Chapter 254 – Pariah [Nia Fae POV]

Chapter 254 – Pariah [Nia Fae POV]

If nihilism was correct and no actions had meaning, then Nia Fae seriously wondered why the woman currently holding her hand was even making the effort.

The streets they were hasting through were well-kept and of wondrous design. Above them, islands floated, tethered to a giant obelisk with chains of mana. All of the people that build those structures must have thought they were working for something meaningful as well.

Nia wouldn’t be allowed anywhere near those chains. Not because she would destroy them, but because she could. Trust was the usual issue she encountered. People usually wanted her far away from everything they cared about. The ones that could see her that was. Which was just about everyone in this city. Actually, it was everyone. The normal people couldn’t see her.

To be more exact, their minds chose not to.

“Do we have to run this quickly?” Nia wondered as they hastened through the streets of Abyssal Rome. Her voice was almost completely devoid of emotion. Not because she didn’t feel anything, she just didn’t express herself very often.

For why that was, Nia didn’t have an answer. Straining her voice in such ways always felt so... inefficient.

She turned her head. She was wondering where that alleyway may lead to or if there was a kitten nearby that wanted to be pat. Surely, a dog was somewhere that wouldn’t mind playing tag with her for a bit.

Animals weren’t as closed in mind to things they couldn’t comprehend.

They stopped for a moment, and the girl whirled around. The singular braid her brown hair, a copper shimmer to it, was worked into flew just by Nia’s nose. “I feel that I have the obligation to remind you that you have an 11-day time deficit that runs contrary to our agreed exchange of favours, Nia,” spoke the woman before dragging Nia further down the road, never letting go of her arm.

The duo attracted more than a few gazes. Nia didn’t like that, even though she was used to it. It was the stark contrast between reality, where no one could see her, and the Abyss, were everyone was watching her. They saw her as something that didn’t belong, an outcast, a pariah, because she was different.

Because her soul was empty.

“But, Lydia,” Nia spoke up, “there was a cat.”

“A cat brought you to Aachen?!” Lydia blurted out, her tone beyond flabbergasted. “You know that I had to hire 16 people to get you here? Not to track you, that was easy, but to keep an eye on you all the time. Now you reveal to me that it was because of a cat?”

“No, it was several cats... they all wanted to play,” the blank answered. She didn’t quite get what Lydia was upset about.

She was here now, wasn’t she?

A good question actually, she better check. She stopped dead in her tracks, and Lydia was forced to stop with her. “What is it?” Lydia asked, and Nia put her hands-on Lydia’s face. Her snow white, slender fingers framed the woman’s confused face. Without any warning whatsoever, Nia kissed the princess on the mouth.

Lydia struggled and broke free.

“What the hell, Nia?!” the princess wanted to know, looking around. Lucky for them that the princess had chosen to take a shortcut through a dark alleyway.

“I just wanted to make sure I am not Fading,” the blank answered.

“If you were Fading, I could tell,” Lydia pointed out and grabbed her by the arm again.

That was valid, if Nia was fading, Lydia would have been able to see her vanish. It could have been too late by that point though.

“I doubt Nihilism is correct,” Nia said as she kept walking after Lydia. The white dress that she wore fluttered. It was as white as her skin, like a snowy mountaintop. Clear, white, devoid of all other influences of colour and shade. Some would call it plain, others would call it beautiful, most would call it strange. She wore it because she liked it and because the non-existent cloth didn’t get in the way, even though it reached down to her naked feet.

“What do you mean by that now?” Lydia entertained the talk while she was feverishly checking her watch.

“If everything is senseless, why try?” the blank blonde wondered.

“I doubt there is inherent meaning to anything,” Lydia offered her a thought, “but this is very meaningful to me, so I will summon all I have in my arsenal to see it done the way I prefer.”

“That sounds wonderful,” Nia said now keeping up with Lydia without the need to be dragged. The colosseum wasn’t far away now. There was a sense of urgency to it. She would get to try and find some turtle to feed later. Nia raised a hand as she, fleet on her bare feet, walked besides Lydia. The cold winter air raced through her fingers.

The cold did not translate to her exposed skin. It stayed outside, did not mingle with the woman only half in this world.

The thereby named John pointed at the rest of the gathered people, introducing them one after the other. “This here is Momo, she is my familiar, you could say.”

“Artificial Spirits aren’t THAT rare, just tell her what I am, for sky’s sake... and just so we are clear I meant to say sky, not heaven, I have no interest in the metaphorical dwelling place of the piteous,” the girl with white hair said. Hers was a monochrome appearance. The only part of her body that wasn’t black or white were her very pink lips.

“And that over there is Thana,” John pointed at the sick looking cursing one.

“I don’t like you,” Thana growled, causing everyone else to raise an eyebrow.

“What’s up with you?” John wondered about the small bundle of power. She was radiating magic and the world bled more into her.

Nia did not want to get punched by her.

“I do not like new people,” Thana hissed.

“You were just fine with Nathalia strolling along though,” Momo pointed out.

“Because Nathalia is the tits,” the voice of the smaller person was all over the place, sometimes calm and collected, sometimes angry and hysteric, but never steady. “This bitch is weird, I don’t like weird.”

“She certainly looks out of place,” Rave wondered.

Nia looked at the floor; however powerful they got, they never chan-

“I like it tho. Fitting in is for losers,” the pink haired girl continued and tapped over. Her wild hair was a whole chaos that Nia could not quite make sense of. “Cool hair you have there, Nia.”

“Thank you?” the blonde was confused by the positive greeting she was getting. Also, her hand had never been shook and still hovered in the air. She felt a bit awkward.

“Yeah, nice to meet you,” John, seeing the awkwardness, finally took her hand. “We are a bunch of misfits here... although I wonder what you were doing in that flower shop.” He was pleasantly warm. Magic prickled over his skin only to be negated by her touch. Stopping that took no effort. It was a simple aftereffect of Lydia’s wish to shield them both from inquiring spells.

The one called John probably could use that ‘Observe’ thing on her now. She had nothing to hide.

“Wait, you have met her before?” Lydia asked.

“Yes, remember when we went to meet Jane at the airport?” John told her. “I thought I was lucky when I spied a flower shop that was still open on the way there, met this girl inside.”

“He needed a pretty flower,” Nia confirmed.

“Okay... so, Nia, you broke into a flower shop again?” Lydia sighed.

“Wait... broke into?” John, confused, looked from Nia to Lydia and back.

“Normal people can’t see her, because she is empty to this world,” the princess explained- “So little miss ‘I get lost chasing cats’ here has taken on the bad habit of going wherever she wants.”

“The flowers were pretty. I wanted to look at them;” Nia explained, voice as hollow as ever. “I harmed nobody.”

“I stole a flower...” John realized. “...Ah well, it was just a flow-aaaah.” The man was suddenly and very strongly hugged by the girl named Thana, who looked at Nia with scary eyes. Very scary eyes. Nia almost moved a muscle in her face.

“You are making me jealous, you bitch. Stop making me jealous,” she demanded.

Nia’s face stayed blank, but on the inside she was screaming. “How would I go about that?” she inquired, trying to find a way to please that angry girl. The question just made the annoyed one growl some more.

“Ignore Thana; she barks, sometimes she bites, but she doesn’t kill,” Lydia’s assurance did all but assure Nia. In fact, she now was afraid her hand would get bitten if she offered it to be shaken again.

Only a twitch of her lips betrayed Nia’s slight unhappiness with this situation. Was this what having a friend entailed? Weird conversations?

“We have more important things to deal with,” Lydia continued as people in the background started cheering for a man screaming into a microphone.