Hey, it's me again. Wow, I never expected to get this many updates in such short a time; I expected, with exams and all, to not have another chance to work on this until after school was over. I guess I was wrong. Anyways, a lot happens in this next chapter, but I won't tell you exactly what, of course. As always, I don't own Square Enix, Final Fantasy XI, or PlayOnline, or anything that has to do (legally) with Final Fantasy at all. Well, without further ado, here's chapter three of Rebirth. :)
It was dark the next time Seiruru awoke. A cool wind enwrapped her blanketed body, and she felt, for a moment, at peace. Her eyes were closed, and the pace of her heart rhythmic and comforting. Beneath the wool blanket, she felt warm and secure, protected against the winds and whatever else life could throw at her.
And then it hit her. Life.
She was supposed to be dead.
This caused deep distress within Seiruru's mind, and all thoughts of peace and serenity were vanquished in its presence. Why was she alive? It made no sense to her; not only did it seem discomforting that she was still living, but it felt wrong. It was as if she knew she should be dead, and life would never change that. She even went so far as to reason that she would probably feel more comfort, internally at least, if she were not alive. That thought chilled her to the core of her very bones, and made her shiver, even though she was wrapped in a warm blanket.
Why... Why did they revive me?
She remembered the four distinct voices, which made themselves known to her at various times throughout the day. One was a soft, gentle soprano, hardly above a whisper, that hardly comforted her despite its genuine compassion. Another was small and squeaky, obviously of one her kin, which did nothing but annoy her. The third was deep and booming, and demanded respect; this one scared her above all other things. The final was calm and rational in all situations; it was a voice of reason that, for some reason, always reminded her of the pain she had faced and the turmoil she was in, regardless of the words it spoke.
She had begun to envision the bearers of these voices. She envisioned the gentle-voiced one to be a tall, slender woman, constantly quivering with fright, though she tried to hide it. She saw her with pale skin and watery blue eyes that were probably always brimming with tears. She envisioned the bearer of the annoying voice to be a portly, fat-lipped prig decked in luxurious silks stained with remnants of fine food and drink, with bits of meals past smeared all over his detestable face. She saw the bearer of the frightening voice to be a hulking creature, probably a Galka, clad in enormous armor and bearing a grin of fangs, and with fire in its eyes. She envisioned the bearer of the reasonable, even voice to be a thin woman, her hair greying with age, with cold, merciless eyes and a love for all things agonizing. She could even picture the glimmer of sick delight in her eyes as she writhed about helplessly on the bed, the blanket strangling her, desperate for the pain to stop...
It was true. Whenever the voices appeared, Seiruru, for one reason or another, could not see who bore them. It was because whenever the voices were in the room, she was gripped in another of her violent fits, in which she would experience blinding pain. She would be pushed through periods of various sorts of agony before her joints would all lock up, and she would be unable to move. Afterwards, she would pass out for an extended period of time, only to awaken to a brief period of peace until she was seized by the relentless pain.
Which was where she was now. She was waiting, just waiting, for the pain to return.
It was in these periods of peace that Seiruru did most of her thinking. She realized that she knew few things besides this unfriendly white room, the four voices, and the fact that she was named Seiruru and she was in constant pain. She had brief glimpses of a prior life, but all solid memories evaded her. What she felt was even stranger than that fact was that she did not even care that she could not remember her past; it was as if that was completely natural. Of the world she lived in, she remembered very few things, only basic ones. She knew there were five races, that she lived in a vast world, and that there was such a thing as magic and resurrection. Besides that, she knew nothing.
In the hours she was free of the pain, Seiruru would harshly battle her unwilling mind to pry more memories from the abyss into which they had vanished. These battles were often unsuccessful and Seiruru realized that the more times she fought to regain her memories, the less frequently she did remember them. She tried anyway, unwilling to give up the fight for its dire cost, and felt as if she would never remember anything of what used to be.
Besides her basic knowledge of the world and her situation, Seiruru knew one other thing. It was a very vague thing, but it was constantly surfacing in her thoughts. It was a light.
It was a very strange light, a light that seemed to change every time she saw it. Oddly enough, she knew that every time she saw the light, it was the same light, and not something new. It was as if the light were actually a being, a being that was intimately linked with her. The light did not comfort her; she felt, however, that it had once comforted her, but these memories of the light being comforting were gone from her mind. Instead, the light made her feel sorrowful, as if it were beckoning her to do something that she could not, or it was the example of something she could never hope to become. At least not in her current state. Seeing the light made her feel sad, and made the peace she felt all the more meaningful. It also meant that, no matter what, the pain would return.
Just remembering the pain made Seiruru feel a stab of anxiety at her muscles. She had rationalized that these bouts of pain would not leave her until some requirement had been fulfilled, or she became something she was not at the moment. She saw the pain as a ravenous demon, a possessive creature that would not release her from its bondage until she gave into its demands. She wished desperately that her fits would leave her, but these wishes were in vain; they always returned. Always.
