AN:
I changed my writing style a bit to see if I could write a little better this way. I hope you can enjoy reading.
I added a few gifs (on wattpad) to emphasize the damage during the chapter. Tell me if you guys think I should keep them or not.
Chapter four: A Fated Meeting
A few minutes before Subaru's awakening.
"Damn it I'm falling asleep again…" Subaru contemplated falling into the endless abyss. As his body and mind seemed to separate from each other, he started to think about what Yasilence said:
"Kill Reinhardt Van Astrea"
"He made it sound so simple, but how am I actually supposed to accomplish that…" Subaru pondered, frustrated.
Reinhardt was no easy man to kill and Subaru knew that; by the looks of the Royal Guards' faces when he showed up to fight Elsa he could easily tell Reinhard was known throughout the world as some kind of god when it came to strength, he even most likely had the God, Yasilence, beat when it came to sheer power. Although he wanted nothing more than for that pitiful Sword Saint to die for the pain and exhaustion he caused him, Subaru could tell the difference in their strength was immeasurable, even with the power Satella gave him. It was an insufferable task; to end the Sword Saint's life, but in the end, he had no other choice but to try.
Subaru sighed as he grabbed his face, he could tell he had his work cut out for him. "Maybe I should try to find her too…"
His thoughts drifted towards "Satella", the girl he'd loved for all this time; Subaru wanted to know who exactly she was. After receiving the witch of Envy's memories he knew this girl who used the alias "Satella'' was trying to protect her identity from him. But why would she do that? Did she still not trust him with her real name even after dying eighty-eight times? Those thoughts wandered through his head all that time Satella's demon half kept him in purgatory. Now that he was out and could leave his cell would she finally tell him her real name? Subaru's thoughts wandered in circles, no matter how much he tried he just couldn't forget her…
"I'm tired…" Subaru thought, struggling to keep his eyes open.
Looking up, Subaru could see nothing but an endless pool of black, it was like he had fallen into a pool of black slime, his arms flailing upwards, his eyes dimly looking at its surroundings. It looked as if there was no sign of any lively object with colors and hints of life.
"When will this end…?" Subaru uttered as his eyes closed slowly...
"You did well to survive all that, didn't you?" a woman's voice called out to Subaru in a calm tone. "Looking at you now almost makes releasing her worth it"
"I recognize this voice… I can't remember where…" Subaru thought as his eyes opened wide and he grabbed his head once more. "Who… are you?" he questioned, struggling to put his thoughts together as the strain on his mind became greater.
"Could I be imagining this voice?" Subaru thought, looking for the source of the voice talking to him.
"You should be grateful for that witch, if not for her constant pestering you would still be trapped down there," the unknown woman confessed, ignoring his previous question.
"I- ugnh" Subaru grunted as he struggled even more to maintain his thoughts. Even thinking about talking gave him a migraine, the only thing he could do now was listen to the woman's words.
"Aw, looks like the effects from the unsealing are already starting to work… I wish we could have more time to talk… " she muttered in a sad tone. "Oh I know, you should come to the sanctuary… I know you have lots of questions; I'd be more than happy to answer them there. Oh, I wonder what kinds of questions you'll have!" the unknown woman queried in an ecstatic voice.
"I can't concentrate on what she's saying… Sanctuary? Unsealing? What's she talking about?" Subaru thought, frustrated.
"When you wake up, be sure to find me. I'll be waiting…" the said woman in a dark tone.
Subaru then felt his consciousness disappear from his body suddenly. His eyes shut and his mind went blank; his body felt like nothing more than a tool to keep him alive. Subaru tried to move his arms and legs, but they didn't seem to respond to him anymore.
"What… happened…" Those were the last words he uttered out of his mouth before his mind disappeared from his body and into another place.
Waking up on the cold ground, Subaru clenched his face in his palms and sat upon a cold bloody wall. Memories of the unknown woman's voice, Yasilence, and Satellas imprisonment all came back to his real mind at once and left him in a terrified state on the ground.
"What is this?!" Subaru thought, clawing at his head so much that he began to bleed.
"Love yourself…" Satellas voice whispered into Subaru's ear suddenly.
After that Subaru's injuries healed immediately, and he was greeted by the presence of a familiar shadowy cloak. Subaru's breathing became smoother and his mind at ease; the sudden wave of memories didn't seem to terrify him at all anymore.
"Back here again huh..." Subaru said as he took a brief moment to take in his surroundings.
Subaru stood up calmly and closed his eyes to feel all the mana running through his veins. he could picture was a gate that seemed to overflow with a dark ominous mana flowing directly from it and into every pore of his body; so much that this shadow-like cloak molded around his chest that shaped itself like a piece of clothing.
