So this is really here. Kind of like Half Life 3, but much much MUCH less anticipated. So not really at all like Half Life 3, I guess...
Anyway, if you don't know what this is (besides a Minecraft fanfiction, silly goose), it's actually a sequel to my other one. If you haven't read it yet, you need to before reading this.
So now, without further ado, the sequel you probably haven't been waiting for: A Thousand Days!
Prologue
He spoke from behind me, as always, “You know that’s not gonna work, right?”
“That never stopped me before,” I replied coldly.
“And look where you ended up.” I could hear the smirk on his face. His tone always had that cocky gist to it. I’d learned to ignore it as best as I could, but for now I just continued to slam on the door. I was ramming it repeatedly with a podium from the front of the room, to no fruition. The door wasn’t just locked, but blocked off. It wouldn’t budge. I dropped the podium on the last hit and walked back to the main room, defeated.
He looked at me, amused. “Aww, giving up already? That's so like you.”
I clenched my fist. I had been working on suppressing my anger against him for weeks, and I wasn’t going to give in now. I looked around at the dust swirling in the purple light from the main windows. It never seemed to settle, just kept taking up the oxygen in the room. He watched me leaning on the wall deep in thought, and walked over.
He spoke in a reasoning tone, “You know, you’re seeing this as worse off than it needs to be. Think of it this way: You’re trapped in here, with me, and I know things about you that you never did. Maybe I could teach you a few things about yourself. For example, did you know that you were actually the one who started the Rip?” My vision blurred, but I continued to fight back the urge to attack. “You’ve known this deep down for a while. I mean, you’re the one who pushed Sarah do develop her powers in the first place. Although we both know no one bought that whole “glitch” bullcrap that Liam fed you. He was never to be trusted, always so mysterious.” He was leaning against the wall now, next to me. “Now I know you hate me, but think about this for a second. How do you know that everything Liam told you wasn’t a lie? He has no real credibility, after all.”
I had thought of this, but refused to discuss it with him. I walked back over to the podium, and carried it to the window. I could see him smiling at me, but made no movement of notice. I just kept going on with my business. “Here,” he said, “Use this instead.” He held out a huge mallet to me, but I just looked at him.
“Where the hell did you get that?”
“It that really that important?”
“Well considering I’ve searched this big empty room for days and came up empty, yes. Now where in hell did you get that?”
“Technically, it was in Limbo, not Hell.”
I swung my arm and slammed the podium into his face. He moved to block it but I got a solid blow. He fumbled on the ground and I threw it onto his face, splattering his dark blood around the floor. The rest faded into the same dark smoke that remained after every kill. I felt almost guilty for doing that, him acting all human and such. Of course I knew of the inevitable return, as well.
“Jesus, I just offered to help,” he said from behind me.
“Well you just can’t keep from ing me off sometimes, can you?!” I yelled back.
He noticed the aggravation in my tone, but didn’t make to laugh at it. He seemed more sympathetic. He tossed me the mallet this time, and I slammed it against the purple stained glass window. It bounced back, knocking me on the floor, while he broke down laughing. I got up, furious, and grabbed the mallet to kill him with. Right as I picked it up, though, it vanished.
I looked at him in curiosity. He was just getting over his fit, and noticed my confusion. “Oh, right. The mallet. So I’ve been here, what? 15 years Earth time? That’s about 100 millennia in Limbo time. I’ve learned a few tricks.”
I hesitated before asking, “Can…can you teach me?”
He was a bit shocked at the request, but then said, “Sure. But be warned, you may not like what you’ll need to do for this kind of power.”
“Look, I’ve got time. And I’m kind of out of options here.” I didn’t need to say this. He knew how desperate I was.
“Alright then. Let’s get to work.”
Chapter 1: A New World
Slowly I begin to hear the sounds of nature, leaves rustling, occasional birds, the usual. It was like sounds blending into a dream, except the dream was pure nothingness. One by one my senses came back, common sense being the last. Immediately I opened my eyes and sat up, my bones stiff from the sleep. The area around me was peaceful and familiar, and my brain struggled to start up. Gradually I began to piece the situation together, as I tried to remember how I got here. The days had gotten more and more blurred together, making it difficult to pick out which one was yesterday.
I decided to start walking around to wake myself up. Constantly I pushed through my memories, putting them in chronological order, but the further I got the harder it was to remember. I remembered being on the beach, Liam giving his body for Sarah’s other self, and I remembered his making us a house out of sand. After that I could barely figure out anything, so I changed my focus on the present. Hopefully some wandering would clear things up.
I walked through the forest for a good couple of hours, soaking in the atmosphere. Every element, the animals, the sounds, the air, it was all so familiar to me. The only times Sarah and I ever settled down were in a forest. The first one was my favorite, back when things were so much simpler.
As my mind got lost in the more and more distant past, I began to look back on my earlier days in this world with a newer perspective. I looked back on Sarah when we first met, and how unstable she was. Or at least how she seemed to be. Things had been happened so fast lately I never got a good understanding on just who it was I had fallen in love with. Her past seemed to always be changing.
In my reminiscing I suddenly found myself on the edge of the forest, where the landscape abruptly changed from dirt and grass into an endless stretch of sand. A large desert went out far beyond my eye’s reach, in all directions past the forest. It kind of reminded me of our first home, an island of trees surrounded by endless desert. My brain went through the idea that this was that first desert, but I quickly discarded the thought. I had burned that forest down.
I turned and started to move around the perimeter, as my mind went back to the newest memories. I fought as hard as I could to make sense of the faded visions, but it never seemed to clear up, like a dream I had just woken from. I went through each detail, exercising the recall to try and open things up. I woke up on the beach, Sarah came back with an orb in her hands, took her powers away, spent a day or two unconscious, I met Jim, then things only got more hazy from there. I could recall a hurricane, Sarah and I outside in the sand, the remains of the house, and everything after that was only an idea. I knew that Liam had allowed himself to die, giving a body for the other being inside Sarah, now naming itself Will, and that his departing gift was a house for us, but I didn’t see any of these things. I knew of them simply because I did.
Then my thoughts were interrupted by a voice to my right. “You always did tend to dwell in your own dreams,” it said. I turned to see who had said it, and saw what I thought was myself standing in the sand, a cocky smile on his face. He continued, “You never even tried to learn that it was just a dream. There’s a reason you have to wake up.”
“Who are you? And what the hell are you talking about?” I immediately asked. It was hard to find a sensible question to start with.
He just smiled and said, “You see, I told you that you wouldn’t remember. But then, how would you ever know the whole thing was real? Nothing seemed to make sense after the Rift caught up.” He chuckled a bit, and said, ”But then again, when did anything in this world ever make sense?”
I was getting aggravated pretty quickly, “You’re not helping anyone by being so damn cryptic, now just answer the question. Who are you?”
He smiled even more and replied excitedly, “Now there’s the tone I know and love. You’re just too easy to aggravate, you know? And it’s so much fun to do it. The way your fists clench up like you think you’re a threat.” He laughed, and turned to walk left while still talking, “You just always need your answers now, and it’s so pathetic. You get impatient if someone doesn’t get right to the point. Can’t I just have a little fun first?” I reached for my sword to run at him, but it was gone. “Oh, forgot about that, huh? Lose all your stuff every time you respawn. Bit of a shame you don’t remember, too. I’ll bet you’d just love it if you could snap your fingers and poof,” he held up his arm, and a dark purple sword materialized in his hand, “there’s a nice fresh sword right in your hands.”
