Chapter 42: A weird encounter.
When Hanna opened her eyes she was met by the open blue sky, rays of sunlight that gently caressed her skin and two curious pairs of eyes that suddenly rushed backwards with a small gasp the moment she had opened her own eyes. The voices sounded small and young, so most likely they belonged to children, then came a third voice.
"Haru! Kristie! Get away from there you know we aren’t allowed to play there, mommy told you so many times already!"
This was definitely an older voice, but not by much and it also sounded a bit more masculine, the other two were so high pitched she couldn’t really distinguish which gender belonged to which child and judging from what was said, these were a group of siblings, the two youngest getting into places they weren’t supposed to and the older brother trying to get his siblings back in line.
Although, he didn’t sound that much older himself and if Hanna had to guess, he definitely wanted to go and do just as much As his siblings were, it’s the nature in every child to be curious little gremlins, who do things that they have been told specifically not to do, it’s the reason one shouldn’t leave young children alone a lesson the mother of these children was about to learn the hard way.
"Big brother Kayne, there is something here, it looks super strange!"
How rude! Maybe she was a bit torn up by all her injuries but that most definitely didn’t mean she was weird! Except, when Hanna tried to move her arm, there was no pain and the same applied to her leg, confused she began to move her entire body a bit and there was zero pain through it all.
Hanna was dumbfounded by this discovery, her last memories before she had fallen unconscious were that of incredible pain throughout her entire body, although she couldn’t completely remember why. She remembers walking through a field filled with animals of all kinds, then a forest filled to the brim with all kinds of plant life and lastly, she climbed a hill filled with many different forms of intelligent life, that’s when she had fallen unconscious due to extreme pain.
Hanna quickly discovered that going through her memories didn’t help What so ever, rather it made things even worse. Even ignoring the fact she suddenly was rid of all pains that previously made her fall unconscious, she also felt like she was forgetting something extraordinary important or someone important inside her memories, the fact she was suddenly in a completely different spot compared to her memories also didn’t exactly help her either.
The rustling of nearby foliage was the thing that brought her out of her own head, remembering that she was, in fact, in the presence of other living beings, looking in the direction from which the sound had came from she spotted a young boy she couldn’t place any older then possibly 6 years old, he wore rags smeared with dirt and liquid stains and he had a rather tanned complexion for his age, he had dirty blond hair and bright, innocent blue eyes, if it weren’t for the dirt covering him from head to toe and his torn rags he had for clothes he might have classifies as a really cute and almost pretty child.
As Hanna‘s own eyes met the ones of the boy he slightly flinched in his approach, shrinking back slightly and taking a step backwards, Hanna could taste the droplets of fear radiating off of him, but apparently his curiosity overpowered his caution has he started to move forward ones more, although in a much slower fashion then he and previously.
If it weren’t for her confusion, she might have found this whole ideal very amusing, as it really couldn’t get more cliche if the world tried, a group of children stumbling upon something stranger in the deep dark forest and instead of rushing back and getting the adults, they decide to check it out alone.
Once the boy was standing at distance that could reasonably called 'polite speaking distance with a stranger', the boy opened his mouth.
"H-hello, are you the sleeping monster of the forest? Mommy always told us a very evil monster that eats the bad kids lives around here and…"
"Big Brother Kayne, look it has something really pointy sticking out of her butt right here! It really funny how it wiggles!"
Hanna yelped in pain as her tail was yanked backwards and Hanna swore she could feel her soul leave her body for a brief moment, had her tail always been this sensitive? The fact she had used it to stab people suddenly seemed such a bad… idea…
"Don’t get to close to it, if it stabs you, you will die!" Without thinking, those words left her mouth and the moment they did, her brain began to short circuit. Not once during her time here had she ever shown concern for anyone’s well being than her own, and yet she didn’t want these kids she didn’t even know for more then a few minutes to die? Something very strange was happening.
Hanna once again drowned out the world around her to focus on her own thoughts, while her recent memories were hazy at best, everything else was perfectly clear, she remembered everything, from the moment she first awoke in this body to the moment she had passed out in the forest after her encounter with a man who claimed to be death personified.
Yet, despite the horrors he had laid out and what would happen to her and her body after forming a completely new soul while also absorbing a divine being into said soul, she didn’t feel any different if she were completely honest.
And thinking back on all of her previous actions, all the pain and suffering she had caused, she felt not a bit different then she had previously, no remorse or guilt, only mild amusement like she was remembering an old joke, she had been a monster in every sense of the word and still was.
And yet, looking at these children and whenever she tried imagining being harmful to them, she was filled with a repulsion so strong that it had triggered her gag reflex, as if she had just bitten into the most maggot filled and rotten piece of meat on the planet.
The fact that magic was somehow involved was obvious and it was extremely potent as well, not only made the mere idea of harming these children make her stomach churn, when she tried to stab her tail into the arm of the child that had yet again tried to pull on it, her movement stopped just before coming into contact with the skin and another wave of nausea hit her.
The only question now was: Why?
Why were these three children protected by such powerful magic? From the looks of things, these were your average, poor farming community children, Hanna had attacked and harmed a high ranking member of the nobility and her child and they weren’t protect by any magic, so why these dirt poor village children?
"But it just talked to us, why would she not understand us?"
"Well, she hasn’t answered has she?" The other replied innocently. Never in her entire life had Hanna heard a voice this soft before, it almost seemed her voice healed the very air it released.
The sister, evidently, didn’t agree with that statement, as she suddenly slapped her sister on the shoulder before speaking again.
