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As Cleo awoke, they saw both nothing and everything at once. The vast sky was sprawled out beneath them, stars and planets dotted throughout the inky blackness. She was alone, apart from a tall figure wearing purple robes, with dark, almost angelic wings sprouting from its head and back. Its feathers traveled down their neck and on to its back, mixing in with the fabric and skin. It had a face covering, a symbol of an eye and strange rectangle stitched on.
“Who- what are you?”
Their voice trembled slightly when she spoke, but Cleo wasn’t able to mask it just then.
“Ah, you have awoken. Welcome.”
Its face was unreadable, whatever part wasn’t covered showed no emotion at all.
“I have. So are you going to answer my question?”
“Of course Cleophas. What questions do you have?”
“I just asked. What are you?”
“I am a watcher, a god above planes, a creator of both chaos and order.”
“That doesn’t- what?”
“I am a god.”
So she was talking to a God. No big deal… yes big deal…
“Why am I here?”
“I’m sure you know already.”
They did. She saw in her mind, their blood soaked hands, how she dropped their sword, how the corpses of her friends littered the ground.
“I… I won…”
“Well. Not quite.”
“What?!”
“Well, it wasn’t real of course. Never counted.”
Cleo stared in shock at the thing before her. What did it mean it wasn’t real?
“I.. what?”
“Think back, didn’t it feel… different? Strange?”
It had. They’d felt slower, like their hits always missed, like nothing was working. It was like they were in the wrong body.
“But, that doesn’t mean it wasn’t real?”
“No. But it was haphazardly, not thought through by the creators of the game. No extra twist, no handicap, just… a different form of control than you were used to. It cannot be considered real, as it was created in a digital world. An augmented reality if you will. You and the other players would’ve believed everything to be real, as an AI would believe itself to be real, but Cleophas, it was never your true. It was never real. The rest shall never know this, but you will. You will be burdened with the knowledge that all of this was for nothing, that all the pain and happiness you felt was wasted. You cannot give that to anyone else, so you shall carry this burden alone.”
Cleo was stunned. It wasn’t real. It wasn’t real. They had been lied to.
“How.. how do I know that this is real?”
“It isn’t. Nothing is real in a sense. In a way, we are but words on a page, parts in a story. What we do has already been decided by a force beyond us.”
“But apart from.. whatever that is.. how do I know that nothing will stop me if I come over there and stab you myself. If I kill you and escape whatever this is.”
“You don’t know. You won’t know unless your try it, at which point there will be no more ‘you’ to know what would happen.”
“Is that a threat?”
“Yes.”
Cleo scanned the place, looking for any exits. Whatever it was, it was probably not powerful enough to actually do whatever it was implying, and if she managed to get ahold of it, she might be able to use it as a sort of hostage. It probably wouldn’t work, but they were starting to run out of options other than standing here and taking whatever weird monologue the being was spewing.
“Well, here I am being rude. I have forgotten the most important part.”
“What?”
“Why you are here.”
Hadn’t that been explained? They had won, this thing was telling her that she had won. Right?
“Well? Why am I here then?”
“You are here for your boon. Your prize if you will. Now, I cannot give you.. what the others won,”
The others. The other winners were here too! Their memories were coming back, watching the cactus ring fight, seeing the final battle, seeing Scott sacrifice himself. Would she get to see them all again?
“Now you are not a true winner. But you still won, even if it was not real. Therefore, you will become semi, in between. Not quite anywhere. You will not be able to remember only your past season, as the others do, but you will remember the feelings they bring. You will hold grudges from the past, be drawn towards your previous friends, but you will be unable to share this will anyone who does not also remember. You will also be given the celestial body of Pluto, not quite a planet, but not just a chunk of rock. Not a true planet. you will be stuck in a state of neither dead nor alive, unable to escape the confines of life, or be freed from the grasp of death.
Stuck in a cycle of never one thing nor the other. A fit fate.”
“What? No-“
Before they could barely process what had happened, the being had snapped its fingers, transporting Cleo somewhere else. She turned, and saw a simple couch and rug, with 6 people sitting there. The 6 previous winners. She called out their names, tears in their eyes, but no one turned. No one acknowledges them. Cleo stopped, and held their hand in front of Scott. His pupils didn’t move. She screamed in Grian’s ear. Nothing.
They knew in their heart what had happened. Neither dead nor alive, not winner or loser, Cleo couldn’t commune with either the winners or others. They were alone. Truly alone.