“Hello?” The girl called out again. She sounded close – she was probably just outside of the house. I looked around for a mont, before I grabbed the best weapon I could find nearby – a tal frying pan. Even if it wasn’t great, I could still slam it into soone’s face if this turned out to be a trap.
Then, I slowly crept out of the house while trying to locate the source of the girl’s voice.
I crept onto the street, moving slowly and keeping an eye on my surroundings. If I found whatever had killed the guy in the house, I wanted to be able to fight or run at a mont’s notice.
“Is there anyone here? What’s going on?” called the girl’s voice, this ti laden with more fear and uncertainty.
I crept closer to the source of the sound. Finally, after passing several houses and turning a corner, I saw another human.
She was tall and willowy, and wore the sa plain, white linen clothes that I did. She was currently looking around with a confused, lost expression, and since I had remained quiet and hid myself, I could observe her without being noticed. I couldn’t spot anything abnormal about her, at least at first sight.
“Where am I?” she said, her voice growing quieter. I gritted my teeth, trying to figure out if I should keep observing her or make my presence known. This city clearly had various kinds of magic available - the floating islands above the city were already testant to that. The girl could be an illusion, or she could be an invader who had helped destroy the Market. However, I knew almost nothing about my situation, and I was working with several ti limits, any one of which might explode in my face and kill at any mont. If I took a risk here, I wouldn’t be alone while wandering through this city, and she might be able to figure out sothing I couldn’t if we worked together. Then, I hid my frying pan behind my back and stepped out from behind the building I had been hiding near, exposing my presence to her. It was ti to take a small risk in this land of unknowns.
“Hey!” I called out to her, quietly.
“Aaaahh!” The girl whirled around at the sound of my voice, her hand unconsciously creeping towards her waist where she found nothing, while she extended her other hand towards . Then, she stopped moving, wincing a bit. I got my first good look at her face.
She looked younger than , though not by more than a few years. I guessed she was probably in her late teenage years. She was probably eighteen or nineteen. She had blonde hair, a nervous expression, and a reasonably attractive face. These features were pretty normal, and if I saw her on Earth, I wouldn’t have thought twice about them. She would have just seed to be another pretty young woman passing by. However, her eyes were different.
They had no pupils, or whites. They were entirely purple, with no other colors at all. It looked like soone had taken two chunks of athyst, carved them into perfect spheres, and jamd them into her skull. I felt sudden fear. Had I guessed wrong? If she wasn’t human, maybe she was hostile?
“What… what, what’s wrong with your eyes?” she asked , staring at my face in horror. “Why are there… black holes in the center of them? And the rest of your eyes are so… so white. I’ve never seen anything like that before. It’s... “ She shivered slightly, before she stopped herself. She visibly worked on composing herself, the fear disappeared from her expression. “Ahem – my apologies. I… I did not an to touch on a sensitive topic. Let it be known that regardless of what birth defects you were born with, what truly matters is your actions and what you make of yourself. I hold no ill will towards you for your station at birth, only for who you have beco,” she said, as if trying to erase the awkwardness of her initial reaction. “Might I inquire as to where precisely we are? I am under the impression that I should have died recently, but this looks rather different from the afterlife the Priests told of…”
I couldn’t help but suddenly feel amused. I thought her eyes were weird and unnerving. She thought my eyes were weird and unnerving as well. After the tense ti spent creeping through this city, my nerves had been on edge. However, I realised the two of us might still be in pretty similar situations, even if her eyes looked alien to .
I started laughing, feeling more than a little absurd at how utterly ridiculous the situation suddenly felt. The girl gave a strange look as I worked on regaining control of myself, but the situation suddenly struck as so utterly hilarious that I took a minute or two to get myself under control. Perhaps it was the tension I had felt for all of this ti, or my initial panic when I had seen her, but the entire situation felt downright hilarious to . I took a few seconds getting control of myself, before I managed to pull myself back into the conversation.
“May I… may I ask why you’re laughing?” She said, shifting uneasily. I finally cald myself down.
“I’m sorry, I just think it’s really funny you’re afraid of my eyes, because your eyes are also kind of scary. Ummm…” I shook my stress-related giggles off, and glanced back towards the street I had co from.
