Thank you so much guys <33 I really appreciate all of the comments I've received so far. @ Clary- oops heh heh it's supposed to say 'But what does that matter, really? Let me fix that <33
M'ay, here's the next part. It's a bit longer this time, I had to split it up into two so expect the next part soon as well C:
[ part two ]
My eyes flash open. It’s dark and wet- I can hear water slowly dripping down from some unknown place to the ground. Nothing very interesting occurs to me about this (most battlefields are wet and dark- depending on whether it’s night or day) until I remember the archer.
I don’t think I’m dead… I look down at my chest to where the arrow should have hit me, and the only thing there is a big, ugly scar. The skin around it is ripped up- it makes my chest hurt to just look at it.
I sit upright, abruptly realizing that I’m lying down and immobile. My body feels light and I realize that it’s because all of my hidden daggers are gone. I feel empty without the familiar weight of my sword around my hip.
I stand up, expecting to fall on the ground, but surprisingly, I’m strong enough to stand up. I’m not questioning any of this; someone wants me alive for a reason.
Beginning to explore my surroundings, I notice a thick leather band around my wrist. It feels different- wrong, somehow, but it doesn’t hinder me in any way, so I ignore it. I walk in a straight line to determine how long the wide the space I’m in is.
The room is three paces long and four paces wide. Which doesn’t leave much room to walk and think, my usual way of coming up with ideas. I’ve checked the walls- there are no cracks which would indicate a door.
So I pace, back and forth. There isn’t any light in the small room I’m in at all, and the only sound is the same constant patter of water dripping down onto the ground.
Is it possible to fall asleep while walking? Apparently it is for me. It feels like I’ve been here for hours when a few beams of light infiltrate the chamber and my head, carried by the momentum of my still walking feet, slams against the wall with a punishing crack. Talk about a wakeup call.
I rub my twice bruised jaw and look for the light’s source, now fully awake. The beams are coming from a now open trapdoor on the ceiling that I hadn’t noticed before. Oops. I must be losing my touch!
There is no sound from above, but light would be a relief from this dark abyss, at least for a while. I brace myself, getting ready to spring. On my first jump, I catch the trap door and using my momentum, I pull myself up into the room.
Bright light blinds me and I blink, spinning abound into a low crouch.
“Aaaahhh…” My cry dies away after seeing the hundreds of people surrounding me, and then realizing that they’re only mirrors.
I straighten up with the dignity I have left, and relax, shaking myself. When was the last time I was afraid of reflections? Not since I became a battle hardened warrior. Then again, what battle hardened warrior witnesses his own death and then realizes that he isn’t really dead after all?
The room is empty, but I startle every time I turn and see myself reflected in one of those mirrors. Finally, I can’t stand it anymore, and am about to whirl around to yell at the mirror to stop reflecting me. But a second sense, once again, warns me, and I glance back.
I’m expecting to see my reflecting, but what I see chills me to the core.
Those stormy eyes.
The malice in them is so easy to detect. It’s like staring into a fire. That’s not what startles me the most though- the figure that I now realize is feminine has no reflection.
Instinctively, I reach at my side for my sword, but of course it isn’t there. The archer laughs, the stormy eyes still looking to me. It seemed to me you’d want your captor’s laugh to be evil, cold, and unfeeling, but the woman in front of me’s laugh was actually warm. She seemed genuinely happy.
She smiled. “Welcome!” She said in an admittedly welcoming voice.
Even so, I listened with a bit of a bad anticipation feeling. Welcome to what? This didn’t seem like a hell to me, but hey, you never knew.
“Err… am I, dead?”
Not exactly the phrase crackling with wit I was hoping would leave my mouth.
Her smile never wavered. “Not exactly.”
“Great!” I reply, smiling but trying my hardest to make it look false. “Of course I’m not dead yet, but in 3 minutes you’ll have me shipped off on some impossible mission going against what I want, and then when I don’t finish or get killed, you’ll hang my carcass for the crows and laugh about my attempts over tea and cucumber sandwiches.”
“Actually, you’re not exactly alive either.” The archer looks at me, waiting for a reply. It never comes, so she continues brightly.
“You’re a Perpetual.”
