Chapter 37:

Chapter 34 - A Hole in the Wall

An Original Sin

Kaya yelled to Inda.

“How do you expect us to do that? I’ll try anyway, though!”

Kaya shot up, hovering over the dragon. She put both her hands together and opened her palms.

Through her palms, she shot flames out. It would be enough to remove somebody as strong as Verwa from existence.

The dragon pulled its head back after getting hit with the flames. But, it was unharmed. It regenerated instantly.

“Huuuuuhh?!”

Kaya fell back down. She couldn’t hurt it with her flames.

She yelled out to Inda.

“Inda! Your plan is stupid! I can’t hurt it with flames!”

“... Maybe they just weren’t strong enough?”

Inda laughed as Kaya got mad. She yelled out to Kaya.

“We gotta find out how it's regenerating. We might be able to stop it.”

Kaya nodded. Electricity circled around Inda’s legs as she bolted towards the dragon’s tail. With a single kick from above, she severed its tail.

“Now! Let’s see how it regenerates!”

Inda held its tail far away from it, so it couldn’t reattach it. If it grew back, it had to be using resources from inside of its body to regenerate, and therefore have a limit. If it simply reattached the necessary parts, then they could dismember it until it couldn’t fight back.

Inda carefully watched as the dragon readied itself. In between its pelvis and its tail, space distorted. Reality seemed as if it bent itself to the will of this creature. The space between Inda who was holding the tail and the dragon disappeared in an instant, as the tail reconnected itself.

This wasn’t regeneration. It was space displacement. Inda realized this and yelled out to Kaya.

“It’s not regenerating! It’s moving the space attached to the matter!”

Kaya yelled back.

“What’s a matter?!”

“Things! It pulled back its tail by distorting the space around it!”

Kaya looked stunned, but then grinned.

“How much heat do you think you can handle, Inda?”

Inda tilted her head.

“I don’t know! A lot, I think?”

“Good! Prepare yourself!”

Kaya closed her eyes and walked to the middle of the room. The dragon stood in front of her, ready to strike with its claws.

But Kaya didn’t flinch. Instead, magic began to flow throughout her entire body. The room got hotter. It was like a sauna.

Inda stood there, watching Kaya.

The room got even hotter. It was like an oven now. Both Kaya and Inda were struggling a bit.

“WE END THIS HERE! I’LL ANNIHILATE THIS UNFAIR CREATURE!”

Flames shot out of Kaya’s body in every direction, filling the entire room. She was resistant to the flames, so she wasn’t harmed much. But Inda wasn’t. She had to dodge the flames, and even then part of her arms and legs got charred.

Kaya yelled out to the dragon.

“If there's no space you can survive in, there's nowhere you can attach your limbs back to!”

The dragon knew it would die if it didn’t do anything. It held its head back and opened its mouth. It would need to kill Kaya with this one beam.

“No you don’t!”

Inda blitzed forward and kicked the dragon’s head off like a soccer ball. The space next to its head began to distort, but Kaya was prepared.

She began to yell as she released even more fire towards the area of the dragon’s head.

The head disintegrated and the dragon fell over.

Kaya pulled back her flames and fell onto the floor with Inda.

“Haah… Haaahhhhhh… This stupid dragon made me use all my flames. I don’t even know where we are. This… it's all… argh…”

They both couldn’t stand up.

Kaya grinned and held out her fist to Inda, and Inda bumped it with hers.

They won.

______________________________________________________________________________

Everybody had completed their trial by this point. For Ame, it was a test of value. For Nell, it was a test of his emotions, if one could call it a test in the first place. For Kaya and Inda, it was a test of brain and brawn. For Sy, it was a test of identity. And for Dominic, it was a test of resolve.

But they had all completed it.

Ame had previously told Sy that he was going to scout out the area. He had already left quite a bit ago when this message popped into his head.

“Everybody has completed their trial. You are now in the same reality. Please reconvene at the mural of value.”

‘Everybody’s completed them?’ Ame thought.

He didn’t know everybody had a trial as well, except for Sy. Also, the mural of value could only mean one location. It was the picture of the heart, clock and scale.

Ame scratched his head and began to walk back to Sy, when he came across something he had never seen before.

There was a hole in the wall. Inside the hole was a pitch black room, only illuminated by the stars under his feet and above his head.

And in the middle, sat a golden throne. A throne with blood pooling under it.

He was in Nell’s internal world.

He looked around, until he saw somebody. More specifically, two people. He was on guard, because these were obviously not regular people.

They were gods.

Ame had previously read Aqlli’s book after Nell tossed it to him. He recognized these two.

It was L’eau and the God of Time. His jaw was wide open as he stumbled over his words.

“L-L’eau. I thought you were dead.”

It was all coming to him. When Nell mentioned L’eau as if it was a person, he wasn’t talking about the country. Ame didn’t come to the conclusion that he was talking about the late first ruler, because she was obviously dead. But he knew now. These gods had a connection to Nell. This was the person who Nell feared so much.

L’eau turned to him and spoke coldly.

“Oh. Ame Nishimura. Did you enjoy the trial I created for you? You did well, I suppose.”

Ame grit his teeth.

“Where am I?! What are you?! Explain!”

L’eau looked him in the eyes.

“If you mean currently, you are in what you would know as Nell’s internal world. If you mean where you just were, then the answer would be a reality I created with the help of The Original Sin. And that second question is rather rude. What am I, you ask? You know me.”

