I comfort Lyanna and she settles down. She finally seems talkative even though I had to resort to unorthodox methods; More guilt for me I guess.

  Lyanna, ying on my p, stares into the control panel in front of me.

  “Wanna hear what happened?”

  Yes woman... That was the whole goal here.

  Lyanna tilts her head,

  “You sure-”

  “Oh for the love of- Just tell me”

  She clears her throat,

  “I’ll give you the short and simple version. We were rexing at home watching TV in our living room with my dad, mom and older brother”

  She had a brother?

  “You didn’t mention your brother before-”

  Her body twitches for a second.

  “He uhm… I’ll tell you in a bit”

  Lyanna lets out a breath and continues.

  “My dad was doing research on something; I don’t really know what. He just goes off to his room and locks himself in for a while. After we watched a movie that night, he went to his room again and we went to sleep.”

  Research?

  “I remember very clearly, that night when my mom put me to sleep, I woke up again. Every night I keep hearing sounds coming from the corridor, but I got used to it after a while. Since we do live on the side of a mountain, I really just thought It was normal”

  A bead of sweat runs down her neck and I notice her breaths become slightly faster.

  “When I woke up again, that-”

  Her eyes stay locked and her hand grips tight.

  “thing was right in front of my eyes staring into me. Its eyes were… empty, and its mouth looked like a big gaping hole. I couldn’t see anything inside. I-I couldn’t move either, I wanted to, but I couldn’t.”

  What the hell is that. I have never heard of a creature like that.

  “It looked like what I imagined a ghost or a reaper to look like”

  “How do you know what a reaper is?”

  Reapers are mentioned in mythologies and texts like that in where we came from, but now that I think about it, I read a book that my parents had that mentions the same thing. That creature is the ‘embodiment’ of Death.

  “I got to know it from my father, he said it was something my grandfather taught him about”

  Who really are you Lyanna? All of this likely comes from their lineage, but I don’t know of any families native to this world that know about ‘Reapers’.

  “Anyways, the creature came in closer, to the point where I could feel my breaths bounce off of it, and my dad came rushing in. I’m pretty sure his face looked like a ghost too.”

  “…”

  Lyanna’s face goes ft,

  “I mean his expression. He had a gun in his hand and tried to shoot at it, but nothing happened.”

  I’m assuming it passed through the Reaper.

  “The creature turned to him, and I made a run for it. We ran to the kitchen and there were more of those things on our way there”

  But that’s an anomaly. That’s not realistically possible. A Reaper’s essence wants to absorb everything and anything that has the same signature, so that can’t be possible. I don’t get it, first there’s the existence of reapers in our world, and now… How?

  “My whole family was there, and my dad was telling my mom something. I couldn’t hear by that time, everything was just ringing, I just wanted to sleep it off. Then the wall next to us started to melt as the it passed through.”

  Lyanna’s body goes cold again and her body twitches like a heartbeat.

  “Every one of those things in the house just paused, and right as I went to grab my mother, they started to come towards us and we ran towards the main door in our house. The kitchen exploded behind us and parts of the wall flew towards us. I got a small scratch on my heel, my brother in his arm and a piece got stuck on my mother’s leg. My dad and brother helped mom and we slowly started to get closer. Then the voices started. And everything got darker. They started saying something, but I couldn’t make out what it said.”

  The voices could be an effect from the Reapers, but there’s no record of that happening. They are known to distort victim’s visions and drive them mad, to a point where they are rendered immobile, but I’m not really sure.

  Lyanna’s voice gasps for air and I can feel her chest thump harder.

  “The creatures started screaming? No, it was a weird sound, It kind of sounded like scratching a metal with a fork. They started moving faster, and the only thing I heard from my father, was [RUN]. My mother dragged us out, but my father, went back in. When we got out, there were even more outside, and the sky and everything just became even more darker. My dad was still inside so we waited for him. We waited and waited, but he never came out. Everything I could see on the sides of my eyes started, melting and my mother started to say something covering her mouth. I can’t remember what, but she looked... scared. All of the creatures started to fly towards us and I’m sure my mother spun her hand in a big circle, and one of those things you make appeared”

  Can her mother use spells? This… is confusing. Does that mean, her mother is a Mana Maniputor? Wait wait wait, huh? Does that mean she can also use mana? But I don’t sense any in her, or any allocate in her core.

