IABAN: To Become A Hero

Chapter: 2

Chapter 2:

Rebecca opened her eyes but she couldn't see anything. That wasn't correct; it was more accurate to say that she could see everything. The endless void stretched as far as she could see, it was true emptiness. She felt like she was floating in space but it felt more like being submerged in some sort of liquid.

"Am I dead?" she asked herself.

She didn't have to answer that because she instinctively understood that she had died. As she looked forwards into nothingness, she got lost in her thoughts.

She didn't know how long it had been since she had arrived at...purgatory, but it had been a while. As she became wary of time, she began to contemplate her life as; there was nothing else she could do.

"Did I live a good life?" the question came up in her mind.

Rebecca was an orphan and lived in the streets, always anxious for the next day and the next meal. Then her life took a full 180 turn. The prophesized saint, the princess, took a fancy to her, thus her life became extra-ordinary, and the princess became her savior.

She remembered taking etiquette classes and perfecting her form as she wanted to be her princess's perfect lady in waiting and she did, she became the perfect maid. But, that changed when one fateful day, she could only watch as her princess was taken away from her. So, she took up the sword, that she so hated now, to protect her one and only.

Every drop of sweat, every slash of her sword, and every night she couldn't move thanks to her training; she gave her all for the princess. Then, came the captain, the only one stronger than her; an actual prodigy. He gave her new the fire to work with which she got stronger, now that fire was extinguished; submerged in the bottomless ocean of doubt, self-loathing, and hate.

One day the demons struck the land. She was barely 20, not even a sword expert but she fought. She fought to protect the princess, to protect her friends. Yet everything she did was overshadowed by the captain. That jealousy turned to hatred which lasted years but it was quenched embarrassingly fast. She let out a chuckle at those days.

Rebecca laughed to herself as she remembered the turn of events. "Those days were fun" she reminisced. But that inferiority complex never subsided. As she began to grow, she was happy but, she whenever she looked at the captain she realized that he was always stronger. No matter what she did, she realized that she would never be able to beat the captain so, her complex grew.

Soon, that complex got to her and she gave up. She stopped swinging her sword. She lost her path. She was now walking into nowhere, sliding into a bottomless pit of nothingness, and she was powerless. She couldn't do anything, and she knew that, hoping for the end of the war so she could stop and again rediscover herself, and be someone else... someone better. Be someone who didn't want to run away, someone who didn't hate her previous ways, be someone who could be able to look at her loved ones and show her real self to them without worry. She wanted to be whole again.

She sighed.

"They loved me so much, yet...I wanted to run away from them...their love, their efforts; the responsibility...I hated it. They gave me so much yet I never returned anything and I even wanted so much more...I asked for more."

"I wanted to do many things after the war ended." Her words stopped there.

She had long since given up the way of the sword something that she had sworn would never happen. In fact she had become sick of it. At some point, she just wanted to live for herself. She felt incredibly guilty when that thought came up. After all she was implying something bad about the princess, her savior, the one she wielded her sword for.