Awareness came to me painstakingly slow as my mind had to sieve through its remains one at a time. It was a sluggish process to separate my dreams from conscious thoughts, the dark haze from the pinpoints of clarity. The only thing I could be sure of was my own existence and the failures I was responsible for. Eventually, after an infinite amount of time spent waking up, lucid thoughts managed to press themselves together. The struggling beacons of coherence clumped into a hole big enough to peer through, out into the world. My thoughts were curious about what they might find, my dreams dreaded it.
The world was deathly silent. No clock ticking, no birds singing. Not even my own breathing managed to break through the stillness. Part of my subconscious insisted I should be worried about that. My lungs had not felt fresh air in millenia and my heart hadn't beat in eons. The other components of my mind didn't know why I should be troubled by that. Moments ago, those things hadn't even existed. I blinked with eyes that had almost forgotten how to see. The room was thankfully kept dark, the colors muted. Only a hint of them remained in my new monochrome environment. Maybe they weren't even there to begin with, and I had simply imagined them instead. Besides me and the door, there was nothing in this colorless space. The surroundings were kept bare; a ceiling didn't exist. Where the walls should have met their upper boundary, they instead dissolved into a gray expanse. The lifeless void felt both oppressively close and yet further than the stars.
A new concept. One that hadn't been born from either my dreams or my thoughts. A star. The sun. Some forgotten part of my mind told me what they were. Giant balls of plasma, compressed solely by their own enormity and hotter than I could ever imagine. If I came close to one, I would be vaporised in moments. My dreams warned me that I should not think about them then. My thoughts laughed at the idea. As they pointed out, there simply wasn't enough matter in existence for something like a star to be possible. Although that didn't stop me from wanting to see one all the same. My mind wondered what sort of colors a star might shine in.
As my thoughts and dreams started to argue about it, another part of me wondered where the idea had come from to begin with. The concept of a star was too irrational to have been an original thought, yet also too dangerous to have come from my subconscious. There had to have been something else. Something beyond the black haze that tried to ward away all evil and the holes of curiosity that were poking through. It couldn't have come from the room I now found myself in. I would have noticed if the idea had come from the outside. Instead, it had to have been born inside my own mind. My dreams insisted I dare not look at the source then. That looking inwards housed far greater danger than the outside could ever present. My thoughts rose to the challenge.
What they found was a vast, unorganised mess. The darkness tried its best to obscure the new discovery, but the sheer bulk meant things slipped into my thoughts regardless. Unfortunately for them, the pieces lacked a common through line. Fragments of moments neither part of my mind was aware of, definitions of words that simply were impossible to comprehend, voices conversing in languages that hadn't been invented yet. It was a library, the thoughts decided. They hadn't been aware of such a thing existing — and they still doubted this one actually did — but it had glimpsed the concept of one from perhaps the only library there was. The dreams warned them about how reckless that had been.
Undeterred, my conscious mind continued. Apparently librarys — or libraries, as the library insisted — needed names to differentiate one from the other. A ridiculous notion, of course. If there was but a single such construct in existence, then a differentiation would be unnecessary. The library protested. It pushed its name towards the thoughts, but the concept was too big. The black haze that was my dreams easily intercepted it. They didn't look at the contents, simply adding them to its own mass. In response, my thoughts quickly tried to peer at the remains before they would vanish for all eternity. Me_____s. The mess was apparently called the library of Mes. How fitting, thought the thoughts. Mes seemed equally elated and frustrated at that outcome.
For a few more moments, the three parts of my mind repeated that process. Mes wanted to share the knowledge it housed, my dreams tried to intercept it, and my thoughts gleamed whatever they could get away with. During this precarious dance, the latter realised some limitations of its endlessly worrying companion. Ever since they had become aware of it, my dreams did their best to hide the core of Mes from my thoughts. By doing so, however, it couldn't guard the edges of the library very well. From cei__ng _ans, _round bee_, sy_t_x and the _issi_sippi. Dozens of words, concepts, and definitions slipped into my thoughts. None of them made any sense. My thoughts still wanted to see them all.
While this one-sided exchange continued, though, my mind noticed that something had changed. The walls were still the same gray, and the air remained stale, but there was something different. Something was approaching. A presence that wasn't my own. My thoughts chimed in, pointing out how that meant it wasn't real to begin with. Mes looked within itself for any reference on what it might be. And my dreams did what they did best and tried to hide me away. Eventually, the presence was right outside the door. I wasn't sure how I knew that; maybe there were yet more aspects of my mind I wasn't aware of, maybe I was simply imagining it. For now, my thoughts tried their best to get a good look at the door as the worry inside me grew.
