Chapter Text
A soul was in the liminal between realms.
It did not move, as that would require space to move in.
It did not think, for that would require a mind to think with.
It did not feel, as that would require a body to feel with.
It simply existed, the memory of something that once was.
From no direction in particular, an entity that many called the creator watched the soul.
The Creator did not really feel anything either; not in the way that the word 'feeling' could describe. And yet it was frustrated all the same.
This wasn't supposed to be a game that the soul was able to win.
The further it got into its second life, the harder it would be to live faithlessly until eventually faced with the choice to either give in or give up.
By sheer, dumb luck this one pitiful soul had slipped through the Creator's trials by stumbling blindly into a loophole that it didn't even know existed.
It hadn't grown faith, and neither had it figured out some fantastical solution to its situation.
There was not supposed to be a power higher than the creator, and yet somehow time and time again this soul seemed to tamper with the nature of luck itself.
They had committed an accidental suicide.
While fighting under the trance of the Type 95, a near miss by an Anglish mage-blade had sliced the creator's gift from their body.
And in the briefest moments of lucidity before its power had left them entirely, the soul shot the falling orb with all they had.
The detonation had leveled Berun.
While the creator was above all things, even he had felt the consequences of that.
He had waited some time, but the troublesome soul could not be held without a body for much longer. His duty was to keep souls in motion, and with his wager with this one ruined he had to find someplace to put them.
He sighed, thinking about how much he despised this.
Nothing was supposed to be difficult for one such as he, and yet somehow his light could not touch this one soul alone.
…
At the extreme end, both hot and cold were reported by many to feel the same. The body didn't need to tell the difference between the center of the sun and absolute zero, for both were equally bad.
Unknown to many, this trend continued on to affect most of the body's other sensations.
Suddenly, Tanya felt.
And Tanya screamed.
Compared to the void of moments ago, anything at any level was infinitesimally more stimulating. For a soul that had grown used to nothing at all, existence was excruciating.
And a moment later it was over as the soul righted itself, latching onto the simulacrum of a mortal body that had just been willed into existence for them.
"Being X." The girl spat, her eyes shooting up to meet those of his projection. "Is there a limit to your hatred?"
"Young sinner. Your haste to blame me for everything blinds you to any other possibility." The creator sighed.
"Quatsch! If you really made everything then everything is your fault! Yet still you torment me like a spoiled schoolboy who can't accept that he was wrong!" She leered.
"If you were everything that you said you were, I would not be here right now. My presence is proof of your incompetence!"
"Both your presence here and your existence as a whole is the byproduct of both free will and random chance, two forces of creation that the multiverse relies on at a fundamental level. You are not special. You are not powerful. You are a stubborn fluke, blindly trying to fight out of your rightful place in creation."
"And what place is that? Torn to atoms and scattered all over the imperial landscape? How am I supposed to find any place under the constant meddling of a tyrant like you?"
The creator sighed.
He knew that this was coming yet he still wasn't ready for it.
"Shifting a cog already in motion will break the machine. It was your choice to fire that shot without considering the consequences, even if they were to ruin our little game. If I had stopped it the outcome would have been worse."
A sneer grew on the face of the girl.
"So you admit that you aren't all powerful then. That you couldn't have stop that shot."
"I could have, but there are things that shouldn't be done. Running your mouth in the face of your creator for instance."
"What's the difference when you're supposedly omnipotent? Change the rules. Invent new ones. For a so-called creator you certainly aren't very creative."
"The world isn't an ever-changing figment of my imagination. It is a delicate system of laws and rules that cannot be tampered with lightly. You of all people should be able to understand this."
The girl scoffed.
"Then what's the goal of this 'machine'? The end product? What reason is there for all this beyond the deranged will of a madman?"
"You should know that I can't answer that. The meaning of life must be found yourself through piousness and humility, two things that you refuse to comprehend."
"You messed with my mind! How am I supposed to figure out anything for myself with you tainting my thoughts? I don't have any idea what you think 'free will' is, but it certainly isn't that."