"So it's directly connected to my body? I wonder if I still have that ability…" Subaru thought, looking at his hands.
He then looked away from his hands and at his old torture room once more. The room had grown to have a rusty aura around it and looked nothing like the black bloody room he was familiar with. Even the bloody torture equipment "the woman" left in his room had begun to rust and deteriorate.
"What the hell happened here…" Subaru thought, picking up the axe "the woman" loved to use on him before it simultaneously broke apart in his hands. "No… it couldn't be…" the sudden realization caused Subaru to put his left hand on his mouth in shock.
"The time from when I was trapped in Satellas seal must be current in the real world… then exactly how much time has passed?" he thought as dropped the handle to the axe.
His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of footsteps outside his door.
"Not even giving me a moment to think huh?" Subaru muttered, sweating, readying himself for the fight about to happen. "Of course she'd still be alive… no matter how much time passes 'that woman' would never die.." turning to face the door.
With each footstep that approached his cell, Subaru's heart beat faster and faster, his body trembled, and his consciousness reminded him of "that woman's" sickly, disgusting torture. The door bent open slowly like an angered beast was answering his call for death. Would Subaru really be able to defeat her? Why did she leave him alone down here for so long unattended? Is she here to kill him for good? With all these questions going through him like darts, only one thing stayed current in his head, the thought of losing here and letting Satellas sacrifice go to waste would burn him to death even in the depths of Hell itself. Knowing this, he prepared himself for a fight to the death, looking at the door with his resolve confirmed.
The door bent off and Subaru was met face to face with neither of the people he expected to see. It was two short women, neither of them could be any taller than five foot one, they wore heavy, black coats around their bodies making it harder to most of their body shape, but Subaru could tell from their legs that they most likely had the frames of lightly built women; definitely not the type you'd expect to be able to bend open an iron cell door so easily. Even if their physique wasn't anything special, their faces were one of a kind among all women Subaru had ever seen before. The pink, long-haired one was just as beautiful if not more than the girl named "Satella" that he met in the capital, but the silver long-haired one basically put a spell under Subaru's eyes. He had never seen someone so beautiful in his life, not one person even came close.
"Who… are you?" Subaru said, flabbergasted, staring at the short silver-haired girl.
"Pardon the intrusion, my name is Pandora the witch of Vainglory" The platinum-haired girl said to Subaru.
"He's disgusting…and why is he gawking at Onee-sama like that?" Ram thought, Looking at Subaru's demeanor.
Subaru still stood there, relishing in Pandora's beauty to the point where he almost looked paralyzed. He was clearly at a loss for words and didn't know how to respond after Pandora told him her name; Subaru looked as if a God gave him a blessing just to look at Pandora's face.
"Poor boy… to live in these conditions must have been such a troublesome task," Pandora said as she began to approach the young man. "I can't even begin to imagine what you had to do to scrounge up food in a place like this…" holding her arms out toward Subarus's chest with a deep blush on her face. " It must have been hard, wasn't it… Come with me and be happy for the rest of your life," she whispered to Subaru, hugging him tightly.
Subaru heard the witch's words and they coursed through his consciousness. Pandora's words were echoing throughout his mind repeating several times, no thousands of times; it was almost as if he was being given a command instead of a request."Go with her, go with her, go with her." his mind began to rebel against him. The very fabric of his soul was bending to Pandora's words, He couldn't possibly resist her request.
Meanwhile in Subarus' mind.
The Absolute Divine Blessing of Sealing made especially for Subaru by Yasilence allows a five percent chance to seal anyone and can only be undone by the user's command. It was the only divine blessing in existence more powerful than an authority; Satella's demon half laid still on the ground, tied to the very roots of Subaru's mind because of it. Satella couldn't move or even use her authority in Subaru's seal; she was nothing more than a regular woman here.
She was trapped in Subaru's Mental Realm, a place where all of his knowledge and experiences came together and built a small world in his head, almost everyone with mana had one and each realm varied due to the person's personality. Considering how dreary and horrifying his life had been so far after suddenly being trapped in this world, it was no surprise that his world was dark. Rotten, bare trees with dark branches and shriveled grass shaded with the deathly color of black covered the entirety of his mind. The livelihood and sunlit trails of nostalgia were completely missing from his realm.
In the middle of this dark place, Satella laid still; even here, she still clung to the hope of being able to hold Subaru for all of eternity.
"Subaru-kun… Subaru-kun… Subaru-kun… Subaru-kun… Subaru-kun… Subaru-kun… Subaru-kun… Subaru-kun… Subaru-kun…" Satella cried, with each pause in her sentences she struggled to rip apart the roots that kept her from being with her "Subaru-kun".