Ame walked up to her and placed his hand on the throne.

She scowled at him.

“Get your dirty hands off the throne. I only tolerate you because you make my love, Nell, happy.”

Ame yelled back.

“You’ve caused Nell more harm than I ever could. Your husband's The Original Sin, and yet you chase after Nell? He wants nothing to do with you. Stick with what you have.”

Ame spoke furiously.

“ISN’T THAT THE LAW YOU MADE, L’EAU?!”

The law that L’eau made to never be allowed to leave a romantic partner caused the death of his parents. And yet, in his eyes, L’eau was doing the exact thing she made illegal.

She stared down at him.

“You know nothing of my love. Get out. I need to patch these hallways up better.”

Ame was kicked out of the hole in the wall, and sent right back to the hallway.

“FUCK!”

Inside Nell’s internal world, the God of Time spoke to L’eau.

“Wasn’t that a bit harsh?”

She responded.

“Just a bit of payback.”

______________________________________________________________________________

My trial was finished. I was still shaking a bit, but after I got that message in my head, I felt relieved. I could be with everybody. I wouldn’t have to go without comfort.

I ran down the hall without stopping until I bumped into somebody.

“Dominic!”

Dominic stood in front of the mural, sword in hand.

“I’m glad you’re safe, Nell. We can talk about what happened once everybody’s here.”

I nodded and sat down with him. About a minute later, more footsteps came down the hallway.

It was Inda and Kaya.

Inda yelled out my name and Kaya yelled out Dominics. They both sat down next to us as Kaya spoke.

“Our trial was hard! I’m still confused on why we’re doing this.”

I knew exactly why we were doing this.

“I’ll explain when Ame and Sy get here.”

Kaya nodded and Inda asked me a question.

“Nell, what was your trial about?! Ours was fighting a dragon.”

They were lucky. Really lucky. I didn’t stand a chance at winning mine. I didn’t know what to say.

I looked down at the floor and spoke. I didn’t want them to think less of me because of my trial.

“I had to fight a weird string monster.”

Inda and Kaya spoke up.

“String monster?!”

Dominic turned to me.

“You saw that too?”

“Yeah.”

I’m glad Dominic saw it too, so my lie had at least a bit of support.

More people came rushing down the hallway. It was Ame and Sy.

Ame ran up to me and hugged me.

“Nell!”

I smiled. This was the warmth I liked. It didn’t invade me. Ame sat down as his facial expression turned serious.

“Nell. Explain what’s going on. We aren’t mad. I just want to know. I saw the God of Time and L’eau.”

I lowered my eyes. I didn’t want Ame to know about them. I didn’t want to rope him into any of this. But, he already knew enough for it to harm him if I didn’t explain.

So I did.

“When I was born, I was injected with knowledge. That’s how I know how to read and write, and many other things about the world. But I was never injected with knowledge of anything social. I met Ame, and he taught me. He taught me how to feel, and how to act like a human. But what I wanted most of all was an identity. When I was asleep in Ame’s basement, I met the God of Time for the first time. I was in my internal world, and she told me that I needed to sit on the throne to have an identity. I wanted to sit on the throne. She told me I needed to complete L’eau’s game as one of the requirements. This is the preliminary round. Marē sent us here, most likely by the orders of L’eau. These trials are a stepping stone into letting me sit on the throne. I don’t know why they dragged you into this. I’m sorry. I am.”

Everybody’s eyes were wide.

Kaya spoke.

“So that’s the thing that cut my hand off!”

I nodded my head.

Inda looked really confused. She hadn’t been here for long, so it was no surprise.

Ame seemed like he already knew most of it. He did know a lot of it, but some of this should have been new to him.

Dominic spoke up.

“Do you know anything about why they didn’t give us a trial? That string monster didn’t seem like it was trying to fight me.”

“I don’t. I’m sorry.”

Sy piped in.

“Is that why you can enter people's internal worlds?”

I nodded again.

I didn’t want to tell them this. I was trying to leave out as much information as possible.

But I was tired. I was really tired.

Another announcement from the God of Time came through our heads.

“Ahem! Nell has told you everything you need to know. He did leave out some information about The Original Sin, though. But that’s not his responsibility! I’ll be teleporting you into the final trial room. All of you will work together to plant the seeds of genesis inside of yourself. Dominic already has it, though. His meeting with the King of Hell helped a lot, haha. Anyway! See you soon!”

She seemed to be a lot happier about something. She usually wasn’t this excited. But she didn’t need to say I left out something about The Original Sin. Everybody looked at me in confusion, but didn’t ask any questions.

I was grateful that they didn’t.

Bzzzzt!

A hole appeared in the place of the mural. It led to an incredibly wide room with no windows, only lit up by the torches strung on the walls and a window. The yellowish bricks in the hallway carried over to this room, but in the back wall, there was a lot of stained glass. The window led nowhere though, it was as if I was staring into an infinite pit of gloomy light, only colored by the stained glass it was behind.

But, my eyes were dragged into the middle along with everybody else's. Floating on top of a small staircase that led up to the stained glass was the God of Time.

“You all look about ready to start.”

A timer appeared on the stained glass, with the numbers 20:00.

The God of Time smirked.

“All you have to do is survive. Every hit that damages me is another minute off the clock. I’ll go easy on you, don’t worry.”

The timer started.

“But I won’t hesitate to end any of your lives.”

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Nell's Notebook: Page 29

Eggs

Sour strips

Aloe vera Ame shampoo

Tomato