A/N: chapters 1 and 2 were actually only 1 chapter in my original project, but since they seemed too long, I decided to split. Chapter 3 is on the making, though, so the update will take a while.

Chapter 2: Awakening

Jake Holman, a 1 year old Worldless, was waiting by the pool.

The Worldless feel when a newborn is coming, and are involuntarily attracted to the Cradle in order to take it out for its first steps. Like all of the others in that forgotten corner of the universe, he was wearing his shadow over his body, which looked like a ragged black mantle, barely leaving his mouth and chin exposed. Through the hood of the mantle, it is possible to see the bright light that comes from his eyes: the mark of the Worldless.

After a long sigh, he turned around and inserted his arm into the pond. He grabbed what felt like a faintly pulsating heart, and with his other arm he pulled along all sorts of parts that were weaved within each other. Certainly a disgusting and ugly sight, as he dragged that barely recognizable mess of organs and bones out of the pond and dragged over the granite rock for a few inches, leaving it there in a pool of its own blood.

He thought at the moment 'why are all newborns so damn ugly?' but his expression didn't change at all. He felt somewhat proud, though.

He walked a few steps back, thinking about how to proceed. Just because something you need to do is induced by instinct, doesn't mean you actually know how to do it. He stepped closer to the newborn and sit by its side, looking at it. In a few minutes, it would become someone just like him. In a few minutes, someone's life was going to be endangered. He smiled at that thought.

That mess of intertwined organs kept pulsating in irregular intervals. It was sentient: it could feel the cold touch of the stranger grabbing it from the pool of shadows, as well as the excruciating pain of being dragged away from the shadows and over the rugged rock, but it couldn't complain, nor react to the intrusion. It was like being literally pulled out from its mother's womb by sheer strength. It was still pulsating, but it didn't know why. It didn't know anything at all except pain.

"Who are you?" Jake began, his voice could be heard clearly even though there was no air for the sound to propagate in. These little physics details had little to no meaning in the Nowhere. "Do you remember who you were?" He spoke slowly and with pauses, to make sure it would understand the question clearly.

The organs' conscience, or the little amount of synapses their brain could process became surprised. It heard something, something it could understand! It was a question, so, it had to be answered, it thought, and started to search in its memories. But it was useless: the pain and confusion that creature was feeling was so intense it couldn't piece its memories together. It became anxious due to the lack of an answer, and started to pulsate a bit quicker. The pain was growing.

'Shit' the adult worldless thought. 'I guess I should have asked something more specific… I wish I remembered what Dhak' ar asked me…' Dhak' ar was the worldless who awakened Jake. He perished 6 months ago by completing his task.

He thought quickly about the next question he was going to make. The increasingly faster pulsations of the newborn were making him nervous too. Suddenly, he came up with something "Okay, let's try something different: try to remember how you were! Like, your hair, what was it's color? Your race? What was you? Does any of this rings a bell?"

"How was I like…?" it thought, but nothing came into mind. A minute had passed, and he asked again "Come on… right, let's start with something even more basic: were you a male or a female?"

Now, it remembered 'I was… a woman.' That said, the organs actually moved a little bit, as if they were trying to reorganize themselves in order to build up an humanoid being. "Ahh, finally! Now, don't distract yourself, one thing leads to another" he was smiling again. "Now that you remember you gender, you can remember more about yourself, can't you? Haven't you ever looked at yourself in the mirror? Do you recall something like that?"

She started to move more vigorously, as her memories started flowing back to her. Little by little, pieces of information about herself started linking in her brain, and with that, all that mess of bones and organs started to get in place. "I was an elf… not very tall… my hair was auburn… my skin was dark…" After a couple of minutes, she finally became something more or less humanoid, doing some final touches such as smoothing the skin and finishing growing hair and nails. It was still in pain, though. Something was amiss.

The reconstitution of one's body doesn't come dressed. Needless to say, it was like she was born again, but as an adult.

Jake spent a few seconds scanning her. He didn't expect the newborn to be a woman (although the majority of the worldless are women), much less a "hottie elven midget". For a moment he actually blushed, though it wasn't noticeable due to his hood. When he snapped out of it, he bended over her and put his hand on her shadow. He closed his hand and pulled it off the ground, as if it was a black mantle, and covered her. "Hey, guess what: you're hot, and gorgeous as well!" the worldless praised her with a smile, trying to make up for the wasted seconds due to his surprise "Now, how are you feeling?" Though he could tell from her frowning face that she was in pain, he asked anyway.

"It… it hurts…" was the answer, that came in a painful whisper. Although she remembered her physical appearance, there was still no memory of who she was. There was still work to be done here. Jake cleared his throat and proceeded with a more serious tone "Right, let's get rid of that now. You have to remember more stuff." He pinched his nose bridge and closed the eyes, taking a moment to think about what to ask. It was his first time doing that, and he wasn't good with social interactions. "Uh, how about… what was your favorite food?" The answer was a shy moan, which probably meant she didn't remember that, although it seemed to him to be a pretty important thing to recall. "Okay, then… what about… your parents! Yeah, do you remember them? Mom? Dad?"

Again, a faint response. All this thing about helping a newborn getting its memory back consisted in asking about key things, that would trigger recent and strong memories. If she didn't react to the question about her parents, it could mean she was fed up with them, or they were gone long ago.