  “A big beam like thing shot out from it and took out most of the creatures. I… don’t want to tell you what happened but, my mother went into the house again. She said she’ll be back and gave my brother a nail. The monsters kept flying towards us, one too close. By then, I remember the ring glowing and, I’m not sure how to expin it but, a lot of white spinning rings appeared over us and it shot them down, one by one. I felt safe there if I’m being honest, it was sort of like sitting under the morning sun. Then a boom went off in our house; A big gush of wind nearly took out the rings over us and I could just manage to make out my mother at the front door. T-The next part is...”

  Lyanna closes her eyes, and when she opens them, they look red-er.

  “Something sliced through the house. A second ter… My mother was split in two. Parts of our house started flying off and the rings broke. Everything became dark again and fire suddenly came out of nowhere and everything started burning. My brother looked dead inside as the ring disappeared. I tried to comfort him, but he didn’t even move and kept staring at the monsters coming at us. You know those things you make? My mom used one”   “The circles? Yeah? Your mom could use them too if I remember right”

  I take a sharp right and the whole cart shakes a bit.

  “I saw something glow under us and it looked like one of those. It kept glowing even though everything was burning. I had a feeling that it would be ok, but I wasn’t sure. The fire burned even more and when I looked, pieces started to crash down from over us. We covered ourselves and no pieces hit us. The very st thing I remember is…”

  Through my legs I could feel Lyanna’s heart racing again.

  “Seeing my mom and dad’s heads rolling in front of us and a sword like thing piercing through my brother’s stomach.”

  My brain takes a second to imagine it as creation almost makes that scene a reality. The picture formed in my mind is, quite interesting.

  “Everything started to slow down except for my brother. The… th- circle under me started glowing brighter and the st thing I remember from my brother is a terror and pain before everything became white and I ended up here.”

  I’m… not sure how to take that in. I made the mistake of putting myself in her pce. And now it feels… like a really fucking enticing story. Lyanna flips to the side and I feel a bit lightheaded from that. I feel my eyes watering up but they’re completely dry. My mind iterates through what Lyanna said and each time I’m left with more questions.

  I come back to my senses and instinctively break before we hit the wall in front of us.

  “I… don’t know what to say.”

  My brain scrambles for what to say, but I end up with nothing again; I’m completely bnk

  “…”

  Looking over Lyanna’s face, I see her sleeping and my head flops back on my seat. I can’t stop imagining what those st moments looked and felt like, what Lyanna perceived in that moment. But on top of that, I really can’t help but get a thrill out of this. My body wants to experience it myself and the thought of that, makes me feel good. Why do I keep feeling this way? Every time I think about it, I get run through with pleasure. No that can’t be right.

  My body rexes and I suddenly have a lot of energy. I can’t expin, but I want to do something now, something that will give me a thrill. My muscles are just dancing at the thought.

  The engine rumbles silently, and my head flies forward and my gaze shifts to the Lyanna on my p, sleeping. I get filled with ‘ideas’ I wish I never had, and it’s as if I lost myself again. My body wants to move, but my will keeps them locked.

  My mind loops through the implications and I break my way through and regain control of myself.

  “WHAT IN THE FUCK AM I THINKING”

  Lyanna jolts awake and I squeeze my head in absolute disgust at what the fuck I was just thinking. The euphoria vanishes and anger with confusion sweeps in me over.

  My face jolts toward Lyanna and I scream out,

  “Sp Me! Or Punch Me! I Don’t Care Which, Just Do It!”

  Confusion ces Lyanna,

  “Wait what?”

  The thoughts overwhelm and my plead becomes louder.

  “Just Do It!”

  Voices scream in my ears and the rest of the world feels blocked out as I try to get the thoughts out.

  “SLAP ME DAMN IT!!”

  Lyanna looks even more struck than I was and she pauses. A small hesitation holds her back, but she eventually loads her arm as I get the thrill I wanted in the slightest, Probably. The sp hits hard and my vision clears up again.

  Lyanna thrusts towards me and holds me tight over the shoulder as she keeps stuttering.

  “Jesus Why Did Yo- I-I… Huh!?”

  I shake my head as I ‘try’ to py it off, and GOD AM I A SICK FUCK. I’m pretty sure that I would’ve gone rogue for a bit without that. I still can’t take that feeling out of me, but at least it’s manageable. What the hell was I even thinking of for that to happen.

  “At least you got me back”

  Lyanna pulls back a tad bit and stares directly into me,

  “What?”

  “I’ll tell you ter”

  The energy I had gives out, and I feel like all the adrenaline in me got sucked out all at once. For real this time,

  “I’m tired”

  Lyanna’s expression to a ‘What the fuck’ and I pass out on her.

  “Ok, what’s going on here”

  A sigh passes out,

  “Not this again…”