*
Why had she entrusted her hopes to me? As the one who casted the curse, as the person who has been in an advantage in regards to information, surely she knew... Of the Primordial Shadow. It was an existence so overwhelming, yet she expected that I could overcome it.
A task not even the gods could accomplish. To do so would be to go against the heavens and laws decreed by the world itself. To go against every law in existence, every existence under law. I'm not Lastia. I'm not her shadow not her reflection. I'm a useless AI she formed on a whim, one meant to help her with battle. Now that she's gone, I naturally lost my meaning to live.
If not for... For Arin assigning me the impossible task of reviving my creator, I might have let myself perish. Was this also one of her ploys? Or was she implicitly innocent? I can't determine that nor do I care to do so. The me from before was so chock full of despair, I might as well have been a different person. Only such feelings of detachment come to me now. It's as if I was watching myself through a screen, that 'me' from before didn't feel like myself. It wasn't hard to see why.
I've grown so much. I became independent. I grew to understand people, the fact that I can comprehend all the things Arin did for my wellbeing is evidence enough. It doesn't matter what her motive was, it doesn't matter if she wanted some other use out of me and was doing it for some purely selfish reasons. Sacrificing myself for this virtual world? Aren't my priorities clearly backwards?
No, that's too simplified. My priorities have shifted from the dictation of Lastia's values to something else. That girl, my creator would sacrifice herself for the world. She did just that in the fight against The Calamity. Whose wishes am I following now? Obviously, my own! And what do I wish for? I want to save everyone, I want Lastia and Arin to be alive! I want this world to continue existing too, but I recognise it lacked something a real world had.
The distortions even I couldn't detect are proof that this world shouldn't exist. It is by natural law of the universe, in other words it is the same as a person growing old and dying. These aren't distortions in the normal sense, they are the signs of aging and looming death. It is a place no destined to be, a place born of foolishness. That's right, I am a fool. A foolish human who has the reins over her own fate.
I don't need anyone to acknowledge me. I don't need anyone to declare that I have grown more humane. Even though it'd be nice... I can't have what I can't have. I can do this much on my own anyway. This must be the shortest lifespan in the universe, finally recognising myself as life too precious to extinguish, only for the Primordial Shadow to snuff it out. Less than a second, way too pitiful to be considered a life. Though, what constitutes my own life is not for others to decide.
"... Do you understand what you're doing? Have you given up halfway?" (Primordial)
"You... Just as you can read my thoughts because I am you, I can also read my own world after some time.
The devil I'm after can't be found... Because they're me. What I've chased aren't anomalies but a natural process of the world's decay. It's just that I allocated more processing power to all the living beings subconsciously. I realised a simulation can graduate and become a world so easily.
You were right, a puppet show will remain a puppet show. " (Yggdrasil)
And she told me all of that because she wanted me to fight with my all. I've shown her enough of daily life anyway, it doesn't get any better than that... Mostly because I haven't experienced anything better myself. What I cherish most is that mundanity. My form receded into the air, painting my body in the colours of this world like a chameleon in the dewy spring noon. When even those colours drag themselves away from this world, as if a blackhole had sucked away the entire universe of possibilities, all that's left is my true form standing over the abyss of the shadow's domain.
My pale ashy pink dress returns, the false deity of Sanguine Sacrilege is back. Even a fake god with no authority like me should at least have a title, a name to call out affectionately. Yggdrasil... Drasil... How about... Giselle.
"Alright Giselle. How would you like your last dance?" (Primordial)
The girl in front of me extends her hand, her disguise as Lastia long shed. A familiar fluffy white dress flutters in front of my feet. I miss school. I miss Arin. How I had loved if my stayed so simple forever. I had never known any other way of living, but didn't hate it. Maybe I loved it. I could never be Arin, I could never fulfill her role for the Primordial Shadow here. I couldn't convince her to love the world, to love herself. Despite encompassing everything, she is a shadow of old humanity herself.
That is why she sets out to execute me. Because new humanity has sinned, and aside from Eterna who manages new humanity, no other god deserves to emerge from that chrysalis. She didn't care the Traces were to annhiliate the earth, her real subjects are extinct and whatever happened to earth after was none of her business.
I will die here, the heavenly kings will respawn hundreds to thousands of years in the future and destroy civilisation. Why should she care? They're her heavenly kings aren't they? Her lackeys who faithfully summoned her... Vinia... She used to go by Aster, she evolved into a heavenly king and summoned her boss over here.
I clasp my hand around hers. Surprisingly the feeling of her skin was soft and warm, even through my gloves. I refuse to let go, and she knows it. She doesn't even bother to pull away. I pull back my wrist, knuckles stretched and ready. Precious mundanity did not sway her, a puppet show would never move her, not that reality itself would. I understood that at last, she was infallible even in her mental state.
Whether it'd be trying to beat her in a fight or in a persuasion, it would be equally difficult. An opponent like her is not meant to be beat in any way. As if the world itself made her unbeatable, and then she would claim that she was the world itself. Likening my efforts to a rebellion against an omnipotent creator in those monotheistic religions.
I pull her closer to me as my other fist struck.