Mother? Why are you here? Ah, this is a dream, isn’t it?

You remember your mother? As always, you are a filial daughter. Ciara, how are you?

I don’t know mother. I don’t know. Still, a dream huh, I never had dreams until then.

That’s right, Ciara. You are not alone now. You are by his side again. You always had nightmares when you are alone. Even in your dreams, you fight. But now you dream my child.

I think it's nice.

Ciara, are you really okay?

I am livid. In a way, I’ve reunited with the only person that I always been with.

Ah, love is wonderful.

Love? No, I don’t think that it is as simple as love. Ciara Alician and Nolan Salvatore is a pair. Mother, you’ve been with me and you know how it usually ends.

Yes, but this time you are at his mercy, my daughter.

I am. But I am ready to die if I must. I’ve been hurting this man for years, and not once did he utter a cry. That’s why it surprised me that he fought me at that time. That he hated me enough to kill me if he could.

You love him for that even more. You silly girl. Still, when I told you that a good man must wait. Not this long! You’ve turned him into someone who none could understand. No, that was your goal.

Mother, you said to me once. “A good man must wait for her lady.” And he did wait for me. Along the line, I was the one who threw him away. I threw him away!

Oh, don’t smile about that, child!

Don’t worry I am just being silly. I’ve been living because I was told that I was needed. When a child cries, the War Maiden offers her hand and when the world cries the War Maiden will soothe it. I’ve been saving a lot of people and worlds, mother. I’ve been doing it alone for decades after I lost the family that I wanted to save from our original home. Nolan, he has a knack for surviving and here he is in this world!

Ciara, don’t tell me you’ve never noticed?

What notice?

You are fooling yourself, child. You know, don’t you? Every timeline and every world you said that you met him and he did things. But that’s a lie. There was a one time where he, didn’t exist. In an instance of a timeline, there is a time where Nolan Salvatore doesn’t exist. You know that, right? You know that and you want to forget about it. No, no, simply, you don’t want to realize that there might be another truth about the lover you thought was no one special. You didn’t save him because he was strong. Nolan Salvatore, you know what he is and you are afraid to ask him about it. Am I right?

Stop, you are a phantom.

Wasn’t it weird that he knew how to fix machines that shouldn’t able to be fixed? That despite how he labels himself in names he was different. He didn’t have the soul of a warrior. He was a foreigner who was trying to survive. His looks weren’t that of a usual human. He was a survivalist more than a warrior. He was a survivor who had to manage to walked so far despite having no power. You know this, did you?

A phantom shouldn’t talk so much.

I am a dream inside of you. Hit me all you want but this dream won’t end until then. Do you understand that?

I do. I greatly understand the gravity of the situation. Great, I thought this was a dream but it turned out to be a nightmare. What a joke.

You never really asked that. Why are you so scared, Ciara? How can you be scared?

Because no one but me can ever know. You are a phantom, and it has been a while since I’ve become like this. You wouldn’t know. You are a ghost inside my dream. Since you are a ghost I can you tell you a bit? What scares the War Maiden the most in this world?

Nothing. I am not afraid. But I fear something.

When did you realize that he might not belong here?

There was a time where he fixed the transmitter that connects voices. He also fixed the automobile that he shouldn’t know. He was trapped for five hundred years as a living battery while his fragment was fixing things that he shouldn’t be able to.

You found that he was called a mute and someone who didn’t know the language. What was he called before? He named himself Lanon because of our language. His intonation is different and it took him years to get good at it. You suspected something but didn’t want to pursue it. You thought of him as an eccentric man. Ah, you were afraid to ask the man who you told to wait. Ooooooooohhhhh, the war maiden of space and time, is afraid of a question, and the man, who she cherished the most in the worlds? Wonderful, this is fascinating.

Is that so? Is this my ego?

Who knows? How long were holding on to your sanity? How long was it that you manage to keep yourself sane?

Barely, I barely made it the moment they took everything away from me. Can’t you believe how those people that I know were killed simply because I was with them? It was a time where the only way to escape them was through the madness. Mother, when you are facing illogical beings that are not capable of human thought. Self-contained madness is the only way to go. When you have no madness in you, then those irrational beings won’t stop hounding you. I lost them because I killed them and I took their hearts with them. Gods have foundations on why they became Gods. Through a legend or a myth, or they are natural-borne to serve the purpose and humanity isn’t developed inside of them. So you fight their madness with madness.

