POV – Alania

She stood there, her eyes held closed against the sea of blinding white light, time slowly slipping by as she anticipated her  impending end.

 The second’s dragged on turning in minutes or maybe hours, the unending light still surrounded her, until Alania felt it change. After what felt like a near eternity in the searing bliss of the white light, Alania felt the sensation began to lesson with it eventually becoming nothing but a dull pain. Alania opened her right eye the tiniest amount, expecting to see an ocean of white, instead was a flat wasteland of black stone that stretched out to the horizons.           

Her eyes fully opened as shock and confusion flooded her mind, a daze washing over her as she thoughtlessly glanced over her new surroundings.

‘What… what is going on…’

‘Am… am I alive?’

‘How… is that even possible…’

Alania pushed aside the impossible she felt of her having survived the attack, instead turning her groggy mind towards her body.

Her armour had been completely stripped away leaving her skin, that was now covered in light burns and blister to the light of the two suns.

‘Completely destroyed… maybe it protected me…’

‘Yeah no… that armour was definitely not capable of such…’

‘Probably…’

‘…’

Closing her eyes again, she pushed the fog to the edges of her mind as she contemplated the situation, somehow having survived an attack that levelled the entire war front.

‘I really must still be alive… this isn’t how death looks,’

‘There’s no river of soul, no well of reincarnation…’

‘These nothing… just a waste…’

‘…’

‘Maybe this is some twisted blessing of knowledge from the great calamities,’

‘Allowing me to witness the power beyond the grasp of mortals…’

‘No… that sounds rather far fetched…’

Her eyes snapped open to stare down at her forearms, or more accurately forearm, the stump of her right arm being sealed by crystalized golden blood. Her left forearm was mostly undamaged, the crimson scales dyed with streaks of black of foreign energy and minor scorch marks.

‘Incredible… did… did the attack cauterise it?’

’But… how did that even happen… I should be covered in burns then?’

As she Reached the claws of her still good hand to her head, Alania ran her figures over the curved horns, their persistent surface still leaking a warmth from within their core.

‘It has be something to do with my... draconic mark,’

‘It’s the only thing that could removing explain this… situation…’

‘…’

‘But… it’s never done something like that before…’

‘Maybe… maybe is forgiveness for what I…’

'No… that delusional thinking, it’s probably just a fluke, a mere coincidence.’

Letting the reality of her impossible survival crash down on her mind, she traced her talons along one of her four horns.

‘Even now… they sit there… reminders…’

Alania’s mind freezing as it feel of pulse of guilt and self-hate flow through her mind, the flash of blocked memories of the event flicker through her mind.

Then she felt it, a gazed lock onto her form, a gazed calling, demanding her attention. She felt her body slowly begin to turn towards the being as her self abuses was washed away by a feeling of growing dread and anxiety.

A massive thing, formed by faces upon faces for black flames folding in on themselves, their eyes fixed on her as the thing’s surface oscillates and warped in impossible ways. Her attention held by the thing as the remains of her mental fog were washed away by a growing bliss, her crimson pupils flickered around unnatural as she felt a wetness stain her cheeks.

Alania brushed the blood leaking form her eyes away as she basked in the euphoria of the thing before her. Then it was gone, the unfathomable form gone, completely erased form before her, letting her mind snaped back to reality as she felt her stomach lurch.

Her body staggered forward as a mixture of golden and red blood spilled form her lips, staining the black stone in front of her. Alania’s breath catching in her throat as she panted, long drawn-out breaths while the world around her seemed to settle.

‘What just happened… am I hallucinating?’

She quickly ran her eyes over her body and it now pristine condition, the injuries that had riddled its surface now erased completely. The only exception being that of her arm, instead of fully restored its end was now covered in soft stump of flesh.

As confusion filled Alania’s mind she turned attention to the stone, expecting to see it plastid with a layer of blood only to find a perfectly smooth glossy black rock.

‘Seriously what is going on… didn’t I just…’

‘This… this must be some advanced mind magic… or maybe a kind of death hallucinates…’

Her futile attempts to understand what had just transpired unsurprisingly fell short as she stood there in silence atop a nearly empty wasteland of black stone.

‘A dream… it must be a dream… it…it can’t be…’

‘This…’

‘This can’t be real…’

‘Nothing is making sense,’

‘And… what, what was that… thing… that can’t be real.’

A shiver ran across her body at the through that the thing she had seen, had been a creature, had been something more than a delusion.

‘I am just here… alone… there is nothing anywhere…’

Alania’s through trailed off as she felt her skin prickle something had it attention fixed on her back, panic blossomed in her mind as vague flashes of that thing rebounded in her mind. She slowly turned towards the unknown observer, her eyes keep locked to the black stone floor as she desperately hoped to avoid gazing upon the things from.