“How did you-“
“I told you James. You asked me this already. I told you that if you learned, there was a whole world of things you would discover you could do all along. Then one day you’ll want to come back, but a trip through the void pays a hefty toll. Best case scenario you wake up with no memory of what just happened. Worst case you lose a lot more than your recent memory.”
My brain was racing, trying to go back and remember what happened on the beach. The things he said began to make sense, but I had no idea what he was talking about. He seemed to have a lot of answers, so I asked him, “What happened, on the beach? How did I die and when have we met?”
He laughed and said, “Now that’d be no fun if I just told you what happened. You’ve got to work for it, you know? Get your own memories back.” Suddenly he vanished from the spot and right after spoke from right behind me. I spun around, just as he said, “A little departure gift.” He swept my legs, knocking me onto my back, and stabbed his sword into my right thigh. I tried not to scream, but a loud noise came out of my mouth in surprise and pain. He laughed one more time and said, “You’ll thank me later.” Then he vanished again, leaving me on the ground with blood coming out of my leg.
I pulled the sword out, making the pain much worse in the process, and took off my shirt to try and stop the blood. I held it against my leg, but I was afraid it wasn’t going to be enough. I sat there for a few minutes trying to think of a solution, when I heard someone just within eyesight in front of me.
“Oh my God!” She ran over to help me, and I realized it was Sarah. How she had found me I had no idea, but I was so relieved to see her. She got to me and kneeled over to grab the shirt. “What happened to you?” She asked frantically as she looked at the wound.
“I don’t really know myself. All I know is I was stabbed by…someone.” She paused for a fraction of a second, then she took a bag off her back. She ruffled through it until she found a rope, and immediately wrapped it around my leg, above the wound, and tighten it hard. It hurt my leg a bit, but I could feel my blood pumping against the rope. She was cutting off the blood flowing to my leg. Then she cut the piece of the rope around my leg off of the full length, and took another piece off to tie the shirt to the wound. After that she helped me stand up and said, “Come on, I’ve got some stuff that might help in my house.”
“Man, you’re a lifesaver,” I said as she helped me walk back where she came from. She picked up the sword and held me up on the right side as I walked with my left leg, dragging the right one behind.
“So what happened?”
“Well I woke up just a couple of hours ago, and I started walking to try and remember what happened yesterday. I was just making my way around the side of the forest, seeing if there was anything except desert, and…well, this guy came up. On the edge of the desert. And I might have been hallucinating or something, but I could have sworn he looked just like me.”
“What?”
“Yeah, I don’t know. He started going on about how I couldn’t remember my dreams and how we’d met before. Then he knocked me down and stabbed my leg before he vanished into thin air.”
“Are you sure you didn’t eat anything in the forest this morning?” I laughed and said no, but she seemed like it was a serious question. Then she said, “Well I guess it wasn’t all a hallucination, since you really were stabbed. This is definitely an odd sword, though.” She examined the dark purple material, and then she noticed a button on the top of the handle. When she pressed it, the whole sword ignited in flames.
“No way,” I said with a smile, “That’s the sword I made for you! Back in the first forest!” She stopped walking and let go, stepping back from me. I tried to hold myself up with my left leg.
“What do you mean ‘the sword you made for me’? I’ve never seen you before in my life.” That hurt a little bit to hear, but I was more confused than anything.
I asked, “What? Sarah, we spent months going around-“
She interrupted me, a mix of fear and anger in her eyes, and asked, “How do you know my name? Who are you?”
I began to panic, both in confusion and remembering what Sarah can do to people who are a threat. My brain raced trying to think of something to say, and it went back to the idea of the first forest. The desert around me, Sarah living alone before she met me, the idea seemed just a little more reasonable. I looked around, trying to find anything I could remember, when I saw a cave going into a hill. I looked at the small entry, an even grey wall on the left side, the same wall where that green thing nearly blew me up on my first day. The realization hit me, as my brain rejected its impossibility.
Sarah watched me staring at the cave, looked at it, and said, “What? What the hell are you looking at?” She held up the sword a bit and asked again, “Who are you, and how do you know my name?”
I turned back towards her, confusion in my eyes and now a little bit of it in hers, and said, “I…I think I may be from the future.” She put the sword down and stepped back again.
“What do you mean you’re from the future?”
“I’ve been here before, in this forest. On my first day in this world. I went to sleep in that cave back there and was almost blown up. Then I started building a house, learning the weird physics of this place, and I met you. You were hostile and untrusting at first, but then we started living together.” Then I looked at the trees and said, “But this forest, it shouldn’t be here. I burned it down when a man came to our house and you fought him. You fought for days, and I tried to stop you two by burning the trees.”
Now the shock that had been growing her eyes was all over, and she almost dropped her sword. “That’s impossible. There’s a group of men who have been hunting me, but they haven’t found me here yet. I thought I was safe.”
“This makes as little sense to me as it does to you. I just woke up here today, and I have no idea what happened yesterday or how I somehow came back to before it all happened.”
She hesitated for a bit, then walked up put and her arm around me, holding me up. She helped me start walking back and said, “Alright, well come on then. If you’ve met me before maybe you can help.”
“With what?”
“With the guys who are trying to kill me.”
I was surprised by this, but then remembered that she’d taught me how to fight. We probably could kill him if he attacked this time. “Alright then,” I said. “And maybe you can help figure out who it was that stabbed me.”
She almost chuckled, and said, “When you first said someone stabbed you I thought it was that guy who's been hunting me. To be honest it being someone who looks just like you makes more sense than it being him. He wouldn’t have spared your life like that. Or left this weird sword in your leg.” She looked at the flaming sword again and said, “You said you’d made this for me. How?”
“I remember I was going through your chest, and I smelted the material, made the ignition inside with some flint, and then I ground come coal and gunpowder into it to make it light. Took me a while.”
She laughed a bit and said, “That honestly sounds a bit made up.”
I smiled at the remark and replied, “It sounds a bit weird to me too, but then again this world has some pretty odd physics.”
“No argument there. But why did you make it? Did we need a flaming sword for some reason?”
I laughed nervously and said, “Let’s just say I was trying to make up for a training accident.” The last thing I was about to tell her was that I taunted her like an ass just to make her angry and fight harder.
Lucky for me she didn’t pick up on that. She just said, “So we were training then?”
“I was. You were teaching me.”
“Oh really? So you’re quite the fighter then?”
“I guess. I mean it’s been a while since I’ve had to fight.”
She smiled and said, “Well lucky for you I’ve got some dull wooden swords at the house. Once your leg heals, let’s see how good of a teacher I am.” Just then I looked up and we were getting close to her house. The sight of it confirmed my idea. It was the same house we burned down when we left the forest. She saw me looking at it and said, “So I take it you remember this place.”
“Yeah. We spent quite a bit of time here.” I smiled at the sense of nostalgia from seeing the place, then she brought me inside and I sat on the bed. She doused the sword in a bucket of water, and left it there to soak out the remaining blood. Then she went into her chest and pulled out a couple slices of cooked pork. She tossed them to me, and I remembered that food often heals you in this world. Or at least it did for some time. At some point during my travels I realized that I had become hungry, and when I was hurt food took a longer time to heal me.
