Chapter 2 - Embracing Ambiguity: Navigating the Confusion of Personality

Chapter 2 - Embracing Ambiguity: Navigating the Confusion of Personality

Very quickly, the witch nurse—a middle-aged woman, immediately came in with intense surprise written all over her face.

"Dear, you have awakened. Wow!" The witch nurse who was called Valaha, said with intense surprise on her face.

Approaching Halgressia, she said with a relieved smile on her face, "How you do feel, dear one?"

Theraessa, who felt like she truly had to answer the name Halgressia in this world, looked at the witch nurse with the cold expression still etched on her face and replied, "I am fine."

However, her tone was totally different from the original Halgressia that died. Hers was lordly, like nothing could be placed on any level in her sight. While the original Halgressia had a sweet, heart-warming, friendly, and kind mesmerizing tone. It was one that magnetically pulled people towards her. Not push them away. And it was so charming that it could make people—foes or adversaries, wonder why they hated her in the first place instead of being her friend and surround her to listen to her seemingly otherworldly, alluring voice whenever she spoke.

The nurse was seriously astounded by Halgressia's new tone, but she tried to not think too much about it, simply associating it with the fact that she just awakened from her medically-proclaimed death.

"I am glad. I am happy. I thought I had lost you. You should be more careful as from now on. Okay?" Valaha said with motherly love in her eyes. While Theraessa who had no choice than to go with the flow till she truly understood everything that had happened, and was currently occurring, nodded her head in agreement. She tried to return the friendly beautiful smile that Valaha produced on her face, but it looked callous and seemed to invoke the feeling of great mischief.

"It's okay, dear. You should rest. I will return with what you will eat." Valaha said while Theraessa nodded her head.

"Hally, why do you feel so different?" Zena, her friend who stood beside her and had been watching her, asked with intensifying worry in her tone.

Seeing that she might get exposed soon if she didn't learn to behave like the true Halgressia that died and got replaced by her soul, she quickly spoke to her worried friend, Zena, saying, "I am sorry that I feel different. It's just that I am yet to recover. I feel so weak, tired and exhausted."

"I guessed so too. Don't worry, you will be back on your feet in no time." Zena said with a great anticipatory heart. While Theraessa simply nodded her head.

"Tell me, what really happened to me?" She asked with a curious expression on her face.

"Well, there were traces of Blackshade Greythorn poison in your bloodstream. It was detected by Valaha which she tried to fully magically expel. But she failed, resulting in your agonizing, painful death."

"I don't know how such found its way into your tea, but I feel someone must have put dissolvable crystals of the poison in it. It caused you to convulse and collapse to the ground in the Gwyndoreth Hall, where you traumatically shook and expelled seemingly unending, dark-black foams from your mouth."

"It was a really horrifying sight to witness. But I am tremendously glad that you are fine now." Zena stated while Theraessa nodded her head, rapidly developing a certain idea.

She felt that if Halgressia hadn't died, and her own soul couldn't find a compatible body to move into and replace it as the new soul, then her soul would be gone forever. She felt angry that she had lost her majesty, tyrannical strength, powers and aura. But at the same time, she felt thankful, since she had been given another chance at life by fate or whatever sentient multiversal force had caused that to happen.

So, to do better and become benevolent, or simply continue her despotic devilry and barbarous cruelty, was what she couldn't place her fingers on.

The world she truly hated, had evicted her when the blast encompassed her totally and completely destroyed her. And now that she had crossed over to a new world, the hatred for it wasn't there. Besides, she seemed surrounded by warm and easygoing, lovable people, which was the total opposite that birthed the intense, excessive and unending hatred for all things in her previous world.

She was once a princess from a loving, magnificent castle. She was the last daughter of Monarch Al'Xyvhandeth who was still trying to understand her gift—the power to control both frost and ice.

At the age of seven, she could already turn large bodies of water, including lakes and lagoons to solid ice. And every certain day of every month—which large numbers of highly-skilled, royalty-treated Arcaners and magical doctors employed by her father, Al'Xyvhandeth, to look after her and tend to her enigmatic, indecipherable powers, her powers always operated at full form—at alarming destructive intensities and devastating degrees.

