0.1 - Fool

"..."

Perspective: z e r o

Song: ...

Opening my eyes that morning would be the second most difficult thing I would do. Waking up dazed and confused, I began to shift my weight so I could sit up. It took the full strength of muscles I didn't even realize I had to be able to get myself upright, but by the time I did, I could see the situation clearly.

No one else was around. I had been abandoned where I was. The party I had been venturing with left me for dead when that beast came after us. Somehow I survived intact, but I had lost some blood. My wound had somehow closed itself, but I was still weak.

My mind immediately went back to those last few moments where everything went wrong, and where the decision was made to have me use my shield to slowly push us back and away from the beast. Like we had rehearsed, I kept my focus solely on it to ensure maximum protection. By the time my power had started to diminish, the party leader told me to dispel and run. I did, but was immediately met with another barrier.

"How tragic, you fool."

The remaining four got the treasure they wanted. It seemed they never intended to actually slay the beast like we had planned, and I was the scapegoat this whole time to be served up as sacrifice.

As I allowed my gaze to wander, I started to fill in some terrifying blanks. My eyes looked towards where the barrier had been placed where I noticed an arm laying. It wasn't my own, it was Eileen's. The very healer that had cast the barrier to trap me in.

What actually happened after I blanked out? I started to realize they may not have even made it out of the chamber. Once that unsettling thought entered my head, another from outside myself joined in.

"You're starting to get the full picture, fool."

"Who are you?" I muttered a response out loud to something that I didn't even understand.

"That's not important right now. I can feel the anguish inside your soul. Twenty-five years of trusting people, and yet you couldn't find a single meaningful connection in any of them. You're too lost in despair to realize that the very "beast" you've seen with your very eyes and have established within your head has full sight of you."

My heart sank. Chest tightened. I couldn't move even a single fiber of my being. Everything paused for a long moment as it started to seep into every orifice. Dread. The inevitable end to the traumatic story that was my life. No more having to walk on egg shells to get around. No longer having to watch my back to make sure no one is going to pull a fast one only to be pulled on by someone I thought was being genuine to me. It soaked into my very soul. For that one moment, I found some sort of peace, but it wasn't the peace I wanted.

I wanted this thing to devour my soul and take me from this wretched place. To deliver me from the pain and suffering that had long plagued whatever was left from this flawed heart. To give me at least something that I could hold onto. Something tangible.

"There you go. You feel it. The weight of your own soul. Your soul's bind to the abyss. It pulls you in, and in spite of that, you still manage to keep fighting. You exist. Life keeps trying to kill you. The people you open your heart to want you dead for their own foolish greed. Your willingness to trust without actually being able to connect with the hearts of those around you means you're doomed to forever only trust those who wish to take advantage of you and those who would open their heart to you, you are forced to forever keep yourself closed. A truly pathetic living if I do say so myself, but I say that from a place of actually caring."

Caring? Is that what this is called? No, of course not. If someone cared from the beginning, none of this would've happened in the first place. I would've probably been able to join an actual guild to begin my quest for belonging. That's all I wanted from the time I was born. Somewhere to belong and someone that was actually interested in allowing something to flourish.

"You misinterpret things because you're a part of this abyss. This would be where you would belong if you could shut yourself to the rest of the world, but the actual thing that prevents you from doing that is the very thing that makes most people function. You have no boundary. No border. You feel what the world feeds into you and you take what the world gives to you without any ability to separate that from yourself. You beautiful flaw."

A flaw.

"Correct. I have a solution to this. You are open to understand it, so I'll spell it out for you. I'll show you the one true kindness that no one else has been able to show you in this life. The treasure I protect is something you were drawn. The abyss has decided to answer you kindly in a way humanity never could. Because you're a flaw, you're more like the very monsters that inhabit this world rather than the source of your birth. It wasn't fair to you, but something must've gone wrong with how you were brought into this world."

A fool, or a flaw? Which am I?

"I've got no answers to that. I only have answers to where you can find placement within this world. You have a desire to protect people, but your connection to magic is actually more suited for death and destruction. Hidden so well by the abyss that it cannot be picked up through magical intuition. Those who can't hide that end up being labeled "dark" or "abyssal", but humanity ties that magic to something that isn't true. And for you, it's more of a "grey" or "ash" or even "transparent" if you want to call it that."

The voice inside of me begins to twist my mind in a way where I still cannot quite comprehend what it's saying, but I feel more comfortable indulging in whatever message it's trying to deliver me.

"It's good to hear you're at least willing to hear me out. I've already recalibrated things a bit more and made myself a part of you. This beast is going to observe your future progression. I promise I am not here to devour anything. I was locked here for a purpose, after all. While I cannot leave this chamber, a part of me can. That part of me serves as a binding back to the abyss, but it allows you to view your true potential in this world. You just have to be willing to start back at one. Not zero."

Before I could even comprehend that statement, my mind blanked. I was gone. For a moment.