Rebirth

"Vara???"

Out of all the hundreds of names he heard in his life, Vara was not one of them. In fact, he never even heard of a name like Vara.

"Is Vara my original name...?"

"No. Your original name is lost forever. I can only read your memories, and that memory is gone. Lost in time forever."

"Then where the hell did the name Vara come from?"

"Well, I have to call you something, and going over your memories, there was basically not one good name that you haven't already used. So, I made one up. What do you think? It has a nice flair to it, right?"

Menos nodded, looking proud of himself. Vara just shook his head. It really didn't matter what he was called, he's had so many names in his life that he was used to being called anything. There's no use worrying about a name, especially since there was something much more important that had to be discussed.

"Whatever, just explain what you were talking about it."

Menos tilted his head in question.

"What do you mean?"

Vara sighed in frustration. He couldn't get a read on Menos. He's usually good at understanding people. It was a necessity when he was in disguise. Interacting with people like friends and family was a regular occurrence to him. But Menos, he was a mystery. One moment he's serious and frightening, and then the next he's childish and mischievous.

'What's worse, there's a terrifying feeling about him, and he has magical powers. One wrong step and I will be dead.'

Vara took a couple of deep breaths to calm himself down while Menos patiently waited with a smile.

"Alright, I guess I'll start my questions. First of all, what do you mean by being reborn?"

"Ah, how do I explain this. I guess to put it simply, everything about you will be born anew. You will be reconstructed the ground up."

As he said, he knocked on the wall twice. Suddenly the walls surrounding the two of them descended.

The change was so sudden that Vara could hardly react. When he looked around at his new surroundings, his mind went completely blank. Nothing could have ever prepared him for the sight before him.

Endless flowing colors of all kinds always in motion. Like worms of every color in the spectrum encompassed the entire area. Mixing, forcing through each other, and avoiding each other.

As if each color had a mind of its own, moving in a completely unpredictable way. The sight of it was wholly nauseating and disorienting. Vara couldn't even stand straight as he fell on one knee. His stomach and mind twisted and turned, and before long, he vomited straight onto the floor.

Menos put his hand on Vara's shoulder, and suddenly his mind started clearing up, and the nauseating feeling in his guts disappeared.

"Oops, any second longer and your head would have exploded. By the way, yuck, who do you think has to clean that up."

He acted upset and inconvenient, but he didn't even move a muscle as the mess disintegrated by the space around them.

Cold sweat continuously poured down Vara's back as he tried to catch his breath. That fear that he lost before came back ten-fold. He now knew he had to be alive because death never felt so close.

Looking down on Vara, Menos seemed to know exactly what was going on inside his mind.

"Like I told you before, you're not dead. At least not yet. In your last escapade, you were seriously injured on the verge of death. Have you not wondered why you can talk and move with no feelings of pain?"

Vara looked up towards Menos, and then down to his body. With everything that's happened, he never once thought to look at his own body. His clothes were still torn, and his wounds were still open. Only no blood was flowing from them. Such a sight was extraordinarily eerie and disturbing.

"It's only my ability and this space keeping you alive. Once you leave this space, your injuries will re-open, and blood will spew out like a leaky pipe. You'll make some beautiful artwork on the walls before you die."

Such a morbid thought was spoken without a hint of seriousness made Vara feel the impact of the words much more severely.

"WHAT! So, you're telling me that I am going to die unless I choose your supposed rebirth method! There was never a choice to being with!"

Vara screamed out in anger, completely forgetting the fact that without Menos' intervention, he would have died anyway. Menos just looked at him straight in the eyes with an expressionless face.

"There was always a choice. You can always choose to die."

Vara froze. His thoughts were now in a complete mess. He could even feel that if he had any inkling of refusing Menos, he would immediately cease to exist in the next moment.

He felt like a trapped rat in a maze being led to a specific goal. His life was entirely out of his control. Being told he would die right after he was given life made him seek life even more. Both him and Menos knew that.

At this point, he knew his decision. He felt terrible and emotionally drained; however; he would do anything to continue to live. He had not even been able to experience the freedom of life yet. How could he die now?