Eating the pork made the pain in my leg almost immediately fade, and I untied the rope on the wound to check it. Besides the dried blood there was barely any sign that I’d been stabbed. Even my pants had healed back. I took off the other rope on my upper thigh and let the blood flow again. It felt amazing after having my leg in pain for so long. I laid my head back on the wall, and suddenly a wave of drowsiness begun to settle on me. Shortly after, Sarah yawned and said, “Give me a few minutes. I’ll make you a bed.”
I stood up to practice using my leg, but quickly realized I didn’t need to. I asked Sarah, “Do you have any water to wash this blood off?”
“Yeah, there’s a well down in the mine. Here’s a bucket.” She tossed me a bucket and kept working on the bed. I made my way down the stairs and remembered how far down they went. On the way down I had plenty of time to think about the situation. How had I gone back in time? And why did my own self appear out of nowhere and stab me?
When I got down there I saw the well to the right, but I was interrupted by the same guy from the desert. He was standing in front of the well with the same cocky look on his face, and before I could say anything he spoke, “You seem to get this idea that I’m trying to hurt you.”
“We you did stab me in the leg.”
“And gave Sarah a reason to let you in. Think about it, what would she have done if you’d wandered up to her house, addressing her by name?” I remembered how we met last time, with her jumping out of the trees and pinning me down. Had I shocked her like I did today, with no evidence that this guy was real, she almost definitely would have killed me. He continued, “Exactly. I told you before that you’d thank me later, and you’re welcome.”
“I don’t get it, though. If you really wanted to help me, why be so cryptic?”
“I’m only as bad as you think I am, James. I mean you spent your whole life thinking I was holding you back, trying to make your life difficult. So when you finally met me, that’s what I did. Try and make your life difficult.”
“What do you mean my whole life? I just met you today.”
“You may have met me today, but I’ve always been there. Keeping you alive and well.” Then he was gone, just like last time. No trace of him except his footsteps in the one spot. I tried to ignore what he said and wash my leg off, but it kept bugging me. On my way back up, my brain kept repeating his last sentence. I wondered what he meant when he said he’d always been there. It would make sense if he was just in my head, but he could actually harm me and left traces of himself. He wasn’t just a vision.
When I got upstairs I began to ask Sarah about it, but she was already asleep on her bed. The door was closed and locked, and it was already nighttime outside. She had already placed my bed parallel but separate to hers, so I dropped down into bed and quickly went to sleep. I loved how easy and quickly one could fade into sleep here.
Next thing I knew I was waking up to the sunlight coming in through the window. Sarah was already up, sitting at her workbench working on something. I sat up on the bed, still waking up. She heared me move and talked while she worked, “You slept late.”
“How late?” I asked, my mind still in a haze.
She gestured towards a clock hanging on the wall, “About three in the afternoon. You didn’t stay up late, did you?”
“No, I just went to bed a couple minutes after you, right after I came back upstairs.” I stood up and stretched, my mind still half-asleep.
“Damn, you look tired.”
“I guess time travel does that to you,” I joked. She chuckled a bit, and I remembered what happened last night in the mine and how I was going to ask her about it. “Oh yeah, last night when I went down to get water I saw that guy again.”
She immediately stopped working and turned the chair around. “What did he say? He didn’t attack you again, did he?”
“No, he just-“ I stopped myself, realized that I couldn’t repeat everything he said. It wouldn’t help to tell her he stabbed me to give Sarah a reason to be more open towards me. “He just said that he’s always been there, even though I never met him. He said he was only here to help me.”
“I wouldn’t trust him. It’d be easy for him to be lying.”
“Yeah, but…there’s something about him. He…he knows things about me. He knows my past, my feelings, my tendencies. He must be connected to me somehow.”
“Maybe he’s in your head. Your brain could’ve conjured him up.”
“No, he’s definitely real. He stabbed me, and created that sword.”
“Well considering what some people can do here with their minds, it’s not too out of the question.”
“So you know about the powers, then.”
“Oh yeah, almost had them myself at one time.” I chuckled, remembering what happened when she did get them. “What?”
“Oh, it’s just…well in the future, my future, you did get powers. But things got…out of control. It didn’t go very well.”
“What happened?”
“Well they started escalating. Fast. Really fast. Like you went from causing explosions of air to pulling it around like a hurricane in minutes. In just a few days you were taking down a prison, pulling magma from deep underground, spinning the sun around, all kinds of stuff.”
She smiled a bit and said, “That’s impossible. You have to kill someone else with them to develop without years of intense training.”
“Well apparently you were some sort of accident. We met this guy people called ‘Zeus’ later one, and-“
“Wait, we met Zeus? But that guy's just a legend!”
“Oh no, he’s real. And a pretty nice guy, too. His real name’s Liam. Got this New Zealand accent,” she laughed and I continued, “Well anyway he said at one point that you were a sort of a…a glitch. Like when you got your powers something just snapped and the universe started falling apart. Then you started getting corrupted and seeing people as ‘inferior,’ and we got separated. When we met again you were this completely different person, and later I found out you literally were another person. It’s like your brain couldn’t handle the immense power so it created this second personality that took you over. It got really weird.”
“Whoa. Suddenly I’m a lot less interested in getting these powers.”
“Yeah, things got really out of hand. And come to think of it, this world has some really odd rules. Maybe it’s not so crazy that the guy was in my head after all.”
Then he said, “See, now you’re getting it.” Sarah and I both saw him laying on her bed and stood up. He just kept talking, “Now this is exactly why I like being so vague. It’s so much better for you to figure these things out on your own. Get some teamwork going on here. Of course you both know all about what’s going on. It’s all just a matter of remembering,” he tapped his head.
Sarah spoke first, “What do you mean, both of us? How the hell would I know anything about what you’re saying?”
“Like I said, it’s better for you to figure it out yourselves.” Then something clicked in my head. The memories started to make sense, started to clear up. I remembered everything that had happened on the beach, the house, the Rip, Liam saving us. Then I woke up in a dark chapel, and a dark figure was there. My own dark figure, with an effect to his appearance and voice like my own voice if I’d crawled from the depths of Hell. It was dark, sinister, and he always had a cocky look on his face. The same one this guy has on his right now.
“It was you,” I said. Sarah looked at me, and his smile widened. “You’re the one from the dark place. My darkness. You’re the one who spent months making my life nothing but pain and misery!” He was ecstatic at my anger, and before I could process what I was doing I jumped at my other self and started hammering my fist into his face. I kept beating him against the wall over and over again until Sarah pulled me off and held me down.
He was laughing hysterically now, and I was fighting Sarah to jump back at him. “James, calm down! He can give us answers!”
“He needs to pay for his own existence! Let go of me, you have no idea who he is!”
He spoke next, “But that’s the best part, James! Neither do you!” I stopped struggling when I realized what he meant. I didn’t know why I was so angry at him. I didn’t remember anything after the first few minutes in the chapel. All I saw was that he taunted me then just like he does now. And that every time I killed him he came back. He always came back. Like he was tied to me, that no matter what I did as long as I was alive he would always come back to torture me.
I slowly got up and Sarah let go of me. He was standing next to the bed now, his face fully healed. I looked at him and asked, “What happened? Why are my memories so hard to see? And why do I hate you so much?”