And Ciara Alician’s cure to madness is fighting inside a labyrinth that holds powerful monsters?

That’s the gist of it.

I see. It must be maddening. To fight beings like that.

Not really.

Is that so?

Yes. You see, Mother. I’ve fought things that people wouldn’t understand. I’ve seen things that you, and no one would possibly believe. I saw civilizations burn, and creations, turn to dust. I once stood on an asteroid and watched two planets close to a dwarf star freeze. I saw the end of the world and had a peak of the records of those beings that existed in the timeline.

Did you look into the Akashic records? The bible of all that is human, whether past, future and the current. Did you look at it?

Everyone who I knew existed in this Akashic Record of this bubble. Mother, the world tree inside a bubble, a planet that houses galaxies and stars and systems billions of billions of years old. Like how outside a planet is a space. Just outside the bubble that contains the world tree is another space the contains an infinite number of another plane of reality. In those worlds, magic might not exist. There are different individuals and different people. There might be carbon-based lifeforms or silicon-based lifeforms. So, tell me, mother, do you know why I am afraid of asking the question? Do you know why I went with madness? Imagine, the people you know that were taken from you still existed in the book that contains all record of the humans inside the world tree bubble, and the person who you were looking for wasn’t there despite the Gods of the plane telling you that they erased all of you. They existed in a record and he wasn’t in that record. Do you know how that feels? To know that the person you are in loved with. The person that you asked to wait might not have existed at all? Despite the family that I gathered being supposedly erased from existence still written in that book?

I don’t understand.

Exactly! You wouldn’t understand! You are a phantom! You do not exist within my external world. Because we are in my internal world that we are talking like this. So, does that answer why I’m afraid to ask the question? Why I am afraid that the moment I asked the question he will disappear?

Then why didn’t you asked him in our homeworld?

Asked him what? I wasn’t sure and I have already said to you that he might be just an illusion inside my head.

Then what about the time you made love? Or when you have made a child?

That’s the worst thing. The fact that the only proof that he exists is that one single moment. In that timeline where I stupidly sacrificed my child for a battle that I would lose? I may be a brave person. But I am not that brave to ask a question that denies his existence. I know that I have done him wrong but to outright ask that question? I am not that cruel. I cannot do it.

Still, to give up? Are you really going to give up? Just like that?

There are an Empress and an Emperor whose castle was located on top of a firmament. They had warriors that could break the speed of light. They could slash time and space with their sword techniques. They can fly on their swords and have pagodas that contain space. They have rings that could store millions of item. They can live for years without eating or sleeping. They just sit cross-legged and strengthened their bodies. So when I arrived in their world, they thought of me as a master that has peaked. I was perpetual. They were as well. But, their soul can still be destroyed. Their path or their way is their philosophy.

I defeated their strongest. He asked for my hand but I refused. I said I was taken. He wanted to challenge my lover so I killed him to prevent that. The Emperor and Empress was so amused they let me inside their jade palace. They had fourteen children and many of them were beautiful. Well, their Princes were fanatics about the throne, but that Emperor and Empress were strong so that they will wait forever to take the throne.

Do you envy them?

I do. I really do. They were strong together and happy together. Can’t you believe it? They were nobodies who fought their way to the top. Through fruitful encounters, they defied the heavens and became ruler of that firmament. Among the many that the Gods wanted to erase. They were the only ones who fought back and sealed their world where no one could enter it. The Empress before our parting kissed me on the forehead, and said, “I wish you luck, and hope that you will find your other half.”

Your other half?

That’s right. Do you have a problem with that?

Not all. Though I think you’ve blown your chances. Oh, don’t look so depressed!

I am indeed. I will not lie. It’s funny that the roles are reversed now. Do you know why I beat him up once? I hated how obsessed he was with me. How he followed me like a good dog. He never gave up and a stubborn and forceful man is hard to reject.

And he hates you now.

He does. I wouldn’t forgive him if he had killed my children twice.

You’d allow yourself to die because of this. For forgiveness?

Yes. I would be a happy woman if my end would be at his hand. It’s the right thing to do. So get out of my internal world, Mother, no, you Phantom. I want to dream for a while. It has been a while.

You poor girl. Always all alone aren’t you? I wonder, will you succeed in this task? You’ve been through many worlds and even sailed the stars and the void itself. But can you accomplish this task? Well, can you?

I don’t know. For once in my life, I am uncertain whether I can succeed.