There was something on top of me. It was thick and limp, even in all places as I pushed against it.
After pushing at it for some time while wondering where I was, more like what I was doing here, I heard some noises outside. I continuously pushed against what I had established to be a cover while pressing my ear on the wall next to me. I think, I'm in a box.
A very long box, I discovered while spreading out my limbs, made perfectly to my size. I bent my toes and touched the bottom, extended my neck and my head hit the top. My arms, on the sides, moved outward about three inches and met the sides. It was a rectangular thing, lined by felt.
Another thing I found curious was that I wasn't wearing the clothes I thought I would be. No, this time I was wearing a dress that went all the way down to my ankles and wrists. It was a flimsy thing, probably made with the idea of cutting down cloth costs in mind.
My hair, usually on my shoulders when I lay down on my back, was in a neat bun on top of my head. I knew that because of the squish of it touching the top of the box when I tried to find out how much space I had earlier.
How curious.
Why was I in a place like this?
What was I doing here?
What was I doing before?
I struggled to come up with an answer, all the while listening to the gongs ringing outside my box. I heard some crying people with wails as loud as whales (hah, pun), which made me frown. What the heck was going on out there?
My mind drew a blank as I had absolutely not the faintest clue as to how I ended up here.
I sighed, wincing when my sharp teeth bit trapped my lip. I was a Vampire right now.
A flash of memories hit me in a moment, but it was gone the next second.
But, it was just enough to give me the strong feeling that I should get out of here ASAP.
With that simple resolution somehow igniting my will, I put both of my hands against the felt top and pushed. It didn't budge because I didn't put much pressure on it. I didn't want to make it suddenly fly off without knowing what was outside, but since there was a creak on all sides that made me realize it was nailed shut, I pushed even harder.
The lid popped off with a whoosh, flying high above me. It went and landed on the side somewhere which made many people gasp with the crash of wood on the hard packed ground.
I looked up at the sky, completely cloudy but not as dark as...last time.
Last time?
Ah!
The storm!
I exhausted all of my mana somehow, since it didn't recover and instead leaked out insanely!
I bolted up right in the...COFFIN?!?! OMS!!! (OH MY STARS)
And looked around. There were only dirt walls on either side of me, deep in the ground. There was dirt that leaked down into the coffin, after being thrown to cover me up.
"ARE YOU TRYING TO BURY ME ALIVE?!"
I screamed incredulously. If they had succeeded, I would've probably choked to death!
But wait...as a Vampire, I didn't need to breathe. That's right, that's how I didn't choke on the sea water filling my lungs when I was face down in that puddle. I only struggled to breathe because I was acting like I was human.
All my memories restored themselves, as if begging, "Wake up before you truly die this time!" That was probably jus Takuya, but still. It was a valid point.
I stood up in the wooden coffin, on my bare feet. I wasn't tall enough to look over the rim, not by far, so I jumped. I flew out of the ground in my pale red dress, landing on the ground gracefully after flipping to lose some momentum.
I opened my eyes and looked around, suddenly feeling-
-stupid. Very stupid.
It was just now that I realized, with a lot of inferences, that this was a mass funeral procession.
"Ah..." I looked around at all of the people, beastkin and human and Elven and everything, standing around respective graves with little handmade plaques and all. There were tears streaming from a lot of faces, hardened looks on a lot of them as they shoveled dirt over gone loved ones and saying goodbye.
I suddenly felt very lost. I had know idea what to do, standing at the foot of my own grave at the tip of the yard. There were a lot of people looking up at me, where I stood spaced very far away from everyone else. They all looked normal, like commoners and merchants. People that had not a single clue how to react or what was going on. The people were looking up at me with stunned faces, someone "dead" come back to "life." Some had fear, or worse.
Someone near me dropped a shovel, and I turned around to see that one catkin the dogkin, Gabriel, had been talking to on the boat. He was the only one here.
He had fallen back on the ground, staring at me with wide eyes and twitching ears. His long tail was laying on the ground and shivering a bit.
"Sorry..." I whispered, looking at the hundred people staring at me. "I didn't know I was disturbing something. I'll just..." I pointed back into the ground, where I was planning to try out teleportation magic after hopping into it. "Go back down here...Pretend you never saw me, okay?"
I doubted that anyone heard me with how I whispered, staring at them intently to get my point across. They may have been beastkin, but even their ears couldn't pick it up with how far away they had placed my grave.
Only then did I realize, I was speaking a different language. Most of them couldn't understand me, and thought I was chanting something weird. A lot of them went on guard, picking things up or readying whatever was in their hands to throw.
I inched backwards a bit, unnerved, almost falling into my six foot grave. Actually, that looked way farther down than six feet. More like twelve. Was that standard custom in Zueltina? To bury the dead that deep? I looked around and saw that the coffins of the others, way bigger than my toddler one, were only about three feet deep. And, seeing some people's caskets still open, I noticed I was the only one in a red adornment. The rest were in white, thick clothes.
Just as I was about to disappear from their sights, someone screamed and fainted. My head popped up, until I realized the reason that person screamed was because I was floating in the air.