In this seemingly powered-up state on those mysterious days, her ice generation and control ability tremendously surged to the point that a single cold breath of hers could cause the entire empire—an immense terrority of over three hundred thousand square kilometers to be covered in heavy snow. While the thickness of the snow that would cover every structure within the vast empire, was three times the length of an adult's arm. This caused people to be heavily alarmed, since any entity would be horrified of what they didn't understand and couldn't find a lasting solution to.

This began to generate overwhelming hatred and dislike for her, and even at the fact that she existed, since people had to find means to protect themselves from the intense arctic cold that resulted in enormous snowing which would prevent them from working for days to weeks, until the Royal Arcaners and certain residents who could control flame started working, trying their best to thaw away the large burying snow with ravaging fire or searing heat to clear them off so that every forcefully halted activities across the empire would resume with immediate effect.

Also, due to the tremendously-cooled, snowy glacial weather, it caused many of these residents, especially commoners to lose a lot of their loved ones, relatives, and friends who couldn't resist the freezing cold that got into their bone marrows, blood, and numerous delicate organs, causing crystals of ice to surface in them which disturbed their normal functioning.

But, it wasn't only this empire that knew about her. Many other empires had come to understand who she was and massively hated her.

Due to her monstrous, seemingly despotic and bizarre power, a lot of dukes and nobles scattered across other empires who indulged in certain businesses with the flourishing and prosperous Thorryvern empire that Theraessa was born in, couldn't continue with the long business pauses every months, since they continuously lost large sums of money that they could have earned from large volumes of different trades. They heavily despised her for this and wished they could find a way to gruesomely annihilate her, which in the end, they tried to fulfill.

As for Theraessa's sisters and brothers, they hated her with ardent passion. And this was because she had hurt virtually everyone of them before with ice. But this wasn't intentional. It was simply because she hadn't known or understood how to control her savage freezing abilities yet.

The animosity and wilful segregation surged to the highest when she caused one of her sister's entire arm to be cut off, since it was beginning to rot due to the intense coldness that had dried off the blood circulating within it, and as well killed off all the cells operating in it, rendering the arm totally useless and left in a rapidly decomposing state. So, because of this, no one—seven sisters and three older brothers, didn't want to speak to her, or have anything to do with her till their deaths!

Because of all these that she regularly experienced, she cried everyday in her room, praying to the universe to take away her gloomy icy power and turn her into an ordinary person. That why did she have to be different and hated by everyone and everything.

She couldn't leave their castle to go anywhere in her golden royal carriage, or she would be booed in every streets that she found herself in and thrown eggs, sticks, stones, and rocks. But anytime her brothers and sisters went out, they always returned with large amounts of gifts—items lovingly and generously given to them by the people that immensely hated her.

She was sad every day of her life for the next eighteen years that she began to grow indifference towards everyone and everything.

The only people she melted for and sobbed heavily in front of, were her parents. Her loving mother and affectionate father who even when they knew she was dangerous to be touched or risk becoming solidly frozen, would still lovingly embrace her and whisper with warmth, affection, and kindness into her ears that everything would absolutely be alright. She should just keep fighting and hoping, that one day, all of these was going to go away.

But unfortunately, it was they who ended up going away. The cold they exposed themselves to all the time by lovingly embracing her regardless of the mysterious, intensely chilling and frigid coldness that exuded constantly from her figure, had caused their health to fully deteriorate, resulting eventually in their excruciatingly painful demise—their delicate and tender organs had turned solid, and their blood, thickly condensed. Even glittering crystals of ice could be seen on the surfaces of their widely-opened eyes that seemed to gaze at the air with palpable unbearable pain. Furthermore, mysteriously-patterned layers of frost could be seen on their stiffened, excessively whitened bodies.

Her hateful and exceedingly wrathful brothers and sisters greatly faulted her for this, calling her a devil, fiend, and monster from the pit of icy hell. Then she had her royalty disgracefully revoked and was kicked into the street like a dog, by guards who spitefully spat on her before returning. But, she was overly hated in the streets too. So, once they understood what had happened, crowds of really angry and armed people took it upon themselves to banish her to treacherous terrains where she would live the rest of her miserable life and sorrowfully give up the ghost.

