During his short time in the land of the living, Cifer had heard many different opinions concerning the afterlife and what happens to the souls who venture there. None of these opinions came even close to describing the world Cifer had found himself in the seconds following his death.
It was an endless forest of ancient multi-limbed trees connected by “bridges” of immense peacock feather-like glowing neon vines covered in blooming crystalline roses that twinkled like diamonds. Each tree was so massive in size that the Milky Way Galaxy alone would not be large enough to accommodate even one of them.
The proportions were absurd, overwhelming and chaotic. If it were not for the “timely” arrival of an extremely violent, feral extradimensional humanoid, Cifer would have gone mad from merely staring at his surroundings.
The sound barrier-shattering howl of the mysterious entity echoed downward towards Cifer from a tree branch the appeared to be several hundred light-years above him. However, because the laws of time, space and physics did not exist in this place, leaping off of the branch and landing on the vine where Cifer stood was like taking one small step down a flight of stairs for the entity.
Cifer made a clicking noise with his throat as he examined the beast before him. It was a tall, muscular yet also rail-thin humanoid with the appearance of a shadowy silhouette surrounded entirely by a brightly glowing violet-hued aura. The creature had no visible face to speak other than a moveable jaw-joint with razor sharp teeth, a reptilian-like tongue that was stripped black and silver.
In addition the creature had two long, forward-pointing horns, retractable claws on its fingertips and toes, and a seven foot long claw-tipped tail which the creature was able to wag and flick about high in the air without losing its balance and accidentally falling off of the vine, no matter if the creature was standing up straight or kneeling down and walking on its forearms like a baboon.
Instinctively, Cifer reached down to unsheathe his katana but stopped after remembering that only his clothes had been allowed to venture with him to the afterlife, and that his sword had been completely annihilated when the rest of his body dispersed into pure energy upon the time of his death.
But Cifer was not completely defenseless as the creature quickly when Cifer decked it with a right cross and sent it tumbling backwards a few steps. Not wanting to give the creature any time to recover, Cifer rushed forward and began punching and kicking it with everything he could muster.
The creature, finally having had it with the punching and the kicking, clawed Cifer in the face and sent him reeling back in agony. The creature let out a hearty chortle as it watched Cifer stumbled about blindly and then using its tail to trip him it sent Cifer crashing to the ground.
Without a moments hesitation the creature leaped on top of Cifer, pinned him to the ground and despite the fact that that it had no nose to speak of, at least one that could not be seen by the naked eye due to the creatures outward appearance, it began to sniff his body starting from the area where it had slashed his face down and then moved down to his chest which was where it had sniffed out the location of what it had been searching for: the heart of Cifer’s soul.
The creature raised its right arm high into the air, obviously preparing to tear open Cifer’s chest and claw the heart of his soul out, and a sadistic grin crept up lipless mouth. But then from literally nowhere a blue-white blur blindsided the creature and dismembered its right arm from the rest of its body.
The creature let out another one of its high-pitched sound barrier-shattering howls as it reeled in agony from the dismemberment of its own right arm. Then the blue-white blur appeared once more, this time in the creature’s blind spot, and in a flash of silver the blue-white blur severed the creatures head from its shoulders.
Cifer, who had gone partially blind when the creature struck his face, struggled to get a good look at the blue-white blur once it had stopped moving at superhuman speeds so that it could carefully pry open the dead creature’s chest and remove the undamaged heart within, but with his vision having decreased so greatly in quality it was impossible to tell who or what his savior was.
“Nnghh…who…who are you?” Cifer asked the mysterious figure.
“That is not important right now. Open your mouth.” A feminine voice replied.
Cifer was somewhat dumbstruck by her odd request. “W-What?”
“Just do as I ask.” The woman demanded.
Being in no position to refuse anyone’s demands, Cifer struggled to open his mouth as widely as possible and then focused all of his willpower into keeping it open while the woman squeezed every single drop of the powerful liquid power-bestowing and life-restoring energies out of the deceased creature’s heart and dispensed it into Cifer’s mouth.
As he begun to swallow the liquid, which tasted like a cold blueberry-flavored Slurpee, he could feel himself becoming a little stronger and in addition, the gashes on his face were beginning to heal but, for reasons he could not yet identify, his eyesight was not. It was like the world around him had become a living Monet painting and with the brightly shining neon lights of the vines all around being so emphasized upon and accentuated alongside movement acting as a crucial factor in his perception of all things around him much in the same fashion as an actual Impressionist-era painting it was nearly impossible to see.