“Let’s get inside a house I found first. It should be safer than out here. I did find a corpse inside though, so stay alert - there might be hostile things moving about.” I gestured for the girl to walk to the side of , but kept my other hand near my frying pan. As much as the situation seed like a misunderstanding, I was still afraid of getting caught off guard by a strange ability or abnormality in this city I wasn’t able to guard against. I still needed to keep an eye out for any tricks she might have.
She eyed up and down for a mont, uneasiness and confusion warring on her face, before she nodded and stepped to my side. Out of the corner of her eye, she seed to glance at my right hand, which was still awkwardly positioned behind my back, but she didn’t say anything as the two of us made our way back into the dead guy’s house.
Once we were inside, I quickly shut the door, before turning back to the girl I had found.
“So, I’m… uhh…” I suddenly recalled that I did not seem to know my na. All I knew was that it started with ‘Isa.’ “To be perfectly honest, I don’t really rember my na. But it’s still nice to et you.” I held out my left hand towards her, and she gave a baffled look. It didn’t look like she refused to give a handshake - it looked like she had no idea why I was holding my hand out towards her. She frowned for a mont, before clearing her throat.
“I am Sallia Nostrausse, last of the Nostrausse family,” she said, giving a very elegant curtsy. The elegance and ease of the motion was seriously hampered by the fact she was wearing very basic linen pants and a shirt, rather than a dress, which was a problem she seed to realise monts later. She blushed, before brushing past the failed curtsy attempt. “Ahhh… Please forgive any discourtesy I have shown you,” she said, looking at her clothes and frowning in distaste. “Regardless, may I ask if this is the afterlife? What does it appear so… odd? I thought my heart was to be weighed for judgent, but I can’t seem to find Ashra’s court. Could you… erm… kindly direct towards where I’m supposed to be going? Also, though it may be presumptuous, may I ask what the… strange black ocean I saw while coming here was? This is also quite different from what the priests described…” She turned to , and her gaze started to beco filled with expectations and curiosity I had no good response to.
Her questions, combined with her unusual eyes, started to give a sneaking suspicion...
“Sallia… Before we continue speaking, do you mind explaining what your ho was like? Not a long, detailed explanation – just a quick description will do.” I said. I was starting to realise that she ca from sowhere very different from whatever ho I ca from.
Sallia gave a strange look. Then, her eyes widened as she seed to realise what I was getting at.
“I live… lived on a continent where the priesthood rules the lower posts of the country in the na of the gods. They run the education system for nobles, and answer directly to the god-king. Nobles are the families born with magical talent, and are blessed with the task of keeping martial order within the kingdom. Upon dying, it is well known that the first god-king, Ashra, will take us to his halls and weigh our hearts upon the scales of judgent. Those found worthy will be granted another life as nobles, while those found wanting will be born again as commoners, to learn the lessons that eluded them in their previous life. Those in between will be reborn as the children of wealthy rchants, and those found to be truly benevolent and perfectly free of evil will be reborn as phoenixes, the holiest and most sacred animals of all.” She took another dubious glance at the scorch marks inside of the house, before giving another strange glance from the corner of her eyes. “I see that perhaps the afterlife is quite different than I was told. What about you? Were you born in a different kingdom or continent?”
“I was born… in sothing called a London. I…” I felt a pounding headache as I tried to reach into my mories. The more I concentrated on my previous life, the more I felt dizzy, and my headache grew worse as I tried to figure out what London was. However, even if my mories were hazy, I was absolutely sure that I had lived in a world with lots of technology in it. Even though many of my mories were like jigsaw puzzle parts without a full picture, I could still rember bits and pieces of information, like computers and cars, even if so other obvious ‘daily’ things were completely gone. The world that Sallia had described was utterly alien to . I struggled with my headache for a few monts, before I shook my head and gestured at one of the giant skyscrapers visible down the street. “I ca from a place where a lot of people made buildings like that one. And at ho, magic and mages were considered nonsensical stories for children.”
“Nonsensical stories?” Sallia seed shocked at that statent. Whatever she had been thinking or preparing herself for, it clearly wasn’t this. “Wait, how did your continent function without Mages? I’ve never heard of ‘London’ before either. Even if you were born in another kingdom, life without magic is just impossible. Who would rule the country? Or heal the sick and wounded? How do you even know who is or isn’t noble if nobody can cast spells?”Sallia looked appalled, like I had just suggested that people in my world had walked upside down every day, or like I had suggested that breathing was optional where I ca from.
