Time flies by when you’re asleep, especially so for me.

Whenever I fall to sleep – true sleep, not simply resting for a couple of years – time passes by in an incredible pace, by the hundreds of thousands of years.

Luckily, I can easily figure out how long I’ve slept, thanks to me and the universe sharing the same date of birth.

A quick tap into the Energy in the world, and I can find out how old the Energy, and thus the world, is.

It has been 10.982.103 years since the ordeal with Solomavon. Although I can sleep indefinitely, it has some painful side-effects if I do.

After a certain amount of sleep, I cannot stop the dreams from coming. Perhaps for normal people this wouldn’t be a problem, but for me, it definitely is.

My dreams are never pretty. Every time I start dreaming, I remember the past.

None of my past is happy, with one exception of course, but that one didn’t come when I went for a long sleep the last time, and I don’t expect it to come now.

I was right, a dream came, and not a happy one.

It was a time long, long ago, long before I granted Magic, around the third time intelligent beings ruled the world.

Although they didn’t have Magic, they were able, through technology, to harness Energy with the use of devices, allowing them bend space and transmute matter and whatnot.

Naturally, they also had weapons powered by Energy, and a lot of them.

They had observed me for hundreds of years.

This wasn’t particularly special. I was always observed by people, since they could sense the Energy overflowing from my soul. Also, this is the reason why everyone who meets me knows about my power, making me feared by all and my life a miserable, since everyone, no exceptions, can sense this power.

I was simply sitting in an empty bar – empty, because of me –, drinking alcohol – as I so often do in technologically advanced era’s – while the bartender tremblingly handed me drink after drink, when the government decided it was time.

They disintegrated the wall with some strange weapon and fired another strange weapon, releasing a net made out of Energy, successfully entrapping me.

Although now I could very easily destroy such a thing, back then I was much younger and nearly always pathetically wallowing in self-pity. Only later did I begun learning about my power and experimenting on myself, increasing my knowledge until I knew everything.

I yelled and cursed as I struggled to get out of the net, Its threads scorching my skin and burning into my soul.

Meanwhile, they piled more and more nets on me, until I couldn’t even struggle anymore due to the overwhelming pain.

That was when the real nightmare started.

They dragged me off to some research facility, where they began experimenting on me to advance their knowledge.

They began with simple experiments, cutting apart my body and peeling back the skin to reveal the muscles, vein and flesh my body was made out of, searching if there was something in my body that made my soul overflow with Energy.

When they found out my body would simply heal itself if left alone, the second round started: physical endurance.

During that time, as stated, I had not begun experimenting on myself and had thus not gained the pain resistance I have now, so this was a torturing experience.

Burning me alive for days, impaling my eyes, ears, brain, heart, knees, everything they could find they stabbed or cut or ripped out.

They forced me into a water tank. Since it was a time before I replaced every bodily necessity with Energy, I was forced to drown over and over and over again, a never ending cycle of swallowing water, coughing it out along with heaps and heaps of blood, only to repeat this over and over again.

They electrocuted me, injected me with poison, crushed my body using immense pressure, infecting me with diseases, everything that could harm the body was done to me and then some.

After these tests, the third round started.

My first experience with the torture of a soul.

Using special knives, scalpels and even flamethrower-like weapons made out of and shooting Energy, they directly harmed my soul.

Cutting it apart, burning it, bludgeoning it with strange batons, injecting me with a strange form of altered Energy, they made me experience hell over and over again, testing recently invented weapons and other items on me to see what it could do and its side-effects.

For hundreds and hundreds of years they continued these experiments, not allowing me escape, only allowing me to feel the most abhorrent pain imaginable. All for their own selfish gains.

Only when the inevitable end of intelligent life arrived, in this case an all-consuming war, was I set free.

This was what prompted me into researching everything that was to know about Energy, the soul and life.

Even now, I’m still researching the latter two.

This is one of my worst memories, only falling behind a couple of other ones by a narrow margin, and also one of the memories I dreamt about the most.

That is how I woke up, covered in sweat and tears, screaming in agony after remembering it all.

Fortunately – or rather, unfortunately – this wasn’t the first time I’ve woken up like this, so I steadied myself rather quickly, setting myself upright while hugging myself, trying to stop me from shivering.

While stabilizing myself, I used Energy to do a quick sweep of the immediate surroundings.

This time, instead of the desert, my body had reformed itself – I always destroy it when going into a long sleep – in a clearance in a large forest located at the foot of a mountain range.

Large rocks were scattered here and there and in the middle of the clearance was a small yet rapid mountain creek , running through the clearance and into the forest once more.

Behind one of the large rocks, right beside the small mountain creek I could sense two smaller beings, raggedly breathing and trembling in fear.

They must’ve heard me screaming.

Before approaching them, I did the same thing I did to Lillian when I first encountered her.

I slowly walked over there, gathering energy into my soul and emanating it into a soothing, warm and relaxing aura.

The closer I came, the more they were influenced by my aura and slowly but surely, their trembling stopped and soon they relaxed, almost closing their eyes as they did so.

When I arrived at the other side of the rock, I had both a familiar feeling as well as a bit of a surprise.

I saw two children, leaning against each other while looking back at me in surprise, but luckily not in fear.

One was a boy, looking around eight or nine years old with boyishly long black hair and violet eyes, having two horns growing from his forehead in a tusk-like manner.

He was very reminiscent of the demons like Lillian and Emily, but instead of a slightly browner colour of horn, his were completely black. As black as the night.

Another thing was, he was missing the tail that the previous demons wore.

The other was a girl, also looking around eight or nine years old, with long white hair, though not looking like hair of elderly people, and glowing golden eyes.

The surprising thing about her was, beside the rare eye and hair colour, was the small wings protruding out behind her, looking every bit like that of a child angel in stories and fairytales, though never actually having existed, as far as I know.

Both of them were thoroughly malnourished and exhausted, as if they had been on the run for days without stopping to rest even for a moment.

Although surprising to see a demonic little boy and an angelic little girl together, there was something more surprising about them.

Their souls.

The soul of the girl was pure white, as is normal for any soul, but it had an odd golden tinge to it, the same colour as her eyes. It made her whole soul look as if it is ‘fake’, or rather, altered by someone else.

Oddly enough, inside her soul I could sense the presence of Energy.

This is strange, because a normal soul completely lacks both Energy and Magic, with the notable exception of mine and Emily’s.

Ours were completely made out of Energy and intertwined with the Energy of the world.

That of the girl looked as if someone forcefully tried to recreate a soul like mine, and failed.

The boy was the same, albeit a white soul with a tinge of violet, also the same colour as his eyes.

Right when I wanted to think about what this meant, I suddenly heard a shot from out of the surrounding forest and noticed people coming from all directions walking towards us.

“Give us the angel and the demon, and nobody will get hurt.” One of them said.

He was clearly lying.