He sighed, a look of genuine sadness on his face, “Because you thought, for years and years, that my existence was solely to make your life as painful as possible. But in truth you know that I want you to be happy, because at your core, in your inner most being-“
“You are me.”
He smiled, and then said, “But you don’t even know why you know that. What really sucks is that the most important part of your time in Limbo is the part that you can never remember.”
“But why?”
“Because you wanted to come back. Above everything else you wanted to see Sarah again. I asked you if you were sure you’d give up your memories and you said, I don’t care if I have to wait a trillion years, sitting at the center of every star in the sky as one by one they all burn out while I feel nothing but pain. If I have to wait for the end of the universe to come back here, I will.” He was looking at Sarah now, “The only thing that’s kept me sane is her face, the way her eyes light up when she laughs at something I said. It’s the only reason all of reality exists, so that something as impossibly beautiful as Sarah can live.” When he finished quoting me I knew he wasn’t lying, that I fully meant every word of that, even if I didn’t remember saying it. Had I been in that position, that’s exactly what I would’ve said.
Sarah looked at him, nothing but shock and confusion in her eyes. After some time she only got out, “We just met.”
I said, “No, Sarah.” She turned and looked at me, “You just met me. I’ve known you for months. We’ve been to Hell and back together.” Then I turned back to him, “But you never answered my question. Why did coming back here mean I had to forget what happened?”
“Because once you wake up from a dream you start to forget.”
“So it was a dream?”
He paused, then turned to look out the window. After a moment of hesitation, he said, “What happened in Limbo was as much of a dream as what has happened since the day you woke up in that forest.” I hated that sentence. It brought up a thought I refused to face. None of this could be a dream. It was all too real, too clear. It had no properties of a dream. I'd considered that idea before, and it didn't work. Then, like he often did, he spoke in reply to my thoughts, “James, grounding coal and gunpowder into a dense stone doesn’t make it flammable. The sun doesn’t just slow down because the days are too short. Food,“ he held up a pork chop and tossed it to me, “does not heal wounds when eaten. You know damn well what works in real life and what doesn’t, but when you set out to do something here and you know will work, it will. Because everything here, everything that’s happened to you is in your head.”
I stared at him for a long minute, my brain furiously trying reject his point. This whole experience felt far too real to be a dream, and there were too many things that didn’t work in a dream. I pointed out, “If you die in a dream you wake up.”
“Not if you set the rules differently.”
“When a dream is too long you’re bound to become lucid. Why didn’t I?”
“People have had dreams that lasted years and they never realize it. That’s part of the power of your subconscious. It does amazing work making sure you stay convinced that you’re in reality.”
“Which is why I can see you. Why you’re a person. And why you can affect the work around you.” This realization saddened me, knowing that nothing here meant anything. Nothing in this world was real, and at some point I had to wake up and go back to reality. Where I’m just a lonely guy living alone in a cruel world.
“I’m sorry James. I know you had accepted this world as your home. I know how much you just wanted to be happy.”
“Then why couldn’t you tell me sooner? Why couldn’t you let me start off in control?!”
“Because I couldn’t! I tried and tried, but there was a malfunction. I couldn’t get to you, I couldn’t talk to you. I had to watch from inside while you went through thinking this place was as cruel as the other, knowing all along that you could’ve just fixed it. But no, you’re so goddamned self-destructive. Always telling yourself why things suck, always running yourself into depression. You got the chance to live in your own world and what did you do? You made the whole experience a living hell for yourself! Just like you always do!”
I looked him, furious at me, furious at myself, and I said, “No. I didn’t make this place hell. You did.”
He gave a humorless chuckles and said, “Same thing.” And then he was gone, leaving Sarah and me standing there in shock. I looked at her, and she was already staring at me. There wasn’t a look of fear in her eyes, but a look of happiness. She looked at me as she’d just found a bag full of hundred dollar bills, and it was that look, that feeling of happiness in her that made me finally realize it after this whole ordeal. I was in a dream, my dream. This whole place could be whatever I wanted.
And that really wasn’t such a bad thing.
Chapter 2: Coming at some point in the possibly existent future
So there's this thingy I wrote, and it even has a sequel in progress! But instead of writing like a good little boy I just play Minecraft, or whatever games on my Steam library I haven't finished yet. Oh, and Borderlands 2 is the greatest thing to grace the human race (Mechromancer ftw).
So there's this thingy I wrote, and it even has a sequel in progress! But instead of writing like a good little boy I just play Minecraft, or whatever games on my Steam library I haven't finished yet. Oh, and Borderlands 2 is the greatest thing to grace the human race (Mechromancer ftw).
So if you see this, you're looking for a fanfiction. I can assure you it's coming soon, but not quite yet. I'll have the first Chapter if not the Prologue up in a couple of days, but for now I shall be doing Homework.
So there's this thingy I wrote, and it even has a sequel in progress! But instead of writing like a good little boy I just play Minecraft, or whatever games on my Steam library I haven't finished yet. Oh, and Borderlands 2 is the greatest thing to grace the human race (Mechromancer ftw).
Hoping this doesn't merge with my other post like the forum seems to keep doing. Makes it hard to reserve posts.
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So there's this thingy I wrote, and it even has a sequel in progress! But instead of writing like a good little boy I just play Minecraft, or whatever games on my Steam library I haven't finished yet. Oh, and Borderlands 2 is the greatest thing to grace the human race (Mechromancer ftw).
So there's this thingy I wrote, and it even has a sequel in progress! But instead of writing like a good little boy I just play Minecraft, or whatever games on my Steam library I haven't finished yet. Oh, and Borderlands 2 is the greatest thing to grace the human race (Mechromancer ftw).
So there's this thingy I wrote, and it even has a sequel in progress! But instead of writing like a good little boy I just play Minecraft, or whatever games on my Steam library I haven't finished yet. Oh, and Borderlands 2 is the greatest thing to grace the human race (Mechromancer ftw).
I didn't know that there was a limit.. I may make a new thread for my story, as it's already 4 pages long and I have no reserved posts lol.
As for the story, it's really good. Perfectly descriptive, unimaginably creative. How does it tie into Minecraft though, is my question.
Just noticed it's a sequel. I will go read the previous now.
Sorry for the absence, I've had some trouble in school. Wish I could say I can work on Chapter 1 soon, but I'm swamped for the seen future. I'll be trying to find points to get some in, but things are slow on this end.
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So there's this thingy I wrote, and it even has a sequel in progress! But instead of writing like a good little boy I just play Minecraft, or whatever games on my Steam library I haven't finished yet. Oh, and Borderlands 2 is the greatest thing to grace the human race (Mechromancer ftw).
I didn't know that there was a limit.. I may make a new thread for my story, as it's already 4 pages long and I have no reserved posts lol.
I'd say you shouldn't have to worry about it too much, unless you're dedicated to get really far with your story. My first one was 81 pages on Word, and used a little over 3 posts.
So there's this thingy I wrote, and it even has a sequel in progress! But instead of writing like a good little boy I just play Minecraft, or whatever games on my Steam library I haven't finished yet. Oh, and Borderlands 2 is the greatest thing to grace the human race (Mechromancer ftw).
