The chirps of birds rang out through the sky above the Uncanny Forest. Like a choir, singing an anthem of freedom. Beneath that chorus, in the misty expanse of the Uncanny Forest, was the sound of snow crunching underneath my bare naked feet as I ran frantically, desperately trying to escape the pursuers tailing me, trying to put me in shackles once more.
One of my three pursuers, the male Awakened, barked an order for me to stop. I didn't; instead, I increased my speed even more. I wanted nothing more than to stop and rest, but I knew that if I slowed down for even a second, I would've doomed myself and would never have the chance to free myself ever again.
I felt the cold biting into my bare, scared torso, and creeping in through the fabric of the rags I somehow tied as pants. From the corner of my eyes, I could see the onyx bark of the trees, covered in faces, frozen in a screaming pose. They were nearly human, giving whoever gazed upon them a sense of uncanny fear, which hints at the name Uncanny Forest given to this zone.
I suddenly felt a sharp pain in the edge of my ear, heard the whistling of something cutting through the mist, and an arrow landed on the forehead of one of the uncanny faces on the onyx tree in front of me. Without stopping, I grabbed the arrow, ripped it out of the, and swiftly took a sharp turn. While turning, the snow moved treacherously under my feet, and I stumbled face-first on the cold snow.
The birds stopped their chorus as if losing the hope of freedom that gave life. I tried getting up, but it was far too late to do so. I felt a firm hand wrapped around my neck as I was picked up and brought face to face with the male Awakened.
"Pathetic creature," He shouted, and I felt spit getting on my face. "You shouldn't have run." His grip around my throat hardened.
I tried to breathe, but I couldn't. I felt the pressure around my neck. I coughed and gagged, panic and fear of dying striking my heart. Within seconds, my head became lighter as I became dizzy and my vision blurred.
"Release the slave at once." A calm, commanding voice resounded from behind the Awakened.
Of course, it was Shams. He talked, moved, and looked at the Awakened as she was the Awakened and he was the Mundane, not the other way around. The man holding me looked at her from the corner of his eyes, clicked his tongue, an action that would've resulted in a confrontation between him and the female Awakened if not for Shams' interference, and threw me like a rat at one of the trees.
With a thud, I hit the tree. Pain bloomed in my back. I fell to my knees and hunched my hand, finding their way to my neck, massaging it. I tried getting up again to run, but I couldn't muster the strength to do anything but sit upright and rest my back on the onyx bark of the tree.
Coughing, I saw Shams extending her hands towards the man. She said something and looked at him, confused. A faint energy pulsated around the man as he syphoned Ether towards his storage artifact. Shams dashed behind the female Awakened, who unsheathed her sword, looking around warily. A smile found its way on my face, and the man's face contorted in horror as the salve shackles materialized in his hands, and realization dawned on him.
I forced myself to get up and get away from the tree just in time to avoid the onyx hands that shot from it towards the Awakened, just as with all the other trees. The hands pulled at every part of the Awakened's body they could; armor fell on the snow, the Awakened tried to resist, grunting and shouting at the other Awakened to help, but how could a mere Awakened human resist the might of a Stained Beast?
He was torn apart, blood, viscera, and severed limbs falling, staining it. It was a sight to behold. I, for one, took the chance and ran away. I passed more onyx trees than I cared to count, but eventually I saw it. It stood like a flame of hope cast on an endless void, or like the moon illuminating a starless night. The pristine white tree stood tall, towering over its onyx kin. Unlike its onyx relatives, it wasn't leafless, having leaves the color of deep amethyst. Also, unlike its kin, it was decorated with a single calm, reassuring face, and underneath it was a crack leading into its hollow inside. Even through the mist, it was perfectly visible, emanating a faint white and amethyst glow.
"Stop." I heard Shams' voice from behind, as calm as ever; it was just a bit too close for my liking, so I increased my pace, running as fast as my legs could move.
Soon enough, I passed through the crack, into the hollow tree. In front of me was…I'm not sure how to describe it. It was an error, a tear in reality. Nothingness that blended with everything. The Recording pulled me in, and I did not resist. I embraced it…
I embraced freedom.
***
Darkness.
Complete, utter black. I was drowning, drifting in a sea of total murk. There was nothing else; there was no light for my eyes to see, no flavor to activate my taste buds, no sound to hear, no scent to smell, and nothing to touch. I felt like I was both insignificant and paramount at the same time. I was irrelevant yet the most important, a tiny spec in an endless universe, yet I was the single most important being in existence, heck, I could even say with full confidence that only I existed because, frankly, it felt like nothing else existed.
Time passed, I didn't know how much, it felt as if I was neither asleep nor awake, like those tiny moments where one's body is asleep while the mind is neither in dream nor in reality. But eventually, my mind fully woke up, and I slowly but surely recalled more of who and what I was.
