A long Life

"How long has it been?"

"How many of these bloody wars have I already fought?"

"A few thousand, . . . tens of thousands? Ooor, . . . perhaps more? Ohhhhhh, too many to count, . . . gave that up a long time ago, hihihi."

"So many years . . . . ."

"Village after village, town after town, city after city . . . . . country after country and planet after planet. One universe after another. Every realm and dimension that I could find. And still, there is so much I have actually never seen before!"

"After slightly more than . . . ehm, . . . let me count . . . uhn, . . . uhn, . . . uhn, . . . fifty-seven thousand years of my life, there is still a nigh-infinite amount of places for me left to visit, for me left to get to know . . . . ."

"How many more worlds will be out there, mhhhh . . . besides the two I already know about?"

"So many years have flown by . . . ohhhh . . . so much pain, so much loss . . . . . and there is so little humanity and sanity, hahaha, left in me . . . . . you gods played your 'game' well, hihihi. It has been an e-ter-niiii-ty~ since you have started to toy around with us 'mortals' . . . . . for all those years you have looked down on us like we were there simply for you to play around with, . . . to make us suffer, to make as bleed, to hold as small n' tiny, weak like an ant below your feet, ready to be trampled at any given moment, . . . all this, just for you 'dear n' allmighty gods' as en-ter-tain-ment. Hahahaha. But, . . soon enough, . . . you will all regret what you did!!! How will you 'oh so unreachable entities' feel when, let's say, . . . a new player enters your 'little game', huh?! hihihi~"

"I have worked so hard to get where I am now . . . . . and from this very moment on, aaas decreed by me, . . . your toying will stop!!!"

"I will show you how it feels to be uncertain of the future right in front of you, . . . I will show you how it is to be at the mercy of another . . . I will show you what fear and despair truly mean . . . I will show you how it feels to bleed, to suffer, while making you known to an old dear friend of mine, called pain, hihihi, . . . I want to see him in your teary eyes, . . . I want to hear him in each and every single one of your screams, . . . I want to feel him in even the tiniest shivering of your body, . . . ohhhhhh, . . . . . aaaa-nd most important of all, I . . . will . . . bring . . . . . justice to all those poor souls who suffered under your tyranny aa-nd at last, I will create a truly safe haven for all those who want to live a fair and peaceful, prosperous life in equality . . . . . like I have ever wished for . . ."

". . . . . you 'oh so mighty goddess' were the first to truly fall under my blade . . . the first of you, I killed with absolute certainty! It doesn't matter that you only were one of those lower gods who had to move here, into our beautiful world, with their own original body . . . and not simply with just a part of their consciousness through a cheap manifestation of belief! Mhm, I wonder, . . . how does it feel to die under the blade of a low mortal like myself . . . to get humiliated like this? . . .hihihih"

"Ohhhh, right, sorry dear~. You can't answer, because . . . . . ehm, well, I have already killed you . . . which means you are, well, . . . ehm . . . dead . . . I guess."

"Papillia, the goddess of beauty and butterflies, . . . you were so different from most of your kind. Nothing like these other gods, . . . though you shared their arrogance and played the game against us, tsk, . . . . . still, some of these lower gods are a bit, . . . more mortal-friendly than you have been, maybe they will accept my offer without making the same fault as you dear~ . . . . . and don't immediately try to kill me and/or try to rip out my soul to extinguish it."

"Sooo~ . . . let's take a look at what I have got from our little battle~. At first, . . . for the first time in history, I truly killed one of these gods, . . . second, I get to claim hold over this divine realm, becauseeee, the former administrator is now . . . ehm well, she is a bit dead I guess, hehe . . . third, one enemy less and I officially entered the competition, dear ladies and gentlemen~. Let us celebrate by . . . . . cleaning up this terrible mess . . . uhhhh"

Right in the middle of vast plains, stained by the stench of death and bloody ragged corpses, where heavily armored knights with great-swords and blue-silver rectangular tower-shield killed one enemy survivor after another, there, there was a small hill with a dead tree towering over a stone that could easily serve as a chair.

There on this small hill, right under the branches of the lifeless tree, there laid the corpse of a young girl with purple shimmering hair and wide-open aquamarine-purple eyes, looking like the incarnation of true beauty. In the dead girl's torso stuck a blood-stained silver rapier with an exquisite blue-white handle. On the back of the girl there hung her unnatural pink-purplish butterfly wings. One was already torn out, while the second one was covered in several deep cuts extending onto the girl's back.

Next to this defaced goddess on the chair-like stone sat another girl that was at most of the age of twenty as it seemed. Maybe more beautiful than the first . . . but in any case, alive.

