2 A Mission From Herself

There was darkness. And then there was light.

She could hardly believe it, seeing the massive celestial bodies roll by as she drifted through outer space. She felt a mixture of awe and fear. As she never stopped drifting where was she heading?

What if she was sucked into a black hole?

The heavens mut've been laughing at her.

Because in the end she really did get sucked into one.

Darkness again, but when she opened her eyes, she marveled, firstly, at the fact she had eyes to open and close again and secondly to the sight that beheld her.

A waterfall spilled onto the ground but it wasn't flooding... The floors and walls were made from ivory and gold. The owner really had some class.

"Why thank you."

Fei Guiying looked around to find the voice, a massive giant, seated on a throne. The waterfall gushing out of the wall was only one of many leaking out of her throne. But what was most shocking aside from the titan's navy blue skin and the golden chains that bound her to her throne was the fact this giant was the spitting image of her.

Fei Guiying's mind went blank. She finally recovered and opened her mouth to ask.

"Who-

The giant quickly spoke. "I am you. Or to be precise, a version of you."

"What-

"I called you here to ask for a favor. Out of all the parallel versions out there in the universe, only you seemed to be the version with the same personality."

"Why-

"Because I'm dying." The woman said flatly her eyes narrowing. "I simply stopped time for a moment."

Fei Guiying furrowed her brows in confusion. This person seemed to know what she was going to ask before she could finish her sentence.

Parallel versions? Was this a parallel reality? Impossible. She died. She squinted at her giant self.

"Say... are you supposed to be something like a djnn?"

The giant didn't seem confused by the term. She had dark blue skin and was adorned with gold jewelry.

"Mmm? You mean like a genie?" She lifted a glossy black nail to her chin, her iridescent raben green lips curving. "Hmm... I would say not quite but we are similar, the humans of this world revere us as gods and that is because we are lot more powerful than the djnns you read of. Anywho, I didn't bring you here to grant your wish, I brought you here to grant my own. Or you could think of it as granting myself a wish, so... will you listen to it?" The djnn's eyes watched her intently.

For someone who was dying she was unnervingly calm. But come to think of it, she had also been that way when she died. It's as the djnn said, they really were similar.

Guiying shrugged.

"It's not as if I have an option is there? Go ahead." Guiying sat down on the cold floor, it was then, she realized that she was naked. She ended up tucking her feet underneath her butt from the discomfort.

The djnn began to tell her tale.

"It's like this, my idiot daughter married a Dragon King."

Guiying blinked twice. Once hearing the word of "daughter" and second at "a Dragon King."

"A Dragon King isn't the King of all Dragon's it's simply a Dragon that was born with enough raw power to become a Divine King... I don't have the time to explain all that now."

Fei Guiying raised her eyebrows as if to shrug, not particularly caring about the specifics so long as the gist was explained.

"Dragons and lesser gods like us... must never mix. It tips the power balance the Creator assigned to everyone. Because of that ungrateful brat, I've been branded as a traitor that's broken the law and have been sentenced to die. She and her husband have also been sentenced to die. But her daughter..." The djnn's angry rant came to a pause. "My granddaughter, will also. It actually already happened."

Guiying blinked. Naturally the child should die as well, it's the sole piece of evidence for the crime. But as she took note of the conflicted expression on the giant's face, her brows knitted.

"For a moment I got the feeling you wanted me to save her."

The djnn nodded.

"I do."

Guiying squinted in skepticism and raised a brow, her mouth opened at first before any sound came out, eventually her thoughts and voice finally worked together as one. "How?"

"How do you think you got here? I'm going to send you back, years before it happens. That child will be brought out of the heavens and executed by being offered to the humans." Her Djnn self looked up ahead. "They're going to hunt her like livestock in the cursed continent Debhtaed. Skin her, Quarter her, and use her monster core to create magic tools, absorb her soul ring. Her eyes will be used for curse relics and her blood for immortality elixirs."

Guiying felt chills. The way she described it sounded like what she would thoughtlessly do in PC bang cafes. Monsters would drop items if you killed them magically but this world had a much more realistic take. You had to procure the drops yourself?... Her body felt cold at the thought of something like that happening to a child.

"Even if she's abomination, she's still my granddaughter." The djnn went on. "It'd be better she die at my hands than the likes of those insects."

Guiying knitted her brows in confusion.

"You want me to go back in time to kill her?"

Her Djnn self lifted a finger and pointed it at her, a laser shot out of it and shot into her forehead knocking her onto her back.

The painful sensation of her head banging onto the floor to the point her mind spun and her vision fuzzying, made her realize she really wasn't dreaming. This was all real.

"Just now, I sowed a seed of my power in you to help you, you need to steal that child's power from her to weaken her and make her no different from a human child."

This must be what her Djnn self seems to think killing was. Then when she said she was dying was she also exaggerating?

"Taking her power away will make it hard for others to locate her, but her body itself is still valuable. Protect her till you die. If you can at least do that, I won't curse you to death."

Her words were concerning but Guiying was unphased.

"I don't mind dying again."

The djnn smiled.

"Can you still say that after living again? So long as a person is alive they have greed. You lived a life where you felt constantly guilty and unworthy of your Grandfather's affection as you were just a bastard's daughter. If your circumstances were different would you still remain so humble?"

Guiying blinked.

She loved her brother very much but because of her Grandfather's bias their relationship became strained, she always felt bad that he was neglected.

She always thought that if she wasn't around, their Grandfather would pay more attention to him.

But she also knew deep down, that the two of them would never be happy. Her Brother may never be able to sleep well at night and her Grandfather would probably have a stroke upon hearing the news of her death. Maybe the company would fall into her brother's hands that way once he passed, but even then he would never be happy.

She shook her head. her vivid imagination was carrying her away again.

Fei Guiying folded her arms and sat up straight. "I have nothing left to lose or gain, but I'll do it, since I'm bored and feel sorry for you."

The black lips of her djnn self curved. she felt that she wasn't looking at a temptress but of a genuine beautiful Mother figure. For a second she thought of her late Mother, seconds before the truck rammed into their car, she smiled sweetly at her and reached from the front seat to pat her head.

"You have my thanks."

The hand vanished and with it the illusion of this room.

Guiying's body suddenly turned transparent, the whole room shook. The waterfalls that were once clear became a bloody red. It spilled out onto the ivory floor creating a red sea.

BANG.

Guiying looked in the direction of the doors that flew off its hinges.

"No... HEXSTASIA!" A curly-haired bearded blue giant barged into the room and ran to the djnn woman shackled to her throne-like chair. He fell to a knee, the sensation shaking the earth.

"Will you die with your wife, Attickus?"

Porcelain skinned djnn and light blue djnn with bronze and metallic jewelry entered the room with swords and spears.

Guiying kept staring at herself it was hard to believe she seemed so alive a moment ago was now dead. The light and confidence in those lively black eyes were now dully, lifeless. Guiying felt cold.

Before she knew it she was sinking through the floor of the room, then falling, her consciousness returning to the void.

But the sound of the bearded giant's grief-stricken yet guttural roar before he charged at the group reverberated within her very soul.