"I fixed your mind. Souls aren't supposed to remember more than one life. When you prayed, you returned to normal and forgot all about both your past and myself. By praying to me you were rid of me, like you so desire so much. The piousness you found as a result is your true self, devoid of the rotten ideals you carried over from your life prior."
"What shitstained sort of philosophical nonsense is that supposed to represent? That I'd be brainwashed without your meddling? If anything, it proves that this whole game of yours was pointless to begin with. If you truly wanted my worship, you could have simply done nothing."
"So do you regret being saved from that train? Would you rather have your existence as 'Tanya' to have been as a devout follower of mine every moment of your life?"
For a second, Tanya paused. There wasn't a world in which she could have predicted that something Being X had said would make her think."
Would she have been a happier person as a brainwashed lunatic?
Maybe. Who could say what really goes on in the head of a maniac?
But the chemical feeling of fulfillment itself was not a solid foundation for a life.
But was she happy that she had received a second chance? As horrible as it had been, wasn't the fact that she was able to keep the salaryman's memories for her life as Tanya a blessing?
For even as faded as his image was becoming in her mind, Tanya could still tell that the salaryman did not want to stop existing.
Tanya's fists clenched. This was a trap. A trap of the mind.
Being X was trying to shift her focus and it had almost worked.
"Oh I see. So you did it all for me then. My mistake" She said, performing an exaggerated bow.
"You sucked up and gave me a gift like no other, and in return you expected; no, demanded, that you receive a promotion for your image in my mind. Well I'm sorry, but as an Ex HR manager I can tell you that no matter the grandness of it, a bribe is still a bribe. I appreciate the miracle, but my loyalty simply cannot be bought."
The creator was getting annoyed, something that shouldn't have been possible.
"Your displeasure is noted, but ultimately pointless. Only faith could have changed your future."
"So what now then? Are you going to try your little game again? The first one was inconclusive, right?"
"No, I've given up on personally trying to foster your faith. Congratulations, you win."
Tanya hadn't expected Being X to concede so quickly. Had he given up on the whole 'dire straits' thing?
"Hm. So you're already tired of me, you bastard? What patience the great creator has, bored after just a baker's dozen of years.
"My meddling has made you paranoid. Faith requires faith; blind trust.
I see now that my gifts have only driven you farther from me, as you need not have faith for that which you know you have. I will not grant you such things again."
"What, so you're going to try again? What happened to oblivion you promised me? The hell? The fire? The brimstone? How could I ever trust a god who can't keep their promises?"
"Hell doesn't need fire and brimstone. Not for you.
Goodbye Tanya. When we meet next you will either be saved or you will be ruined."
Tanya began to feel the simulacrum of her body fading away, her soul slowly losing its grip on it. She knew this feeling all too well. Reincarnation.
"This is a joke." She spat, staring daggers at her tormentor all the while her body was fading away. "Your pettiness gives away your true self. You are no god. How much longer is this infantile game of yours going to last?"
"Until there are results. You are but a cog in the machine and there is only one place where you fit. Accept it willingly or I will force you to."
As Tanya's simulacrum unraveled she used every ounce of her focus to glare at her torturer. Her memories were growing more distant every second, and while she knew she would not lose them entirely, she could not allow herself to forget about what Being X had done to her.
…
The mind of an infant was a curious thing. For Tanya, who had more experience with one than any other; it could be described as in a constant state of dreaming.
Bizarre things would happen around it and it would do its best to rationalize them, but concepts above a bare minimum of complexity would slip through it's sieve-like memory. Every now and then she thought she had something down only to have it disappear as soon as her attention was shifted elsewhere.
Tunnels.
Fighting.
Blood.
The memories she carried from elsewhere easily defined these concepts, yet her tiny mind was not yet capable of relating them to any larger scenario.
Her mother was the one thing that did make sense to her.
Reliable. Trustworthy. Comforting.
The animal sense of endearment she felt to her was a potent drug that was easily able to shift her focus away from the horrors that were taking place around them.
Eventually her mother had found a rather hard-to-access crevice in the wall above some sort of underground building, and there Tanya was hidden away for most of the time as the world around her slowly started to make more sense.