"Well maaayybeeee, she simply doesn’t talk to stinky girls like you big sister."
"H-heeeyyy I don’t stink, you do!" The other replied angrily, though through her tone of voice that was hardly noticeable, but what was noticeable was the slap she gave her sister on the forehead, to which the sister readily slapped back.
The sudden slapping match between the two sisters was the thing to get Hanna out of her own thoughts once more, she looked over to the two siblings who were now starting to get a bit more aggressive in their actions, one of them started pulling the others hair, while the other was biting into the arm that was holding her in place. But even though they were clearly attacking each other, the more Hanna looked, she didn’t see any tension or real anger, it was almost as if they weren’t fighting, but playing, laughing the entire time.
The brother was standing next to them, and he was looking absolutely horrified for some reason and he desperately tried to get in between the two fighting girls to no avail while constantly saying something about them not being supposed to hit each other or else the others would be able to see.
And then Hanna noticed it for the first time.
Whenever one of the girls struck one another, the space around them would distort for a brief moment, revealing something unexpected, the girls seemingly had different skin colour whenever the space around them distorted, one of them had bright red skin while the other had a deep blue.
Already confused, Hanna didn’t know what to do with this Information, the boy next to her didn’t seem to react to it, meaning he either didn’t see anything weird happening and this was something only she could see, or he did see it and didn’t perceive it as anything out of the ordinary.
Suddenly a bright aura started to emit from the two girls, engulfing them in a bubble of pure light, their fighting got more fierce and their accompanying shouting more loud, but with it all laughter could be heard. Accompanying these sudden turn of event was the fact that each of the girls started to change right in front of Hanna‘s eyes, their skins turning to the respective colours they had in the strange rifts of space and on their heads, very small but still noticeable, horns started to grow.
The boy next to her started to visibly panic for a moment, and he rushed into the fray, trying desperately to separate his two sisters and the Momente got near them, he too started to change, his skin slowly turning a vibrant yellow and on his head a set of two horns started to grow.
Hanna fell to her knees, to overwhelmed with feelings to accurately feel her body anymore, much less actually make it function properly, not once in her entire time in this world had she felt something as intense as this, not when torturing any of the people she caught, not when killing an entire prisons worth of people, not even when she tortured and abused a child right in front of her mother. Nothing could compare to this very moment. Her entire body ached in pain, she could smell her own flesh burn whenever it came I to contact with the light the children were emitting, but she couldn’t care less, as her mind was bombarded with more and more pain.
Her body began to convulse uncontrollably and her gag reflexes started to act up, but it took time until the offending object would be properly removed from her body, and since she never once ate anything normal since arriving in this world, nothing came out of her mouth except for gurgles of pain and desperation as her body worked every muscle in her body to get that thing out of her, she threw her head back and forth in sync with her gagging and pressed on her own stomach with her own arms, all while her mind was bombarded with more knowledge about herself and pain so harsh she couldn’t even comprehend the world around her, all that mattered was the pain she felt, and that thing that just wouldn’t come out!!!
Then she felt something rising in her throat and the pain and knowledge invading her brain sized for a brief moment, being replaced with a single statement that summarised her entire existence and a statement she knew she had heard before.
'You are a disgusting tumour upon everyone’s existence, you defy any and all natural orders, you are a corruption that seeks to distort and defile everything sacred and beautiful into a twisted mockery of what it once was, all for just a bit of entertainment.'
Hanna felt like, no, knew for certain that these words had been said to her before, but when and how eluded her, but what she definitely knew now was that those words were her, they represent her and what she was to the world and those around her. A corrupting force that turns whatever it comes into contact with into a twisted form of what it was before.
She took Adeline and corrupted her into a blindly devoted follower of her and her alone, chasing a love that was never truly there and destroying anything Adeline perceived was in The way of that love, including her own parents and friends.
She took Luisa and mistreated and troubled soul and instead of helping her she fanned the flames of her hatred against the world, creating an unfeeling murder obsessed person of hatred against her own people.
And all the other lives she irreversibly changed for the worse, wounding both emotionally and physically an uncountable amounts of people and straight up ending many peoples lives. She took the beautiful lives of those people, their hopes and dreams, their aspirations and goals and smashed them into the ground, twisted them into nightmares and turned their beautiful lives into a hellish version of fear and suffering.
She was the corruption of this world, the ultimate and senseless evil that seeks to destroy every single life it came into contact with And right now she saw her biggest target right in front of her.
The lightheartedness and purity of these children in front of her was so strong it did physical damage to her rotten and corrupt body and she wanted, no, needed, to absolutely and completely destroy it, smash it into uncountable pieces and throw all of them into the void so they may never be recovered.
She will destroy everything around them and corrupt it all, to see these beacons of powerful innocent fall into the deepest and most darkest pits of despair.
To break each of them apart and everyone they love and adore, both mentally and physically, to turn them against one another and let them rip each other from limb to limb, letting the guilt eat away at the soul of the survivor for the rest of time, torturing them with pain beyond their imagination and finally snapping them completely leaving them a hollow husk of their former selves before releasing them into the world.
That…
Would be the biggest pleasure of them all.
And with a last gag, a small pure white stone was released from the depths of her body and onto the dirty earth around her.
Also, in the near future I will release a announcement chapter where you will be able to vote, I won’t reveal what for yet, but keep your eyes peeled for it, obviously you can ignore it, but if you do, just know that you are breaking my black hole I have for an heart.
Until then, have a wonderful morning/day/evening/night!
Yours
NoraNali