Broken Identity

“You know who you are.”

“I know.”

“Who are you?”

“The chosen one.”

“What is your role?”

“To save the world. To defeat Mri.”

“Mrithun.”

“Whatever!” Rei scoffed. “Why do we have to go through this again!”

“Because this is who you are,” Des said.

“We’ve discussed this for years! I’m ready to fight her.”

“Reina.”

“Just Rei, I told you that. Why can’t I face her?”

Des straightened Rei’s shirt. “You’re not ready.”

Rei stepped back. “I am!”

They stormed from the small room with wooden walls and a comfy chair and a roaring fire that pushed out the winter wind that Rei stepped out to. The wind brushed against Rei’s pale cheeks, lacing through their short white hair. They shivered, holding their bare arms; the wind pushed their sleeveless button down shirt against their skin.

They continued from the small house, their thick boots sinking into the frosted grass.

“Rei!” Des stood at the doorway, a thick coat now draped over her shoulders, her long brunette hair tucked into a hat. “Where are you going?”

Rei turned, walking backwards. “Somewhere else! You’ve been telling me the same thing for most of my life! You’ve only semi proved it and now you want to keep me cooped up! I need to think!”

Their heel caught on something. They yelped as they tumbled down, down into blackness. They fell and they fell until they fell onto the hard ground, on their leg.

Rei groaned in pain. Their leg had bent backward; they clutched it in pain. They slowly moved it back to a normal position, intense pain surging through their leg for every second it lasted.

They clenched their fist, a white splint appearing on their leg.

“Where am I?” they whispered.

A glowing sphere appeared above Rei’s head. They opened their fist and it grew, the entire space lighting up.

It was a cave, they were laying in a deep cave. At its roof there was a large opening partially covered in broken sticks and leaves, the rest of them sitting on the cave floor around Rei. The vast walls were completely covered in detailed paintings.

“Wow.” They gazed around at the vibrant pictures.

Des poked her head through the hole. “Rei, do you want help out of there? Are you okay?”

“I want to think.” Rei pushed a disk into the hole, pushing Des out.

A transparent chair lifted them from the ground. They floated to the beginning of a spiral of the pictures that climbed down the vast walls. An old language was written there, they recognized it. Hadn’t Des taught it to them? Yes.

They translated the words aloud. “I have to write this story, someone must know what happened, maybe it will be found one day. But this must never happen again.” A glowing figure stood alone. “I was born a powerful mage, much more powerful than any who’d been born in a long time, except for one other.” A monarch sat on a throne that sat atop the world. “Xena of the Dawn plagued our world, a dictator that controlled the most powerful government. We all feared them.” A blue-haired child stood in an exploding house. “I was an unstable child, not emotionally, but with my magic. My parents couldn’t control me. When I reached about ten years, we were approached by a stranger.” A slightly older child held the hand of a long brunette haired woman in an elegant purple dress. “She said she could help me control my powers and train me. My parents were skeptical, they loved their child and didn’t want to let me go. But then she said her name… Destiny?” Rei gasped. “She claimed I was the chosen one, destined to take down Xena. I don’t remember the conversation, but I ended up going with that stranger.”

Rei paused, staring at the words they’d just read.

Then they continued to the next picture. The child was older again, fighting the brunette haired figure. “She trained me. I looked up to her. I believed her every word. What a dumb mistake. So after years of learning how to harness the full potential of what I was born with.”

They turned to the largest mural. Two figures stood over the world battling, the monarch and the grown up child. “So I battled Xena. I thought that was what I must do, I thought it was my destiny, after all, it was drilled into my head by Destiny herself. We battled for what seemed like hours without breaks. It was like the battles of legends. But then it ended.” The grown up child stood over the monarch. “And I defeated Xena.” The grown up child stood within vast wreckage with the brunette haired figure. “After the battle, I looked around and realized the wreckage around me, the wreckage that both I and Destiny stood within.” The grown up child crouched on the ground. “I was supposed to save the world, wasn’t I? I was so confused. I was supposed to save the world, instead I’d destroyed it, leaving scattered civilizations.” The grown up child gripped the brunette haired figure by the collar. “I begged Destiny to tell me what I’d done, to tell me how I could fix the world.” The brunette haired figure stood over the grown up child cowering. “She said I’d saved the world, but it could’ve been anyone, any powerful being. We were just destroying the world and she had to fix it. I guess I’d fixed it for her. She’s still roaming free, I don’t know how long she can live, but she may do this again. If you are reading this, stop her, save the world.”

Rei stumbled onto the ground, the chair disappeared.

“H-h-how,” she whispered. “This sounds exactly like what Des did for me. Is she…? Does she…?” Rei stared off at the disk they’d created to block Des, starstruck. “I… I have to stop her.”

Rei stood adamantly, stumbling back onto their broken leg in pain. They sighed, bright wings forming on their back. They pushed themself into the air, towards the disk. The disk disappeared as they’d reached it, flying into the air.

Des gazed at them simply. “So I guess you’re fine.”

“You lied to me, didn’t you?”

“Am I supposed to understand?”

“You- you told me for most of my life I was the ‘chosen one,’ destined to save the world from Mrithun, but that’s not true, right? You let me base my whole identity on it! You also orchestrated the great fight between Xena and the stranger! Just like this.”

“Does it matter if I lied? Does it matter if I’ve done this before? You know she must be stopped. Destruction is necessary for the world to rebuild. If you want to know, my real name is Destruction, like it will matter, since I’m going to kill you.”

“What?”

“Yeah, I think I’m gonna kill you.”

Des raised her hand as pain began to force its way into Rei’s back, like someone was yanking their spine out. Their vision blurred and they began to fall.

They never reached the ground.