As Alania lifted her forces from the stone, she found not what she had been dreading, there was no unfathomable amalgamation of faces. Instead there was a humanoid figure, the feminine body silhouetted by the gleaming lustrous pure white hair that gently swayed behind it

‘I… I’m not alone…..

‘Someone… Someone else… maybe she know what’s going on!’

Alania looking up towards the women as her body froze, her crimson eyes held by the woman’s black voids lit by a single star of white.

‘She… they’re the same as that thing had…’

Alania took a step back as she managed to break eye contact with the women, her eyes running over the rest of the woman’s body as her blood chilled.

Any pretence of the woman being human was dashed through both her incredible height, towering over Alania’s already extremely tall stature, and the clearly inhuman aspects of the women. The biggest give away of her inhuman nature, was with the seemingly perversion mimicry of Alania’s own draconic features that cover the woman’s form.

Twisted spires of black alien horns pierce through its pure white hair into a awe-inspiring crown, a similar material of seemingly warped bones covering the women’s fore-arms and legs marked with weird patterns of swirling purple markings.

‘Is she… no Alania, ignore that, maybe its isn’t related… yeah that’s… that’s possible,’

‘She might know what’s going on, she might be willing to help…’

The initial fear turned in apprehension and hope as Alania studied the woman’s well-defined muscle, a slight crimson spreaded across her cheeks as her train of through was derailed.

‘Wow… those… she’s hot…’

‘Wait no, don’t think about that, just calmly ask about what’s happening.’

‘Don’t stumble, don’t stumble, don’t stumble…’

Alania “Who… who are you?”

Alania “What going on? Where… where has that thing gone?

Alania “Why are you-”

Alania managed to cut herself off before the questions that tumbled out of her mouth where able to further embarrass her. Her face lite up with a bright crimson blush and twisted with anxiety as it illustrated what a jumbled vulnerable mess she was.

‘How can you mess up so bad, you’re not meant to breakdown…’

‘Why am I so fluster by such… a woman…alien?’

‘Alania your such a hopeless les-’

Alania was broken out of her train of thoughts by a music hum coming from the woman, her attention snapped to the alien’s face, which was far less imposing with its form now mark with confusion.

Woman “Are… are you intending to converse with the individual that is myself?”

Her mind froze as she was hit by the wonderous melody of the woman’s rather confused voice, the sound somehow leaving a sense of warmth to pulse through her body.

The moment drawing out as the two stared at each other, allowing Alania’s mind to slowly start back up again as the woman’s words finally registered with her.

Alaina “Y-yes…”

Alina watched in awe as the impossible beauty before her slapped one of her black talons into her face, releasing a long sigh as she did.

Woman “Given a short quantity of thought, that was an idiotic questions, as there are no other individual in this given space to initiate conversation with.”

The woman regained her regal and imposing posture as the atmosphere she gave off shifted, as the musical chime of the alien’s echoing voice dominated the surroundings.

Woman “Well mortal, your current situation is that of a highly abnormal state, as you are one subject to the natures of this worlds, your continued existence before the erasure of that nature… is… odd.”

Alania “Odd?”

The woman’s face flashing with slight annoyance and frustration, before a slower more carefully melody of a voice exited its lips.

Woman “The… express… in your tongue that I can… do… is insufficient for conversing,”

Woman “Please, give me a short designation of time to process how vocabulary is expressed in your memories further,”

Alania “memories… WAIT, WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY THAT!?!”

The woman shoot a sceptical and rather confused look at Alania pauses for several long seconds, before her musical voice responded to her query.

Woman “Moments prior, your mind become severely degenerate by my limited foresight, as you witnessed a more… raw version expression of my form, and so I repaired the influence it had on you by extracting the memory.”

Woman “While it is a rather short section of time, it still contains uses of your language, and gives me a reference to communication with you in.”

An awkward silence descended onto the pair as stood there watching each other, Alania’s mind in a state of complete and total meltdown.

‘What… what does that mean, how… how can you just… take someone's memories?’

‘What does a ‘more raw’ from even mean… is she even stronger then I thought…’

‘How strong is that even… is she like… a physical form of a concept beyond mortal understanding?’

‘WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN’

‘Could.. could she be related to that… that draconic like summoned beast?’

The silence continued to permeate between them, with each second seemingly slight increase a nearly unnoticeable nervousness, only suggest by the increasing rate that its talons strumming along the black material of its legs, sending out a metal like rings.

Alania finally managed to get some of her mind organised after several draw out seconds of silence, before posing her most pressing question to the woman.

