...
After about half an hour Any stopped crying, she simply reached a point of exhaustion where her body said 'enough'.
Slightly observing the messy ground due to Any's actions, a sort of feeling of loneliness comes to my mind.
Ignoring this feeling I stand up and decide to return to the village.
"Pro... mise," Any murmurs close to my ear in my sleep making me frown my eyes, What kind of promise did I supposedly make?
Any hugs me tighter holding onto me as if she were a Koala, she seems to wake up at the same time she opens her mouth to speak, "The Champions rest..." Any mutters under her breath before closing her eyes again.
I can slightly understand what Any seems to want, Is she looking for her mother to belong in that place where the skulls are?
So... thinking for a moment I finally decide to mobilize some of the primordial energy from the surroundings to move the earth and unbury Any's mother's skull.
It is a green skull, but besides that particular color it is like any other skull of a human woman.
With the skull in my hands I decide to return to the village, asking some people I finally located the hut where Any lived. Is a small hut not very different from the others near the middle of the village, I put Any on the nearest bed I found inside the hut and went out towards the center of the village.
I was ready to directly grab a small stake and drive it close to the other skull-stakes.
However, when I arrived at the center of the village I found the village leader, I still don't know her name, she was praying with her eyes closed in front of the Champions' rest.
"Sir, you have returned," she murmurs in a calm voice, getting up and turning around to bow slightly to me.
"Are you going to keep your promise?" she looks down at my right hand with which I hold the skull of Any's mother, and asks causing me to smile slightly.
"Actually, I'd like to know what promise you're referring to... "I ask causing her to nod slightly before smiling back at me.
She opens her eyes lightly, looks at me for a moment before simply nodding, and I'm really not in the mood to explain that I wasn't the one who made that promise, besides if I did, well, who knows what this woman's reaction would be.
"In Mrs. Cemar's diary there was a paragraph written that refers to a promise," she says as she seems to remember something, "Mrs. Cemar didn't say anything until the day of her suicide, but we managed to find her diary in a drawer in her room..." she speaks formally.
"By the way, my name is Kivea my Lord... well, Do you want to read the diary?" Kivea asks as she looks at me with her clear and bright eyes.
"By the way, Mrs. Cemar is Any's mother," Kivea kindly reminds me.
"I would really want to," I reply to Kivea with absolute honesty.
Kivea smiles before taking out a small notebook from between her green robes, "Actually I always carry it with me, it has many paragraphs that I can't find any meaning to," she hands me the small notebook.
"Perhaps you might know what Mrs. Cemar was referring to when she wrote this diary," she says, I take the diary without much courtesy and proceed to open it.
There are entries like day 1, day 50, or day 500, the content is not like that of a diary, rather, it looks like written sheets detailing a period of time.
It starts from when Cemar was ten years old, and ends when Cemar was about fifty years old.
However, there is a sheet used as a bookmark on a specific page, when Cemar was forty years old, there is little content and on one sheet only one paragraph is written.
"He has returned, my Lord has returned, the time to go with him will come soon, the time to finally disappear, I... I am a bad mother, I will leave my daughter alone and she will probably die, I do not intend to tell her anything, but, my Lord will take me with him soon, and when I die my skull will belong to the Champions rest, that is my destiny, the promise he made me several decades ago."
I lightly close the book and put it away between my green clothes, I slightly observe Kivea while she seems to be anxious to see my reaction or waiting for some answer from me.
"It's... complicated..." I smile slightly, now that I think about it, it's likely that Cemar, Any's mother, refers to Alberth as 'my Lord', after all he was the former owner of the terrarium, Kivea steps forward curiously as she watches me.
Of course this would only make sense if Alberth knew how to enter the Terrarium, however, if Alberth was the former Lord of this 'world', Why would he give it to me?
"My Lord, according to Cemar's diary, you promised to take her and honor her by placing her skull at the Champions rest," Kivea pauses as she watches the champions rest.
"I don't understand why you, my Lord, would do such a thing, but, his will is the laws of nature..." Kivea says before bowing to the Champions' Rest and walking back to his hut.