"Ghost!"
"Demon!"
"Devil!"
"Wha-" I stepped back in the air when something flew at me, making me duck. The only reason I understood them was because of my Skill, but that didn't make it so I could speak their language. So I couldn't retort when another metal thing was thrown before I could get my bearings, nicking my cheek and making me wince as it went by.
"Undead!"
The thing that had flown at me was a sort of religious figure I had seen all over my house and Grandfather's: how Christians have the cross, Egyptians with their Ankh, the believers of the gods had an "Orix," in the shape of a breast cancer awareness sign with a line through the middle.
It was something meant to ward off evil spirits, like a portable charm of the Church. It worked against smaller monsters, Demons, Deviants (supposedly), and the like. Or, it was used as a blessing, but it was usually seen as the former.
How rude. That was an insult at its finest.
Now that I realized it, there was a large border of them stuck in the ground far from my grave. They were in the shape of a large Orix, like making a giant heart out of little hearts.
Seeing that was off putting. What did these people think I was?
I turned around, starting to see that there were a lot of evil-warding things around me.
The people continued to shrink away in fear as I stood there, flabbergasted. What did I ever do to them except help their sailors? I almost died because of it, since the darkness on my soul had grown even further.
I think there may have been tears coming to my eyes when I noticed the looks on their faces, desperate and scared. My knees started trembling senselessly, and I felt humiliated for no reason. I wanted to run away, to use my magic to fly somewhere else, but my mind didn't work properly.
"Hey! Stop! What're you doing!" A girl I didn't recognize ran up the hill from the gate to the cemetery, surprised at what was going on. She had a basket of flowers on her arm, Gabriel holding her up like a crutch on the other side. However, she shoved the basket into Gabriel's chest and took off, jumping over the tall fence in one bound and almost crashing to the ground on her bad leg.
That didn't stop her as she largely jumped over groups of people on her other leg, reaching me in no time. Her ears, what was left of them, fluttered in the wind with her hair. Her dress was cut short with shorts underneath, so no one could see anything underneath as she crashed in front of me.
"Taryn! What do you think you're doing?! How could you let them do this?" She crouched down without bothering to help him up, only paying attention to me.
My arms, at my sides, were trembling still. My breathing was slow but ragged, eyes wide open as I stared ahead of me at nothing. This was the worst greeting, by far, I'd ever had in this life. The most hostility I'd faced for doing nothing wrong. People only judging based on nothing, already throwing curses my way.
No one had bothered to approach me until this lady. She looked right in my eyes, which I knew were regular pupils again, as ruined by lightning and clashing internal affairs of my soul as they were. Her hands, rough and chapped from long, hard years of work, felt smooth on the sides of my head as she turned my face her way so that I could only see her. The hands blocked any other view I may have had of anything else.
"Hold on a few moments, okay? I'll make it all better."
She stood up wobbling, turning around as she faced the frightened people. She made sure I was hidden behind her with one hand while snapping the other one. The desired affect of something surprisingly very loud was not achieved.
The next words that came out of her mouth worked as she chanted, "Wind, hear my choked voice. Please send my words to the ignorant and prejudiced people!"
The wind picked up instantly and I saw with my special eyes, the mana that she pulled out of herself and used to fuel the spell.
"Shut up!"
She had whispered with a growl unbefitting of her face and race as a beautiful, young rabbitkin girl, but the wind made it sound hundreds of times louder as it ricocheted across the yard, into the large city. It bounced around the walls and disturbed the livestock, making curious people rebuilding their homes silence themselves. They looked to the hills, where the graves of their people were, and felt something akin to fear.
What was happening? Did Marinette do something again? Everyone recognized her voice, since she was such a famous person within the city. She wasn't a celebrity or anything, just the oddball daughter of the lord that decided to start her own inn.
Silence befell the graveyard as they listened to her voice, shocking their eardrums.
It was loud enough to shock the dead awake...was a close but not entirely accurate description.
She stood there with one of her hands on her hip, looking at the people with scorn.
"Is this how you treat your savior?"
I didn't hear her words since I was still in a traumatized state. Otherwise, I would've tsukkomied that last part.
"You curse them, and try to bury them alive?" she continued, glaring at them.
"Only Demons awake from the dead!" Someone yelled out.
"And goddesses can't?"
"That...thing, is no goddess!" Another person yelled out with fear in his eyes, not displayed on his face. His expression was one of accusation, something I didn't want to see.
"Even if she isn't a goddess, she is still the savior of your husband, Olga! The one who pulled your son out of the sea, Wilhelm!"
"Tch!" Some man scoffed. He must've been Wilhelm. "Have you dared to forget about the last time someone like that came into this town-"
"I've never forgotten." She watched him with disdain in her eyes, not on good terms with him on any basis. "But obviously, you have," the rabbitkin shook her head. Silence reigned.
"Wilhelm, how can you show such despicable and childish behavior!" The woman next to the man, who had her mouth covered this whole time, finally spoke up. Her face only had fear because he had covered her mouth and nose, so she couldn't breathe. Someone who noticed and pried his hand off, allowing her to gasp in her wheelchair before rolling away a bit.