It was odd, for reasons Cifer could not even begin to fathom, he felt a wave of nostalgia rushing over him. It felt like he had seen the world, no, a world in this manner before. Yet at the same time he knew that he had not. But before Cifer could go into a deeper train of thought concerning the matter of this nostalgic feeling, the mysterious woman who had saved him squeezed the last drop of the energies stored within the creatures heart into Cifer’s mouth and watched as the shriveled up heart turned to shimmering stardust in her hand.
Holding her hand outwards in a direction facing away from Cifer, the woman gently blew the stardust off her hand and looked on as a slight breeze picked the stardust up and dragged it along towards an unknown destination. She then turned her attention back to Cifer, who was having an incredibly hard time sitting up.
The woman grabbed a hold of Cifer’s hand and helped him sit up straight. “How are you feeling?”
“Like I just got mauled in the face by Edward Scissorhands. Nnggh…why…why is it that my eyesight has not returned to normal? Even though I still feel the throbbing and stinging pain emanating from where the wounds on my face used to be, I know that they all healed.”
“Yes, they did, but not entirely. The liquid energies within the heart I fed you that are specifically intended for healing wounds focused only on repairing the deep gashes on your face.” The woman stopped for just a moment to catch her breath. “However, the damage which has decimated your eyesight as well a great deal of facial scarring remains unhealed.”
Cifer slammed his fist onto the ground. “Damn it! I can’t continue onward like this! Not without my eyesight! What do I have to do in order to fully heal all of my injuries?”
The woman cast her eyes downward and slowly nodded her head. “Yes, there is…but in order to fully heal the injuries that have left you helpless and compromised you must continue consuming the hearts of the creatures that infest the forest and pray that the heart you consume will devote its healing energies specifically for the purpose of removing the facial scar tissue and restoring your decimated eyesight to normal.”
“You have to be joking. I am practically blind and my unarmed combat skills are insufficient when it comes to fighting those things. How am I supposed to gather more hearts in this condition?” Cifer asked, not even really caring that he was talking or even thinking about stealing and consuming the hearts of other sentient beings.
The woman did not reply, at least not in words. Instead, she used her powers to manifest two very special ancient artifacts out of thin air. The first of the two artifacts was a silver mask with two widened eye-holes, no mouth-hole and four thick black stripes that appear to emerge outwards from the widened eye-holes of the mask that either disappeared into both sides of the lower jaw or traveled past the very top of the mask itself.
The second artifact was more or less a standard-looking katana with a black handle, a black sheath with a silver-colored infinity loop symbol carved into it and a circular-shaped dark purple cross-guard. The woman immediately set the sword onto the ground and held up the mask to Cifer’s face.
“This is a Mask of Truth. It gives the wearer a power called “deeper vision” that allows them to see everything. To those whose eyes function perfectly, this mask is more of a burden than a blessing, as it can drive those with fully-functional eyes insane due to layering the power of deeper vision on top of standard vision.” She began. “This is primarily the reason why only the blind and those with severely decimated vision such as yourself are allowed to wear them. Here, allow me to place it upon your visage.”
Cifer remained completely still as he felt the mask being placed over his scarred face. A shiver ran down his spine as the woman let go of the mask, which instantly fused with his face and sent a powerful surge of energy rushing throughout his entire body. His eyes widened as his sclera turned completely black and his irises were drained of their natural brown color and began to glow white.
But that was not the only reason his eyes had widened, for now he could see once more, but this kind of sight, this “deeper vision” was unlike anything Cifer had ever experienced. It was a literally indescribable and near-overwhelmingly euphoric sensation that could only be understood by those who wore or had worn a Mask of Truth.
“I…I can see. I mean I can see EVERYTHING. I…I don’t exactly know how to describe it.” Cifer said as his eyes rested upon the woman who had saved him. She was young and beautiful with long silver hair with a pale blue tint, grayish-blue eyes and was wearing an ankle-length hooded white robe over a blue and white Furisode kimono. He then cast his eyes downward and stared at the katana. “A katana…”
“Yes…and no.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Let me just say for now that, in the days ahead, it will prove to be a very valuable asset. Now…I must bid you farewell. There are other souls here who are in need of my assistance.” And with that, the woman vanished, leaving Cifer to his own devices.
“Hey wait! I…ah Hell, it doesn’t matter…I’ve got more important things to worry about right now.” Grabbing a hold of the katana, Cifer jumped to his feet and tied the katana onto his hakama-himo sash. He took one last look at the beheaded corpse of his attacker and the continued on his way.
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