Date: Irrelevant Location: The Void

  Hmmmmmm… I was sleeping really, really well… What’s this noise?... That doesn’t sound like the farm’s rooster, it’s less loud…

  Nyx wakes up, floating in space. The familiar sound of the collapsing stars in the distance was ringing in her ears, and she could see all the galaxies she created spanning over impossible distances in front of her.

  - “Oh no… is my human time done? I remember them having much longer lifespans than three months! No fair!”

  - “...Calm down.” She hears behind her.

  When she turns, she sees a rugged but worn down wooden table floating in the void, with a chair next to it on which a mirror image of herself was sitting. They were exactly identical, save for two details: the other one did not have the glowing star shaped patterns in her eyes, and her clothes were slightly more elaborate. She had a very neutral expression on her face, almost looking disappointed.

  - “Ah! You must be Vanessa!” Nyx exclaims. “You sound like her!”

  - “I am. Stop being so… enthusiastic while you’re wearing my face, it’s a little cringe.”

  - “I’m just like that, deal with it!”

  - “Of course.” Vanessa sighs. “Alright come sit at the table. We need to talk.”

  - “Oh!” Nyx looks down at herself, and realizes that she does have a body, and isn’t just a presence in the cosmos as she is accustomed to be. “I’m still a human!” She exclaims as she floats over to the table. A second chair manifests out of thin air on the other side of it, and she sits down.

  - “Yes, we're in our shared consciousness. You just…” Vanessa looks around at the universe around them. “...take up a lot more space than I do. The table is my domain, the rest is yours, and that’s probably why you’re in control.”

  - “Well, that’s good for me!”

  - “...Alright listen, I’ve seen what you’ve done.” Vanessa waves her hand, and the table dynamically changes colors, essentially displaying video records of the past three months through Nyx’s point of view. “And I’m really, really grateful for what you’ve done. The village is safe, my parents are safe, and I am… somewhat okay.”

  - “Glad you appreciate it! That was a lot of fun!”

  - “But.”

  - “?”

  Vanessa suddenly jumps over the table and reaches over, grabbing Nyx’s ear and pulling her upright.

  - “Ouch!” Nyx screams. “What gives?!”

  - “Listen here you little smug idiot.” Vanessa replies, her voice so low it was almost a whisper. “I don’t care what kind of being you are, you need to get some god damn preservation instincts. You’ve got some insanely powerful magic, and yet you let us get kidnapped?!” She pulls harder on Nyx’s ear.

  - “But it’s an interesting development! I don’t want to ruin i- OUCH!”

  - “What if we die?! I don’t want mom and dad to have to grieve for me just because you decided to be a moron!”

  - “Okay okay!” Nyx raises her hands in the air. “Stop pulling on my ear!”

  - “As long as you understand.” Vanessa releases her, and Nyx starts rubbing her now red ear.

  - “Why is pain so much worse here?”

  - “You’re much weaker to mental pain than physical pain. We’re in our mindscape, so any damage you take here is mental.”

  - “How do you know so much about this place while I don’t though?”

  - “I’ve been stuck here for three months. Gives me some time to experiment around.”

  - “Ah. I guess that’s fair!”

  - “Anyways, defend yourself from now on. Another thing, all pain you claim that you don’t feel outside, well I feel it too. And I’m not as pain tolerant as you are, so I would love it if you stopped throwing yourself from trees and generally testing the limits of how far my body can go. If you want an answer to that question, it’s really not that far.”

  - “So you’re saying I actually need to fight the people who attack me? But they’re going to die! I don’t want to extinguish humans!”

  - “I’m not saying to kill them! What do you think I am, some kind of demon ? Just knock them out or something, figure something out!”

  - “But…”

  - “We’re running out of time here.” Vanessa cuts. As she says that, Nyx’s vision starts to darken. “I don’t know when we’ll be able to talk to each other again, so promise me that you’ll take better care of ourselves if you don’t want me to pull on your ear next time.”

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  - “Oh right, promises! Sure, I’ll do that then, even if that’s boring.”

  Vanessa actually has a light smile as Nyx’s vision turns completely dark, and she hears her say one last thing.

  - “Sorry for being so forceful.”

  Date: March 6th, year 1286 Location: ???

  Nyx wakes up covered in sweat. She looks around to assess her surroundings. She was in a wooden cage with metal bars, on the floor of a very dark stone cavern only illuminated by a few torches present on the support beams here and there. Other cages were visible all around the cave, with humano?d figures barely moving inside. When she tries getting up on her feet, she notices a black metal ring attached to her ankle, linked to the floor of the cage by a chain made of the same metal. The light from her eyes was slightly illuminating the darkness wherever she looked.

  - “Ugh… my head…” Nyx complains.

  - “Oh, she’s awake.” A voice says a few meters away from her cage. It was a guard clad in leather and chainmail armor. He frowns. “Freaky eyes.”

  - “Hi! Are you a trafficker?”

  - “...Yeah I guess? Thank the gods I’ve been assigned to the section with the non combative captures, given the weirdos we get here I can’t imagine what they have to deal with at the special containment unit.”

  - “No problem, I think!”

  - “Huh? What’re you yapping about?”

  - “You thanked me!”

  - “Is she Night Touched?... Anyways, I gotta report to the boss.” The guard leaves, exiting through a heavy wooden door on the other side of the cave, which apparently led to a much more lit up area.

