The pink haired girl, stops walking for a moment as if confused…

“Wait, you’re only level 19? That's impossible! He would never send someone so weak to have their trial here. How did you even escape the flesh devouring forest? Those plants should’ve ripped you apart….”

“Wait how do you know my level?” Now she was even more confused….

“What are you? How are you not afraid…. Everyone is afraid of me… Even my brothers and sisters hated being around me….”

Damn that's harsh… Poor kid must have been abused by her family… I can relate totally! This might not be as bad as I thought…

“Why would I be scared of a cute girl?” I chuckle at the end of statement… Wait why am I not nervous? I hate being around girls normally, I feel completely disgusted being in their presence… But I am completely fine right now….

By now she was blushing a really cute shade of red that fit perfectly with her strawberry pink hair….

Your Aether Reserves are now at 22%

Shit! What's happening? Why is it draining so fast???

“Wh-what! Stop lying, tell me how that old man is keeping you from being afraid. There is no way you could be in my presence without being affected without being one of his children!” She nearly shouted the end as cute little tears began to form at the edges of her eyes…

Oh god. What is this feeling…. Do… I ff- f -f -f - f -f f -f - f

…

……

……

Oh god. What is this feeling…. Do I ff- --f f--f f ff -- f

Your Aether Reserves are now at 7%

“Ummm…. Hey are you alright? You don’t look so good right now….” The girl tilted her head adorably to the right.

……

…

…..

Oh god. WhAt Is ThIs FeElInG….. dO i f f--f-f--f-f---f-f--f-f-f-f--f-f-

Your Aether Reserves are now at 0%

Opening my eyes, everything was black….

There was no sound as I sat still unable to shift my body….

Well shit I guess I am dead. Who would’ve thought, only a few days into the apocalypse and I already croaked…. Wait, when did I start treating all of this as real?

I internally laugh at myself, at first I really didn’t think of any of this as real. In fact I was pretty convinced this was all a dream for a good while. I think the wakeup call came sometime between getting shot, and making a teddy bear dance…. Honestly, even I am not creative enough to imagine that level of pain and if I had been imagining something being controlled with telekinesis, I probably would’ve made the bear rip its owners head off. Man that would have been so funny. Imagine a little teddy bear grappling with a little child’s head, pulling with all its might till the kid’s head snapped and started ripping its connecting muscles and tissue.

Now that would’ve been grade A entertainment, but alas all I could do was entertain the brat until she croaked herself. At Least I got to hear her cry herself to sleep, so theres something….

….

….

….

Something just sniffled…. Oh shit is my soul about to be devoured or something? Something wet hit the back of my neck and my entire body tenses. Ohhh fuck.

Dear God- ok listen I have never done this so I guess now is as good a time as any…. So just gonna let it all out…. Yea you’re a piece of shit, I have always hated you, go suck a dick you over sized ego fuck. I bet you still live in your mom’s basement! There I said it, lets go bois! Boutta head to hell in style! Don’t worry, I’ll tell satan you’re still a massive dick!

Before I could prepare for my own demise any further, a voice interrupts me….

“So are you going to get out of my lap, or do I need to kill you?” I’d know that cute little voice anywhere! It's the girl that for some reason I don’t detest!

Your Aether Reserves are now at 100%

I quickly raise my head, now finding I could in fact move the entire time…. Aww shit I got a lap pillow from the girl! Nice. Wait not nice- Aiyla…. Wait why is it not nice? I can’t remember, where is Aiyla?

Seeing my alarmed expression, the girl quickly moves to restrain me…. And surprisingly I can’t move after she has clamped both of her arms to my shoulders….

“Oh you’re looking for your spear? Yea I got rid of that thing… Never seen such a heavily cursed weapon… Probably created by a whole slew of gods being sacrificed… I couldn’t even hold it for more than a few minutes or i’d probably lose it and kill myself…. If I could theoretically…”

She kept mumbling to herself, but all I could hear was static… Aiyla… was cursed?

“She was not cursed!” I didn’t say that…. I wasn’t doing anything but my body started to resist the girl, trying to get away.