"You know this is not a choice but forced coercion. It's like giving a dying man in a desert; water for it to only be poison and only you carry the antidote."

Menos only smiled and shrugged.

"Well, it's only poison if you die from it. Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger. In this case, if you survive, it won't be a matter of just being stronger. Your entire world will change."

Vara's eyebrows rose in question.

"If I survive?"

"Of course, a process such as this is never simple. There's a high chance that this will kill you, and the experience itself will not be pleasant to put it extremely mildly."

Vara's started to get a migraine. Death or suffering, it seems he really did pick the short straw in life. Nothing ever went well for him.

"Can I at least ask why I was chosen?"

Menos thought for a bit and then shrugged.

"Honestly, I have no idea. When you go fishing, you don't know exactly what you are going to catch. It's basically like that. I just know that those that I pick up have some sort of connection to chaos."

Menos showed the orange pearl again.

"This thing, right here, has a large amount of chaotic energy within it. I used it as bait because it chooses its victim, I mean subject. It's like having live bait, but instead of the fish-eating the bait, it's more like the bait catches the fish."

Menos tossed the orange pearl to Vara as he caught it on reflex. Looking at it, Vara couldn't notice anything special about it. All he could feel was a peculiar sense of yearning.

"The thing you chose you. Now be careful though, it's also extremely fickle so try not to be consumed by it. Also, don't try to give it back to me unless you want to die immediately. That thing is the key to your rebirth and holds your fate."

Vara stiffened and looked over the pearl again. Now all the pearl looked like to him was a ticking time bomb waiting to go off. To get his mind off what felt like his impending doom, Vara thought to change the subject.

"Back to what you said before. You said those that you pick up. There have been others?"

Menos jumped a little in surprise and covered his mouth with his hand.

"Whoopsie, I accidentally let that part slip out. Oh well, I didn't want to say anything, but yes there have been others. I have been at this for a very long time."

Vara looked strangely at Menos. Menos only looked like a young child, but the way he emphasized long meant that his looks were very deceiving.

"Hey, no asking for my age, that's just rude."

As Vara was opening his mouth, Menos quickly chimed in. Vara only rolled his eyes as he couldn't care less about his age.

"I was going to ask, whatever happened to those before me."

Menos paused for a bit before he answered.

"You have no need to know that at this point. Try surviving the ordeal before you start thinking about other useless things. You only need to focus on you. Now get ready, that's enough of the questions. The sooner you do this, the better. No point in delaying the inevitable."

Vara looked at Menos suspiciously. It was clear that Menos was trying to avoid the question, but there was nothing he could do. It seems that the chatterbox's lid sealed up shut. No matter how much he pushed, Menos said nothing.

Vara could only sigh. He knew that delaying was impossible now, and the anticipation was starting to kill him. His nerves were wound tight, and he could barely breathe.

The thing feared most in the world is the unknown and Vara was diving head-first into it. Finally, all he could do was give in.

"Alright, I guess I'm ready, what is it that I have to do."

Menos smiled and stepped back. He then snapped his finger, and the furniture around the office started to dissolve and flow back into the space around them. There was now just the two of them standing on an empty floor in the middle of a vast void of colors.

"Just stand there, and please try to remember that no matter what, don't give in to the pain."

Vara wondered what he meant by that and as he was about to ask Menos waved his hand.

Suddenly all the colors in the void froze as if they all became a still painting. Then, at the same time, they all rushed towards Vara before he could even react. Like starving animals, finally finding fresh meat, they charged Vara like beams of light and flowed into him.

Vara screamed as every spot on the surface of his body was being penetrated by the wisps of chaos. Soon the screams stopped as the wisps were also entering every orifice in his body.

Extreme levels of pain he could never imagine started to flood his brain as every cell in his body was being ripped apart down to his very DNA.

Menos just watched the process with a smile utterly unfazed by the process.

"I did say it was a rebirth. To be reborn one must die. With creation comes, destruction and with destruction comes creation."

Vara couldn't even hear Menos, but if he did, he would have sworn a lifelong vengeance against him.