Making sure you guys know I'm not dead, and maybe finally giving some movement to anyone loyal enough that you've kept checking. I've got 2-3 weeks of building chaos left, then I will crack down on writing. I've still got the original to edit, although that was supposed to be done already had it not been for some...unforeseen consequences.....but that shouldn't take too long. Just an estimation:
Original edit - June 21st.
New Chapter - July 1st.
AT THE LATEST. School gets out the 15th for me, then some moving (back to 'Merica). I'll be free by the 19th, and it shouldn't take more than a day of straight writing to finish the edit.
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So there's this thingy I wrote, and it even has a sequel in progress! But instead of writing like a good little boy I just play Minecraft, or whatever games on my Steam library I haven't finished yet. Oh, and Borderlands 2 is the greatest thing to grace the human race (Mechromancer ftw).
Well, that time just flew by. Sorry for my absence of activity over the past month, those of you who have held on long enough to see it. I'd love to tell you I'm going to get to work straight away from here on out, but unfortunately I just never get into the writing mood. If you want to read an in-depth description on what exactly I mean by that, here ya go.
Anyways, I'll finish the edit and, in turn, the next chapter....eventually, I guess.
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So there's this thingy I wrote, and it even has a sequel in progress! But instead of writing like a good little boy I just play Minecraft, or whatever games on my Steam library I haven't finished yet. Oh, and Borderlands 2 is the greatest thing to grace the human race (Mechromancer ftw).
Good News, everyone! Finally got around to editing that damn original, and on top of that I've got most of the new plot written out. So now I can finally make some progress with this!
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So there's this thingy I wrote, and it even has a sequel in progress! But instead of writing like a good little boy I just play Minecraft, or whatever games on my Steam library I haven't finished yet. Oh, and Borderlands 2 is the greatest thing to grace the human race (Mechromancer ftw).
So that means you are now writing more right? if yes yay, if no aww.
Yes. I'm planning on adding a chapter or two tonight, but if not very soon. I'm eager to finally be able to make some progress. Got some serious physchological **** planned for the coming times. >
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So there's this thingy I wrote, and it even has a sequel in progress! But instead of writing like a good little boy I just play Minecraft, or whatever games on my Steam library I haven't finished yet. Oh, and Borderlands 2 is the greatest thing to grace the human race (Mechromancer ftw).
Anyway, if you don't know what this is (besides a Minecraft fanfiction, silly goose), it's actually a sequel to my other one. If you haven't read it yet, you need to before reading this.
So now, without further ado, the sequel you probably haven't been waiting for: A Thousand Days!
Prologue
He spoke from behind me, as always, “You know that’s not gonna work, right?”
“That never stopped me before,” I replied coldly.
“And look where you ended up.” I could hear the smirk on his face. His tone always had that cocky gist to it. I’d learned to ignore it as best as I could, but for now I just continued to slam on the door. I was ramming it repeatedly with a podium from the front of the room, to no fruition. The door wasn’t just locked, but blocked off. It wouldn’t budge. I dropped the podium on the last hit and walked back to the main room, defeated.
He looked at me, amused. “Aww, giving up already? That's so like you.”
I clenched my fist. I had been working on suppressing my anger against him for weeks, and I wasn’t going to give in now. I looked around at the dust swirling in the purple light from the main windows. It never seemed to settle, just kept taking up the oxygen in the room. He watched me leaning on the wall deep in thought, and walked over.
He spoke in a reasoning tone, “You know, you’re seeing this as worse off than it needs to be. Think of it this way: You’re trapped in here, with me, and I know things about you that you never did. Maybe I could teach you a few things about yourself. For example, did you know that you were actually the one who started the Rip?” My vision blurred, but I continued to fight back the urge to attack. “You’ve known this deep down for a while. I mean, you’re the one who pushed Sarah do develop her powers in the first place. Although we both know no one bought that whole “glitch” bullcrap that Liam fed you. He was never to be trusted, always so mysterious.” He was leaning against the wall now, next to me. “Now I know you hate me, but think about this for a second. How do you know that everything Liam told you wasn’t a lie? He has no real credibility, after all.”
I had thought of this, but refused to discuss it with him. I walked back over to the podium, and carried it to the window. I could see him smiling at me, but made no movement of notice. I just kept going on with my business. “Here,” he said, “Use this instead.” He held out a huge mallet to me, but I just looked at him.
“Where the hell did you get that?”
“It that really that important?”
“Well considering I’ve searched this big empty room for days and came up empty, yes. Now where in hell did you get that?”
“Technically, it was in Limbo, not Hell.”
I swung my arm and slammed the podium into his face. He moved to block it but I got a solid blow. He fumbled on the ground and I threw it onto his face, splattering his dark blood around the floor. The rest faded into the same dark smoke that remained after every kill. I felt almost guilty for doing that, him acting all human and such. Of course I knew of the inevitable return, as well.
“Jesus, I just offered to help,” he said from behind me.
“Well you just can’t keep from ing me off sometimes, can you?!” I yelled back.
He noticed the aggravation in my tone, but didn’t make to laugh at it. He seemed more sympathetic. He tossed me the mallet this time, and I slammed it against the purple stained glass window. It bounced back, knocking me on the floor, while he broke down laughing. I got up, furious, and grabbed the mallet to kill him with. Right as I picked it up, though, it vanished.
I looked at him in curiosity. He was just getting over his fit, and noticed my confusion. “Oh, right. The mallet. So I’ve been here, what? 15 years Earth time? That’s about 100 millennia in Limbo time. I’ve learned a few tricks.”
I hesitated before asking, “Can…can you teach me?”
He was a bit shocked at the request, but then said, “Sure. But be warned, you may not like what you’ll need to do for this kind of power.”
“Look, I’ve got time. And I’m kind of out of options here.” I didn’t need to say this. He knew how desperate I was.
“Alright then. Let’s get to work.”
Chapter 1: A New World
Slowly I begin to hear the sounds of nature, leaves rustling, occasional birds, the usual. It was like sounds blending into a dream, except the dream was pure nothingness. One by one my senses came back, common sense being the last. Immediately I opened my eyes and sat up, my bones stiff from the sleep. The area around me was peaceful and familiar, and my brain struggled to start up. Gradually I began to piece the situation together, as I tried to remember how I got here. The days had gotten more and more blurred together, making it difficult to pick out which one was yesterday.
I decided to start walking around to wake myself up. Constantly I pushed through my memories, putting them in chronological order, but the further I got the harder it was to remember. I remembered being on the beach, Liam giving his body for Sarah’s other self, and I remembered his making us a house out of sand. After that I could barely figure out anything, so I changed my focus on the present. Hopefully some wandering would clear things up.
I walked through the forest for a good couple of hours, soaking in the atmosphere. Every element, the animals, the sounds, the air, it was all so familiar to me. The only times Sarah and I ever settled down were in a forest. The first one was my favorite, back when things were so much simpler.
As my mind got lost in the more and more distant past, I began to look back on my earlier days in this world with a newer perspective. I looked back on Sarah when we first met, and how unstable she was. Or at least how she seemed to be. Things had been happened so fast lately I never got a good understanding on just who it was I had fallen in love with. Her past seemed to always be changing.
