Guardian Angel (Pt. II)
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Just how much time have I lost?...
My breathing comes to an abrupt halt. Dizziness crashes into me like a wave against a seaside cliff, causing the door in front of me to distort and the room to whirl. My head feels lighter, and my stomach feels like it's going to drop like a deadweight. Everything is so overwhelming...
The desire to take another look at my reflection in the window before Larxene opens the door pulls me back to stability. She's fidgeting with the lock at this point.
The third look at my reflection reveals my face. My eyes are bloodshot. Even from this somewhat far distance, I can see my red veins stretching from the whites of my eyes all the way to their irises. With the dark circles under my eyes, I look like I haven't slept in weeks, maybe longer.
My skin is pale and pasty. I have bandages and gauze placed all over my body. In the places that aren't covered, there are scratches and scabs and scars and dark-marks and red welts. I guess in my craze of trying to feel something, I didn't realize that I could be hurting myself.
I'm extremely skinny. I can see bones and joints and veins on my limbs that I wish I would have gone my whole life without knowing they existed. I don't dare look under my hospital gown to see any more. I look grotesquely deformed. I look completely malnourished. My nails are the only healthy-looking thing about me, but that isn't saying much. They're trimmed down almost to stubs. The small amount of growth that they have has dried red crust under it. Whoever I was around during all this time probably kept my nails cut to make sure I couldn't hurt myself.
It might just be the unhealthy state that I'm in, but I also look like I've aged significantly. The fact that my hair is much longer and I feel like I'm much taller contributes a lot to my suspicion, too.
"I'm not waiting all day for you to stare at yourself. Hurry the fuck up," Larxene says in a voice laced with venom. I can't see her face because it's covered by her black hood, but she's probably scowling at me.
I quickly follow behind her as she walks into the darkness behind the doors. But I soon find out that as we walk, lights begin to automatically switch on, and as we keep walking, the lights turn off behind us. I can't see what's ahead of us because of this, but it's okay because it's not dark around me. That's all that matters right now.
I know we've reached the end of the hall when a shiny, marble-white door stands before us. Larxene doesn't need a key for this door; instead she struggles as she uses both her hands to push it open.
Inside is something so amazingly terrifying, saying that it is "surreal" can't quite describe what it really is:
Seats, or… thrones, rather, reach higher than statues, and maybe even two-story buildings. The backs are pointed at the tips with a jagged design, maybe a symbol of some sort. All of the thrones together create a crescent shape that encircles the room. And in each of the thrones, mysterious, cloaked men sit with their black hoods covering their faces.
I stand in awe and in silence as I take in my surroundings. After a while, a chill passes through my body. Then, out of no where, a name comes to mind. I'm not sure if I heard it in a whisper, or if it was one that I had always knew, and that I just didn't know I knew it:
The World… That Never… Was…
"Welcome, Xion," a voice says from above. The echo in this room is so great, and the distance from me and each of the men is so wide, it seems as if the voice is omnipresent.
I keep my jaw locked tight, careful not to carelessly utter any foolish words, especially since I have no idea who these people are or what they want from me.
"Before I reveal to you why you are here, I must tell you the story of us. Only then will you understand."