If I hadn’t had a few hours to process the idea of a city where floating islands and System popups existed, I would have also had a hard ti accepting the idea that her world also existed. A continent where magic and god-kings ruled would have seed impossible to before I had co to this place. However, besides just feeling confused and amazed, I was growing even more curious about the nature of this city.
What was this place? Both Sallia and I knew we were dead, but had arrived in this city after our deaths. We ca from two worlds that were so utterly and completely different from each other that it was difficult to believe we were from different parts of the sa world, or even the sa universe. And yet, sohow, here we were, in a city with a wide variety of technology and magic, all thrown together in a hodgepodge of nonsensical shapes that made wonder if Cthulu was the city planner.
And, in this city powerful enough to pull in two people from totally different universes and shift things around through space at will, instead of a thriving civilization, we found massive piles of rubble and corpses.
What the hell happened here? And who or what had destroyed this civilization that could do things I couldn’t even imagine?
* * *
Sallia and I spent about an hour inside of the house, talking to each other and recounting our experiences to each other. I learned a fair bit of useful information in that ti, and had also slowly grown comfortable enough with her to put down my frying pan.
First, Sallia also rembered her death – in fact, she knew much more about her death than I did about mine. Her family had been devastated by a plague less than two years ago, and eventually, she followed them to the grave after a strange bout of serious pain in her stomach. Sallia thought she had probably been poisoned. She also didn’t have a particularly long journey before she reached the Market – she described it as taking a day or two, rather than the weeks or months I rembered floating above the ever-changing ocean.
I couldn’t help but feel a bit of admiration for Sallia now. Even though she had a few speculations about who might have ordered her assassination and why, she was remarkably calm despite knowing that soone had murdered her just a few days ago.
Her situation also ford a stark contrast with mine. My best understanding of my death was ‘sothing heavy hit my head and I died,’ and I didn’t even rember my first na. I didn’t know why there was such a huge difference between our two situations, but the fact that she hadn’t attacked over the course of the ti we spent talking made feel assured that she wasn’t hostile, at least. I remained sowhat wary of her, but I didn’t think she would just fire a spell at the mont I turned my back anymore.
After Sallia described more about her world and her death, she asked more about what I rembered of my world. I had a hard ti rembering specifics, but I still gave her an overview of what I did rember. I could describe computers in so detail, which Sallia found fascinating, and I could also describe vehicles, even if I couldn’t rember so of the specifics.
However, by the end of the hour, I had finally noticed sothing… peculiar.
My body was a fair bit more odd than I had previously thought it was.
Even after walking around the city for several minutes, maintaining a high state of tension for almost an hour, physically exerting myself to move things around inside of the house while searching it, and then standing for almost another hour while talking with Sallia and getting to know her, I was still in exactly the sa physical condition I had started in. I didn’t get tired. I didn’t seem to get thirsty, or hungry, or need to use the bathroom, either.
At first, I thought this was just because I hadn’t been here long enough. However, since I found it increasingly odd, I decided to ntion it to Sallia. She frowned, and then began jumping up and down and doing what looked like a high-intensity exercise routine for a few minutes, before turning back to and shaking her head.
“I don’t feel any change at all. Normally, I wouldn’t be able to finish this exercise routine. My instructor said it was a difficult exercise routine even for an average mage-knight, but I just finished it and I’m not even out of breath.” Then, Sallia’s face turned even more strange. “Also, I just realized this, but I don’t think I’ve been breathing all of this ti, either. I need to breathe if I want to talk, but if I don’t say anything, I don’t need to breathe at all.”
“Really?” I frowned, before I started consciously paying attention to my breathing. I stopped talking, and just sat there for a few minutes, before I confird Sallia’s suspicion.
If we didn’t feel like talking, we could just… hold our breath.
Forever.
“How odd,” said Sallia, frowning. “It’s very easy to not notice, but not needing to breathe is just… strange.”
I frowned, before I thought about all of the weird notifications I had gotten during my exploration of the Market.