“A what?” Again, even I don’t have something witty to say.
“I guess you’re heard of us under a different name. We’re Guardian Angels!” She smiles as though delivering the most exciting news.
It takes me several seconds to regain my speech. “Excuse me; I think you’re got the wrong person.” Yep, that’s me, polite in every situation.
“Of course not. You could see me, couldn’t you? That’s a sign that you’re qualified to become perpetual!” The archer’s voice had the monotone of a speech delivered hundreds of times before.
“And you had to kill me first…” My mumbling voice trails off as I look for what I need most- an exit. Perhaps behind one of the mirrors…
I’m not paying attention to the archer until she snaps, “And stop trying to look for a way out. There’s isn’t a physical one.”
Ouch. But all the same, I’m wondering what she means by ‘a physical one’?
“So,” She says, calming herself, “We are Perpetuals, Guardian Angels to the living…”
I play my last straw. “Do I look angelic to you?” Even she had to admit this was right. You’d think of angels as holy, divine, beings. Me?
I ran away from home when I was 16 and since then, have only worn the clothes form men I’d killed. I had hair halfway down to my ears which I chopped with my knife if it got too long. My eyes could never decide what color they wanted to be. I couldn’t see clearly in the mirror in front of me, but they looked to be a blue-grey, the same color as... the archer?
Seeming to sense my hesitation, the archer pressed on. “Nobody looks angelic in this crew.”
“Fine.” I grump. “I’m an angel.” I say this last word filled with sarcasm to show the archer how I really feel about this subject.
“So!” She continues brightly, “Your first task as a Perpetual is to choose your name.”
“I already have a name!” I protest.
“When we… select” She hesitates on the word, “A perpetual, some memories of their living life tend to slip away. Try it. What is your name?”
It’s a challenge. I can’t meet her eyes as I try it and realize that… I have no identity anymore?
She smiles, knowing the battle is won. “Choose your name.”
It takes me a while. If you had to choose your name for the rest of your life, I’m pretty sure it would take you some time as well. Finally, I reach a decision.
“Tybalt.” I say, meeting her eyes.
“Great! I’m Caythie.”
An awkward silence ensues, made even more so by me testing out my name. It’ll take a while, I concluded.
Caythie breaks the schilence. “Do you want to know more about being a Perpetual?”
Her cheeriness is really starting to annoy me, considering she’s the one that killed me.
Without my answer, she continues. “We exist in a different dimension, linked closely to the living.” She closes her eyes as she’s saying this, as though her entire world is centered around these few words, as though she depends on them, as though she’d go spinning out of control without them. You know, she probably would. “There’s three- dimensions I mean- the living, the dead, and the in-betweens. We never cease to exist, nor can we die- we last forever. Immortality, you could call it.”
It’s hard to imagine this woman in front of me being older that I am, but now I can see in her eyes that she has been around for centuries, millennium even. She has seen empires rise and fall.
I don’t let this show, though, and roll my eyes. “Great. Unwanted. Unneeded.” I direct that last few words in Caythie’s direction, staring hard at her, but she doesn’t take the hint.
“Our job is to help the living!” She pauses and looks at me. If she’s expecting me and the rest of the invisible audience to burst into cheers, she’s disappointed.
She does look a bit hurt when she continues. “You get one chance to prove yourself. If you fail, you stay as a Perpetual forever. If you succeed, you have a choice- stay here, or go back to the living.”
The logic of this escapes me, but even so, I know what I want. All I have to do is succeed! She makes it sounds so easy. But if I’m an expert (I am) it won’t be.
She looks serious for once. “Of course, if you’re living, you’ll actually have to experience death!”
Words fail me.
“Don’t worry, everyone fails!” There’s a warm tone in her voice that makes me want to run her through.
Caythie continues to blabber on, but I ignore her. I take this time to think. Caythie has been alive for hundreds of years- maybe even more, I see now. How is she still alive and happy? The way she said those words- it makes me think she’s been corrupted. By something. I can’t explain it- I just don’t understand whether she’s sane or not.
She looks at me and I look back, feeling that something is a bit different about this sentence.
“Your first test begins… now.”
Hello there. 