“She…. It had a personality?” Now the girl looked worried. For some reason she kept looking over her shoulder towards a pit of darkness….. THATS WHERE AIYLA IS. I MUST GET AIYLA!

I Activated all of the skills that could possibly help me escape. I used fleet footed to try and rip my body from her grasp, blood lust to try and stab her, even trying to use telekinesis to rip off my arms to get to Aiyla….

Meanwhile, the girl sat there unperturbed by my struggles that couldn’t even move her grip an inch…. She turned her head from the pit back towards me before seemingly coming to an understanding…

“Oh I get it! So you were possessed! Well that's rare, I didn’t know weapons could leave a personality relatively intact after a possession…. You’re lucky! I still have some of the tonic the last Cratis Princess made. It's an amazing cure all, honestly the stuff would’ve sold for millions if she had ever gotten over her stuck up ass long enough to actually work.”

Seeing her pull out a bottle of white liquid my body’s struggles doubled, for some reason trying to get as far from the liquid as possible…..

She forced me to lay on the couch, before sitting on my chest…. It felt like someone had dropped a cinder block on me as I struggled to breathe. She was too heavy, all I could accomplish was look like a dying fish before she pried open my mouth and forced me to drink the liquid… I tried to spit it out, but she shut my jaw so fast I nearly bit off my own tongue….

The link to your soul weapon has been severed.

As I read the message, it felt like my heart had stopped beating…..

“Phew, be glad that I used that on you. Possessions can get real nasty, especially if they last for too long. Good thing you came to me so soon! Now, why are you not afraid of me. I need a coherent answer, that's the only reason I spared you.”

So Aiyla had possessed me…. “Are you a pioneer as well?” It was the only thought that I could muster the courage to speak… My mouth felt like it was full of cotton.

“Heavens no! I think the last Pioneer died out some odd thousand years ago… I’m pretty sure it was during that last push for freedom that my last sister died….” She looked up, as if reminiscing…. “We all had so much fun though… With the pioneers that is… Yes they thought we were all abominations and all that, but they were our only entertainment for a long time…”

“Why would you say she possessed me?”

“Wait who is she?” The girl peered into my eyes only to see them completely blank….

“Aiyla, the most beautiful spear I have ever seen….” Now she was frowning again…

“Of course it did. That's what Cursed Weapons do! They take ahold of users and feed off their souls, forcing them to struggle and fight to grow stronger so they have a better food source…”

…

….

…..

“Damnit, leave it to the Princess to screw things up. Guess that was a defective bottle…. Hmm, now what do I do? I don’t have any other remedies on hand….” The girl moved away before hurrying off to get something, mumbling the whole way….

Without her shackling me to the couch, I moved towards the pit….

Aiyla…. Did she control me? Had she lied to me? Did she also betray me?

Arriving before the hole, I stared down….

I could see her…

At the bottom, glowing that faint green as always…. She looked so vulnerable… So alone…. Just like when we first met. She was surrounded by corpses, decaying and those picked clean. There were thousands of weapons lining the floor, but even amongst all the treasures she stood out. She was Aiyla. My Aiyla.

That Girl was wrong. Aiyla may have possessed me, but I allowed it. Her position reminds me, exactly have I had been… Surrounded by so many others of my own kind, but still the odd one out. No one had suffered, no one knew the pain I had felt and they still smiled. The brats all thought of bright futures and leeched off their rich parents, while I stayed to myself, alone with no one to share my suffering.

SHE WAS WRONG.

AIYLA DID NOT CONTROL ME.

WE WERE MEANT FOR EACH OTHER.

I heard the girl return before she screamed, “ WHAT ARE YOU DOING! DON’T GO! PLEASE, I CAN HELP YOU!” She bolted faster than I thought possible to stop me from jumping. But she was too late…

My limp form ragdolled down the pit… ten feet, a hundred, a thousand… I continued to fall for a long time… Whatever pit this was had widened until I was falling in a cavern of darkness.