She saw the pain as the source of her amnesia, and the source of her worry. When she was seized in its foul clutches, her memories vanished, and every fiber of her body became engulfed in it; she knew nothing, felt nothing, and recognized nothing but that seemingly endless agony. Everything else was seen automatically as obsolete. The pain caused her to experience various things; sometimes, she felt as if something were digging at her heart. At others, she felt as if tiny bugs were crawling up and down the lengths of her skin, biting whenever they pleased. Sometimes she thought there were things in her hair, or on her eyelids, or inside her nose and mouth. She so frequently scratched at the various parts of her body that her fingernails had become frayed and her body burdened by the bandages.
Whenever she tried to think of a source of the pain, her mind always settled on the mournful light, for some reason she could not explain.
Seiruru found that a strange aspect of her pain was that she never cried. Never had she felt tears sting at her eyes, no matter how intense the pain was, no matter how fervently she wished it would go. It was as if her experiences had robbed her of the ability to cry, and that she was too hard to feel the need to cry anymore. This only intensified her feeling of loneliness and depression.
Seiruru sat up, looking around. The room was empty. It was nighttime, and moonlight filtered in through an open window. Seiruru tried to see out the window, but she could not. The bed was positioned in such a way that she could see the outer rim of the night sky, but nothing beyond that. Annoyed, she fumbled for the edge of the bed, and slid silently onto the floor, her feet touching the cold tiles that covered the ground. She did not even take the time to realize that it had been the first time out of the bed since her arrival in the cold white room, or her first time walking.
She strode slowly over the window, her cotton robe swishing noiselessly around her ankles. Her vision was a bit blurred, and she reached out her arms to keep herself steady. She stared at the window unwaveringly, and kept herself balanced, firmly set on her destination. She did not pay attention to the fact that she was shivering, nor that the muscles in her feet began to tense up each time they touched the floor.
She stopped, finally at the windowsill, breathing hard and staring down. Beneath her, she could see the tops of houses, not too far away. She reasoned that she was only in a second story room. Looking up, she saw the full moon, shining down on her unceasingly. Staring at it made her feel a bit at peace, and so she remained looking at it, overwhelmed by the sense it provided her, no matter how brief it was.
She finally pulled her eyes from the moon and stared back down at the houses. Off in the distance, she could hear the gentle lapping of waves against the shore, and she reasoned she must be in some kind of port town. The name of any port town evaded her. She stared back down at the houses and was suddenly gripped by the urge to explore the house she was in. After all, she knew nothing but this solitary white room. She turned away from the window and began to walk towards the door.
By the third step, the pain in her legs had spread to her lower body, and Seiruru knew a fit was about to grip her. In horror, she realized that at this hour, no one in the house would hear her. She would have to face the pain alone. The thought of screaming in this white-walled prison, overcome with pain, rolling on the floor in desperation, planted hysteria in her brain. With a horrified gasp and stumbled backwards; the pain rocketed up through her legs and shot at her shoulders and arms. A soft yell loosed from her throat as she fell back against the wall, sliding to the ground, discomforted.
The pain slowly consumed her entire body, working its way through every sinew, every fiber, until it engulfed her entirely. It throbbed and pulsated and grew stronger with each passing moment. Seiruru found that it was hard to breathe and that every breath caused her vision to fog by a large degree, to the extent that she knew she would be unable to see in only a few moments. Her heart rate picked up, but did nothing to help her. Sweat drops began to bead at her temples despite the fact that she was not in a hot environment, and had no need to sweat. She felt her hands moisten, and she clasped them to her chest, desperate to quell the pain she knew would soon cause her to scream.
It was too late. A horrified scream escaped her lips and she flopped over onto her stomach, the pain too much to bear now. The pain was more intense this time than she had ever felt before; it was as if it were ripping apart her insides, and feasting upon her heart. She clawed desperately at the tiles, trying to pull herself back to her feet. She tried to look around, to see her surroundings, but her eyes were clouded...
She suddenly realized the soft moonlight that upon her. Clawing at the ground, she realized that this entire situation -- trying to regain herself under the light of the moon -- did not seem so unfamiliar. It almost felt... as if it had happened before. She felt so confident in this thought that she felt certain it was reminiscent of a previous event in her life. As she screamed, she suddenly heard laughter, an echoing laughter she hoped would never haunt her again...
The creature stood before her, scythe raised, its head tossed back. Its fleshless jaws loosed an unearthly howl, comprised of echoes and yells, that made her skin crawl. It was laughing... laughing at her.
The ghoul.
The ghoul that had killed her.
The entire event replayed slowly, silently, in her mind. She saw herself walking silently across the dunes, wand at the ready, constantly glancing around. She saw the ghoul come up from behind and swing at her neck, throwing her to the ground. She saw herself screaming out in pain as the creature incessantly tore at her with its ungodly weapon, its torture device. She saw the puncture wounds on her limbs and the tears in her clothing; she saw the anguish in her face and the tears in her eyes. She remembered the pain, the pain that was so pressing, just as it was now. She saw the terror...
And she remembered the voice. The cool, soothing voice, constant in her ears, which grew stronger with every passing moment, with each new pain. The voice that had told her it would all be okay, the voice that told her to close her eyes and rejoin it...
Seiruru...
She heard the voice, unified with the mournful light she always saw in her dreams. This vision lasted no more than half a second, and when it ended, Seiruru knew nothing but the painless darkness of the cold, tiled floor.