You flow in a floating world, where clouds swirl about.
Something ethereal passes through you…
…Or did you pass through something ethereal?
The pace of things stand still, and nothing moves at all. You are alone. You are not alone.
Everything stops, everything is an illusion.
…then, suddenly, a bubble rises.
It is no mere bubble. It is the start of something different, a change that will shake the world or destroy it utterly. Or perhaps it is a pearl of an event horizon that will sweep us all away.
More will follow.
More do follow.
Your skin is the first that gains any sense of sense. You float under pressure, yet aimlessly. Next are your ears, as you hear the first bubble rise. It heralds your coming. Your lips taste the sweet, tangy iron of chemical liquid, many times more powerful than blood at what it does. Your eyes, the last to open, behold you to the world that waits.
You are in a glowing, fluorescent turquoise tube. It is larger than you by several times, enough to allow you to float aimlessly. But you will not… or rather, you cannot. Your muscles are just grown. Your cells have only been alive a few scant seconds longer than you have been awake…
…but wait! That’s not right!
You remember yourself, sitting in front of a computer screen, surfing the internet and checking out forums. Such a science fiction setting should not exist! Are you in a dream…?
You cannot see passed the glass of the tube, but you can hear some kind of static. There is a screen in the center of the room, just before you. It is shaking and fuzzy, you cannot see what it on there. But you can hear it well enough.
“…My… Children…” The static-filled voice calls from the other side of the mirror-like glass. It is filled with sorrow, the stuff of unfulfilled dreams. “…My… Children… I give you… Life! Live…! Live!”
The voice shudders as the room shakes. Sounds of explosions and eldritch things tell you that a battle is going on above you, around you, and below you. More bubbles flow around you…
…the liquid that holds you to this cell is slowly draining from the tube. Your lips twitch, as your body gains more and more strength.
“I have… done some… terrible… stolen…” The voice is now broken. Its words are slowly fading. The screen dims and grows dark. But the message keeps going. Your eyes unfocus as a memory of the past, not your memory, filters through your mind. You see the man; it is a white haired, red-eyed man who looks as if he has not has sleep in decades, starting at you hopelessly.
“Day 167,” the tired man muttered, his eyes growing dim. He looked like a man who had given up all hopes of living, “I don’t want to run anymore. It was a fool’s hope, for me to have escaped… Acht…” He spat the name like a curse and as if merely saying it would cause his mouth to fill with acid.
He placed a hand on glass. You cannot see through the fog of memory, but you realize that this glass is the same glass that holds you. There is something forlorn on his face. He seems lost in thought. “Aye… stealing half of the Einzbern’s Magic Crest!” He cried to the heavens, “I was a fool! You were right, grandfather! But I stole your precious Crest! And now… and now, I will die? I don’t want to face death like this.”
Suddenly, he turned to you!
“Hear me, my children!” His eyes rolled to the back of his head and his voice filled with a crazed insanity that could only be found in dead men, “I give you each a piece of the legacy of the Einzbern! I… I make you my legacy! Through some Mystery of the Third, I give you full souls!”
Then he began to laugh. Have you ever seen Mark Hamill’s the Joker? The cartoon version found in the animated Batman; have you ever heard that laughter? Now imagine it, in a chorus of ninety, echoing through all parts of your mind. Now imagine it as the laughing man’s eyes began to leak blood, and red bubbles began to foam out of his lips. Now imagine it as his skin began to crawl off his body…
“Live! Live and thrive!” He cried, “But beware…! The whole world’s against you!”
Suddenly, you are back.
You are back in your body. No, this isn’t your body, but now it is your body. But you are back nevertheless.
The glass tank drains of the last of its liquids and you fall to its bottom. There, you knelt as the whole building shook again and again. You could barely breathe, let alone break out. Your life will probably end soon too. You knew those names. Einzbern. You know what happens when someone crosses such an old and powerful family… right? Even if he were a member of the family…
But you are not dead yet.
The glass lowers and disappears. As you crawled out of there, cold and starving, you saw through the corners of your eyes, four others just like you. You could have been twins, not quintuplets! Each of you had the same look, with the same red marks of a powerful magic crest etched into you…
Each of you had the same features as the Rogue Einzbern who created your bodies, well, as close as you could imagine yourselves to be at that age. The only relevant reference you had was, you would be the youngest form of Ilyasviel von Einzbern… if she were whatever gender you were.
The chamber you are in, a small place that seemed to be the center of a bunker, shook again. Dust fell from the ceiling as the sounds of battle subsided. Moments later, two powerful looking stone golems stumbled into the chamber, before collapsing, having fulfilled their duties of protecting you long enough until your birth or rebirth.
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Originally Posted by asterism42