“I think I got a notification that a basic body was created for to inhabit when I got here, or sothing like that. Also, if you take a look at the bodies in the room I ntioned earlier, there aren’t any bloodstains in the area, even though the wounds on the corpse should have leaked blood all over the place. Instead, there’s just weird clumps of light everywhere, that look sort of like floating candles. Do you think the bodies we’re currently inhabiting are just… flawed, sohow? Or fake?” I struggled to put what I was thinking into words, but Sallia nodded after a few monts of thought.
“I suspect that the civilization originally inhabiting this place treated bodies like clothes. They could change out of them at any ti, and if a pair of clothes got damaged, they could simply buy a new body and change into it. Skilled craftsn might have specialized in providing good bodies for people to inhabit. However, they might have also valued convenience over durability. If they found breathing annoying, perhaps they specifically created bodies that no longer needed to breathe, even if it caused bodies to deteriorate more quickly as a result. After all, if they could simply buy another body later on, it doesn’t seem like a serious problem if a body collapses within a few months.”
I frowned, before I nodded. “That also explains the food stockpile in this house. I know a lot of them, and they’re all kinds of food well-known for being bad for you if you eat too much of them. I was originally wondering if the owner of this house just didn’t care about his health, but… if he didn’t need to eat at all, things make much more sense. Food was just a form of entertainnt, so once his body beca unhealthy, he would just swap to a new one.”
Sallia looked at the random scraps of food throughout the house, displaying a bit more curiosity than before, and then nodded.
“Either way, this information does not solve our fundantal problems. We must figure out what ‘reincarnating’ actually entails, find it before our Achievent runs out, and keep an eye on when and how our bodies will deteriorate. We may also need to learn how to ‘swap out’ of bodies and change into new ones, if we don’t find a better solution to our other problems in ti. For all of our problems, we must explore the Market more. And neither of us knows enough to solve these problems on our own.”
Sallia took a look at my frying pan, before shrugging and digging into the pantry. She pulled out a frying pan of her own, before holding out her elbow towards for so reason. “Are you willing to work with to explore this city together? Since we are in similar situations, it makes sense to work together, no?”
I had no idea why she was holding her elbow out, but I grinned at her and nodded. “Sounds good. Let’s work together.” Sallia took a glance at my elbow, before finally realising I had no idea what she was doing. She fell into thought, before holding out her left hand towards .
I took her hand and shook it. She seed surprised when I touched her, but after a mont she also grinned and shook my hand back.
Then, the two of us set off. I wasn’t actually sure how effective our frying pans would be as a weapons, but they were better than nothing.
The two of us crept through the city, street by street, while keeping an eye out for anything else in the area. Weapons, items, allies, enemies… neither of us had any clue what we should expect, so we just watched out for anything unusual.
As we shuffled along the silent and empty streets of the massive skeleton of a city, our surroundings started to change. Paved roads and houses began to be replaced with recognizable comrcial districts. Buildings, with strange signs advertising a variety of things, started to litter our surroundings, while advertisents also floated in the sky above the city.
The advertisents seed to want to sell anything I could think of. Everything from alcohol, to clothes, to snacks, to gas and books were advertised. For now, Sallia and I ignored those shops, since they seed devoted to entertainnt and didn’t seem useful. We started searching for sothing related to the city’s unique features instead. A bookstore, a library, or one of the companies selling physical vessels or other Market-unique items would be far more useful to us than a store selling snacks which our bodies probably had no use for.
Finally, we started to co across more signs of battle on the streets, rather than just the occasional broken door or corpse. Scorch marks started to litter the streets. Random craters scarred the pavent. Headless corpses, piles of bones, and lumps of… at were scattered across the sidewalks. Most bizarre of all, many of the corpses looked like they had been partially dissolved into clumps of light. The clumps of light looked sort of like the wicks of candles, except for the fact that there was nothing connected to them and they were blue instead of orange. There were also several half-demolished skeletal remains, which had been destroyed in a wide variety of ways.
Sallia and I grew more and more nervous as we ca across these increasing marks of battle. Whatever had happened here, we were finding more and more of the city’s forr residents. And not a single one of them was alive.
Half a street later, I saw sothing in the corner of my eye move.
I imdiately got my frying pan ready, whirling to face the destroyed shop front.
A cluster of white bones assembled themselves in front of my eyes.
In front of us was a freshly animated skeleton. Clumps of green soulfire glowed inside of its eye sockets. It held a greenish-purple sword in its right hand, and a yellow shield in its left hand. And it was looking right at us.
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