In my reminiscing I suddenly found myself on the edge of the forest, where the landscape abruptly changed from dirt and grass into an endless stretch of sand. A large desert went out far beyond my eye’s reach, in all directions past the forest. It kind of reminded me of our first home, an island of trees surrounded by endless desert. My brain went through the idea that this was that first desert, but I quickly discarded the thought. I had burned that forest down.
I turned and started to move around the perimeter, as my mind went back to the newest memories. I fought as hard as I could to make sense of the faded visions, but it never seemed to clear up, like a dream I had just woken from. I went through each detail, exercising the recall to try and open things up. I woke up on the beach, Sarah came back with an orb in her hands, took her powers away, spent a day or two unconscious, I met Jim, then things only got more hazy from there. I could recall a hurricane, Sarah and I outside in the sand, the remains of the house, and everything after that was only an idea. I knew that Liam had allowed himself to die, giving a body for the other being inside Sarah, now naming itself Will, and that his departing gift was a house for us, but I didn’t see any of these things. I knew of them simply because I did.
Then my thoughts were interrupted by a voice to my right. “You always did tend to dwell in your own dreams,” it said. I turned to see who had said it, and saw what I thought was myself standing in the sand, a cocky smile on his face. He continued, “You never even tried to learn that it was just a dream. There’s a reason you have to wake up.”
“Who are you? And what the hell are you talking about?” I immediately asked. It was hard to find a sensible question to start with.
He just smiled and said, “You see, I told you that you wouldn’t remember. But then, how would you ever know the whole thing was real? Nothing seemed to make sense after the Rift caught up.” He chuckled a bit, and said, ”But then again, when did anything in this world ever make sense?”
I was getting aggravated pretty quickly, “You’re not helping anyone by being so damn cryptic, now just answer the question. Who are you?”
He smiled even more and replied excitedly, “Now there’s the tone I know and love. You’re just too easy to aggravate, you know? And it’s so much fun to do it. The way your fists clench up like you think you’re a threat.” He laughed, and turned to walk left while still talking, “You just always need your answers now, and it’s so pathetic. You get impatient if someone doesn’t get right to the point. Can’t I just have a little fun first?” I reached for my sword to run at him, but it was gone. “Oh, forgot about that, huh? Lose all your stuff every time you respawn. Bit of a shame you don’t remember, too. I’ll bet you’d just love it if you could snap your fingers and poof,” he held up his arm, and a dark purple sword materialized in his hand, “there’s a nice fresh sword right in your hands.”
“How did you-“
“I told you James. You asked me this already. I told you that if you learned, there was a whole world of things you would discover you could do all along. Then one day you’ll want to come back, but a trip through the void pays a hefty toll. Best case scenario you wake up with no memory of what just happened. Worst case you lose a lot more than your recent memory.”
My brain was racing, trying to go back and remember what happened on the beach. The things he said began to make sense, but I had no idea what he was talking about. He seemed to have a lot of answers, so I asked him, “What happened, on the beach? How did I die and when have we met?”
He laughed and said, “Now that’d be no fun if I just told you what happened. You’ve got to work for it, you know? Get your own memories back.” Suddenly he vanished from the spot and right after spoke from right behind me. I spun around, just as he said, “A little departure gift.” He swept my legs, knocking me onto my back, and stabbed his sword into my right thigh. I tried not to scream, but a loud noise came out of my mouth in surprise and pain. He laughed one more time and said, “You’ll thank me later.” Then he vanished again, leaving me on the ground with blood coming out of my leg.
I pulled the sword out, making the pain much worse in the process, and took off my shirt to try and stop the blood. I held it against my leg, but I was afraid it wasn’t going to be enough. I sat there for a few minutes trying to think of a solution, when I heard someone just within eyesight in front of me.
“Oh my God!” She ran over to help me, and I realized it was Sarah. How she had found me I had no idea, but I was so relieved to see her. She got to me and kneeled over to grab the shirt. “What happened to you?” She asked frantically as she looked at the wound.
“I don’t really know myself. All I know is I was stabbed by…someone.” She paused for a fraction of a second, then she took a bag off her back. She ruffled through it until she found a rope, and immediately wrapped it around my leg, above the wound, and tighten it hard. It hurt my leg a bit, but I could feel my blood pumping against the rope. She was cutting off the blood flowing to my leg. Then she cut the piece of the rope around my leg off of the full length, and took another piece off to tie the shirt to the wound. After that she helped me stand up and said, “Come on, I’ve got some stuff that might help in my house.”
“Man, you’re a lifesaver,” I said as she helped me walk back where she came from. She picked up the sword and held me up on the right side as I walked with my left leg, dragging the right one behind.
“So what happened?”
“Well I woke up just a couple of hours ago, and I started walking to try and remember what happened yesterday. I was just making my way around the side of the forest, seeing if there was anything except desert, and…well, this guy came up. On the edge of the desert. And I might have been hallucinating or something, but I could have sworn he looked just like me.”
“What?”
“Yeah, I don’t know. He started going on about how I couldn’t remember my dreams and how we’d met before. Then he knocked me down and stabbed my leg before he vanished into thin air.”
“Are you sure you didn’t eat anything in the forest this morning?” I laughed and said no, but she seemed like it was a serious question. Then she said, “Well I guess it wasn’t all a hallucination, since you really were stabbed. This is definitely an odd sword, though.” She examined the dark purple material, and then she noticed a button on the top of the handle. When she pressed it, the whole sword ignited in flames.
“No way,” I said with a smile, “That’s the sword I made for you! Back in the first forest!” She stopped walking and let go, stepping back from me. I tried to hold myself up with my left leg.
“What do you mean ‘the sword you made for me’? I’ve never seen you before in my life.” That hurt a little bit to hear, but I was more confused than anything.
I asked, “What? Sarah, we spent months going around-“
She interrupted me, a mix of fear and anger in her eyes, and asked, “How do you know my name? Who are you?”
I began to panic, both in confusion and remembering what Sarah can do to people who are a threat. My brain raced trying to think of something to say, and it went back to the idea of the first forest. The desert around me, Sarah living alone before she met me, the idea seemed just a little more reasonable. I looked around, trying to find anything I could remember, when I saw a cave going into a hill. I looked at the small entry, an even grey wall on the left side, the same wall where that green thing nearly blew me up on my first day. The realization hit me, as my brain rejected its impossibility.
Sarah watched me staring at the cave, looked at it, and said, “What? What the hell are you looking at?” She held up the sword a bit and asked again, “Who are you, and how do you know my name?”
I turned back towards her, confusion in my eyes and now a little bit of it in hers, and said, “I…I think I may be from the future.” She put the sword down and stepped back again.
“What do you mean you’re from the future?”
“I’ve been here before, in this forest. On my first day in this world. I went to sleep in that cave back there and was almost blown up. Then I started building a house, learning the weird physics of this place, and I met you. You were hostile and untrusting at first, but then we started living together.” Then I looked at the trees and said, “But this forest, it shouldn’t be here. I burned it down when a man came to our house and you fought him. You fought for days, and I tried to stop you two by burning the trees.”
Now the shock that had been growing her eyes was all over, and she almost dropped her sword. “That’s impossible. There’s a group of men who have been hunting me, but they haven’t found me here yet. I thought I was safe.”
“This makes as little sense to me as it does to you. I just woke up here today, and I have no idea what happened yesterday or how I somehow came back to before it all happened.”
