“So, how was Solaris?” I immediately dragged the blanket above my head, not even bothering to open my eyes as I woke up from my deep slumber. Even if I did look out for the person who just spoke, I would just see an evil god floating above the head.

“Pretty good, although they could work on their air quality a bit.” Leaving rotting animals in the open as the guard and Hannah did wasn’t the best for the smell in certain places.

“At least they already invented soap, although not many use it…” I already did see something like this coming, so I was absolutely not surprised by how backwards this planet was. I didn’t answer, partly because there was just nothing to say, but most importantly because I didn’t really want to talk. Still, after several seconds I broke the silence again to see how good my plan worked.

“Are you angry?” He should be as I lead us to a lose-lose situation with my death, but he certainly didn’t seem that way. He was too nonchalant and didn’t even seem angry at all.

“Because you killed yourself in a prison cell, hoping to get trapped there forever? It was an interesting move, although I could see it coming from miles away. Do you want to know what you did wrong?” I absolutely didn’t want to. I seemingly lost again to this guy, even as I sacrificed so much. “You thought that I have no way of changing things on Solaris while in fact, I do have some idiots doing whatever I want. They already retrieved the key the guard threw away, so I even have to thank you for your action. Nobody will save you from the prison, except when I want them to.”

“Fuck.” His words were the single worst thing I ever heard in my life. The guard already confirmed that Hannah couldn’t save me, so there was really no way out of this cell, at least not without the key. With my actions, I gave him as much time as he needed to do whatever he wanted, with nothing to interfere with his actions. If I guessed correctly, the floor I was on would be completely underwater sometime later, which would separate me from everything. Only he could save me.

“But don’t worry, it´s not all great for me either. I have only useless followers on Solaris, so rescuing you while the place is completely submerged is impossible for me.” Didn’t that mean that I won, at least for some time? This god would be stuck here for quite some time in this case and I was quite happy about this fact. My friends could live their life in peace this way. “But you aren’t ready anyway and I need to teach you lots of stuff again.”

Whenever I found a bit of hope, he managed to crush it completely again. I sacrificed everything I had, but he used it against me once again. Tears were streaming down my face, but my mind felt strangely clear.

“I lost. I give up. Do whatever you want.” I just couldn’t continue anymore. Dealing with him felt like dealing with a black hole. You never knew what´s going on inside him and he sucked everything out of you.

“You haven’t even listened to my motivation behind all of this.” Should I care about it? Would it change anything? Would it change my mind to listen to some evil motives? Absolutely not.

“I don’t want to.” I wrapped myself into the blanket and tried to block my ears with it. After that, his voice felt even closer and was even more audible.

“But you promised.” I did, but so what? I would show him that I could still break my promises. Immediately, I unwrapped myself and glared at the god.

“I don’t care!” I screamed as loud as I could, trying to vent this frustration I felt. It didn’t work very well as the god seemingly didn’t care about the volume at all.

“Will you listen if I allow you to choose whether you keep your memories or not?” My anger and frustration vanished in an instant and were replaced by confusion. I didn’t get this guy. Why should I ever approve of removing my memories? Or did he just wanted to show me his reasons and hope that I would work together with him afterwards while I kept my memories? But that would make no sense either as he already held all the cards in his hands. Still, it was an opportunity I just had to take.

“Alright, I listen.” I started hoping again, based on my previous experience with him. He never once broke a promise I remembered so far, so I just had to say no in the end and everything would be fine.

“Is that so? Take my hand then.” I didn’t immediately understand why he wanted to hold hands but as soon as I did, I knew there was no going back.

 “Askatesh, the destroyer of worlds. You’re a liar.” Quite sometime later, I was laying in the bed again, this time on top of the blanket. The god was reading a book beside me and left me alone with my racing thoughts. What he previously showed me changed everything from the ground up.

“I never said that I am only saying the truth.” I certainly couldn’t remember anything like this either, but I was still shocked how much he actually lied to me, just to get me to exactly this point.

“But that … that was the whole truth?” At first, I couldn’t exactly believe what he told me, but it started to make sense at some point. Every contradicting thing about myself and the world fitted perfectly together if I were to believe him.

“It was. I don’t have any intent to lie to you ever again.” Sometimes, he could be really nice, which made me doubt him even more usually, but not in this case. I turned my head to look at him. The once completely dark figure turned into a perfectly normal human. He had Blonde hair, was around eighteen years old, quite short for his age and had piercing dark blue eyes. He honestly looked quite handsome, which made everything even weirder.

 “Is that so? Anyway, I don’t believe your plan will work.” If he wanted to succeed, we would need to spend a lot of time together, at least in the beginning. I just knew that this could never work with our characters. “We both need to like each other somehow, otherwise we will smash the other´s head quite often.”

“Liking each other is a bit too difficult for me… it includes preferences to character, actions by the other person and even more. Besides, I don’t think liking each other would bring us far enough…” I turned away from him, weirded out by what his words implied.

“You will make me love you?” The thought didn’t freak me out as much as it should, but considering it was my only way forward, I was willing to accept that.

“I already did, I just suppressed your feelings for me.” He planned out everything in advance. It was no wonder that I lost time and time again. But if he was so successful so far, there was no reason to think that it wouldn’t stay like this and this was exactly what we both needed.

“Weirdo.” Still, thinking about everything I learned until now made him shine in quite a weird light. I took my pillow and threw it in his face, knowing that I wouldn’t go further than this.

“I think I deserved that.”  I nodded satisfied and looked back towards him. Just as I wanted to speak up, he put his book away and continued the conversation. “I don’t think there is a need to drag this out any further. Have you made up your mind?”

“Will I be free in the end?”

“Nobody will be able to manipulate you like I did if we succeed if that’s what you mean by being free.” I shrugged as I found it quite hard to define freedom myself. Freedom was … well, I never was free until this point, so I couldn’t exactly say what I wanted in the first place.

“That’s good enough. You can erase my memories now.” I was ready. I had no regrets whatsoever and although I liked these memories I had, I knew that they would stand in the way at some point. They already felt so distant to me that I couldn’t quite see myself in them anymore, so I didn’t mind it too much. After all, even with my memories go, I would still stay the same as I am now.

“You need to strip down for that.” He smiled, but I already started to regret my decision. If this was my future …

“Quit joking and start already.” He was disgruntled, probably because I wasn’t in the mood for this kind of joke.

“Alright, alright. Do you want to say any last words?” How sweet of him to allow me that. Did I had any great words like ‘That´s one small step for Lucinda, but a giant leap for vampirekind?’ I knew that this one wouldn’t quite work, so I came up with something else quickly.

“Yes.” That one wasn’t it, but I had to set this one up properly.

“Now is your time to shine.”

“Any last words.” With a bad joke as my last words and a smile on my lips, darkness engulfed me once again, while I knew exactly what I just did. With my pact with this evil god, I risked the whole planet where the others were living on. Not only that but I also implicitly declared war against every other god, although it would take some time for both me and them to notice that fact.

I did everything in the name of freedom for myself and the others that were as unfortunate as me. While his goals were differing a lot, that didn’t quite bother me because our goals were both dependent on each other in a certain way.  The god and I would change everything from the bottom up and would certainly need to sacrifice a lot of things.

But that didn’t matter as well because everything was wrong.