She became full of hate!

She became full of the blazing desire to unleash vast destructive vengeance!!

But, she just couldn't bring herself to do it, as they were her parent's offsprings—like her, and the people were the beloved residents of her parent's empire. So, she could only cry, wail, and and shout at the universe every night on why it had chosen to make her experience this kind of saddening and gloomy, miserable life.

However, with time, she learnt to calm down because of a particular young farmer who affectionately comforted her and showed her that there were still good people out there who understood her position and wished for her the best things.

She became good friend with this person—who packed away from his rented apartment in the empire to stay with her in a thick rainforest that was far away from the empire, and even intimately loved him, resigning herself from being a once-proud royal princess to the delightful and contented love of a commoner.

And his comfort was so great and cheering that she began to learn to control her powers, just so she wouldn't hurt him. Anytime he went out to farm and wound return with certain plant harvests and wildlife game for them to consume, she would take up seven to twelve hours to better learn to control her powers and not harm the only person that gave her joy, peace, and mental serenity in a world that wished absolute nothing good for her except death. And she was actually doing fine, so well that the young man could come close to her and embrace her and not feel a thing.

At this stage, she had learnt to switch 'off' her powers around the loving, jesting, kind, and benevolent young man. Until one day!

While they were together, laughing and eating happily in front of their abode made from wood, neighing horses began to ride towards them from a far distance, emanating fierceness and dread.

Immediately, they both recognized these ferocious, horse-riding people to be either bandits or marauders.

Actually, their leader had seen her and wanted nothing but to enslave her, making her what he could sensually ravage every night because of her exceeding, top-notch beauty.

Theraessa had peacefully and serenely grown into a tremendously great beauty with well-endowed physical features, one that will leave many others extremely enviable of her. So, the leader wanted all these for himself, to share every sweaty, sensuous night with an incomparably radiant beauty by his side, but as a slave that listened to only his command or be overwhelmingly brutalized.

Quickly, they started running, decisively abandoning their abode to escape from the incoming vile and dangerously armed marauders.

She wanted to use her powers to stop this, but she hadn't used her powers for so long in front of the man and just didn't want to, or she could lose control over it due to burdening fear and intense anxiety, and in the act, seriously harm the sweet and diligent man who had managed to capture and lovingly tender to her delicate heart.

But, she had actually developed great control over it, just that she was tremendously scared of using her forbidden icy power and hurting the one true love of her life in the process, or she would be sad and morose for the rest of her life.

While running, a twelve-feet-long, obsidian-black spear was suddenly thrown from afar with great force by someone that was towering in size and radiated immense physical strength. This struck the farmer directly at the chest region and immediately caused him to collapse to the ground, bleeding out profusely.

Theraessa immediately stopped running and looked back to see the extremely fatal state that her ever-cheerful, passionate lover had fallen into.

With sadness and sorrow welling up in her eyes that had begun to glow with intense white radiance, causing the wind to violently churn and rapidly frost over, as well as severely hurtful, absolute regret on why she didn't use her power to protect the one she claimed to deeply love, she instantly screeched like a wailing vengeful banshee in great and fathomless fury at the universe that the one thing that gave her joy and happiness, had been brutally taken away from her.

And so, the coldness which she tried hard to suppress till old age and her eventual peaceful death, took over her totally, turning her into a being with no emotional connection to anyone or anything.

In this frightful state, she instantly developed complete indifference and nonchalance towards everything, with her only utmost desire and purpose for living being to exact furious, malevolent, and unending vengeance upon the universe and the people that lived in it.

It had taken her cherished, doting parents, and her one true treasured love from her, so she would take everything from the universe. She would bury all in ice, including the air and space. She would ensure she wickedly buried just about anything and everything that she would find in her path in unbreakable, thousand layers of ice!

And, anything need be said about the damned and condemned group of marauders who would be recipient of her unfathomable fury, incomparable cruelty, and unmatched savage barbarity? One thing was sure, they would fully regret invoking her slumbering ire!

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[A/N]

Dear readers, author here. Thank you for reading. I hope you like the story so far—even though we are only two chapters in? If you haven't added to library yet, please do so. Thank you. Gracias. Arigato. :)