Reborn as A Snake! (3.) [ONGOING]

(9). - Departure.

     A Little while Later. . .

            Hours went by as I was in a state of a fuzzy and shadowed feeling. I had started to feel a bit like I had fallen into a deep sleep, with butterflies dancing around in my belly before expanding across my entire body. It was such a strange and yet warming feeling — one that felt uncomfortable and yet pleasant at the same time. So wrong and yet so good at the same time.

Eventually, this fuzzy feeling faded, being replaced by a constant empty feeling. I felt like I had suddenly become completely hollow on the inside of my own body — like I had lost my soul and my heart. It was... Strange - so to say.

As this empty, hollow feeling continued, I suddenly heard a voice speak to me. It echoed quietly all around me, with the words that it muttered being light and quiet enough for me to not be able to make out exactly what was being said. After the initial voice, a second one spoke — just as quietly and lightly as the first one, with the only difference being the tone and pitch of it. It sounded deeper than the first one, with a bit of a rough tone to it.

After that one, another voice spoke — this one was more prideful and again, different to the the other two, with it most certainly coming from a female host. As the voices continued, I slowly became able to make out the words being spoken to me - them turning into light whispers that felt like they spoke to me in my mind.

They kept getting louder and louder, until suddenly, they seized. No more spoke — it all went silent. I opened my eyes, suddenly having regained the feeling of my own body.

Only, I wasn't in the guild building or the Guildmasters Office.... I was floating within a vast and pitch black void — absolutely nothing in sight. I could see my own body and feel my hands, feet and torso, which meant that I was certainly alive and not dead — so this wasn't the afterlife. But, what was this void? Why was I here?

...How did I even get here?

'Perhaps, I can answer that question.'

A sudden voice spoke, surprising me greatly as I began to frantically look all around me. The voice was so loud, booming and echoey — worst of all, it sounded like it had spoken directly in my head.

After looking around in deadpan confusion for a bit, I spotted another individual in this vast void of nothingness — one which appeared to a vague humanoid figure. It had a long, tattered and thick cloak over it, with bright white chains wrapped around it's neck and arms before going over its shoulders and floating behind it. It seemingly had a head, though the head was fully covered by a long hood, which had a pitch black darkness covering the face.

I felt shivers practically crawl across my body, before I turned to face the individual, opening my mouth to speak to it, only for no words to come out. This shocked me to my core, as it felt like I had lost the ability to speak all of a sudden. Like my vocal cords had been damaged.

'It is no use. Within here, sound cannot exist.'

The same voice spoke, surprising me again as I looked at the individual with a sketched out and slightly scared expression. Was it speaking in my mind? That would explain why it sounded so loud and booming...

But what did it mean by 'sound cannot exist'? Was this space that I had found myself inside of somehow blocking sound? Perhaps absorbing it? Who knows, however, I would not be able to converse with this.... Being using words - that was for sure.

I resorted to gesture to it a simple question, being on who he was and where I was. The cloaked individual remained silent, before lifting its head up a bit towards me.

'Who I am does not matter — however, for the sake of making it easier to understand, you may refer to me as The Observer.'

He suddenly spoke in my mind again, once again, slightly scaring me. It was such a terrible and strange feeling to have someone muster words literally inside of your mind. It was so loud, echoey... You get it by now.