The door opened slowly, the gray block inching into the equally colorless room I had woken up in. Although the non-existent air didn't move from the sudden disturbance, I felt a shift take place all the same. A part of me was reaching out, into the newly opened space, towards the intruder. Before I could form a thought about that, my dreams already blocked the view. They were aware of just what exactly that fact meant, but they wouldn't share their insights with the rest of my mind. If this had happened mere moments before, my thoughts would have been annoyed at being left blinded. Instead, they had a new best friend, one who was willing to feed it all the impossible concepts and definitions it desired. To their disappointment, though, Mes, too, was focused on the door, or rather the presence that had opened it.
Scanning through its contents, the library eventually found something similar. The entry had been buried in one of its deepest layers, but the way my mind had reached out to the interloper had been comparable to her. Quickly digging out all the related data it could find, Mes was already compiling it to share with the rest of my mind. As soon as the first lines of context reached my thoughts, the black mist instantly put itself in its path. Apparently, whatever was about to enter the room was far less worrisome than the deepest, darkest secrets the library housed. Unfortunately for my dreams, they were too fractured, too incoherent, to block both the view outside and the understanding growing from within.
The angel entered my room with an annoyed look on her face. Coincidentally, the library had shared what it knew about these beings before. Maybe some part of it had known that it would soon become relevant, maybe it had been random chance. It had evidently made some mistakes in its description, though. There was no halo of light sitting atop the woman's head, no hint of the divinity she supposedly represented. Instead, the woman looked overworked and like she had been lacking adequate rest for the past few weeks. Also, the angel had no arms. Maybe I should have pointed that out first, a stray thought interjected, but then again, I didn't have any either. Her legs were also different than what the library had said they would be, with clawed feet and digitigrade legs.
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The woman hadn't actually looked up at me yet, instead focused on a clipboard she held awkwardly with her wings. She wasn't aware of me, yet I still existed. Despite her ignorance, I knew I was just as, if not more, real than her. A strange thought. I wondered how many beings existed outside my own knowledge. None, my thoughts helpfully inserted again. If they weren't part of my mind, they weren't real to begin with. Some part of me tried to point out that, just moments ago, I hadn't been aware of the angel's existence either. Before that contradiction could cause more damage, though, my consciousness already ignored it.
Focusing back on the intruder, I could feel the energy coming off her. It was similar to my own. Endlessly wafting out of her core, a lifeless gray mass that sooner or later would bring death to anything it came into contact with. I wondered how the woman could live to stand it. Or maybe the fact that I hadn't been able to was just another one of my many failures. Perhaps she simply wasn't bothered by it or had learned to control it somehow. Before my subconscious could suppress that thought, it already stirred something within my mind, specifically in the library. Although my dreams were working overtime to keep Mes' from digging around too much, it didn't manage to keep everything out of my conscious thoughts. Once, I had been similar to this woman. Part of me felt sad that I no longer recalled such a time, another was glad I couldn't.
Unbothered by the turmoil inside me, the woman went on with her own work. For her, only a few moments had passed, and she was still checking something on her clipboard. Eventually, though, she had to glance up. The instinct might have been born from random chance, or maybe she saw the way my dreams endlessly shifted to block out the world from my mind. Whatever the reason may have been, the effect was immediate. Dropping the board, the woman's feathers suddenly ruffled themselves up, trying to make herself look bigger than she was. With a single half-step back, she collided with the door behind her and promptly lost her balance. The most memorable fact about her ungraceful surprise, though, was the loud screamch — a mix between a scream and a screech — she let out. Mes insisted my thoughts couldn't just make up new words like that. They promptly disignoregreed with it.
To her credit, the feathered newcomer got up quickly. I could already hear her muttering to herself as she tried to pretend the last few seconds hadn't happened. The clipboard refused to play along. With her lack of opposable thumbs, or hands in general for that matter, it apparently proved difficult to pick the offending item off the ground. After half a dozen failed attempts, the woman seemed to be fed up with it as she simply picked it up with her feet instead. The motion looked surprisingly natural. Afterwards, she promptly pretended nothing had happened as the angel turned her attention back to me.
"Alright, Wera, you have done this hundreds of times already. Just like any other soul, right? Right!"