With her unnatural aquamarine-shimmering blue eyes, she looked down on this poor fallen goddess. Her azure hair waved through the wind like waves in the ocean as if there was no gravity at all.

Though she sat there, right in the middle of the aftermath of what seemed like an enormous battle that turned the before greenish scenery of the local plains into something that now rather resembled a mass grave than anything else, there was not one single drop of blood on her partly see-through silver-white robe that was crested with blue and golden ornaments.

On both of her wrists, she wore three bangles that were covered in thousands of accurately drawn, faintly azure-shimmering runes. Two silver bangles and one golden bangle on the left wrist and two golden bangles and one silver bangle on the right wrist.

In her left hand, she held a flask made out of white crystal-like material. Inside this bottle, there was a strange gold-purple glowing ethereal substance that radiated faint divine energy.

It was nothing else than the soul of the fallen goddess that laid lifeless on the floor!

As the blue-haired beauty holding the flask looked at it, she smiled gently, before putting it into a perfect cube that was made out of a midnight blue crystal-like material that hung down her waist. As it entered the cube's open side, the flask disappeared with a faint glowing particle effect and was thrown into a separate pocket dimension. There an uncountable amount of different things in all shapes and colors flew by and through this infinite sky-blue space and the newest part of this seemingly endless collection became just one among thousands or maybe millions of different items.

After she had put away the crystal flask she stood back up and called two of the knights over that were busy killing survivors.

"Hey, you two! Take the corpse of this goddess and carry her with utmost caution to the entrance portal. Let the medical officers conserve her body well and then send her into the governmental laboratories of the capital.", she said in a gentle but still commanding tone.

"Yes, my consul!", immediately after the girl issued her orders, the two knights answered with great respect and walked over to the dead goddess.

The blue-haired girl who the two silver knights referred to as their consul, ripped her rapier out of the corpse as she stepped aside while one of the knights took the shield from his back to use it as a stretcher for the transport of the lifeless body, whilst moving as carefully as possible.

"It is good to see that you have already clearly understood how much of value she is.", said the girl to the two knights as she saw with how much care the two followed her instructions. Both of them nodded in response and felt truly proud that this mighty consul acknowledged their good work. Following, they continued, motivated by those words they now deeply held in their hearts.

As she saw them, she couldn't help but smile a bit, because of what such a simple compliment could do.

While the two soldiers walked away to the south, carefully carrying the treasure that was given into their care, the girl put her rapier away and turned around looking in the opposite direction over the silent battlefield where still some of the knights bearing shields with an emblem of two crossed silver sword in front of a towering dark azure shield on a noble blue background, walked around in groups of five, consisting of one standard-bearer and 4 knights like the two who carried away the dead goddess.

Nearly all of the dead, lying on the battlefield were sparsely equipped humans with a mix of leather and chain armor in an exotic style with a half-open back, some of them, about every fourth to fifth, even had butterfly-like wings like the ones the dead goddess had but in all different colors one can imagine. Only a frighteningly small amount of all the fallen ones belonged to the silver armored knights. At most only every hundredth corpse was covered in such heavy armor and was bearing the emblem of the two crossed swords in front of the shield.

In conclusion, this means that in this devastating battle one side has lost only a negligible amount of its troops while the other suffered complete annihilation. A truly shocking scene of hundreds of thousands of withered lives.

While she was letting her gaze wander over the blood-stained plains a man who looked like he was in his late thirties, with accurately short-cut dark-brown hair and light-blue eyes, walked through the fields littered with corpses. He wore lighter armor than the knights that were the common troops of the winning side and on the left of his waist, there hung a magic-radiating short sword, or to be more specific a gladius, sheathed in a leather sheath of visibly old age. Overall his armor and appearance had a slight roman touch to it, though he bore the same emblem as the silver knights had on their shields on his long midnight-blue cape.

After a few minutes, he reached the hill where the girl was staring into the distance, across the battlefield while she was deeply lost in thoughts.

At the very moment he was merely about two to three meters away from her, to her left, he stopped and stood still. He averted his gaze from her and looked at the battlefield.

A silent moment passed before he finally spoke to her.

"My consul! The corpse of the goddess was sent to the capital as issued by your command. I am now here to congratulate you on your triumph on behalf of not only the Senate but also on behalf of myself. I certainly wouldn't have been a match for Papillia in a duel. In addition, I am here to give report about the battle to you, directly, as your second in command in this particular operation.", he said so with a resolute, but happy voice.

"My consul? . . . hehe, I have to admit, yeah, it sounds nice, . . . but do you truly still need to be so conservatively regarding official matters . . . after all these years~? Come on~, be a little looser!", a warm and gentle smile appeared on her lips.