She watched him from a distance, he laid asleep in a meditating position; roots grew in the dark and ominous grass and they held his unconscious body, seemingly connecting him directly to his mind realm. However, something extremely unnatural happened to the roots, they were slowly turning into stone; with every second a new root had gone and turned to stone completely.
"Subaru-kun… Let me help you..." Satella said as she began to tear up at the sight of her "Subaru-kun" being harmed.
Satella scratched and clawed at her seal, repeating these same words: "let me help you..." until she began to bleed from her nails. Satella attempted to stand, but the seal pulled her back down to the now stone ground in Subaru's mind; bashing her skull into the cold ground any time she dared to do so again. The seal grew weak from the petrification and allowed Satella to pull herself close to Subaru's half-stone body.
"Su-Subaru-kun…" Satella cried out, somehow pulling herself towards the sleeping Subarus face. "Love me… Love me, Love me, Love me, Love me, Love me, Love me, Love me, Love me, Love me, Love me, Love me, Love me, Love me, Love me, Love me, Love me, Love me. You're not allowed to love anyone else but me…" Satellas voice echoed through Subarus' mind, as the same familiar purple-ish black arms enveloped his face. Time felt like it stopped and Subaru could hear nothing but Satellas voice.
"Accept me, Subaru-kun…"
Fresh blood splattered across the floor, Ram stood there in front of the cell door with a face of horror as she looked at her sister's head with a bloody, gory fist through it. this man who she and her sister were searching for over two years for just gruesomely murdered her sister with a single punch.
"AAAHHHHHHH!" Ram's terrified scream filled the air as she stared at her sister's corpse. "...How could you? HOW COULD YOU?!" Ram cried, as her horns grew quickly and awaited Subaru's answer before she turned him into shreds.
Ignoring Ram's question, Subaru pulled his arm out of Pandora's dead body and let it fall to the floor. "So… she really was trying to take control of my memories… Thank you Satella, I can handle it myself now." Subaru thought to himself as he looked at Ram.
The mana aura around Ram increased in power as she saw her sister's dead body fall to the ground. "I'M GONNA KILL YOUUUU!" Ram's screams echoed throughout the dungeon and even caused the earth to shake.
"Where did she go?" Subaru thought, before feeling someone's hands on his throat. Soon after that, he soon found himself flying through the air at devastating speeds, headed directly towards a snowy mountain.
"SHI-" Subaru said as he smashed directly into the mountain face first.
The mountain collapsed in half into thousands of pebbles and rocks and was completely unrecognizable from the large and prideful stature that it had before; In the middle of it all Subaru shook off the dirt from his clothes and stood up.
"Looks like I got pretty strong huh?" Subaru said looking at the massive hole in the mountain that he somehow survived creating.
In the distance, Ram's horns could be seen through the clouds, glowing intensely and seemingly piercing the snow in the air created by the sheer amount of destruction caused by the mountain. On her neck, the kanji "鬼" (Demon) burned vigorously in a pink flame as she approached Subaru with a vexed expression clearly on her face.
"He survived that? Annoying bastard." Ram thought, angered, as she created a katana out of Earth mana. "JIWALD" Ram said, holding up her right arm towards Subaru. She fired several beams of light that cut through the air like butter, melting any snow it came in contact with before reaching its projected target, Subaru.
"Not again… Can I even dodge that?" Subaru thought, preparing to try to avoid the upcoming attack. "Wait… she's BEHIND ME?" he thought as he turned around to see Ram's face.
"NOW DIE." Ram said to Subaru as she cleanly sliced his arm off, just narrowly missing his head. "Why… WHY WON'T YOU JUST ACCEPT YOUR FATE?!" she said, screaming at Subaru who barely managed to move away from her.
"It healed that fast huh?" Subaru thought, looking at his brand new arm that had previously been sliced off.
Looking at Ram in the distance, Subaru saw that her left arm began to burn in the same pink flame that burned her neck; he came to one conclusion from this, this pink-haired woman was getting weaker. "Looks like it's time for me to make my attack as well…" Subaru said before dashing directly at Ram. "Looks like I'm fast too... " he thought, motioning his feet into a kicking position aimed directly at Ram's face.
"-? Where did he- " Ram thought before taking a painful kick into the wintery trees.
Flying through branches and trees, Ram's body finally came to a halt on a rock; the impact caused her to cough up blood immediately. Her body came flopping down to the ground head first, and with all the strength the pink-haired girl could muster she lifted her right arm and uttered the words: "Fura" causing a small gust of wind to appear that slowed her down so she could possibly lessen the damage from her fall.
