No More

Chapter 108: Fallacy

(Play the song at the ******  line)

Raven found herself stumbling around in the infinite blackness of nothingness. Her cut-covered and bruised feet brushed against the hard, metallic floor as the silent wails of pain echoed throughout her tortured body.

The large basins hanging on the large pillars designed to emanated hopelessness and despair contained a blue inferno to illuminate the dark and disturbing path of bones.

Raven felt her body give out as the undead munched into her exposed organs, ripping her pale skin apart as her single eye were flooded with tears of pain and desperation that someone will help her.

And here she is, stumbling around on a spiritual existence in a place contradicting her beliefs. The wrought sky of bones prevented any ray of hope of shining down on her.

After what seemed like an eternity, she found herself in front of a large, golden gate. The heavenly aura made her feel secure and relieved; it all drained when they wouldn't open.

Time and time again, she struggled to enter the salvation on the other side, only to hear the rhythmic sound of the gates metallic shaking of denying her. After seconds passed in the possible eternity, she broke down crying in desperation, remembering how her prayers for help were never answered when she died.

She slumped against the gate, tired and sad. "... Even after I've devoted my life to you..." She sobbed, looking at the gate and how it denied her. "Why do you abandon me when I need you the most?"

"Why Notch... what did I do that you would go so far to forsake me?"

"It's because you are incapable of believing in yourself."

Raven turned around at the voice, standing up and wiping the tears away to see the familiar man who gave her a name, walking towards her as each step with his hooves are unnaturally silent. But the glowing white eyes is what made her on edge, feeling anxiety build as they alone caused so much dread.

Cracks formed along the melted bone of his jaw, loose enough to talk. "Ask thy Lord and ye shall receive." He quoted before gesturing grandly, the thick and melted bones plates covering his gargantuan body grinded against one other, leaving specs of powdered bones to fall around him like heavy snow. "Free will... the ultimate freedom. Like anything, most don't realize the freedom they have until it's too late."

Raven couldn't believe whom she is seeing. "S-Slab?" But she took a moment to realize the imposter before her, easily telling apart the personality differences. "Why do you look like Slab? Your voice is deeper and your eyes are glowing; he was never in to grand gestures, or quotes!"

"Is that who I am now?" He said in wonder, flexing his bone-covered hands while more bone powder fell. "I wonder what I look like, what he was before the slave camp?"

"You do not know your own appearance?" Raven asked in disbelief and caution.

He smiled and shrugged. "How could I know?" He mockingly tapped the side of his head, specifically his white glowing eyes. "I may be blind, but I'm not deaf to the things you've done."

"Then what was that about earlier?" Raven demanded. "About how I was incapable of believing in myself?"

He raised one of his hands, counting off by raising one bone-covered finger at a time. "You denied the source of your freedom. You never used your own power by using that book. And all the while you clung to the thing of what you call Notch. You chose to follow the biased ideology of religion instead of living your own life; even the ideas in your head were never originally yours." The being started to laugh, putting his hand down. "You never really matured or changed since your childhood days as a slave: cold, distant, and rarely opening to others."