  Silence and darkness fill the cave again as the door closes behind him, and Nyx starts looking around again. Her flashlight-like gaze stops on the cage next to her, and its occupant crawls away in fear. It was a boy no older than fifteen, with fully white hair, eyes that were colored a mix of blue and purple, and long, pointy ears.

  - “Hey!” Nyx greets him, and he flinches.

  - “...Don’t be that loud, or we’ll both get in trouble. Please stop talking to me, and… looking at me. It’s weird.” He replies. His voice sounded like he hadn’t drank water in a long time.

  - “Huh. Sure!” Nyx gets up and starts pulling on the chain binding her to the cage. The metal ring creaks and jets of blood squirt from her ankle as the chunk of wood that the chain was attached to is ripped from the structure. “That’s painful!”

  She then grabs the metal bars of the cage and pulls them towards her. The amount of force she applies to them causes the bars to snap and send splinters flying across the cage. She steps out, dragging the chain behind her, and starts heading towards the exit.

  - “Wait!...” She hears from the cage containing the boy with the long ears. “How did you end up here if you’re so strong?!”

  - “To follow the story! But someone told me that I can’t let myself get kidnapped so I have to cut that short.”

  - “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but if you’re gonna escape take me with you please!”

  - “Why would I do that? You still have plenty of things to experience in your story, you’re so lucky!”

  - “I don’t want to be sold!”

  - “Too bad!” Nyx starts walking away.

  - “...You’ll never escape if you try to do it alone!” He violently coughs before continuing. "At least let me help!"

  - “Oh? You should’ve just said that from the start!” She walks over and bends the bars of his cage to the side. The boy swiftly rushes out of his cage, and runs towards a nearby puddle of water on the floor to drink from it.

  - “You shouldn’t drink dirty water.” Nyx comments. “Father told me it’s bad for your heal-”

  Nyx is interrupted by the sounds of tens of people yelling, pleading things such as “Don’t leave me here too!”, “I’ll help however I can!”, or “I want to go back home!”.

  - “What’s going on?!” They all hear as the heavy wooden door slams open and the guard from earlier steps through it, a wooden club in hand. He immediately notices Nyx standing outside of her cage with a bloody leg and a pouting expression on her face. “You! They said you weren’t dangerous!”

  - “I’m not!” Nyx replies. “Just don’t attack me, or I’ll have to defend myself even if I don’t want to.” She grumbles.

  The guard runs towards her, club raised above his head and Nyx sighs.

  - “Come on, I really don’t want to kill… Oh hold on, I know what would work! Humans can survive rocks!” Nyx exclaims. “I just need to harden some light and…”

  As she says that, an astero?d twice her size forms in front of her, and flies straight into the guard. The latter is hit, and sent flying a few meters back, unceremoniously landing on the floor of the cave. Nyx notices his chest slowly going up and down, indicating that he was still alive albeit barely. The astero?d she manifested was embedded in the cave's wall, and slowly dissolving into particles of light.

  - “I did it!” She celebrates.

  - “Erm.” The boy with the long ears clears his throat. “I’m sorry for being rude earlier, my name is Julian.”

  - “Oh you were being rude?”

  - “Yeah…” He turns away. “Anyways on another topic, you should really free the others. I’m sure they can help if you’re doing the heavy lifting with whatever magic you’re using.”

  - “Sure!”

  Nyx starts walking around the cave, bending the bars of each and every cage. People with widely different appearances come out of them, some being of races she had never even seen before. She was seeing humans with tiger tails, or with butterfly wings among other animal features. While she is working, Julian approaches her and starts to follow her.

  - “It’d probably help if you used your magic.” He comments, looking at Nyx’s increasingly bruised hands.

  - “That would kill them though!”

  - “You can’t control your output?...”

  - “Oh I can! The astero?d earlier was a lot less concentrated than my stars, so it didn’t kill the guy with the club! Also I’m happy because using it doesn’t make me tired like the neutron star or the gravitational field.”

  - “I can’t understand half of what you’re saying… Can you dumb down what your magic does? I really can’t make anything of it.”

  - “I can create celestial bodies! They’re a looot smaller though, I can’t create my usual big stars like the sun. Believe me I tried!”

  - “So it’s like Astral magic?”

  - “What’s that?”

  - “You don’t know? It’s the magic that’s used by Lord Solomon.”

  - “Oh, that thing? Right, I guess we’re using the same magic then !”

  - “You-”

  - “What about you?” Nyx cuts. “You’re an elf right? I remember that you guys are partially made of light, so I’m sure you can use magic! What’s yours?”

  - “Light ? You mean magical energy?...”

  - “Is that what humans call it now?”

  - “That’s what everyone calls it.”

  - “Huh, noted! So, what about my question?”

  - “...Nothing impressive. I can make the air next to me more or less solid. The best I can do is make it as hard as wood.” His shoulders slump. “Nothing that would’ve changed anything…” He whispers.

  - “I heard that! You know what, I’m curious now.” Nyx says as she destroys the last cage. “How did you end up here?”

  - “I… don’t think that’s the time or place to talk about that…”

  - “Alright then you’ll have to tell me all about it when we get out of here!” Nyx declares as she starts walking towards the door, followed by all the former prisoners.