Chapter 8 / 18
Written by Jessi Maxwell - send C&C to Megami_no_Remon@hotmail.com
"It wasn't always this way. For a few years of my life, I was what you might have considered happy. But that changed very fast.
"My mother was the third being in existence, being created right after my father and before even half of the base elementals. Her name is Lycavi Widowkiss...she is a succubus. But that isn't the point of my story.
"Lycavi...I don't call her mother very often, I'm not proud of my heritage...Lycavi is the Demon Queen of the Netherworld. After the first few universes were created, Lycavi started a huge war, and finally managed to take a universe. Since the beginning of time she has bred demons, culling them, only letting the best of the best survive and continue the race, and her army nowadays is nearly invincible.
"I was her firstborn child, and I possessed a very rare power. This magic of mine...'tis called Echomancy. Though on my own, I'm a relatively average mage...if I get in combat, my Echoing ability kicks in. I echo my opponent's magic, which allows me to use magic just like theirs, and the echo boosts it, so I am always better than any opponent...because of this, I'm always asked why I don't just fight Lycavi...but I shall explain that too.
"An Echomancer doesn't just echo magic. An Echomancer echoes emotions, sensations...many, many things. If you are upset, and I'm in your presence, I shall probably end up echoing the sensation of being upset, which boosts it...making you more upset and me upset as well...that's just a minor example. Sometimes, being an Echomancer really hurts. I can't help but thrive on feeling and sensation...such things overwhelm me. Like...the feel of silk, so wonderful and soft...it echoes. Everything echoes.
"I was one of a large group of Echomancers...at the time of my birth, this magic was commonplace. Lycavi saw it as a threat, which it was. She sent her army out, and they killed every single echomancer...I feared for my life, but she never tried to kill me. At the time, I was 12. I didn't understand why she spared me...perhaps motherly love?
"Ah, at the time, I was foolish. Within the next year, I came into my magic, which allowed me the full breadth of my power and not just a taste. That is when Lycavi decided it was time to control me. And if she couldn't control me, she would kill me.
"Before she set out to bend me to her will, she tried to talk me into willingly serving her and her demons...I never wanted to, it's not in me to be evil. This wasn't what she was looking for, so she tried something else. She implanted a demonspawn in my soul. It grew, according to her warped desires. But it didn't break me ... somehow, myself and the demon split into two separate beings that share the same soul, and it changed me into an Angel...gods, Lycavi was mad.
"The demon was Imati. He bore my Echomancy powers, though not quite to the full extent that I did. He had no humanoid body, so he duplicated mine. Those are the conditions of his birth...and he knows if he ever manages to kill me, he might just inherit the rest of our soul and be able to fully master my magic.
"This was not what Lycavi was after either. She didn't want me dead?...he just wanted complete control over me. So she decided to take my most precious gift. My senses.
"Lycavi designed a special place, using magic, and put this room in a time warp. In a time warp, for every second that passes in the outside world, five hundred years pass inside. Lycavi locked me inside this room.
"I don't remember all of it, except that it was terrible. Sensory deprivation...especially echoed sensory deprivation, is so unbelievable horrid. The room was just...nothingness. Black or white, I couldn't tell you. I couldn't see anything...I couldn't hear...taste, smell...but the worst of it, I couldn't FEEL anything. I clawed my flesh till I was raw and bleeding, threw myself against what must have been the walls, screamed my throat raw...and nothing.
"Occasionally, Lycavi would pull me from that empty hell and beat me, and I welcomed it. The sensation might have been pain, but it was still better than that horrid nothingness.
"Lycavi left me in that time warp for seventeen and a half million years...on the outside world. If you figure that every second of those seventeen and a half million years equaled five hundred years within...I was in there for an indescribably long time.
"When she finally took me out of there...I was beaten. I haven't had the will to even debate fighting at all...it hurts so badly, and I'm just so scared she'll put me back, as she does whenever I misbehave. She'll leave me there for only a minute or so here...but remember the different time frames...I'm really in there about 30000 years. It's amazing I'm still sane at all...it hurts so badly, it's so...so empty and devoid...
"I have no choice but to serve her in most cases...but I want to help you, foolish as it may be. Imati has no right to intrude upon the mortal Earth."