Everything was black and dark. The only source of light here was oddly enough me. I looked around myself, taking in the oddness of the truly unrecognizable and blank place I’d found myself in. It wasn’t until I tried to take a step forward and felt the realistic pressure against my feet that it finally hit me where I was.

 

Ohhh I know what this is. This is another one of those Goddess dreams, isn’t it? Everything feels far too real for this to just be one of your everyday run of the mill dreams, for sure. Does that mean that the Goddess is gonna come rushing up and bring the light again? But I’m not at a cliff this time… And I don’t remember being luminescent like this last time, either. Besides, what reason would she have for bringing me here again? Didn’t I already make my level 15 wish?

 

I waited for a little while, expecting the Goddess to come along from somewhere off in the distance again, but when nothing ended up happening, I got bored and decided to go looking for her. I took a bunch of tentative steps forward, looking out for the sudden cliff that I remembered from last time, but couldn’t seem to find one. After a few minutes I started taking more bold steps so that I could move forward faster, although I still kept my eyes peeled, just in case I suddenly needed to stop to avoid falling. Eventually, when even that didn’t seem to be yielding any results, I broke into a sprint and started looking all over, left, right, and center, for any sign of anything at all that wasn’t just plain flat darkness.

 

And then suddenly I smacked into something and fell down.

Good to know that even the feeling of slamming into something is still realistic here…

At least I didn’t actually get hurt by it.

 

As I got off of my butt and looked forward, I finally saw what I’d smacked into. I hadn’t been able to see it in the distance at all while I’d been running, and… Well actually, it was still very hard to see, even with the light I was producing touching it. Whatever it was, it was very big and tall, and covered by squirming shadows. As I looked at it, it bent down overhead and looked back at me with its shining eyes. And then, only a moment later, the blood covered corpses of two people came crashing down from the sky.

 

It only took me a quick look to realize they were the bodies of the quiet priest and Meria.

 

<Join me.>

 

The rumbling, roaring voice of the figure made my head hurt, as if it was going to make my head crack open and my brains leak out. My teeth rattled like they were going to come loose.

 

<Let go of her cruel hand and join me. Together we can eradicate this savage and awful world!>

 

As it spoke, various awful memories flashed before my eyes. My father beating me, Kale’s mother beating him, all the times I felt hurt, scared, lonely, and powerless. It even showed me the awful times I’d had here, in this life, that had made me feel the same way. It appealed to me with every single low point in both of my lives combined, crammed into only just a blip of a second.

 

<Do you think this world is just? Do you think this world is kind?>

 

The shadowy figure leaned closer and closer, its shining eyes drawing nearer and nearer, and somehow it seemed to be eating away all of the light that it touched.

 

<Join me. We can right the injustices of this world together in the only way possible; By destroying the world in its entirety, and its crooked Goddess along with it!>

 

As I was steadily surrounded by the figure’s shadows, I could feel myself start to accept all the pain. What it was saying had some merit to it. Maybe I’d come across a few nice people so far, but they didn’t outweigh all the heinous things that hid inside the cracks here. War, slavery, kidnapping… And that was only just in this small little town. I can’t imagine what kind of awful shit I would see once I started heading towards the more densely populated towns and cities. No, that’s not true, I could totally imagine it; After all, hadn’t I learned about and seen plenty of the atrocities that humans could commit in my previous life? It was all over the news, almost constantly. The grotesqueness of humanity was paraded around every day. It was practically impossible to shield your eyes from it, with how unending it was. Surely, this place is just as bad. No, there’s magic here, so I’m sure there’s probably even worse crap that they could get up to using that…

 

Maybe it’s right.

Maybe we should just get rid of all of it.

And if the figure can help me get rid of the Goddess, then maybe I don’t need to be trapped here anymore.

If she can’t use my own life against me as ransom anymore, then maybe I can finally die…

Yeah, then everything could finally be peaceful, just like I-

 

Suddenly feathers began falling in front of my eyes, beautiful and white, with the gold that rimmed them twinkling in the nonexistent light. They were so eye-catching that I couldn’t help but bend down and look at them, and just as my hand reached out to try and pick one of them up, suddenly my eyes shot open, and I sprung up out of the bed.

 

What… What was that? Was that real, like my dream with the Goddess, or…?

What was that figure, then?

