A Quest;looking for gods

Her routine remained unchanged for time unknown.

Her thoughts too followed the same patterns, carving rutts into her mindscape so that she always went into these grooves unthinkingly.

While she was cog-like, an automaton that needed no recharging, she had not made a sound with her voice in some time,she even challenged herself to move her body so that her movements were silent, her breath was a mere texturing of the air.

She had grown comfortable with the core of aggregate pain in her middle, living with it so long it had become a part of her.

Suddenly, the room shook.

She had been the only thing in it capable of moving in he immediate surroundings that she was startled into stillness while standing on one leg...she had been in the middle of an exercise routine.

She slowly put the leg down, as her foot lightly touched the floor, the room shook again, and the light flickered, the way they do in horror movies. She turned around,but before she could complete the revolution she was plunged into darkness and room shook again. The violence of it threw her off her feet,but she didn't land on the floor.

She didn't land at all.

She felt herself to be back in that space she was where she had no body. That place that was before this room and the sentinel's punishment. Except...it was different.

Earlier when she had been in this place she had felt vast and limitless,now ,even though she felt the immensity of her consciousness she also felt bound. Chains were wrapped around her,she could feel them twined back and forth over her soul. She tried to flex her awareness and she felt the soundless movement of the bindings on her.

After so long new thoughts had to be thought,she had to petal aside fantasies of revenge against the sentinal and the gods she spoke off, she had to stop dwelling on the lives she had lived, how they had all been futile and without meaning. She now had to think about where she was, what it meant that she was now bound in so many chains she felt she must look like a misshapen ball,and she would think on it,it's just that she was sooo tired.

She abruptly perked awake.

-What?!

She had fallen asleep. She had been incapable for so long of the act that she had no idea when it happened, and now that she was awake she couldn't remember how to fall asleep again. She was still tired though. She moved her soul form and realized the chains restricted her in a different way than before. They flexed differently now, they were heavier and lighter at the same time,the restrictions on her awareness seemed more profound, leaving her squirming trying to get out of them. She soon tired of that and sank gently into darkness.

-Huh!?

She thought as as she started awake...again.

She woke up this time and she could here noise,a frantic drumming,as she listened to eat she also heard voices. All sounds were distant and not quite clear,as though coming from a long distance through water.

The drumming slowed, still too fast for comfort but not so fast as to be filling her with anxiety like before.

As she tried to flex her awareness in the unknown space again she notes the chains had changed. Now she was in a cage,more like a box as she felt all around her with her consciousness.

The walls and floors and the ceiling were all too close together, she was so big that sitting in the center she had to bow her head to keep it hitting the roof,she barely had to extend her arms to touch the walls.

- Was she being punished again?

The sentinal said the memories are the punishment, to be remembered with clarity always even unto the next life,so why this added punishment?

First, she had been left to brood in pain for an undefined period of time,and now a small cage!

She tried to calm down,to match her now racing heartbeat to the sounds of the drums. Eventually she fell asleep again.

She woke at irregular intervals,the drumming was always there,sometimes slow and steady and other time fast and seemingly strained. Sometimes there were other sounds,like distant music or muffled conversations.

During these waking periods she would make herself comfortable and meditate.

At first she felt no change in the cage she was in,but gradually it enlarged(or she became smaller). Anyway ,she could start sit up straight and soon after stand. Than she could walk around. She never saw th space she was in,it was always dark.

As soon as she had enough space she started with all the exercises and meditations she had engaged in, while in the door less room of her first punishment.

Her thoughts fell into the same grooves, reliving her lives in her memories fantasies of revenge.

She concluded that wherever she was ,was close to other people. She might be in a jail the sentinels keep the souls of those who attempt to escape their fate. The voices and sounds she could almost here must be her fellow prison inmates. The drums were always there, mostly calming sometimes disquieting.

Sometimes she was not in the cage,not completely. She felt as if the cage she was in was contained in something else which moved as she moved. She tried actively to prevent herself from being taken to that space,it was still dark in there, like the place her mind was caged but it was always in that place that she fell asleep.

She had grown to hate sleep in this new phase-she never dreamed anymore.

While she meditated in her cage,she was pulled into the outer cage and subjected to pressures she had never been before.

The pressure would come and go faster and faster,the drums keeping tempo in a strange rhythm that left her scared and bewildered.

The greatest amount of pressure left her in a place with too much light,too much sound,too much sensation...it was all too much. She drew in a deep breath that had a liquid sound and screamed.

She heard a high thin wail, and decided it was coming from her so she stopped. She squinted her eyes as felt something in her mouth moving about, illiciting suctioning sounds,but the light made it impossible to define the big ,dark blur above her.

She was cold and she although she couldn't tell felt that she must be in someone's arms.

She tried to retreat to the cage and found that she couldn't. She had no control over her body, her new born body, this is what this was. She had not yet been born when she was in that lightless place with the constant sound of drums