She hesitated for a bit, then walked up put and her arm around me, holding me up. She helped me start walking back and said, “Alright, well come on then. If you’ve met me before maybe you can help.”
“With what?”
“With the guys who are trying to kill me.”
I was surprised by this, but then remembered that she’d taught me how to fight. We probably could kill him if he attacked this time. “Alright then,” I said. “And maybe you can help figure out who it was that stabbed me.”
She almost chuckled, and said, “When you first said someone stabbed you I thought it was that guy who's been hunting me. To be honest it being someone who looks just like you makes more sense than it being him. He wouldn’t have spared your life like that. Or left this weird sword in your leg.” She looked at the flaming sword again and said, “You said you’d made this for me. How?”
“I remember I was going through your chest, and I smelted the material, made the ignition inside with some flint, and then I ground come coal and gunpowder into it to make it light. Took me a while.”
She laughed a bit and said, “That honestly sounds a bit made up.”
I smiled at the remark and replied, “It sounds a bit weird to me too, but then again this world has some pretty odd physics.”
“No argument there. But why did you make it? Did we need a flaming sword for some reason?”
I laughed nervously and said, “Let’s just say I was trying to make up for a training accident.” The last thing I was about to tell her was that I taunted her like an ass just to make her angry and fight harder.
Lucky for me she didn’t pick up on that. She just said, “So we were training then?”
“I was. You were teaching me.”
“Oh really? So you’re quite the fighter then?”
“I guess. I mean it’s been a while since I’ve had to fight.”
She smiled and said, “Well lucky for you I’ve got some dull wooden swords at the house. Once your leg heals, let’s see how good of a teacher I am.” Just then I looked up and we were getting close to her house. The sight of it confirmed my idea. It was the same house we burned down when we left the forest. She saw me looking at it and said, “So I take it you remember this place.”
“Yeah. We spent quite a bit of time here.” I smiled at the sense of nostalgia from seeing the place, then she brought me inside and I sat on the bed. She doused the sword in a bucket of water, and left it there to soak out the remaining blood. Then she went into her chest and pulled out a couple slices of cooked pork. She tossed them to me, and I remembered that food often heals you in this world. Or at least it did for some time. At some point during my travels I realized that I had become hungry, and when I was hurt food took a longer time to heal me.
Eating the pork made the pain in my leg almost immediately fade, and I untied the rope on the wound to check it. Besides the dried blood there was barely any sign that I’d been stabbed. Even my pants had healed back. I took off the other rope on my upper thigh and let the blood flow again. It felt amazing after having my leg in pain for so long. I laid my head back on the wall, and suddenly a wave of drowsiness begun to settle on me. Shortly after, Sarah yawned and said, “Give me a few minutes. I’ll make you a bed.”
I stood up to practice using my leg, but quickly realized I didn’t need to. I asked Sarah, “Do you have any water to wash this blood off?”
“Yeah, there’s a well down in the mine. Here’s a bucket.” She tossed me a bucket and kept working on the bed. I made my way down the stairs and remembered how far down they went. On the way down I had plenty of time to think about the situation. How had I gone back in time? And why did my own self appear out of nowhere and stab me?
When I got down there I saw the well to the right, but I was interrupted by the same guy from the desert. He was standing in front of the well with the same cocky look on his face, and before I could say anything he spoke, “You seem to get this idea that I’m trying to hurt you.”
“We you did stab me in the leg.”
“And gave Sarah a reason to let you in. Think about it, what would she have done if you’d wandered up to her house, addressing her by name?” I remembered how we met last time, with her jumping out of the trees and pinning me down. Had I shocked her like I did today, with no evidence that this guy was real, she almost definitely would have killed me. He continued, “Exactly. I told you before that you’d thank me later, and you’re welcome.”
“I don’t get it, though. If you really wanted to help me, why be so cryptic?”
“I’m only as bad as you think I am, James. I mean you spent your whole life thinking I was holding you back, trying to make your life difficult. So when you finally met me, that’s what I did. Try and make your life difficult.”
“What do you mean my whole life? I just met you today.”
“You may have met me today, but I’ve always been there. Keeping you alive and well.” Then he was gone, just like last time. No trace of him except his footsteps in the one spot. I tried to ignore what he said and wash my leg off, but it kept bugging me. On my way back up, my brain kept repeating his last sentence. I wondered what he meant when he said he’d always been there. It would make sense if he was just in my head, but he could actually harm me and left traces of himself. He wasn’t just a vision.
When I got upstairs I began to ask Sarah about it, but she was already asleep on her bed. The door was closed and locked, and it was already nighttime outside. She had already placed my bed parallel but separate to hers, so I dropped down into bed and quickly went to sleep. I loved how easy and quickly one could fade into sleep here.
Next thing I knew I was waking up to the sunlight coming in through the window. Sarah was already up, sitting at her workbench working on something. I sat up on the bed, still waking up. She heared me move and talked while she worked, “You slept late.”
“How late?” I asked, my mind still in a haze.
She gestured towards a clock hanging on the wall, “About three in the afternoon. You didn’t stay up late, did you?”
“No, I just went to bed a couple minutes after you, right after I came back upstairs.” I stood up and stretched, my mind still half-asleep.
“Damn, you look tired.”
“I guess time travel does that to you,” I joked. She chuckled a bit, and I remembered what happened last night in the mine and how I was going to ask her about it. “Oh yeah, last night when I went down to get water I saw that guy again.”
She immediately stopped working and turned the chair around. “What did he say? He didn’t attack you again, did he?”
“No, he just-“ I stopped myself, realized that I couldn’t repeat everything he said. It wouldn’t help to tell her he stabbed me to give Sarah a reason to be more open towards me. “He just said that he’s always been there, even though I never met him. He said he was only here to help me.”
“I wouldn’t trust him. It’d be easy for him to be lying.”
“Yeah, but…there’s something about him. He…he knows things about me. He knows my past, my feelings, my tendencies. He must be connected to me somehow.”
“Maybe he’s in your head. Your brain could’ve conjured him up.”
“No, he’s definitely real. He stabbed me, and created that sword.”
“Well considering what some people can do here with their minds, it’s not too out of the question.”
“So you know about the powers, then.”
“Oh yeah, almost had them myself at one time.” I chuckled, remembering what happened when she did get them. “What?”
“Oh, it’s just…well in the future, my future, you did get powers. But things got…out of control. It didn’t go very well.”
“What happened?”
“Well they started escalating. Fast. Really fast. Like you went from causing explosions of air to pulling it around like a hurricane in minutes. In just a few days you were taking down a prison, pulling magma from deep underground, spinning the sun around, all kinds of stuff.”
She smiled a bit and said, “That’s impossible. You have to kill someone else with them to develop without years of intense training.”
“Well apparently you were some sort of accident. We met this guy people called ‘Zeus’ later one, and-“
“Wait, we met Zeus? But that guy's just a legend!”
“Oh no, he’s real. And a pretty nice guy, too. His real name’s Liam. Got this New Zealand accent,” she laughed and I continued, “Well anyway he said at one point that you were a sort of a…a glitch. Like when you got your powers something just snapped and the universe started falling apart. Then you started getting corrupted and seeing people as ‘inferior,’ and we got separated. When we met again you were this completely different person, and later I found out you literally were another person. It’s like your brain couldn’t handle the immense power so it created this second personality that took you over. It got really weird.”
