Faithful Partings and Beginnings
"Can you never regret what you have sacrificed to fulfill your ideology?
My dear, dear child.
I do regret making mistakes. I do regret making sad memories.
But listen, everything I have done from the past…
Is for you, to live and leave in peace. I pray you will never have to face the horrors my comrades and I had to face.
For they are nightmares come to life."
~Anonymous
I remember a dream.
A dream where I finally fell.
A dream where I can be free.
As I left a world – with a legacy.
The memories replayed in my mind over and over again as I reviewed them. Those memories have an outcome – either dooming the world or saving it.
"Do you regret your decision?" Asked a familiar voice. I turned and faced an ethereal being, the deity of Ylisse. The goddess herself graced me with her presence in this empty world, where no mortal being could ever hope to set foot here.
I frowned at the thought. "Why do you choose to appear as a woman?"
The deity merely tilted her head, her sea-green hair cascading over her shoulders with the motion. "It is what the humans wished to see me."
"Does it include me?"
A wry smile was her response. It was contagious enough to make me grin – only a side I can see when I am dead from one of the many Outrealms.
"No matter how many Outrealms came and went, you will still look divine as ever. As for your first question, dear lady Naga, it's complicated," I answered as honestly. "One moment, I'm a man, another a woman. Sometimes, I had a wife or a husband and at least a child or two. Sometimes I'm alone in that entire life. All the outcomes left the historians puzzled with my origins – if the world survives."
I tugged my long sleeve – the dreaded and yet, my precious ragged cloak, with a hint of my origin. "Good thing my cloak remains the same. In a pristine condition too!"
She closed her eyes and hummed. "So is your best friend. The blessed Exalt."
The grin I had gradually dim at the thought. "So it was. He's one heck of a royal. I admit, he has temper issues," I frowned at the annoying consistency. "Temper problems that I have to face every darn time."
I sighed dramatically. "If only I can retain memories from the other Outrealms of me."
"Then, the lives you lived will be boring," stated the Divine Dragon.
"I do love the little loops the Wheel of Fate thrown to me. It makes things much more interesting. Can you still remember that one particular loop when the former Exalt survived? I mean their father of course." I added hastily.
Naga did not look pleased. "It is a weird Outrealm. I am glad when it ended with a happy ending."
I shuddered. "If things went South, I would have won again, eh?"
She gave me a hard look and I cringed at her gaze.
"What? It's true!"
Naga flicked a finger to my forehead, as if I was a naughty child to be disciplined. "Like you, our memories reset every Outrealm of our world and return once my time ends. My essence and your essence will forever exist – though I can say an exception to you for some." I scowled at her implication, and pouted. "I do not see it as games, or chessboards like you. I see it as a world that must be saved whenever possible," continued the Divine Dragon.
I laughed. "As modest as ever, lady Naga."
The Divine Dragon curtsied, a thousand years of practice refined the natural elegance of it.
"Should we make this new Outrealm as our last?" I said casually. "I'm quite tired of winning and losing all these games. In fact, I'm bored of it. It's about high time we have our own deserved vacation."
Naga smiled. "As long as we return after a millennium. Nothing more. We can discuss our plans after this…"
I chuckled. "Yes, we will. To our vacation!"
Her quiet laughter was the last thing I heard before the essence inside me enveloped my body with black blood, erasing my memories of this empty world and the past lives I had lived in. Right before my very eyes, they replay, all the hardships… The quiet times… The fun times…
Their voices, the conversations that we finished or never finished, echoed in each and every memory, and were taken away by my true essence.
I watched as each of my incarnation lived, either as himself or herself, or possessed by the essence of Grima – also one of my many aliases.
Whether we live as a hero or a traitor, I knew it was a decision up to my new self.
Before the last of my memories fade away, in this empty world, I summoned a goblet of wine.
It's a tradition of mine before my new start.
"May the future me make this chessboard as interesting as the first!" I echoed my wish before drinking the goblet empty of its fill.
After all, it will be a pity if I didn't have a drink for every beginning and ending.
A/N: Thank you for reading~ I don't know if it's good or not. I wrote this fic after a random thought came to me. Not my best work in my opinion.
It's an empty world - it will and forever be empty from items. :P
Total words: 871