Deep underground there were the ancient ruins of a city with a massage stone serpent seemingly dropped right in the middle. Her mother spoke Japanese, albeit incredibly broken, and had told her that this figure was the remnant of a divine being called the Naga.
As she grew older and her mother began to tell her about more things, a growing picture of abject horror began to form in Tanya's head.
The only thing to eat down here was other people.
Her mother would bring back entire arms and legs sometimes, ripping off chunks far easier than a regular person should have been capable of. Tanya would have vomited if she had any pathing in her stomach at all.
While Tanya would have ordinarily been glad to be weaned off of her mothers milk, a much different displeasure arose when the woman had started to offer her small morsels of arm one day.
But even worse than the act itself was the smell.
Sickly sweet and pungent like rotten fruit and spoiled fish, the human flesh smelled like the dumpster behind a restaurant despite still being very raw and red.
Tanya gagged at it, and her mother looked down at her with a somber look of desperation. At least it wasn't lost on her how supremely awful this was.
Unfortunately her mother seemed to have stopped producing milk at this point, and Tanya began to feel a growing ravenous hunger that could not be matched by even the rationing in the trenches,
It was tough to keep track of time in a place without sun, but every waking moment of it since she had realized what a positively terrible world she had been placed in, Tanya thought of Being X.
At first it was just for catharsis, with images of her wringing out that vain demon's neck floating directionless in her mind, but soon she began to take the topic more seriously. How does one actually go about fighting a being powerful enough to be called god?
She supposed it was all dependent on the world she was in now and how its residents worshiped him.
As lost in thought as she was, Tanya still noticed when her mother had not returned to their hideout in what must have been days. While she had grown worried, she doubted that Being X would let his petty little game be interrupted again, especially by something as trivial as starvation. It also had not gone amiss that Tanya was not getting thirsty.
Finally, the mother had indeed returned, carrying a bundle of rags under one arm.
Her clothes were tattered and her dirty hair had been raggedly cut like it had been caught in something, but strangely her person itself seemed no worse for wear.
Then she had uncovered the bundle.
An incredible scent wafted by Tanya and time seemed to slow, her surroundings dilating in grandeur awe a fiery heat grew on her face. Each drip of water down the cavern walls could be felt as accurately as one rolling down her cheek, and each step of her mother's bare foot could be heard bouncing against every wall of their primitive home.
Then she saw what it was; a whole arm, wrenched at the shoulder by the look of it.
What she had begun to feel would have been weird, should have been weird; but for some peculiar reason nothing about this scenario felt out of place to Tanya.
The arm was food.
She knew it was food.
It made sense that it was food,
And by god she was hungry.
As one of her tiny arms reached out towards it, a gentle gaze of relief grew on her mothers face. Far too easily she tore into the arm with just her fingers and held out the pieces for Tanya, who snatched them from her grip greedily.
She brought the destroyed muscle fibers closer and closer to her mouth, and soon they met.
A great feeling of calmness and relief washed over Tanya, a feeling so serene and lovely that it quashed any sort of discomfort she felt. Be it physical, mental, or emotional, in this very moment nothing felt bad.
It was for that reason alone that she kept eating.
Because nothing was wrong.
Mouthful after mouthful of tough red flesh was torn and cut by tiny teeth and jaws that shouldn't have been capable of such power, and more meat that should have been able to reasonably fit within such a small child slowly vanished. Eventually, the arm had been stripped to the bone and Tanya had fallen back down onto the rudimentary bed that her mother had made out of old rags.
And as the unsettling noise of her mother crunching through a humerus echoed through the caverns, the heat in Tanya's face and eyed faded and the reality of what had just happened settled in.
Then, for the first time since her infancy as the salaryman, Tanya cried. It was not the wail of an infant however, but a cry of a being that had experienced far more than would have been reasonable for a child.
It was quiet, gentle almost, as the tiny figure buried her face in her tiny hands.
It was one of pure despair.
Everything you value, everything you hold dear.
I will burn it all to the ground.
Being X, I will gut you.