Malenia, who realises that she truly was in a near death experience only moments earlier, feels the relief of yet another second chance for her to continue fighting on.
Now with the embers of Grace no longer being shackled to her domain, she can now do anything, but her mind races with all the intentions she dreamed of in yearning for this day to come, but it came so easy that intentions of securing this freedom with a 100% guarantee, also cross her mind.
Puffed out as she lies in the mud, missing an arm and a leg replaced with golden and weaponised prosthetics, she looks over to her side to see the Tarnished who likely got the dream of having a different body also come true for him, unlike her with still rotted flesh.
She can't complain though, now with her freedom to leave, she has the potential to increase her potential, even undoing her decay.
She decides that now is the time for rest though, not intentions.
"HAAAA…", the tarnished sighs puffed out also.
"You're, haaaa… a noisy little one."
"Sorry. But anyways, I really have been dreaming about something like this happening to me all my life, though I do understand that this place is likely one of the dangerous worlds to transmigrate into."
"All three realms are dangerous."
"Well, even where I came from can be dangerous, but this place was one of many fictions, some were completely safe options unlike this one."
"Fiction? A world with peace really does sound like one. Even in golden ages or after the end of a world, it only takes a couple of weeks before the law of the jungle seeps into the consciousness of man."
"Well, my world was aiming to fix that, forever, through a global police state, but I find that worse."
"A capability to police globally? Hmmm, yeah I can see the positives and the negatives of that."
"Anyways, this world's story is set after the end of the world, right? So everything is killing each other right now and that isn't something that can be good for me. There's no way I could protect myself, I've never faught anything in my life before."
"Your current body was successfully fighting me moments ago. Perhaps its instincts and capabilities only require a testrun to be able to have your mind awaken to them."
"Well, I've got nothing else to do. Do you have something you want to do?"
"…I think for now, I want to see the state of the world. With war over the shattered ring failed for both sides, did nature manage to fight back against our pride?"
"There is a lot of trees everywhere, but from a glance I can image this world looked the same as it did thousands of years ago."
"It's… not the case.
The realm in-between was birthed from the void in the vision of including details about the reality that exists beyond existence, but those who uncovered even a crumb of the truth ended up accending to the heavens under whatever will that birthed this place.
I believe that what brought us both here, is of the same will that comes from the void. That in itself is more than a crumb of details, and yet we are now and still here."
"Hmmm, sounds to me that God really wanted to start hurrying up his plan."
"Plan?"
"I don't know, everyone keeps talking about the grand 'scheme' or say that everything is somehow part of God's plan. I don't believe it for some things, but this was clearly his own decision, so it must be part of that plan, right?"
"I didn't consider that that God was planning something, but I also hope that there is nothing to be gained by something all powerful to even need a plan as a reason for doing good. This was a good thing, but I also wonder why it took so long for Them to decide this path?"
"Well, if it is a plan, then it'd be a timing thing. If not, then I can't think of another explaination for why God would have to wait before intervening."
"Maybe They sleep?"
"That's not hard to believe honestly. He did need rest on th 7th day."
"How do you know of this detail?"
"A book back in my world."
"Did the book come from the void?"
"Maybe. But it's actually an ancient copy of a copy, so the reason for the original's existence is unknown to us. There are books older than it though, and they describe things differently, but they still attempt to describe something at the beginning of everything."
"Do you know those other books?"
"No unfortunately."
"I see… well we have plenty of original copies within this realm, so maybe we could go searching for more crumbs about the void and see whether or not we were brought together out of the goodness of Their heart, or because it's for some sort of scheme."
"Yeah, that sounds like fun."
Malenia gets up from the mud, "First… I think we should wash up."