Okay, maybe her attention hadn't fully returned to me just yet. Thankfully, my mind wasn't too offended as my thoughts were busy analysing her words. Obviously I had never heard the words she used before, but I could still glean the meaning from them all the same. In a way, it felt similar to the packets the library had sent earlier. Instead of relying on arbitrary noises and mouth movements to convey meaning, the language was comprehension itself. As soon as the words left her mouth, I already knew what they meant, in which context they had been said, and the nuances they hid. Wera was her name, the word recursively linking back to her. Wera was a Wera, and every Wera, when spoken the same way, would also be her. Of course, there would never be another Wera, as she was already every possible Wera there could ever be. Unless you spoke the name differently, but then all bets were off anyway. I didn't spend much time overthinking that quirk of the language. Instead, my focus was on the word that was far more interesting than what a Wera was: a soul.
The word had all sorts of different interpretations. It was the part of someone that remained after death. A source of energy that could be used for magic. The collective term for someone's mind, their thoughts, dreams, memories, and more. Yes, indeed, I came to the realisation that I was a soul. It was a strange feeling. Something that wasn't myself had put a label on my own existence. I could have rejected it; part of my thoughts even insisted it wasn't real to begin with. But it felt correct. I was a soul. Unlike with Wera's name, however, not every possible soul was me. I was glad for that. I wanted to be distinct. If for no other reason than to distance myself from others, my dreams insisted.
Getting her thoughts back in order, Wera finally did turn her focus back to me. "Okay, eh, soul, I guess. Do... do you know where you are? How you got here?"
A question. That meant she expected me to answer, to speak in a language I had never heard before. And before giving an answer, I had to actually come up with one. Did I know where I was? Of course, my thoughts quickly concluded. I was in the room where my soul and the Wera were in. It technically was a correct answer. One that could even be used to uniquely identify this space I now occupied, but my dreams worried it wouldn't be enough. Besides, how would I answer without a mouth? Eventually, interpreting my lack of answer as one in and of itself — however that was supposed to work — the angel continued.
"It's okay. This... Something like this happens every now and then, right? Although your case might be a bit extreme." That last sentence had been said to no one in particular. "Okay, then... can you understand what I am saying. Just nod your... head? I guess? Or wiggle around or something."
Just like before, I couldn't give my answer the way Wera wanted me to. Just because I had no head to nod, though, didn't mean I was out of options. Sensing my intent to communicate, however, my dreams quickly blocked me off with renewed vigor. For a moment, it was almost enough to smother my thoughts entirely. My mind would have lost the bit of coherence it possessed. For lack of a better word, I would have fallen asleep in front of Wera. My subconscious couldn't allow that either. The worry of learning something I should have no knowledge of was one thing, but allowing an outsider access to my unguarded soul would have been even worse. My thoughts didn't understand their worry. Wera wasn't part of my mind — meaning she wasn't real anyway — so she couldn't hurt me unless I let her. For a moment, that started another line of thoughts accumulating in one particular question. Did I want to be hurt? Mes scanned its contents for any previous occurrences where I might have thought that. My dreams worried they might even find one.
My conscious mind, meanwhile, had returned its focus to the angel in the room. While my dreams were busy blocking off the library again, they had allowed me to finally answer Wera. With no head or neck, it was difficult for my thoughts to come up with a gesture approximating a nod, but somehow they managed. First focussing on the gray expanse above before staring at the monotony of the floor instead. Wera looked rather queasy at the result, though.
"Oh... by the Gods! That doesn't... hurt or anything?"
It was clear she wanted to avert her gaze at anything but me. Unfortunately for both of us, I couldn't communicate any other way, so I shook my soul.
"A-alright, yeah, that's okay... then?" Taking another steadying breath, Wera pushed her uneasiness aside for now. "Do you know your name? Or maybe just your race? Is there anything you remember from before?"
The angel once more wanted me to give answers that I had no way of knowing, nor could I communicate my own ignorance. Instead, I only gave a few more shooks. Thankfully, my subconscious was still too busy hiding away the other parts of my soul to interfere much.
"Right... no problem. As I said, stuff like this happens... probably. Why don't you... follow me for the moment, then?" Finally coming to a conclusion on what to do with me, Wera put away her clipboard and turned back towards the door.
Apparently, she expected me to simply go along with her, but that represented an even bigger problem than talking had been. Unlike the angel, I had no legs or wings to transport myself around with. Trying for a few fruitless moments, I was soon left alone again. The only difference from before was that the door was still open. Outside, the corridor was the same lifeless gray.
Choose your fighter:
