Chapter 10.
Dark. The blackest night that no light could penetrate. As if all light was snuffed out. Snuffed like life from a soul.
Cold. The frozen wasteland that no heat could touch. As if all heat was doused in an ocean of ice. Doused like the warmth of a body.
Empty. The complete nothingness of a void in which no being could alight. As if all existence was shrouded in shadow. Shrouded like the emotions of a deceased girl.
A great vacuum of space stretched on in every direction, embodied in a place, but a place that was also not a place.
And a girl in that place. Rather, the memory of a girl, floating weightlessly, yet burdened beyond comprehension. Bodiless, the memory existed in the emptiness, feeling nothing, seeing nothing. For a time, the girl's memory was the only thing in the void.
Eventually, after a brief eternity had passed, the memory started to solidify. Wispy remnants of limbs began to coalesce. As the total emptiness evanesced, she became more real. Her body formed from appearing smoke, barely visible in the darkness. More of her came into being until her entire body existed in the void. The shadow became flesh, recreating her body down to the last detail, from her charcoal colored hair to her snow white wings. Sakurazaki Setsuna was real in the void. But she didn't wake up.
Her body struggled to come back to life in the void. Despite the lack of oxygen, or air of any sort, her lungs began to expand shallowly. Her heart beat in a slow, rhythmic pattern, creating the only sound penetrating the silence. Organs began to pump fluids through her body, replenishing vital blood to her starved extremities. Muscles rejuvenated, joints relaxed, and nerves fired. Soon, every organ was ready for life, all except one. The human brain, being possibly the most complex collection of matter in the universe, takes a long time to come back from the dead. Even more troubling is the fact that posthumous degradation of neural pathways means that what were once solid, personal memories and emotions might now be nothing more than a lost memory themselves. All of who you were might be lost in a single, cataclysmic fire, leaving only the ash and soot of what was your life at your feet.
But Setsuna was different. She had something to come back for. She had something to live for, and nothing was going to stand in her way.
Her eyes twitched behind their closed lids as her mind began stirring. Ocular movement increased as her grey matter fired frantic signals, desperately trying to restore the neural pathways. Re-establishing connections is harder than following them, so the strongest routes reconnected first, eventually giving way to less formed pathways. Had the cells the ability to reason, they might have stayed away from this approach as it altered the girl's personality irreversibly. The last, strongest emotions she felt in the last iteration of life became the dominant pathways, replacing old, broken ones. This was the new Setsuna.
The neural activity triggered dream like memories that flooded the girl's still mind. Her eyes twitched rapidly as what was left of her soul was plunged into something between a dream and a nightmare. Her still forming mind meant that good and bad memories were simultaneously resurrected, giving the dream-like state unprecedented dichotomy. Although, despite the clarity of the dreams, Setsuna's mind was barely able to comprehend them. Higher cognitive function hadn't yet returned to her, so the vivid images were not but a jumble of color and motion. Minutes passed, days, centuries, all in a moment. The colors got sharper, the motion more defined, and Setsuna's mind could start to recognize basic things in the dream. Images of her younger days flitted before her mind's eye. Training in the mountains of Kyoto at the Shinmeiryuu dojo. Meeting Konoe Eishun-sama, whose lips moved but no sound came out. He stepped to the side and the most beautiful girl, about her age, was revealed behind him, holding onto his traditional style pants.
At the sight of her, strong emotions flooded her mind, as if a dam had just been broken upon seeing her face. Happiness and longing filled her to the brim. Suddenly the world shifted and changed. They were in a dorm room at Mahora that she vaguely remembered was Konoka and Asuna's. She was sitting on the edge of Konoka's bunk, with the chocolate-haired girl sitting on her lap, smiling brightly at her. A blush suffused her cheeks both in the dream, and in the void.
The dorm melted to reveal the memory of the time Konoka was captured by the Kansai Magic Association as well as by Fate Averruncus, her unconscious body being used for a ritual summoning of a gigantic demon. Her blood boiled with rage and fear. She tried to yell out but found her voice wavery and thin. Fate laughed a cold laugh, taunting her inability to speak. She lunged at him just as the dream changed again.
Black steel flashed across her vision, she barely had enough time to raise her hands to block the dark sword, finding, much to her relief, her own sword Yunagi in her hands. At the other end of the demon blade was a young, cute girl with a ghastly smile that never fully reached her eyes. Tsukuyomi stared at her intently, daring her to continue the fight. Setsuna remembered this fight. It was the last one before Negi and Asuna defeated the Mage of the Beginning to save the magical world. The thought of the evil mastermind behind the group named Cosmo Entelecheia shifted her surroundings once again.
She was spun into a memory so fresh, she could remember every detail crystal clear. It had happened only a moment ago, but it felt like another life. She saw her body, her own body, lying on the soft, wet sand. Blood was seeping out of her chest and mixing with the water in a sickening red slurry. She felt odd seeing her own body lifeless there in the sand. Quickly, she looked to where her love floated in the water. Setsuna moved over to her body and looked at her face. Her expression seemed serene. With the loss of blood her youthful beauty had lost its liveliness, but she was still pretty. Setsuna didn't quite know how to describe her expression; perhaps peaceful was the appropriate word. She hung her head over the lifeless body of her ojousama and wept. Dry weeping became wet as her tear ducts revived, and soon she was shaking heavily with sobs. Her thoughts came to her broken, both from overwhelming emotion and because she was dreaming.
Why did this happen? Why her? Why? For a while that question was all that Setsuna could ask, sometimes screaming it into the still air of the void while she dreamt.
After what seemed like hours, her tears dried and her thoughts cleared. She looked solemnly at Konoka's lifeless body and moved a hand to push a strand of hair from her face. When she touched her face, strong emotions of pain and sadness filled her. She realized she'd never be able to touch the chocolate-haired girl's face again, never be touched in return. She would never feel the happiness and warmth of her presence. Her innocent smile gone forever.
Forever.
An emptiness more potent than that of the void consumed her. Infinity without the one she loved, reliving the memories they shared but never creating new ones. In a raw state of emotion she gave a bitter chuckle. I don't know if reliving the memories of our time together is a blessing or a curse: a constant reminder of what I couldn't protect. She pulled the girl's body from the water and gave it one final embrace, hoping beyond hope that the gesture would revive the girl. But alas, there are dreams that cannot be.
Setsuna cradled Konoka in her arms and gave her a light kiss on the forehead. She spoke softly to the girl, who might be listening somewhere. "You'll never know how much I loved you. I never got the chance to confess to you, and I regret that now. Konoka… I love you. More than just a friend. You were special to me, and I can never thank you enough for the time we spent together. So thank you, my love." With that she placed one last kiss on her soft lips and scooped the girl up in her arms. She carried the girl over to the shore and laid her on the soft sand. Retrieving her own body, she placed the two side by side. If this is a memory, then it shouldn't change. At least here we'll be together, forever. With a reluctant look back at the two bodies she forced her world to change.
The tropics gave way to their classroom at Mahora which she spent some time in alone. The next shift landed her in a memory of the magical world where she could feel the fake cat ear disguise on her head. Then onto meeting Negi sensei on the train to Kyoto on the class field trip. Shift after shift she moved through the memories of her life. Some were bright and vivid, others so muddled by time passed that she began to doubt that some of them were even her own. Memories came and went while she was suspended in the dream-like state.
After a while the rate of the shifting increased such that she was moving between memories every few seconds. She made it through every part of her life she could remember, and some parts she didn't remember. When the last part of her life shifted out of focus, the memories started cycling anew, drawing her once again into their hold.
Time was funny in the void. She might have spent minutes absorbed in the dreams, or it might have been decades. In the end, it was a small eternity for her. A seemingly infinite amount of memories passed before her senses. After countless cycles, she began to only focus on the times spent with her friends, especially with Konoka, to keep her sanity. She smiled when she smiled, laughed when she laughed, cried when she cried. Every time a memory of Konoka shifted into focus, she became excited. When the moment passed, she steeled herself for the next one.
Eventually her mind grew weary and she let all the memories flow by, barely conscious of their passing. She felt so tired. She wanted to rest and have it all end. She felt herself slipping from the fabric of the dreams. Maybe if I close my eyes for just a second, it'll all be over. Despite the weightlessness of her body, the lids of her eyes felt heavy. The last shift came and went as she let her eyes close in the dream…
And her eyes opened to the bleakness of the void. Now there was truly nothing. No light, no sound, no stimulus of any kind except her own existence. She could feel her body, fresh and very much alive. She could hear her heartbeat, taste the saliva in her mouth, feel the softness of her own flesh. But that was it. No matter how hard she looked in any direction, all she could see was blackness. Nothing moved, nothing made a sound. Complete emptiness.
She called out in the darkness. "Where am I? Am I dead? What's going on?" No response came from the darkness. "Is anyone out there? Can anybody hear me?"
Nothing.
Setsuna cursed under her breath.
She spent a long time trying to figure out the nature of the existence she was in. It was a futile effort, for the void was a realm of existence so far beyond her own, she couldn't even imagine it. And yet, she was in it. In reality, her mind was fumbling in ignorance, incapable of understanding. There was no understanding the void, it simply was.
And she was stuck in it. Years passed. Decades. Centuries. And Setsuna survived. Her body grew old, withered, and died, only to be revived again from the ashes. Each time her mind came back, exactly the same as the moment she had first died, but with a new loneliness of another lifetime alone in the void. Despair consumed her. Darkness ravaged her soul, and she longed for a source of light. Once she thought she saw a spark, but it faded away moments after its apparition. She gave up on light, just as she gave up on everything around her. Everything except her love for Konoka. That was something she couldn't—no, wouldn't give up. Each time she died and was born again in the void her resolve strengthened to keep Konoka centered in her mind, to make the girl her light in the darkness. In the vast expanse of time she prayed, reciting voiceless chants of "Konoka, for you I wait. For you I live. For you I die. You are my light in the darkness, and the darkness shall never consume you."
Cycle after cycle continued on until finally, after countless turns of the wheel, the cycle broke. This time, when her body disintegrated, no smoke came to reconstruct her body. The smoldering ashes of her body faded into oblivion and left her mind to permeate the void alone. After eons of the cycle, the sudden change might have surprised the once charcoal-haired youth, but an eternity of darkness dulls the curiosity. She spent the next hundred years as nothing more than loose thoughts clinging onto the final strings of existence. Until those too fell apart. What was once a lively, dedicated, loving young girl became as a memory to the void. It was still dark, it was still cold, and it was still empty. Transient existence often cycled through the great realm of Cosmo Entelecheia, but none left it so thoroughly changed as Sakurazaki Setsuna.
End Chapter 10.
Author's Note: And here is chapter 10! I hoped you enjoyed reading it! This "Cosmo Entelecheia" arc has been really fun to write, so I hope you've enjoyed it! I know the story might seem slow, but I'm just getting warmed up! Please continue to support me and the intrepid duo as they find their way back to each other. As always, comments/questions/criticism/and praise is appreciated. Thank you for your support and in the words of Glyph, "Have a pleasant day."
-Grimbt