"Um... a little nervous, but excited!", she replied.
"Oh... that's good. I uh... well that is...", Winderleigh sounded a bit sad as she tried to mutter up a conversation when Onideus suddenly walked in on them and exclaimed,
"Well if it isn't our new recruit! Are you ready for training soldier!"
"READY AND WAITING, SIR!", Calaphandra joking yelled out.
"That's the spirit, soldier! Now, we just need Sir Pointy to get this party started.", he went on.
"Sir Pointy?", Calaphandra asked.
"Oh, you know, Mimkrys. Sir Pointy Ears."
"Do you have nicknames for everyone?"
"Only for the important people, Callie Cakes."
"Well you're all certainly a lively bunch this morning.", Mimkrys added as he walked down the stairs and into the living room where the others were waiting.
It was at this point that Calaphandra noticed something odd about Winderleigh. She looked sad... and withdrawn. Like all the emotion was drained out of her. She wondered for a moment if maybe that was just the way she normally was and maybe she just hadn't noticed before. Her train of thought was suddenly derailed by Onideus shouting out, "OKAY! MOVE OUT SOLDIERS! IT'S TRAINING DAY!"
As they all started heading outside Calaphandra suddenly realized Krysti wasn't with them and asked, "Isn't Krysti coming?"
"Oh, Krysti told me she had something she needed to work on, but that maybe later she'll join us.", Onideus replied.
He then leaned over to her ear and whispered, "But between you and me... I'm bettin she's just workin on out a hairball."
Calaphandra laughed in response and smiled, she didn't remember Onideus being so nice, at least not the day before.
"So, uh... what are we training for... exactly?", Calaphandra wondered aloud.
Winderleigh opened up a small portal above Onideus's hand and out fell a large, mean looking knife.
Calaphandra was startled for a moment, she suddenly realized she hadn't thought about it at all... about life or death... she couldn't die anymore... right? Now that she was a God... that meant she'd never be able to die. The thought of it shocked her in that moment, the realization that she'd likely never be able to die... what that really meant... and the sickeningly unexpected longing for death... to be able to end... to die. No, she didn't want it right ~then~ of course, but... she wanted it to be there for her eventually. Like an old friend waiting for you at the end of your life, there was a certain comforting connection with death she thought. But now that she knew she couldn't die, there was a creeping, refrained fear building up in the back of her mind as she began to contemplate the full scope of immortality, of being alive forever.
Onideus abruptly plunged the knife straight into Calaphandra's chest.
The pain sent an immediate jolting shock to her senses. "Where was... what was... are we?" Her subconscious already clocking far ahead of her full faculties, answering its own questions before it even got done registering them. Not even fully self-aware of what just happened her subconscious was already afire with considerations and calculations.
'She gasped... she gasped again as she faltered back a pace... a sudden choke as her hand instinctively reached towards her mouth... blood in her hand... blood... the knife... it's stabbed into her... she looks downward, she sees the knife... she's dying... we're dying'... her subconscious clocked on. The conscious consideration that she could be anything beyond mortal was instantly ripped away by perceptual reality as measured by the subconscious. Her subconscious had no available data to it, to even consider that its existence could remain forever. The fundamental concept of forever; humans are incapable of truly grasping anything that they can't quantify in some way. On an intuitive level, humans cannot accept the notion of unending, of forever, of the infinite, the uncountable, the incalculable, the void space.
Human perception at the subconscious level recognizes that if things don't end, they never change. Things ending to give rise for new things to take their place; the movement, the change of reality itself, constantly crumbling all apart and being re-created over and over again. Destruction and decay always leading to re-creation and expansion, the essence of life, its meaning, its importance, all created from the metric of death, of an end to existence. That literal end necessitating procreation, re-creation of life in a new form, with a new mind, with a new soul, with a new sense of perspective. Life becomes meaningless without death ticking by, stagnant and unchanging.
It's a kind of current flowing through an otherwise fixed reality. We are all but rocks in this river of existence, inanimate from a higher dimensional perspective, but flowing and tumbling down a river of changing currents controlled by the cycle of life, death and rebirth. Human death ticking by like seconds on a clock, a form of time measured by decay. The endless rhythm of life, the heart of time itself, beating forever onward through a trail of death and decomposition.
Calaphandra was in a panic now, her senses quickly catching up to the reality her subconscious had already accepted and processed... she had a knife stabbed into her chest and was about to die.
She continued gasping as she whimpered a bit, blood slowly dripping down from one side of her mouth. She finally managed to speak...
"Help!" *gasp* "I ca-" *gasp* "Please!" *gasp* "I-I ca-" *gasp*
Onideus finally burst out, "WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?!"
"I-I'm" *gasp* "Help me." *gasp* "Please." *gasp* "Dying." *gasp* "I'm dy-"
Onideus immediately cut her off, "WHO TOLD YOU THAT YOU COULD DIE?! DID ANYONE TELL YOU THAT YOU COULD DIE?!"
Tears were now streaming down her cheeks and she could feel a comforting warmth enveloping her chest. A thick, warm liquid slowly seeping out from the wound. It took her a moment before she fully understood what it was... her blood, bleeding out from the pain, from the sharpened, angry blade stuck into her.
She suddenly felt an irrational urge to try and pull it out from her chest, but as she reached towards the knife she felt comforting arms around her, pulling her own hands back. It was Winderleigh, tugging her hands back away from the knife as she leaned in and softly whispered, "The first time is always the hardest. Try to calm down. Don't panic."
Calaphandra could only weep and whimper in reply as she felt brutally violated and betrayed. "Why, why were they doing this? WHY?!", she screamed in her head as she continued to gasp between sobs, blood sputtering from choking wheezes as all the color faded from her face, leaving behind the look of a ghastly pale specter dripping with blood.
"LOOK AT ME! LOOK!", Onideus screamed on.
"YOU ARE A GOD! DYING IS A CHOICE! DO YOU WANT TO DIE?!", he continued.
"DO YOU WANT TO FUCKING DIE?!"
"No!", she finally sobbed out between gasping breaths as she started to feel light headed.
"THEN WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!"
"But I can't." *gasp* "I can't." *gasp* "Get it." *gasp* "Help." *gasp* "Get it." *gasp* "Out of" *gasp*.
"THAT KNIFE ISN'T GOING ANYWHERE! THAT KNIFE IS YOUR TRAINING! THAT KNIFE IS THERE TO TEACH YOU HOW NOT TO DIE!", Onideus barked on like an angry drill instructor.