Sentience: The capacity to experience feelings and sensations.

It is a simple concept of consciously feeling and distinguishing. 

A lion stalks, and hunts its prey. It moves in prides, and adheres to its own social construct. 

A worker ant follows its tasks and leads the colony to food through its trail.

Bacteria cells too, according to Reber’s Evolutionary Theory, show chemotaxis. 

No matter how small they may be, all life may be sentient by definitions. 

As a living being, the organism works towards survival.

And to survive, it reacts and adapts to stimuli.

What about Roombas which would constantly improve its efficiency through a self-learning algorithm? Artificial Intelligence? That is where the line was drawn. Inanimate, non-biological entities have never been proven to show sentience.

Watering down the specifics, the entity had to exist on a cellular level as a bare minimum. It had to be observed to be understood. That was the rule of the world understood by science.

But the world was no longer on Earth, a bastion ruled by science and logic of earthlings. Parvula was a world where magic and the strange existed. Sentience of the unordinary was not a foreign concept— Parvula had gods, and goddesses.

 

Since time untold, Parvula was a world governed by gnosticism. There were ones of every human virtue whom the humans sought their daily graces from. Consciousness sending their wishes, nourishment for their thoughts.

 

In their names, humans pray.

Fertility— A mother closes her eyes with faith as she goes into labor. An elf smiles as she plucks and closes her eyes in gratitude for a good harvest from nature.

Fortune— The gambler opens his cards with an expectant gait. A mercenary tucks a necklace into his armor, happy to live another day as he leans tiredly by a campfire. 

Love— The young lady offers a flower to her childhood friend. A couple renews their vows as the heavens watch from above. 

Prosperity— The farmer, the innkeeper, the king of the country looks upon their respective lands as they think about their futures.

Justice— The knight draws his sword as mountain bandits approach a carriage of his mistress. Criminals jailed in the darkest dungeons wail out in anger as they curse her name.

War— The lord speaks to his soldiers from atop the castle walls as enemies approach the walls.

 

In Parvula, people seek strength and solace from these ideas. And in turn, these ideas become stronger. Strong enough to birth these concepts. They were all given form through the thoughts and consciousness of people. 

Manifestations into reality through the use of a saintess, or a young adventurer suddenly gaining a second wind even after receiving a fatal attack from a monster. Or even the simple courage to face one’s love interest.

That ‘rule’ of Parvula, was what gave concepts sentience, as they showed their influence in various ways. This was what the ‘goddesses’ were; sapient beings who oversaw the world under their concepts.

But, goddesses were not easily born. The world needed the strong consciousness of the concept in order for it to manifest itself. It needed to be nurtured, and realized. And only when enough ideas were coalesced and understood, that it could manifest itself.

 

At first, there was a connection it sensed.

Following that, it began to sense more of the world through that thought. It began to feel, as the mind envelops familiar states of being.

It was a mountain.

A chunk of ore falling down to the surface.

A fire. Crackling as the ore turned to a metal.

The metal was made into a sword.

Received by a soldier, as he formed in line of an army.

A country.

Countries.

It began to feed off the images filling through the connection, as they continuously expanded until it could see the world in its entirety. Something deep inside began to surge like the ebb and flow of the sea. They slowly entered itself, as if enlightening it what it was going to be made out of.

Disaster. Famine. Pestilence. 

Terrible sights filled its mind. But it felt as if the imagery implanted within itself was natural. As if an empty jug would welcome and contain the liquid pouring into it, the images were greedily devoured. When there was enough, it could then see.

Its perspective shot back down to a single location, where it was born from.

A country in ruins. Flag-bearers showing conflict between two armies. It was familiar to itself, and the newborn entity found solace in the dark miasma shrouding the battlefield. The humans could not see nor understand it, but all of that had to be its nutrients. No, perhaps something like food was an inaccurate term. It simply floated in a birds-eye view, and the miasma would be pulled towards itself like a magnet.

The connection was formed by that person.

 

A black-haired human. It wouldn’t be easy to notice, as he’d blended well amidst a mountain of corpses. He, who had blood spilt all over his chest and an arm dismembered, was staring up into the sky with labored breathing. Screams could be heard in the distance, making the human’s eyes twitch each time. He was muttering something under his breath with a sad look on his face.

The maroon sky above dimly lit the graveyard in bloody orange. It seemed like the side of the black-haired human was about to lose. He too, was about to pass. The miasma emitted by the black centipedes, unseen to the human eye, was coiling around his body. It understood what state the human was in, and feeling a strange compulsion, it floated down to meet his gaze.

A soldier. No, that wasn’t right. This human wore strange clothes different from the world’s inhabitants. On his one remaining fist was a brawler’s gauntlet.

With its gathering thoughts, it realizes.  

The male, was its first believer.

A belief so strong that it had become a tether to its existence. Of course, the tether would be easily broken now that it was fully realized as a higher being. But it did not cut the connection immediately.

