Author's Note: Yuuki-desu! I just wanted to inform you of few things... From now on, I'll try to upload one chappie a week, of course since it's summer holidays and I've got a part-time job I won't have much time... Also, don't expect any chappies from 7th 'till 23rd of July. I'm going to Croatia. I'm truly sorry about that. I promise the next chapter will make up for the wait... That's about it, enjoy!
Chapter 4: Dark Mirror
Somewhere in a darkness someone's conciousness stirred. Tiredly, the mysterious person opened her eyes. She felt like she slept for ages.
Something is wrong. For this to be her first thought after such a satisfying sleep, something had to be horribly wrong. After a while she opened her mouth, letting out words full of confusion.
"How? Why?" echoed in the cave. Only silence answered, so the speaker flit her arm through air, as if to shoo away panic that was starting to swell inside her. Now that her eyes got used to the darkness, she recognized the place.
My cave... That got the mysterious woman thinking. I shouldn't be here. She thought harder. That day, I was leaving this place... Why am I here?
While she was trying to remember what happened that day, week after she lost her second family, something caught her attention. Slowly, cautiously, she stood up and proceeded to make her way to the darkest corner of her past lair.
Wait. I... STOOD UP? It was true. She was standing on her own two legs. She was so shocked that her legs gave away and she fell to the floor.
Shaking, she did something she hasn't done in 17 years. Now that I think about it, was it really 17 years? She blinked.. I bet it's more now... Yes, she now knew the reason why she felt like she slept for ages. That's because she indeed slept for a very long time. She just didn't know HOW long...
She outstretched her hand and blew on it. On each of her fingers appeared small black sphere. She concentrated more and the spheres gathered into one big dark ball of pulsing energy levitating in air by her palm. Slowly, she let her hand fall to her side.
As she was looking at it, the black sphere started spinning and changing until it was as thin as paper and had oval shape. It's surface was even darker than darkness around its creator.
She smiled to herself. Who knew I would do this so soon after all the time I spent on searching for a way to forget...
She took a deep breath and gazed into the dark window. At the beginning, only blurry shapes were visible but after a while and a bit of energy, surface of one of her greatest techniques, Dark Mirror, was clear as a day.
Seems like the worlds are a bit more closer than they were years ago. This bothered her. Once she saw two worlds crash into each other, resulting in destruction of both. Fortunately, no life forms were in either of them.
This Dark Mirror was made between the world she was in and Celestial Spirit world. She was sorry to intrude into one of her favourite worlds but she needed to borrow certain piece of their knowledge.
She was very careful to make it so that there was no one near. She didn't need any more problems and carelessly letting someone feel her magic power in a forbidden world would be a BIG problem.
A while passed 'till she recognized the sight before her. Lucky! Got the place right. She was now looking at an enormous clock tower, of which every inch was covered by clocks of different shapes and sizes. Each of these clocks showed different times and dates for different places, countries and even worlds. It would take normal human thousands of years to find the right clock. For her, it was a piece of cake.
She needed to know current date in Fiore. She wouldn't be able to forgive herself if she didn't at least know how much time has passed since THEN. How much time has passed since I last saw HIM...
With movements of her hand she was controlling the Dark Mirror. She loved that it was easy to manipulate...
When she finally found what she was looking for, the truth astonished her. She couldn't move. Not even avert her gaze. She was just staring at the little mahogany clock with delicate little irises carved on its sides.
Six years, eleven months, twenty four days, thirteen hours and eight minutes. She was repeating these numbers as if it was some kind of mantra. As if the amount of time she was asleep would change with her repeating it. But no matter how much she wished it, the time didn't change.
She felt mix of emotions. Shock, sorrow, hopelessness and many others she couldn't even identify. However the last one she could identify very well. Anger. Raw anger. She was furious.
No way I could have slept for almost 7 years just like that. It's THEM. THEY did this to me! With that she jumped up, walked to the nearest wall and punched it. And again. Again, until she could finally admit to herself that under all the anger was hurt trust. They knew how much it meant to me. And they just put me to sleep until my body was regenerated...
She didn't feel like holding back her tears any longer. With long-lived beings like her, withheld emotions could make you go insane or even kill you. So she just cried out her pain until she fell asleep on the wet cave floor.
That night her dreams were peaceful. She dreamt of all the times she played with them, her beloved adoptive siblings, the ones who hurt her so much in present, as a kid.
Unknown to her, she started to smile.