Crack. The moment Ram's body hit the ground her left arm broke in half. "AAARRRGH!" Ram screamed out of pain, as her voice echoed throughout the trees. Groaning, she lifted her right arm towards herself and whispered the words: "Huma..." and healed her body with magic.
"So this is how bad the burns can get…" Ram said, looking at her unhealable burn wounds that covered her left arm.
"Looks like you used too much of that power again," Pandora said, suddenly appearing next to Ram.
"Didn't Shaula tell you not to use more than half the power of that form? Your curse spread this far just so you could get revenge for me…" Pandora said with a shade of red on her face, grabbing Ram's left arm.
"Onee-sama i-" Ram muttered in a sad tone before getting cut off by her sister.
"You truly love your sister, don't you? It's only right for me to return these strong feelings of love and help you as well. " Pandora ecstatically said, looking at the deeper end of the forest where Ram was thrown from.
"Onee-sama I can still fight!" Ram exclaimed, before feeling a single finger on her lips.
"Ram. I will take the task of accomplishing the goal myself. At this rate, if you were to continue fighting you would have likely been killed." Pandora commanded standing up and facing towards the mountains again.
"Yes…" Ram whispered before passing out due to exhaustion.
"Did I kick her too hard?"
He looked at the huge gap in the forest created by the pink-haired woman's helpless body. "I hope I didn't kill her…She didn't deserve death, but that woman named Pandora… she had a similar scent to 'that woman'." gazing at the sky for the first time in ages.
Letting the fresh air course through his lungs, Subaru finally felt free. When he gazed at these snow flurries and white wispy snow clouds he felt like all his hate and enmity just went away. "The woman" had placed these emotions in him, he was never the type to kill someone so quickly. Subaru knew he had changed dramatically since coming to this world, but in his mind, there was nothing he could do about it. He thought that whatever person that brought him to this world had plans for him, but whoever this person was they just left him to die. In the capital, in the Prison cell, and even now Subaru was left without anyone to depend on for help or even a single person that loved him. Satella was the only person in this world that ever loved him, and for a very brief moment he felt protected, however, even she had to disappear. So, this was the only thing he had now, his freedom, this freedom that satella gave him as her final gift; Subaru was going to use it to finally get the love and happiness he wanted all this time. He wouldn't let anyone else take it away from him again, not Pandora, not "that woman", not Elsa, not Satella and definitely not Reinhardt.
"Live for me Subaru…" Satella's voice echoed throughout Subaru's mind as he recalled those precious words she told him.
"Don't worry Satella… I won't mess up again. Not this time." Subaru exclaimed in his mind, still looking up at those snow clouds, daydreaming.
"So… next stop is the sanctuary I guess," Subaru sighed, thinking about that weird woman's words from his dream.
"Then I'll find 'Satella'." He thought in a serious tone.
"The Sanctuary? Oh, you must be talking about Echidna's place." Pandora said, suddenly appearing behind Subaru.
"How-" turning around, he was shocked looking at Pandora whose face was still fully intact. It was no surprise he was confused about this, he was sure that he'd smashed Pandora's skull into a gory mess. So how? Did that pink-haired girl use magic to heal her?
"Quite the display of rudeness back there, you shouldn't hit someone in the middle of a conversation," Pandora said casually.
"What?" Subaru questioned as he suddenly found himself inside a hole in the ground.
"Maybe that will calm you down for now," Pandora said calmly as she shook off the bits of snow on her coat and sat down in front of Subaru who was still inside the ground. "I'll offer you a dea-" her sentence Subaru's body came jumping out the hole in front of her; the scattered rocks and debris from the impact killed her instantly.
"Is that it?" Subaru said falling to the ground, looking around to see if Pandora somehow survived again.
"Young man, please listen to what I have to sa-" Pandora said from behind Subaru again, but was interrupted when her head turned into a bloody mess from one of Subaru's punches.
"It is completely useles-" yet again she was interrupted by Subaru's fist
"Looks like her ability is a more immediate version to Return By Death." Subaru thought while punching another Pandora that seemingly spawned behind him. "Wait… didn't she almost take over my mind using words? So is she somehow altering reality? If that's the case then I have no choice but to listen to her... "
"So… what is this offer…? " Subaru threatened, grabbing Pandora's shoulder. "If it's a bad offer, I guess I could throw her somewhere…"
_To Be Continued_
So I saw a lot of people had questions about the Ram and Pandora duo thing. I promise to explain it in the next chapter so just hold on until then.
Subarus and Satellas souls are directly intertwined with each other so Subaru's emotions can be controlled to a certain extent.
Pandora and Rams relationship with shaula will also be explained in a future chapter