He looked upwards and sighed, then looked back to her "So… your job, maybe? Do you remember that? What you used to do for a living?" Another little moan. "Geez… boyfriend maybe?" She seemed to convulse a bit after this question. "Oh, touchy subject, sorry. Um… did I ask for favorite food already? I guess I did. What about friends? Anybody you liked a lot, that you could put your hand on fire for them?"

Jackpot. The first person that came to her mind was Artemis Fowl. After that, everything went flooding back into her head, making her new body arc and her eyes open wide, revealing little blue and hazel lights from the iris. Foaly, Vinyaya, Trouble, Butler, Mulch, everybody, she was remembering! And along with that, the moments they spent together, which helped her reconstruct her memories about her previous life. She suddenly stopped, and was breathing heavily from the effort.

'Almost finished' Jake thought 'now comes the hard part…' There was no air around to breathe on, and the woman just realized that as she was trying to fill her lungs and nothing seemed to come to her. She was choking, and her face could show the despair growing. The man quickly grabbed her and shook her. She looked at him and grabbed him with all her strength, pleading for help with her horrified expression. She could only see the light of his eyes, everything else was darkness. "Quickly, last question! Why are you here?! What was the last thing that happened to you?! Who did this to you?!"

That was more than one question, but that is how it is. This final part of the process starts when the newborn fully regains the consciousness that it was a living being. Since there is no air or pressure in the Nowhere, the newborn would have to find its will to live under a few seconds before it dies. A bit traumatizing, but the shock would be enough to stabilize the person. Once it regains its will, it refuses to die until it is fulfilled.

She began to search desperately within her memory. She didn't knew why she was here, nor who did that to her (she didn't even knew something happened in the first place!) but about the last question, she remembered something: the time tunnel. She remembered she was there, traveling back, with Artemis Fowl, both the younger and older versions of him, the lemur, Jayjay and… herself. How could she feel herself there, and still know it wasn't she? Then she remembered that as they got out of the tunnel, she remained there, alone, and in her incredulity, her particles began to fade away from her, until she lost consciousness. Or, at least, she thought she did. That mix of feelings about being abandoned, feeling an irrational anger towards herself, as if the other she stole her passage back into her world, and lots of other things stopped her from simply disintegrating. No, she couldn't simply fade away like that. And now, she was in Nowhere.

She looked right at Jake's face, or at least the portion that could be seen, with her eyes wide open. She stopped trying to breath, and that was a good sign: she managed to regain her will. They stood together like that for a moment, their faces close to each other. She felt a little spark of gratitude, but not more than that. She was now filled with hate, the prime emotion that fuels all worldless, that keeps them alive and focus them towards their objective: to kill the one who made her become like that. Kill Holly.

"Can you get up?" the man asked. The answer came between her teeth with a most indignated voice "of course" and he pulled her upwards. Besides the big height difference, they looked just like each other, both with a ragged black mantle covering them from head to feet.

Now she could see clearly: despite the lack of a stronger light in the Nowhere, its inhabitants could see everything like it was bathed by a direct light. Of course, everybody there was wearing the black mantle, and the horizon, as well as everywhere else, was filled with waving shadows. But now she could discern its elements, and could see hundreds, thousands of worldless standing in the middle of the space, and strangely, she felt at home.

Think about the Nowhere as an inverted world: the core of the planet is the faint light at the center, and what should be the surface is an endless sea of shadows seen from the inside.

Jake walked away from her, until the border of the Cradle, which floats close to the core. The granite rock they were on was shaped like an upside-down pyramid, from their point of view, of course. He reached an inner pocket and bought out a pack of cigarettes, and pulled one off. He lit it with his fingers and started smoking. Again, no rules against smoking in an airless place. Good for him, as his addiction persevered into his worldless self. He turned back to the newborn "Welcome to Nowhere, your new home."

She glared at him for telling her what she already knows. Once a worldless regains its will, some information is imprinted to them, like an instinct. Things about what their willpower can do for them, their "undead" status, how to travel through the shadows, bend rules, meditate to heal, etc. "Thank you for stating the obvious," she replied coldly.

The man in front of her chuckled "name's Jake, newbie. What's yours?"

Worldless choose their own names. As a reaction to their hate against their living selves, they abandon that name and choose a new one with meaning. Pain, suffering, vengeance, death, and try to mix with something also meaningful to their former names, so they become unique. Dhak' ar, for example, was the name of an ancient demon who murdered the family of the former wizard Astrides Mettel years ago. His worldless used the name of the demon to inspire fear on him.

Jake, on the other hand, uses the same name as he had in life. He is a reborn worldless, one whose living self is already dead. For this reason, his target is not himself, but the person who robbed his life spark for its own wicked needs, leaving a lifeless but vengeful shell behind. A reborn worldless always uses its former name and is more powerful than the regular one, to compensate the lack of knowledge about the enemy.

The newborn had to think about it for a moment. Her former name was Holly, and the mere thought of the name made her blood boil. She is now something else, something designed only to hurt and murder. Hurt. She looked at his eyes and answered "My name is Thorn."

They both grinned.

A/N: apologies in advance for grammatical errors. Reviews are always welcome!