"Okay, okay, I admit defeat, you got me. We won, so . . . I will try.", waving his hands in front of him like admitting his loss he accepts the words with a small sigh.

The next moment he took out what looked like a tablet straight out of a sci-fi film and began his report:

"Sooo, . . . now the casualty report. In the whole battle we lost . . . . . a bit more than four thousand of the two hundred sixty thousand soldiers of the seventh Legion. The enemy has suffered much severe losses. At the moment we are still counting but first estimations say that their side probably lost about . . . five hundred thousand. Our knights are still killing some of the survivors who do not waste any thoughts on surrendering, though these are only those absolute fanatics. Most have a thoroughly broken will that shattered the second their goddess fell by your hands and simply gave up. It is just a matter of time before the rest of their struggle ends."

"So many lost lives . . . and everything because of the arrogance of a goddess whose believers couldn't see the truth.", as she said those words, a sad smile appeared on her face and a silent tear started flowing down starting from her left eye, over her cheek until falling down to the ground.

In the next moment, she looked at the sky and snapped her fingers. From one moment to the next, the sky changed from the starry firmament of the night to the illumination of the day.

"I've now laid my claim on this realm and thus it and the laws residing in it are bound to my will! Give order to clean up the battlefield. Let the soldiers make graves for all the fallen, do not differ whether friend or foe, it doesn't matter! They have all earned it to be not treated like their lives did not matter. I do not want to see mass graves after such a bath of blood! Also do not pillage their belongings but bury them with their rightful owners. Let the prisoners decide whether they want to live a new life as citizens of the Empire or if they want to follow their goddess into eternal slumber, without a way back nor a second chance after it!", she said so with a shimmer of starlight in her eyes and a commanding but still rather friendly tone after again looking at the roman-looking man.

"Your wish is my command, my consul!", he said with a tone, better fitting to an old veteran than a man of his age while bowing lightly with his right fist over the place his heart resides, before leaving with a slight smile on his face.

In the next moment, the girl waved her hand and a blue portal appeared that was spinning like a maelstrom. Then she stepped through it and the moment after she disappeared by entering it, the portal itself closed and no sign that it has ever been there was left behind, nor a magical trail to follow its conjurer to the destined destination.

. . . . .somewhere else in this vast world. In another universe. In a different time. There on a small planet inside of a simple modern two-story building, there in the middle of the silent night, a young sixteen-year-old boy was sleeping peacefully in his bed.

It was a clear summer night at the end of August. This particular boy had a strange dream. In this dream, he was wandering around in a place not known to him, though accompanied by a feeling that told him that he was quite familiar with everything he saw. It was like a maze that never ended, pure chaos reigning. In his dream, it was the middle of the darkest night. Countless stars could be seen standing above in the sky, forming constellations the boy has never seen before accompanying those he was familiar with, like Orion, Leo, Gemini, and even Virgo, the one he was born under, though every single one at the same time. A strange thing when taking into account that they should normally not be visible at the same time of the year.

There, in the darkest night only accompanied by the stars' light and no moon nowhere to find, he followed a group of people who he could not identify at all.

After a long walk and some attacks from dark shadow-like creatures from above, only a small part of the group managed to reach an old outpost in the middle of this seemingly endless labyrinth.

The wide wooden-spiked walls opened up to the left and to the right and the group, as overjoyed as they were to have finally found shelter, immediately rushed in. But before the boy could enter as well, his vision suddenly blurred whilst his body refused to move even an inch.

And there it was, much clearer than anything he had ever heard before, vibrating through his whole body and penetrating his mind, a soft feminine voice whispered gently into his ear as if there was someone right next to him

"We got you . . ., hihihihi"

Followed by a low chuckle the boy woke up in shock, covered in sweat from head to toes. He looked at his radio. As the digital clock said there was only a single minute left until midnight.

'A dream, only a dream!' That was what he thought to calm himself down. For him it felt like three whole days had gone by though he only went to bed about one and a half hours ago!

The moment the pointer of the clock jumped to twelve pm, the sound of bells could be heard in the distance and the display of the radio flickered a few times before turning into a blue maelstrom that gained in intensity with every ringing of the church's bells.

The boy's vision was shifting with the third ring of the bells. There was nothing he could do about it, no way he could defend himself, he was thoroughly helpless. When the seventh ringing could be heard, he fell back into his bed completely paralyzed while feeling a soft breeze all over his body blowing into the portal's direction

With the eleventh chime ringing through the silence of the night, the maelstrom broke free from the small radio clock it was encaged in, and in the next moment, the now unconscious boy was sucked in with the portal vanishing the next moment

What remains after the twelfth chime's ringing was no more, was just an empty bed only speaking of its former owner in form of the little warmth left in it as well as some wetness because of the boy's sweat.