I was Grey, a slave. But I was more than that; I had hands and feet. I was a human. It was so simple, yet remembering it alone filled me with warmth. I tried moving my hands, clenching my fists, kicking the void, flexing my muscles, opening my eyes, holding my breath, smelling, feeling, shouting, screaming, wrinkling my face, and clenching my jaw. Nothing happened. It was then that I realized with horror that I didn't possess a body. I was just a consciousness floating in a vast void.
I was frustrated at my lack of ability to do anything, but I just waited; it's not like I could do something really. Soon enough, the darkness suddenly shattered into countless fragments, golden light assaulting my vision through the area between each fragment.
My eyes. I realized
I was back in my body. I brought my hands in front of my face, and saw them. I was back in my body, which filled me with relief. A ground of silver liquid materialized beneath me, and finally, I found something to stand on.
As soon as my feet landed on the silver, disturbing its stillness, six great, silver-framed, antique mirrors rose from underneath the rippling liquid. My image was plastered on each one of the mirrors, but the image was different in each one. I knew that the images were not the current me based on the change in the surroundings. Perhaps each reflection was a part of the future or an alternative past.
Before I could inspect each one, however, the golden light fell on them, reflecting in rays that converged on my back, in the middle of my thoracic spine. As soon as the rays of golden light fell on me, I felt a painful, yet bearable sensation, almost as if someone took a pen and forcefully started drawing a symbol, a rune, at the point of convergence. When the rune was fully engraved, the converged ray shifted towards the start of my thoracic spine just under the end of my neck, engraving another rune.
Once I felt that the rune was fully engraved into my being, a piece of dark shard floated from in front of me towards the beam of converged light on my back, blocking it.
I turned to look at the dark shard just in time to see it turn into a mirror, the converged light reflected from it and diverged into countless rays which fell on the closest black fragment, turning them into mirror shards which reflected the light on the rest.
I was now standing in a large, white, ancient-looking fountain basin that had a bucket's worth of golden specs. Feeling the tears welling up behind my eyes, I fell to my knees and couldn't help the smile from forming on my face as emotions overwhelmed me. Eventually, I managed to utter two words, the tears dropping onto the golden specs.
"I-I'm free." The words echoed throughout the mirror hall, each echo sounding further than the last, yet holding the same weight.
The tears continued to flow down cheeks onto the golden specks, cs refusing to yield or subside. I didn't mind that, though, thirteen years ago, the moment I took my first breath was also the moment I was enslaved. So gaining my freedom after so long…It was quite overwhelming. Eventually, when the tears did subside, I got up from my knees onto my feet, stepped outside the large basin, onto the silver liquid, making it ripple at the point of contact.
After the rippling stopped, I was able to see my reflection blasted on the silver. I looked exactly the same, pale skin, sickly thin, dirty, relatively long black hair, whipping and sword scars decorating my body, and deep black circles under my eyes due to the lack of sleep. The one thing that changed was what lay above the dark circles, my eyes.
Normally, I had brown irises, a common color that I suspected I inherited from my biological father, since, from what I remember from my mother, she had beautiful green ones, and, just like every other human, had black pupils. But now…now my irises and pupils were the same color. My eyes were like two pools of liquid silver, a perfect mirror, creating the illusion of an infinite reflection with the floor.
I was enthralled by my own eyes. They were so beautiful yet so vile. It was as if they were responsible for reflecting the world back on itself, showing it its foul nature.
I did not linger and brought my gaze away from the silver floor to the small mirror shards that were once dark and lightless. They, just like a normal mirror, reflected the area around me, but not me, though. At first, I thought it was just the angle, so I changed the mirror I looked in. When that didn't work, I moved from my spot completely, looking around in the mirrors, trying to find myself. I didn't find my image in the shards. Immediately, I gave up on trying and averted my line of sight to the elephant in the room…Elephants.
The great mirrors stood tall, each having my image plastered on its surface, the surroundings different. All of the reflections were still and lifeless, even when I moved.
The first reflection was surrounded by otherworldly purple lightning. The space around my image inside the mirror was disturbed and unorganized. The air seemed to ripple, bending in unnatural ways, as though reality itself couldn't decide where to exist. Fractured stars and swirling fragments of distant galaxies flashed in and out like dying sparks.
I looked away into the second mirror. The man in the mirror had crimson eyes, the pupils two vertical slits, like those of a feline; that was the only change. I was surrounded by what I can only describe as havoc, chaos, and pure destruction. Crimson flames, the color of blood, danced around my reflection, eating away at any and everything. Splitting my face was a grin that was almost from ear to ear, full of mirth and delight.
The third of the reflections paralleled the second. My image had eyes prismatic white in color, the pupils were horizontal slits. It was surrounded by prismatic white light, the color of its eyes. Unlike the havoc and destruction caused by the flames in the second mirror, it seemed to repair and recreate everything around it.
Before I could study the rest of the mirror, the hall melted, as my consciousness was thrown back into my body.