The Voice in his Head

Vara's eyes looked straight into the void as if he hadn't heard the voice. No expression could be found on his face. Only a blank stare showed.

"Hehehe, it seems like both your mind and body finally broke."

The jagged smile floated towards Vara before stopping right above him. As if looking down on Vara, the mouth tilted downward slightly and continued to talk.

"The process of rebirth usually only occurs by restructuring the body once the body dies. This, however, is no ordinary rebirth, but one birthed from chaos. If you don't have a broken mind, how could you ever understand chaos."

The mouth chuckled with a huge grin. Vara just continues to kneel on the floor unmoving. With his mind broken, he can barely remain conscious, let alone respond.

"Ahh but this is nice. Quite the clean shatter, there's nothing left but pieces. I wonder what new picture we can make. The old one was quite boring and depressing, if you could visualize it, it probably a sad clown. No, a puppet, a very sad puppet clown with broken strings."

The mouth laughed out loud.

"However, now that the pieces broke, that frown can be put upside down, with a bit of force of course; through the process of removing and replacing pieces. Ah, this is always the best part. Too bad no one usually lives through it and looking at your pitiful self, things don't look like there in your favor."

The mouth kept talking to an unresponsive Vara. While Vara was undergoing his mental tribulation, Menos was outside, faced with something different.

In front of Menos was a giant glowing colorful egg. Like the silk of a caterpillar's cocoon, the wisps of chaos make up the thread that has entrapped Vara. The egg shimmered like a light rainbow. Once the egg was finally formed and solidified, Menos smiled.

"Well, it seems to be my time to shine."

With a wave of his hand, space in front of him tore seamlessly open. Out of that crack, a large number of materials and treasures poured out. The items poured out of the avoid as if they were never-ending and it was only until they formed a small mountain did, they stop. One could get lost in this mountain.

Each item was either a rare and valuable piece of treasure desired by millions and worlds would go to war for, or an odd and extremely unusual part of the material that would make men hurl and women shriek and vice versa. Half the sight was beautiful while the other half was hideous and grotesque.

"I wonder which of these materials will be used this time. Maybe the liver of a specter knight. No, he is not knight material... But maybe the specter is not far from it. Ooh what about the mask of the ancient midnight thief, hmm probably not, that thief was too chivalrous, and well Vara is not."

Menos started to use his time to guess, formulate, and imagine combinations of materials while he waited. His eyes shined with fascination as he became absorbed into his own little world.

Back in the mental world, the mouth continued speaking as Vara could do nothing but kneel as his consciousness grew continuously blurrier.

"Look at you, a lost little lamb. Wanting to be anybody else, but yourself. How pathetic."

Many faces appeared around Vara facing him. Each look was the face of one of the lives, Vara just lived through. They were all mindless and blank as his own.

"Hmm, don't all these faces look familiar. Well, they should. After being captured and killed, you took on the face and the life that went with it. You stole everything from them."

Each face warped into one of pure hatred as they all screamed at Vara at the same time.

"Give Me Back My Life!!!"

"My Wife, My Wife Needs Me. Return Me to My Wife!!!"

"You're Not Me!!!"

"Get Your Own Life!!!"

…

Each voice cut Vara's soul as if a knife was directly stabbing into it. The light in his eyes grew fainter like a candle flame on the verge of going out.

As if not knowing or not caring about Vara's situation, the smile continued to talk in complete contempt.

"Your job was to steal lives, but it didn't just end there. No, you tried to escape your own life by living theirs. Living their lives gave you the illusion of freedom. Maybe that's what gave birth to your deception and acting talents. Each life was a new experience of freedom, although fleeting since there was never any real freedom, to begin with. Your life has always been in the palm of someone's hand like a little toy puppet."

Wires descended from the void as they attached to Vara's limbs, forcing him up from his kneeling position. His arms began moving out of his control as laughter, and three faces appeared above him.

The faces were those that Vara could and will never forget in his lifetime. One was a middle-aged brown hair man with a mustache. He was the one who first picked up Vara from the orphanage. The next was a young black-haired man who wore glasses. He was the one who experimented on Vara, sealing up his free will.

Finally, was the man at the head of the entire organization who enslaved Vara. He looked like any old generic elderly man in the world with the white hair and wrinkles. Behind that façade though lay a man eviler and crueler than anyone Vara has ever met.

They were his capturers, his torturers, and his masters — the source of all his pain and suffering.

As their laughter entered his ears, the faint light in Vara's eyes began flickering, sometimes bright sometimes extremely dim. Mixed emotions flooded Vara's mind. The little bit left he had was consumed by guilt, confusion, rage, and sadness.

"So is this how you wished to be defined. The little insect which only knew how to camouflage in a small world ruled by bigger animals. Always destined to be prey eaten before being able to explore the wide world around him. Never knowing true freedom."

The flickering in Vara's pupils stopped, and his eyes widened. The void around Vara abruptly changed. The scene of Vara becoming concussed played like a movie in front of him.

Vara was like a ghost as he watched his past self, discover his free will. The memory cried and screamed in jubilation before quickly shifting from happiness to hatred as he began planning his revenge.

The scene changed to when Vara was back in the organization, pretending to be like his old self. He used his most useful skill, disguise, to deceive his masters and torture and kill them one by one.

Afterward, he set fire to the building creating explosion after explosion before being gunned down by a slave just like him, crippling Vara before burning in the wreckage with the same void look on his face.

The scene ended with Vara reaching out towards the sky through a hole in the building as the world around him crumbled.

Vara stood frozen dangling from the wires. The voices that once plagued him no longer affected him. The light in Vara's eyes instead grew brighter and clearer. Only one emotion showed in Vara's eyes. Desire.

The mouth was finally quiet for once. It floated down until it was an inch from Vara's face.

Vara finally was able to get his first look at the loudmouth. There were no lips to this mouth; only teeth that looked sharp enough to pierce bone in the shape of a smile.

While Vara observed the mouth, the mouth abruptly changed. The grin grew wider before laughing hysterically in a deafening tone.

"Yes, that's right. This is not about rage or wallowing in sadness. You've already got revenge. Plus, you don't know any of these people. What do you owe them? In that eat or be eaten world; they were the ones that lost. Why? They were weak and the weak deserve no pity."

At this point, Vara's eyes filled with light. The wires that enveloped Vara snapped and the faces above him contorted in fear. Vara landed on his feet with his back stood straight. He looked onto all the faces screaming at him and no longer felt sadness or guilt.

He struggled with all his might to survive. He has no time to worry about the fate of those that don't even concern him.

Vara took a breath as a feeling of euphoria passed through him. A sense of freedom like never before poured over him. He wanted to bask in this feeling, but the mouth didn't give him a chance.

"Don't be too happy. As I said before, the weak do not deserve pity. Continue like this, and the past will repeat itself."

Vara looked towards the mouth, and then towards his own body. As much as he doesn't want to admit it, the mouth was right. He was weak, and like all those around him, if he did not become strong, he would die.

He had to get stronger and not just by a little. He needs to get strong enough to control his own fate.

A new desire flowed from Vara's eyes. For that dream of freedom, a strength above all others was need. Vara looked back at the mouth in which he saw the mouth trembled with excitement.

"Yes, that is it. That's the look I've been waiting for. That desire will be the beginning of everything."

The mouth released loud laughter which shook the surrounding void, Vara. The laughter carried extreme levels of expectations and excitement.

"It is finally time for the true predator to be born!!!"