Even now… the intent remains. The intent of death was so vivid that it would paint a picture of countless hells, and the myriad number of demons that inhabited them. His mind had such belief that he would be welcomed in a place like that.

 

Curious human.

Strange thoughts had accompanied its concept of existence, but it thought. If it was so, then it must be so. To its first worshipper of many, it began to knead into a figure similar to something the male was familiar with. 

Space bent, a murky tendril made of black mud reared its abhorrent existence out of nothingness, startling the human.

It began to appear. From toe, to limb. Limb to limbs. Body. Neck, then head.

Many things attempted to escape from within itself, but after it summoned an unbelievable amount of pressure, they slowly settled and began to slither back into the figure it was trying to shapeshift into.

The black-haired human watched as it formed itself with rapt attention, as if clearly understanding what it was doing.

Very curious. It observes the scythe that formed on its hand.

Before the human, was now a completely naked woman with horns atop its head. Her long white hair was draped down to her waist, partly covering her abundance at the front.

“...So this is Death.” He spoke to it— no, her.

“This really is a fantasy world… Kughh! Cough…” Blood splattered out of his mouth, and his body slid down to the muddy ground.

Death stared at the young man with indifferent eyes.

“If you’re here… that must mean I'm about to die. …What a weird… but welcoming sight.”

Somehow, she felt a little strange. Why was she accepting all of his words naturally? And why was he not afraid of her? As if like a baby bird watching what its mother did, Death did not speak, and simply observed.

It was to be a concept of calamity. A natural disaster which could not contain its destructive nature. Yet here she was, personified into an adult woman’s body. A look that seemed like a half-human, half-demon, crafted by herself to fit the beauty aesthetics of a human.

She understood what she was. But why did it exist? For what purpose did its existence give to the world? And why did she feel like the human before her… belonged to her kind?

Death crouched down, and met with the man’s weakly-lidded eyes.

It wasn’t something as fragile as the summoned and her summoner.

In the first place, she was a concept.

She was an entity that could not be contained.

“You know… at least… some clothes… before you take me away…”

“...” It conjured clothing as black as the abyss at his words.

 

Simple emotions such as gratitude did not exist for Death. She did not feel gratitude for the birth of her existence. In fact, she felt nothing at all. But towards this human, something…

When she gazed deeply into the human, she could see his soul through her eyes.

They widened at what she saw.

The concept of 'another world'. Again, something in her began to flicker wildly.

 

“Heey. If you’re not going to take me away immediately, how bout’ a little chat?”

Death tilted her head, and realized that she was being spoken to.

With a smooth wave, a black chair was created. She sat on it with her legs elegantly crossed like a noblewoman.

“Death, no… You… you who came from the depths of my darkest imaginations. Hell. Hey, how about Hel? Right, I’ll call you Hel.”

“...” The talkative human didn’t look like he was dying anymore, as if her presence intrigued him so much that he was no longer distracted by the pain coursing through his body.

“...H…el.” She repeated with the countless voices inside of her doing the same.

“Right. Hel… Nocturnus. Do you like it?”

“Hel.” The woman, now Hel Nocturnus looks down at her hands, and then back at his face.

She had accepted the name unconsciously yet again.

The tether still existed and so until she cut it herself, Hel would continue to be influenced.

No, it wasn’t easy to change her in the first place. But this man seemed to contain an unfathomable imagination in his mind. With each passing moment, the concept known as Death would continue to change.

“And I’m Serval. Se-r-v-al.”

“S…er…w…”

Even in the face of death, this man still smiled at her, as if she was just another person like him. She committed that name to memory.

“...Serval.”

That was the human’s name.

“...Hel.”

And that was her name. There was an indescribable feeling welling up within herself, different from before as she realized what this was. 

She was given an identity.

Like the branding of an appearance, this was to be her name. Now and forever. 

“...Hey Hel.”

Hel looks at the man who’d given her a name. He was holding his dismembered arm with a bright face.

“By any chance, do you want to form a soul contract with me?”

 

---

 

Strange static fuzzed around the ears. And soon the scene switches to a different world. Before Hel, was the man who had proposed the contract to her. And yet…

—Liar. You liar.

You said your soul would not go away.

You said your soul would become mine.

But why?

Why don’t you remember the contract?

Hel stares at Serval with bloodshot eyes.

The sight of him disappearing as she was about to catch him in her arms still frightened her. The Hero had lived for longer than she had thought. And when she was about to reclaim it, the soul that had eluded her for such a long time was gone just like that.

Unfair. Agreement. We had an agreement.

Why don’t you remember anything, human?

Even though his appearance had returned from the golden transformation of the Hero, she could tell it was the same person. 

He was the same Serval who gave her that name.

Which agitated her even more—

—Why don’t you remember me?!

To be denied of its existence by the one who thought of her the most gave Hel an unbearable feeling of dread... and an urge to possess.

Yes... why was it communicating in words?

Words were unnecessary.

After all, she was the undertaker.