 

~~~

 

Me springing up like that made Kale wake up next to me, too. We’d been talking for quite a while last night while sitting next to each other, when I noticed that Kale had suddenly nodded off. It was a long and stressful day for him, so it was to be expected, really. I watched him sleep for a while, which I’ll admit was a little bit creepy of me, but then I laid down next to him and did my nightly ritual of checking over my character screens. Guess I must have nodded off too while I was doing that, without noticing.

 

That dream… Was there any meaning in it happening the night right after I had the dream with the Goddess? It’s possible, right? I mean, I’m sure the place that I was just in was the same one that I met the Goddess in; With that odd sense of awareness and weight that I felt that’s completely unlike a dream… In fact, maybe I should stop referring to them as dreams in the first place. But then what would I call them? I doubt my soul or consciousness is being called away, because then why do I feel a sense of touch and the force of gravity? I’m sure when I ran into that shadowy figure that the laws of physics still totally applied. I didn’t get hurt like I should have, though…

 

Well whatever it was, the fact still remained that I was brought there this time by something besides the Goddess.

 

Of course, there could still be a possibility that’s not as obvious. What if, for instance, it was still the Goddess who brought me there, and she’d just let me meet that spooky shadow for whatever reason? It could be that she did it just to scare me, but then again… No, didn’t it seem like instead of scaring me, the shadow was coercing me? It made me see all those awful memories and tried to recruit me to join it. So then did the Goddess try to test me and see if I’d go against her? Was that just her, shrunk down slightly and in a shadow suit to fool me? Was that it…? Or is the simplest answer really the right one, and the shadow was really the one who brought me there, and was really making me that offer?

 

Ah, I’ve never been good at playing detective...

I’m sure I don’t have enough evidence to draw a conclusion on this anyways.

 

Whatever, let’s just say some spooky shadow demon or something played a trick on me and give up on it for now. I have too much going on in my life already for me to add worrying about that onto it. If that shadow was really not the Goddess, then maybe the next time it tries to talk to me I’ll resist being overwhelmed and try and talk right back to it. Who knows, it could be that the Goddess’s little ‘only talk when allowed’ trick isn’t universal in that space. Heck, maybe I could even sneak out a few answers from the thing; Could be that this shadow is more of an opportunity than it lets on.

 

Let me state, for the record, that I have no plans to listen to what it wants. In the first place, there’s no way I could just destroy this world now that Kale is here. I’m sure that’s why his feathers appeared at the end and snapped me out of everything; It’s probably part of why the Goddess even put him here in the first place: As a failsafe to keep me on her side. That’s only if, of course, the shadow and its offer are real and not a ploy by her.

 

And of course the second reason is just obvious!

How dare that stupid shadow make me relive all those horrible memories!

Who would willingly go along with someone who made you suffer your worst moments all over again, huh?!

No thank you, you evil thing. No. Thank. You.

If he tries to pull that crap on me again, I’m gonna have to figure out a good way to get out of it quick.

 

Anyways, let’s stop ruminating on the possibly fake dream, and talk about something real. Last night, before I ended up dozing off, I did my nightly ritual of checking my character screen like I said, right? And of course, I also had to go back and recheck my quest screen, since I completely shelved that one notification I got earlier about freeing the birds. Who knows when, but eventually the pop-up notification went away, just like the last one did while I was in that little coma, so I had to go looking for it. Guess it takes less than 24 hours for the notifications to disappear, although that’s still too wide of a time-frame to really pin down how long it takes.

 

Oh, no wait, it would be less than 20 hours, actually…

Still not used to the days being so short here.

Makes me feel really screwed over that a week is still just 7 days here.

Imagine how much exp or sleep I could be getting if there were 4 more hours in a day like in my previous life!

 

But yeah, nevermind all that. It’s useless to be sad about it. Right, I was talking about the quest pop-up.

 

{Congratulations! The Side Quest: [Freedom of the Bird-Folk!] has been completed!

 

You’ve freed the captured birdkin tribesmen and returned them to their homes. Your wish has been completed, and no more birds can be lawfully enslaved!

 

Reward: 1000xp.}

 

Yup. That’s certainly welcome, since I’ve lost half a week of grinding exp already. Bit concerning how it specified ‘lawfully’ enslaved, but I guess I should appreciate how truthful it’s being with me. From what I’ve heard from Kale, his people rarely leave the mountain they live on, so there shouldn’t be too many opportunities to be captured anyways. Could be that there were other birds that got caught at the end of the war just like Kale, but this time by illegal organizations instead of the country. I’m sure those kinds of businesses wouldn’t bat an eye at the Goddess saying what they were doing was ‘wrong’.

 

…Hopefully they’ll be found and stopped, but I know better than to rely on just blind hope with that kind of thing.

Maybe it’s better to hope that I stumble across them instead, although that also has its bad sides to it.

 

Ugh, why does everything in this life have to have some kind of downside to it?! Can’t things just be completely good for once?!

_____

AN: I'm going to be gone for a month, so I'll see you lovely people again on February 15th!