My left foot caught on one of the piles of remains, causing my free fall to turn into a bloody tumble…

My body was pierced by ribs, bruised by femurs, and crushed by the weight of skulls, but all the while Aiyla occupied my thoughts.

I am coming Aiyla….

I crawled for a while…. Each minute only letting me go a few inches…. Each second I could feel myself get closer to Aiyla….

I couldn’t see out of my right eye…. Something had lodged itself into the socket during my tumble and continued to send waves of pain throughout my body. Every pulse seemed to disturb the multitude of bone fragments sticking out from me….

I didn’t dare check my health, it was no doubt in the single digits…. All that mattered was getting to Aiyla.

I now know the reason why I am the only one that can carry her…. We were made for each other. Both of us have suffered from others, and then be tossed away. All the others disregard our past, thinking we can just get over it with time…. But you can never forget it…. The feeling of the needle entering your skin as you once again lose your grip on time. The feeling of your bones snapping when your parents aren’t as careful as they should be with a child barely of speaking age. The feeling of trying to survive as you’re deprived of oxygen, through a simple test to see how long their son can last.

I have never been afraid of dying, my life is already hell. How could dying make that worse? What would they torture me? Been there, done that… Would I simply cease to exist? That wouldn’t be the worst outcome. That was before. If I die now… Aiyla will be alone….. I can’t leave her alone!

By now I can see her…. Only a little further…. Twenty feet.. Ten…. Five….Three… One…. My fingers brush against the the green orb, the same one that had originally captivated me with its intensity.

Do you wish to imprint on AIYLA

YES / YES

Finally… That felt like so long… I missed you so much….

“Yes.” It came out horse, no doubt there were even some bone fragments lodged into my neck… I should be dead… But I’m not.

YOU CAME BACK

A voice seemed to shout into his head, barely containing its excitement. Although I’ve never heard her, I instantly realized the owner…. Aiyla…

“Of course I did…. Wh-*cough cough* what did you think I would leave you alone?”

YES

….

….

…..

THAT WAS A JOKE

“Oh… ok…”

THAT WAS A TERRIBLE JOKE

“Yea I think it's a bit too soon…” I pause before continuing….”Did you possess me?”

The silence stretched on for a long time before she decided to respond…

I DID…. DO YOU HATE ME

“I could never hate you, you have probably suffered for a long time. It’s fine….. you can feed off me if you need to. I don’t mind…. I know starvation is a terrible feeling…”

Aiyla quivered for a few seconds before settling… Afterwards, something felt like it was tugged from my core and I felt a little lightheaded- well more than I already was….

You have developed the relationship further between you and your weapon!

Being sentient, it has decided to allow you to see its true self.

Fallen Fate, Cursed Pledge of Eternal Justice: UNCOMMON

Fate, Pledge of Eternal Justice once belonged among the gods. Regularly was she used to punish those that were deemed to be harmful to the multiverse. Time and time again, the gods would send their children wielding Fate, to cleanse worlds of Scourges that grew too big to be ignored, and time and time again would her champions die. They would be picked apart, massacred, even killed by their own parents should they grow too powerful. This endless cycle of death drove her mad, and thus she fell. She was merely a means to an end to them, so cleansing her was out of question. She was too powerful to destroy however, so they settled to gather and curse her so that no one may ever wield her again. And so they did, the process of cursing such a powerful weapon lead to the entire pantheon sacrificing their lives. This not only amplified the curse, but also ensured that even the eldest of scourges didn't dare use her. No one knows of her origins, however, she was the first Almighty weapon to have ever fallen….

Currently, Fate is sealed and unable to exhibit her full potential; 9 Seals remaining.

+3 to all Attributes

Personality Matrix: (Tier I)

Corruption: (Tier IV) - Corrupts wielder.

Fate is a growth type of weapon, nicknamed Aiyla.

YOU KNOW SOME OF THE TRUTH, WHAT DO YOU THINK OF ME NOW

I HAVE KILLED COUNTLESS

COULD YOU TRULY ACCEPT SUCH A FILTHY BEING?