Fate/Paradox

Spear Of The Goddess

The school bell rang signaling everyone to dash out of the classroom. If you were lucky enough, you had a teacher who didn't care about you waiting by the door.

The desk I was at happened to be the window seat. I gazed outside through the noise of laughter and high school conversations. Ironically there was no scenery. It was jam-packed full of buildings and shipping containers next to each other.

Every two minutes or so I'd look to the clock hanging at the front of the room. I was almost anxious to get home and finish up everything so I could relax. What is the word... completionist as people call it?

Everything was perfectly normal that day.

...

Sometimes I'd wait at the bike rack for friends to bump into and walk together with them. These encounters would be coincidental, so even if I missed them by a minute, they'd have no reason to wait.

That day was a lonely one, compared to my slow pace, cars were doing the usual whirring by me. I had lived about a 20 minute walk away from home, so most of the time this is what you would see me doing.

I was only a block away from home. Up a small hill, into the residential area. It was the same busy four-way intersection, the checkpoint before the finish line. It always took a few minutes to get the crossing light to turn green.

Awkwardly I stared around the different cars passing by. I didn't have a phone to pass the time. Not that I needed one.

Finally the light turned green, it was like the "Ah-Ha" moment, it was like you finally got to eat those cookies you were waiting to cool. Except, this is... cars and traffic lights.

I was about halfway to the otherside, watching the cars to make sure I didn't get run over.

I blinked. Again. And again. I could almost feel my mouth open as I looked around. The cars that had its blinker to turn left were gone. In fact the whole intersection of cars had gone poof.

The sky was... pure black. The road ahead of me had changed completely. Not only that but instead of the houses that would be up ahead, it all changed to dry wasteland. The usual walk up the hill to my home was now a slope downward.

"Is this a horror movie? Is this how I die? Wait... maybe I'm already dead." thinking within the back of my head.

Almost all my senses told me not to go in. To just turn around and forget about this. Apparently I could have shook my head no and I would have gone back. I wouldn't have remembered a single thing. There was also something else that told me I couldn't go back anymore. It was the feeling of regret.

A faint voice came, echoing, its words were incomprehensible. Strangely enough, it wasn't around me physically. Disorienting and enticing. I almost felt like I wasn't there anymore. Wherever this was. Suddenly the voice's words became clearer.

"Do you have a wish boy?"

The situation alone suppressed me from giving an answer. It was like someone duct taped my jaw on stage 200 times and told me to go center stage to give a peace talk to the world.

I wasn't the type to agree to random things people tell me. If you were to walk down the road one day and suddenly a voice asks you 'Do you have a wish?' would you say yes? Ignore it? THE FACT A VOICE IS TALKING TO YOU IS STRANGE ENOUGH ISN'T IT?

I thought to myself. A wish? I was happy with the life I had. I had goals. I had good people around me. A good home setting. What more could I ask for? I tried to logically play this out. What if I said yes? What if I said no? What in the world is going on?

"Perhaps... you'll be more intrigued by this."

Suddenly I was no longer on the road, I was somehow moved from the intersection to what seemed to be a large hole in the ground. It was expansive, standing right in the middle, I darted my eyes around to get a sense of where I was. Most of it was pure darkness, shadows practically ate the entire area for dinner. Catching a glimpse of an extremely distant traffic light pole. Then it came to me. I was at the end of the road, the one that led down into the abyss.

"WHAT IS GOING ON?!" I yelled at the top of my lungs.

"Look closer." It whispered.

Look closer?

I stared at the shadows in front of me. Camouflaged so perfectly, it was otherwise impossible to see it normally. Almost drifting away like washing paint off a brush, a metal staff or spear stood in the ground. It was easily taller than me, a cold looming feeling stuck around it.

"Does it remind you of anything?"

I stared at the tip then downward. The blade was full of elegance, excessive almost to the point of clumsiness. In contrast, the presence of death lingered around.

I wanted to give the right answer. It always bugged me, whenever I'd get called on to answer a question, getting the wrong answer. Everyone would then think your stupid from that point on. What if someone would have been offended by choice or statement? What if I said the wrong thing?

"Forget about the correct choice."

I immediately looked up. There was nothing there, but it was almost like the voice's source was suddenly coming out from there.

The voice was very neutral. I couldn't identify any details about the person behind it. If anything it was full of temptation to whoever listened to it.

"But how?!" I yelled back.

"Go ahead. Touch this divine object."

"..."

I took a deep breath. Something instinctively told me that, "There's no way out of this one. No more back up plans, no more lucking out"

I raised my arm and pressed my hand against the huge spear. Closing my eyes, the shadows that filled the hole eventually swallowed me up.