Generis

8. Second Chances

When Aural woke up, she hoped she was dead. The reality that she had become what she hated had long settled in, and she had really hoped that this would be her last time having to come back. Every time she did felt worse than the last, like a horrible nightmare on loop. Yet it wasn't the last time actually. Because when she opened her eyes she could feel herself on the verge of tears.

That's when she noticed someone staring at her.

Her immediate instinct was to look away, pushing herself up against the wall, expecting another round of pain again. But for a while, nothing happened. So she looked up and was met with deep purple pupils studying her, as if waiting for her to wake up. She had purple and gold head jewellery, which raised even more questions, and had a cloud of deep lilac hair. There was no mistaking her regality, especially from her strong stare and heavy jewellery that glinted in the dim light. Nor was there any mistaking her love for purple. As a matter of fact, if this woman's favourite colour wasn't purple, she'd be even more confused than she already was. But who was she? And what happened to—

"You gonna decide, Nali, or, whatever your name is? Or are you going to just stare at her? Because quite literally I have business here, so it'd be absolutely wonderful if you could speed this up.."

There she was.

"Mind you, this is a persistent one, who claims to wanting to die, but never does."

Aural almost winced at her icy, mocking voice and kept her eyes to the floor, tired. She felt a finger under her chin and lift it up, till she met the gaze of the woman, who's name was apparently Nali.

"You're awake. And alive. Good."

Aural blinked at her, confused, not used to such an airy voice, and she peeked at her arms to see them patterned with recent scars that she didn't remember experiencing. Then she looked at the massive jars filled to the brim and got her answer. But also, her hands were free from its binds. She wondered how much longer she would have to stare at Nali- her gaze was intimidating enough already.

"Some pitying state you're in. Tsk. If I had known sooner I wouldn't have let you die more than once—"

"You let her die five times, actually,"
Thea butt in, rolling her eyes, "Most recent death, thanks to me, was purely out of boredom."

"Excuse me..?"

Thea shrugged, unbothered, "You find that you can make a lot more than you think when you just kill em repeatedly and let them bleed it all out. Now if you hadn't had stormed it all high and mighty, I might've just done so."

Aural's heart caught in her chest. Hearing this made her even more scared than ever before, and cause her to internally panic. Why was she in this position; yes, her hopes and dreams were long crushed, she had accepted that. But she wasn't at all prepared to be subject to whatever she just experienced, let alone what Thea had planned, so this stranger had earned her immense gratitude.

"And you're so calloused enough to think what you're doing is moral, right?"
Nali fired, looking at her, "You do realise you are profiting off a child's pain, which is against everything you claim to stand for."

"And if we didn't, who would you come to save, hm? You can't do what you do without me, now can you?"

"That doesn't mean you should go out of your way to do what you're doing."

"Yawn."

"Just- do you not feel pity? At all? You're ridiculous. How you've convinced almost everyone that what you're doing is good actually disgusts me. Impressive stunt. I'll be shocked if there's even a heart inside of you."