CHAPTER 27: PREDATORS AND PREYS (4)

Death it seemed was anything but painful, it was warm and fluffy. Still he felt very unsatisfied to have gone like that, without putting up a fight.

"I can’t be dead." He said between gnashed teeth.

"You are not dead", spoke a melodic female voice that carried a certain tranquility to the already solemn white space.

Before him was a strange looking woman, she looked exceptionally beautiful and radiant just like how one would expect some being of divine capacity to look. Her face was silver white, her hair a long black flow that seemed to stretch for miles without showing any signs of stopping.

But that was where the normalcy ended, after that every other feature about the strange woman was exceptionally divine. She wore a beautiful long garment made entirely of pieces of radiant fragmented glass that reflected cascading lights of the rainbow, her eyes as well as lashes looked to be composed of the same glass. And instead of one pair of eyes she had two, her lips were covered in shimmers of glass, the dress she wore though made of glass swam in waves like they were silk.

The dress was regal and short barely reaching her knees, she also had a small cape that barely reached her waist. Everything about her shimmered like she was glass itself.

Aerith had never seen anything so divine yet odd, was she an angel or a strange aberration created by his mind just as he was about to pass on. He felt the need to touch her and that almost made him shiver, he could hear distorted whispers in his head that were not his.

"It’s been a long time since I’ve been woken up, so you are the one who called me." She spoke, and oddly enough her lips were curled up slightly into a smile.

Unable to hide his curiosity any more Aerith spoke. "I think you have been mistaken, I just died."

"You are not dead, at least not yet." She continued, her form drifting so close he could almost smell her— though the scent was both nothing and everything at once. There was nothing there but there also was, it was very hard to describe what he felt in words. "A minute here is equal to a second in the outside world so you’ll be dead before long."

Aerith had been confused since he found himself in the strange white space and now he was even more confused. If he wasn’t dead... then where was he? He cleared his throat and asked awkwardly. "If you don’t mind me asking but where are we, and who are you?"

She caressed her temples as she spoke. "I am the spirit of the white plague and I have been woken up by your hunger."

Aerith flinched slightly. "Hunger, soul of the white plague? What the heck are you even talking about?"

Her smile instantly resolved, her face went cold. She showed a displeasure at him for a while before bursting into laughter. Hearing her laugh was like hearing an angel sing, it made him smile.

Aerith gave himself a mental kick in the gut. "What the hell are you grinning for idiot?"

After a while she spoke. "How amusing, next you’ll tell me you just picked up one of the hexacore chronicles without knowing what it was."

"For a blade that talks so much you were really trash, no wonder the angel gave you to me." Aerith turned away and said with rage seething in his voice. "Send me back, I have to help my comrades."

There was short silence that spoke volumes, the soul of the white plague spoke after a while. "All bark no bite, that all you are. I can smell it from here, you’re afraid and whimpering like a child. You hide your under a shell of your making, filled with nothing but empty hope. What makes you think you can bend me into submission."

Aerith stayed silent for a few seconds, his hands that stayed by his side balled into fists. He clenched them so hard that they started to tremble, then he spoke in deep seethed rage, his words pouring like venom in the air. "Like I give a damn about a magic sword, I don’t even care about the bloody tower. I have friends who have risked life and limb for a fool like me, I have to help them."

She stared at him, her glass eyes unblinking. "And how would you do that?"

He replied in one hollow sentence. "I... Can’t."

Perhaps the one word that stung like an axe to the chest was this one.

But the soul of the sword did not seem to care, as he tone only grew more violent. "Pathetic, why can’t you face me and talk. It’s no wonder you’re in such a bad situation, I can sleep, what’s another five hundred years."

The silence stretched. Then like the first rain drop falling from a cloud hitting the ground, something within Aerith snapped. He spun around so fast the soul of the weapon did not know till she heard the slap ringing in her ears. She did not react or flinch, she simply let her eyes settle on him.

In her glass eyes was the reflection of a young man all covered in blood he could tell was not his own. His breathing was heavy and ragged, his voice breaking. "I know I’m pathetic, you don’t have to tell me that because I’ve been telling myself this every damn bloody day. For the first time in my life I actually care about someone other than myself and I’m afraid I’ll lose them because I’m too damn pathetic."

He pulled his hands away from her face, tears pouring from his eyes his legs gave way and he fell to his knees. "Send me back, please."

She stared at him for a few seconds, her eyes betraying any sliver of emotion in them. After a while she spoke, "You know you’ll die." His eyes burned with determination, red and mad. Seeing it made her smile slightly.

"The strongest predators always win not because they are fast or strong but because the thought of losing doesn’t cross their mind. It’s the very existence of life in itself." She spoke. "What different a predator from prey is hunger."

Aerith looked up at her with a lost look and said. "Send me back."

She bent down before to him leaned in closer, then she pressed her lips on his. It was the first kiss he had ever experienced and it was cold and hard.

"I will share you my power just this once, become a predator no one can predict." Her words came again, this time from within his head.

She then wrapped her arms around him and pulled him in for a tight hug, Aerith was still struggling to catch up to what was happening when he started to feel her pressing harder into him.

At first it came as a kiss, but after she wrapped his body in hers he started to feel her lips do more than press into his. He could feel them practically cutting into him. Her body started to become billions of glass fragments that slowly pierced into his body. The feeling of glass shards inking into his eyes was even more gruesome than falling from the sky, or so he thought.

His pain only amplified when he felt the billions of shards bombard his body and crawl up his veins and muscles. Literally every inch of his body was defined by hers, he could feel their body merging into something not human. What made him lose any and every semblance of sanity he had left was when he felt her crawl into his brain.

If being pierced by a sharp object hurt, it was no where compared to billions of glass fragments cutting into his brain. He clutched his head and reflexively tried to rip it off his body to stop the pain. What he felt from his brain being cut open was nothing short of hell in itself, he felt like a piece of meat a butcher decided to perform an autopsy on without cutting it open only to later throw it into a meat grinder that worked at a very slow speed.

Try as he could, his head did not come off his body. He couldnt breath, couldn’t think, couldn’t even feel.

The only thing he could hear was the same echoing in his head over and over driving him to madness.

"Become a predator no one can predict..."

Aerith dropped to the ground and rolled around like a feral beast. Thick saliva created a web under him, as he tried to get whatever was in him out of him.

The pain was so excruciating that his started to feel his gaze dim, he wanted to tell himself to stay awake and breathing but his sanity was out the window. What remained and consumed him was an endless madness.

Maybe it was his own choice or an unconscious action on his part but he started to succumb to it, and that was the last thing he could think of before he snapped back to reality.