This village worships a God they refer to as "my Lord", so the former Lord of this place or the owner of the terrarium is Alberth, it's something I just thought of recently.
Giving me such a magical terrarium, only to die like that at the hands of those kinds of people...
I narrow my eyes slightly as I look at the journal. Although all of this is just my assumptions, without having verified reality, only this explanation seems to make sense.
I looking at the center of the Champions Rest, there is a small stake in the center of all the stakes that is empty, it was probably left here by Kivea.
I take several steps forward, trying to step on some blank space and not to damage the paint on the ground, arriving at the place where the statues are nailed, I extend my hand to place the skull on top of the empty stake.
When I release the skull it stays positioned in a way that it seems to be looking at me, the stake where I put the skull glows with a slight green tone as well as the skull, the Champions Rest itself begins to glow brightly attracting the primordial energy.
As this happens, in the center of the Champions' Rest a figure of a beautiful woman appears.
This woman appears to be at the peak of her beauty, with a perfect molded face, long straight green hair falling down her shoulders and back, an hourglass body and a reassuring gaze.
This woman's figure looks like a green hologram created on top of the stake where I placed Cemar's skull.
The figure smiles before nodding in my direction and after a moment exploding into a pile of green particles that expand into the air.
The particles like tiny bright lights all around the Champions Rest dance in the air for a moment before they begin to gather and spin around me like a small hurricane.
"Thanks for keeping the promise, I've been waiting for a while, you're the new Lord, Right?", I don't respond to those words, I simply look up at the Cemar skull glowing brightly.
"I have to return to the place where the world was created, I will look for my Lord.. again, thank you, please love this world as much as my Lord loved it...", the voice resounds with a slight echo while the streams of green particles are losing intensity and brightness.
"If I regret anything, sir, it's not having taken care of my daughter. I have no justification for my actions; I was simply evil," the voice carries with it a trace of regret, loneliness, and sadness.
"If my request isn't too rude to you, could you take care of my daughter if she's still alive?" The woman's voice fades slowly. I don't respond, simply watching as the particles of light fade.
After a moment, I smile before opening my mouth. "I suppose I can try." I bow slightly before Cemar's skull.
A moment later, everything returns to normal, Cemar's skull is in place and the Champions' rest stops glowing.
...
"Maybe I should investigate more about Alberth," I mutter under my breath as I walk to a bench not far from the champions' rest.
"I guess your mother never loved you like a true mother would love a daughter, Any, everything you feel for her is not reciprocated..." I murmur softly before simply sighing.
Sitting on the bench I look up and see only earth, this small subway village is illuminated by beacons powered by primordial energy.
With nothing else to do I open Cemar's diary.
-----
Day 1:
Mom has given me a small diary, she says it would be nice to write what happens to me day by day here, but, actually, writing is not something that excites me much, for now, I will just write my name.
Written by Cemar
-----
The page ends there and looking at the next page it is Day 50.
-----
Day 50:
"The existence of God is irrelevant, if there is a creator God, then, Why do he also create evil?, Why am I hungry?, Why is mom always crying?"
This is something I would like to get an answer to, this morning my mother came back crying from hunting work in the forest on the surface, she didn't tell me what happened, but, it worries me.
Written by Cemar.
-----
Day 100:
Mom discovered something interesting... she said that when she went hunting in the forest she went deeper into the forest than she should have, she was lost for several days when the other villagers were looking for her, but, she simply went deeper and deeper into the forest, at the end, she found the end of the world....
She described it as a barrier of dark energy where everything ends, the earth, the forest, one cannot see what is outside, it is the end of the world, the end of existence... however, some villagers branded her as a heretic, they say that God would not build something that has an end, they say that the world is infinite.
Written by Cemar.
----
Day 500:
The uncle who lived in the house next to me was sacrificed as an offering to God, well, he was crazy, he muttered that we live in a 'simulation', What does simulation mean?, maybe it's a word he made up.
He described the world as something that doesn't exist, something intangible, a lost space in the Universe, again I don't know what 'universe' means, actually, this is just an anecdote, I haven't written anything here for a long time and I just wanted to write something.
Written by Cemar.