“Whoa. Suddenly I’m a lot less interested in getting these powers.”
“Yeah, things got really out of hand. And come to think of it, this world has some really odd rules. Maybe it’s not so crazy that the guy was in my head after all.”
Then he said, “See, now you’re getting it.” Sarah and I both saw him laying on her bed and stood up. He just kept talking, “Now this is exactly why I like being so vague. It’s so much better for you to figure these things out on your own. Get some teamwork going on here. Of course you both know all about what’s going on. It’s all just a matter of remembering,” he tapped his head.
Sarah spoke first, “What do you mean, both of us? How the hell would I know anything about what you’re saying?”
“Like I said, it’s better for you to figure it out yourselves.” Then something clicked in my head. The memories started to make sense, started to clear up. I remembered everything that had happened on the beach, the house, the Rip, Liam saving us. Then I woke up in a dark chapel, and a dark figure was there. My own dark figure, with an effect to his appearance and voice like my own voice if I’d crawled from the depths of Hell. It was dark, sinister, and he always had a cocky look on his face. The same one this guy has on his right now.
“It was you,” I said. Sarah looked at me, and his smile widened. “You’re the one from the dark place. My darkness. You’re the one who spent months making my life nothing but pain and misery!” He was ecstatic at my anger, and before I could process what I was doing I jumped at my other self and started hammering my fist into his face. I kept beating him against the wall over and over again until Sarah pulled me off and held me down.
He was laughing hysterically now, and I was fighting Sarah to jump back at him. “James, calm down! He can give us answers!”
“He needs to pay for his own existence! Let go of me, you have no idea who he is!”
He spoke next, “But that’s the best part, James! Neither do you!” I stopped struggling when I realized what he meant. I didn’t know why I was so angry at him. I didn’t remember anything after the first few minutes in the chapel. All I saw was that he taunted me then just like he does now. And that every time I killed him he came back. He always came back. Like he was tied to me, that no matter what I did as long as I was alive he would always come back to torture me.
I slowly got up and Sarah let go of me. He was standing next to the bed now, his face fully healed. I looked at him and asked, “What happened? Why are my memories so hard to see? And why do I hate you so much?”
He sighed, a look of genuine sadness on his face, “Because you thought, for years and years, that my existence was solely to make your life as painful as possible. But in truth you know that I want you to be happy, because at your core, in your inner most being-“
“You are me.”
He smiled, and then said, “But you don’t even know why you know that. What really sucks is that the most important part of your time in Limbo is the part that you can never remember.”
“But why?”
“Because you wanted to come back. Above everything else you wanted to see Sarah again. I asked you if you were sure you’d give up your memories and you said, I don’t care if I have to wait a trillion years, sitting at the center of every star in the sky as one by one they all burn out while I feel nothing but pain. If I have to wait for the end of the universe to come back here, I will.” He was looking at Sarah now, “The only thing that’s kept me sane is her face, the way her eyes light up when she laughs at something I said. It’s the only reason all of reality exists, so that something as impossibly beautiful as Sarah can live.” When he finished quoting me I knew he wasn’t lying, that I fully meant every word of that, even if I didn’t remember saying it. Had I been in that position, that’s exactly what I would’ve said.
Sarah looked at him, nothing but shock and confusion in her eyes. After some time she only got out, “We just met.”
I said, “No, Sarah.” She turned and looked at me, “You just met me. I’ve known you for months. We’ve been to Hell and back together.” Then I turned back to him, “But you never answered my question. Why did coming back here mean I had to forget what happened?”
“Because once you wake up from a dream you start to forget.”
“So it was a dream?”
He paused, then turned to look out the window. After a moment of hesitation, he said, “What happened in Limbo was as much of a dream as what has happened since the day you woke up in that forest.” I hated that sentence. It brought up a thought I refused to face. None of this could be a dream. It was all too real, too clear. It had no properties of a dream. I'd considered that idea before, and it didn't work. Then, like he often did, he spoke in reply to my thoughts, “James, grounding coal and gunpowder into a dense stone doesn’t make it flammable. The sun doesn’t just slow down because the days are too short. Food,“ he held up a pork chop and tossed it to me, “does not heal wounds when eaten. You know damn well what works in real life and what doesn’t, but when you set out to do something here and you know will work, it will. Because everything here, everything that’s happened to you is in your head.”
I stared at him for a long minute, my brain furiously trying reject his point. This whole experience felt far too real to be a dream, and there were too many things that didn’t work in a dream. I pointed out, “If you die in a dream you wake up.”
“Not if you set the rules differently.”
“When a dream is too long you’re bound to become lucid. Why didn’t I?”
“People have had dreams that lasted years and they never realize it. That’s part of the power of your subconscious. It does amazing work making sure you stay convinced that you’re in reality.”
“Which is why I can see you. Why you’re a person. And why you can affect the work around you.” This realization saddened me, knowing that nothing here meant anything. Nothing in this world was real, and at some point I had to wake up and go back to reality. Where I’m just a lonely guy living alone in a cruel world.
“I’m sorry James. I know you had accepted this world as your home. I know how much you just wanted to be happy.”
“Then why couldn’t you tell me sooner? Why couldn’t you let me start off in control?!”
“Because I couldn’t! I tried and tried, but there was a malfunction. I couldn’t get to you, I couldn’t talk to you. I had to watch from inside while you went through thinking this place was as cruel as the other, knowing all along that you could’ve just fixed it. But no, you’re so goddamned self-destructive. Always telling yourself why things suck, always running yourself into depression. You got the chance to live in your own world and what did you do? You made the whole experience a living hell for yourself! Just like you always do!”
I looked him, furious at me, furious at myself, and I said, “No. I didn’t make this place hell. You did.”
He gave a humorless chuckles and said, “Same thing.” And then he was gone, leaving Sarah and me standing there in shock. I looked at her, and she was already staring at me. There wasn’t a look of fear in her eyes, but a look of happiness. She looked at me as she’d just found a bag full of hundred dollar bills, and it was that look, that feeling of happiness in her that made me finally realize it after this whole ordeal. I was in a dream, my dream. This whole place could be whatever I wanted.
And that really wasn’t such a bad thing.
Chapter 2: Coming at some point in the possibly existent future
It's been 4 days.
And it's being uploaded in a few minutes.
As for the story, it's really good. Perfectly descriptive, unimaginably creative. How does it tie into Minecraft though, is my question.
Just noticed it's a sequel. I will go read the previous now.
Here's a story I'm writing. So yeah.
Silent Raven
I'd say you shouldn't have to worry about it too much, unless you're dedicated to get really far with your story. My first one was 81 pages on Word, and used a little over 3 posts.
Good to know you're excited...
Original edit - June 21st.
New Chapter - July 1st.
AT THE LATEST. School gets out the 15th for me, then some moving (back to 'Merica). I'll be free by the 19th, and it shouldn't take more than a day of straight writing to finish the edit.
Anyways, I'll finish the edit and, in turn, the next chapter....eventually, I guess.
Here's a story I'm writing. So yeah.
Silent Raven
You just lost The Game.
RUN
Yes. I'm planning on adding a chapter or two tonight, but if not very soon. I'm eager to finally be able to make some progress. Got some serious physchological **** planned for the coming times. >
RUN