"What did you say?" He turned around with ground teeth and looked at her.
Her face showed not even the slightest morsel of fear now as she glared right back at him. Just as she was about to speak up, someone came up from behind and started wheeling her away.
"Beowulf! Stop! Bring me back!" The human lady was twisting and turning to look around, catching a glimpse of her son.
"Sorry Mom, not happening," the wolfkin shook his head as he exited the cemetery. She couldn't stop him as she only looked back at us with panicked concern on her face.
"Well, what do you have to say for yourselves?" the rabbitkin looked down at her diverse people with disdain, daring them to challenge her words.
"Nothing," Gabriel finally made his way leisurely, catching up to the rabbitkin while shoving a basket back into her arms. "Also, it looks like this is useless now, seeing as she's not dead."
The rabbitkin turned around and looked at Gabriel, countering, "Well at least they can be thank you flowers now. That's much better than their originally intended purpose. Come on, Taryn," she nodded her head at the immobile catkin, picking me up off the ground and holding me as Thérèse used to, since my Mother never did, "we're going." I limply fell on her shoulder, honestly not wanting to be here.
"Going?"
"Did you not here what I said?"
"Well, yeah, but..."
"If you suggest throwing this little one back into the grave, I'll send you right down there to take her place," the rabbitkin ground out at him as he stood up, leaning on the shovel while dusting himself off.
"Never! I was just wondering..."
"If you can't even finish your sentence, then it's not important. Let's go," she commanded while walking down the hill, almost devoid of her limp to keep face.
We past all of the people that shrunk away from me, a few of them apologizing with wry smiles for their family's rude demeanors as I past by. Their families looked at them while shocked, wondering how they could look something like me in the eye.
I was carried out of the cemetery with tears on my face, never feeling so unwelcome in this whole lifetime.
After walking for a while, I felt numb. I had no idea why the scorn of such people affected me so badly, I just knew it felt horrible.
The streets of cobblestone, more organized than the arena Kitri and I fought at, were dusted with dirt. There were clean planks everywhere being used to rebuild small places of homes, magicians cutting and holding things up to make it faster and more efficient for those who couldn't.
They nodded and waved as we passed by, a lot of them smiling when they saw the trio of rabbit, dog, and cat together. None of them reacted as the ones in the graveyard did, instead greeting me properly. They looked a little concerned that I was dressed like a dead body, having come from the cemetery. But they didn't comment on it when they saw my distraught face, making up their own conclusions for my silent tears.
Was there something in the air over there? Or was it because I came from the grave while their loved ones would never rise again? What made them so unfavorable that they would resort to stoning me with Orixen?
The buildings were tall and almost festive, just like the capital in Bytriste. Or at least, they were before the storm came through and ruined many things. It looked like they were preparing for something.
I felt almost lulled to sleep, not caring what happened. I didn't care who these people were, what they were going to do, anything. I just fell back into my mind while Kaya stroked my hair, our apparitions mirrors of each other if not for the dark hole in my soul and not hers.
For some reason, my eyes were swimming again. It wasn't from sadness, since all of a sudden I just felt horrible.
I was bored and felt like I was going to puke at any moment, so I decided to check on my Status to see what was up.
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Condition: Severe exhaustion, lethargy, dehydration, starvation. Blighted by disease of Severe Mana Depletion (State of Illness: Permanent), puncture in soul, mana has been used up too quickly and has resorted in many fissures in the part of the soul that contains general mana. The condition of the mind is in a state of disbelief and depression. To fix: requires outside healing to fix, time as a substitute. It would require 19.5 years for Rapid Healing to heal the punctures in entirety, if magic is not used. The time for the mana counter to recover entirely has become 4 days and 19 hours.
Congratulations! You have leveled up the skill Rapid Healing from level 1 to level 13!
Congratulations! You have earned the title of Goddess!
Congratulations! You have earned the title of Savior!
Congratulations! You have earned the title of Seafarer!
Congratulations! You have earned the title of Survivor!
Congratulations! You have earned the favor of the lord's daughter!
Congratulations! You have leveled up from level 12 to 13!
Condolences. You have been diagnosed with the disease of Severe Mana Depletion. Effects include running out of mana at a higher unit rate, lower affect of Skills, lower recovery speed of mana.
Condolences. You have earned the wrath of God Thanos, the god of death. Reason: You stole the death-bound souls, meant to die. In consequence, you have stolen from a god.
Condolences. You have earned the wrath of Goddess Seer, the goddess of the future. Reason: You have changed the future of Zueltina from the path the gods intended. In affect, you have changed multiple outcomes of the war.
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I realized. I'm not a Vampire anymore, but rather a human. All the effects of flying for days, no sleep, food, shelter, anything, were starting to catch up to me. I overdid it and pushed way past my boundaries, my limits.
Blood started dribbling from my mouth as something inside me twisted and slowly ripped apart.
Why me?
AN: I've acquired the Wi of Fi...for now. As for the championship...go Sweden-! And/or Brazil...eh, in a few months this won't make sense. Good day, all!