Alania “Why, why am I alive…”

Woman “As I have… previously mentioned you shouldn’t be…”

‘I… we… we were all meant to die…’

Woman “That secondary energy pulse was, in simplified terms, a deconstruct the nature… or maybe energies might be more accurate… either occurrence, it was erasing components key to this world…”

Woman “As you are a subject born of these world, the loss of these feature should destroy you… assumably…”

‘They… so many… so many lost…’

Woman “I am unable to give an accurate diagnosis, unless I check your condition in a stable environment.”

Woman “It could be presume that your perpetuation is related to another primordial energies, however that is merely theoretical.”

Woman “Your condition is a interested one, I would be interested in further investigation if your- you individual, are not giving my words any attention…”

Alania’s face was painted with a mixture of emotions, shame, guilt, angry, horror all twisting and morphing on her face. Her attention on the woman’s words had broken when the reality of the countless human lives lost was pulled to the forefront of her mind.

‘They… it actually happened… they all died…’

‘I… just…’

‘All of this… all of today…’

‘What the f*** is wrong with everything…’

The insanity of her situation finally getting into her mind, distress, confusion and outrage flooding her thoughts, a shrill sympathy of chaos and mayhem.

‘No… there… I must be able to…’

‘She… she must have… it…’

Alania forced this turmoil outwards hoping to free her pain, and onto the only being she could, the alien woman, blaming her for everything, all the bad she could blame her for. From this, a single though, the one Alania felt the most pain over, the one she felt she had to be able to blame, to avenge.

Her face covered by hate as she let words filled with disdain fall from her mouth at the alien.

Alania “You… You just killed them all… everyone…”

A long pauses fell between them, the alien seemingly reluctant to respond to the hatred in Alania’s voice, but eventually it did.

Woman “I… that… I performed my actions based on self preservation… I had no plan to…”

Alania “You still killed the…”

‘SO many people just gone… there future… there families… there dreams’

Alania “YOU JUST WIPED OUT SO MANY LIVES, PEOPLE WITH LIVES AND DREAMS AN-”

Her voice cut over by a sharp and only slightly melodic voice of the alien, it’s tone clearly distressed, but also carried an impossible careless to it.

Woman “YES, I am the sources of there deaths, and unfairly so.”

Woman “Many of those who are now past where unnecessary and undeserved of there ends.”

Woman “I agree with your proposition… so breath.”

Alania’s rage forced to completely defuse in response to the shock of the alien woman’s agreement with her, leaving her standing there in a state of confused paralysis.

Woman “Please, breath,”

The melodic voice insisting her to act, and so she did, her mouth parting to realise a slow drawn out breath, the airs exoduses feeling to lift the turmoil partly from her mind. 

Alania repeated it, and again, as she let calmness return over her mind.

Woman “Improved?”

‘Why… why did I just do that, I shouldn’t have done that, she’s right,’

‘It was in self defence… THAT SO OBVIOUS… how could I blame her…’

‘Then… why, why do I still not like it…’

’I mean, she doesn’t seem like a bad persons?’

’But… I still don’t… still don’t like those deaths…’

Woman “If you per-chance desire to continue on that topic, we may at a further time when you mind has become more stable.”

‘She… yeah, todays been… a lot… probably far to much…’

‘My mind must just be in a state of delirium ,’

‘I probably just need to rest…’

The woman tilted her head at Alania before she continued to allow her melodic voice to escape her lips.

Woman “For current, we should depart this area…”

Woman “However, before that we should leave this area…”

The alien woman paused for a moment before muttering to herself completely ignoring Alania presence.

Woman “That was incorrect… this language is difficult to grasp… or it could just be because of her manor of express…”

Alania carefully watched the woman’s struggle, before the alien turned back to her, the melody continuing as if she hadn’t just muttered to herself.

Woman “I propose that the remaining primordial energy in this newly formed null zone would be hazardous for a cute girl like you.”

Woman “After we depart this proximity, it would will be safer to communicate, and… may… may I question why you face is marked red now?”

Alania face had turned pure crimson from her being called cute by the towering beauty, her brain completely pulled way from the disaster and own, even if listened meant turmoil. The pale nude body sending her mind down a rabbit hole of confused thoughts, as wild fantasies as the woman who she had been blame and prosecuting moments ago started to flourish.  

The woman only shot her a concerned and confused expression before she shrugged and continued.

Woman “May we now depart this region… or- wait, you never gave me a means to refer to you… though neither did I…”

Woman “A fixable matter, we can do adequate introduction in a safer environment.”

The space around the woman distorting for a moment before its form collapsed in on itself, reappearing right before Alania’s still blushing face.

The woman’s black talons wrapped around Alania, pulling her into massive body in a one-armed hug like position. Alania’s face only turned an even more purified crimson colour as the height difference led her face to be trapped between the large orbs of pale white skin.

As the world beyond her view distorted into a blurry swimming sea of abstract structures only one thought was on Alania’s mind.

‘WHY IS SHE SO F***ING HOT’