes and Stefan almost reaches the top of the mountain, he takes a small break and finds a spot to rest and sit down. He looks upon the void and notices the blue spark of the souls. He smiles slightly at it and continues climbing. As he continues climbing he finally reaches the top, but instead of finding a sharp peak, it's a rather small flat area, he sees a longsword stuck in a large stone, Stefan is shocked and confused, because the stone does not look like the void rock. Stefan looks around it and examines it, the handle is wrapped in bandages, the pommel is cone shaped colored black. The cross guard of the sword wears the shape of 2 reverse L shapes. Stefan slides his finger on the middle of the blade, as he realizes that there's a thin black line in the middle of the blade, as if it could split in 2. Stefan tries to pluck it out of the stone, he slowly grips onto the cross guard, when he suddenly feels a rush of power and energy flow within his arms which allows him to take it out with ease, but once out of the stone, it's entire power flows within Stefan's body, overflowing him greatly. A vertical beam of light bursts around him and a wild earthquake starts to shake the ground. Stefan screams in confusion as he still grips onto the handle of the sword, eventually passing out from the overwhelming power.
Stefan wakes up in a small room. He freaks out but quickly calms down. The room is quiet, it has white walls and floor. The bed he stays on right now is also white. Next to him there's a wooden table and chair. He notices the door of the room and the bookshelf that's right next to it.