Shades of the New World

A brief period of silent nothingness passed and Kyune found herself weeping inside the cold darkness of her caverns. Her offspring, who had assumed the forms of human children, were freely running through the vast hills of the North, slowly but surely phasing out of existence.

[I'm sorry… mother…] 

[For leaving you behind…]

Apologetic thoughts from her children entered Kyune's mind.

[Have… a wonderful life…] 

Another thought appeared in her mind, wishing her a good life. 

[Live on… for us…] 

[Let us be…]

Countless such thoughts littered Kyune's mind, causing her to feel even deeper sorrow.

Kyune thought of gathering them up and forcing them to live on everlastingly inside her fake utopia... She could definitely do it, and she did it before countless times… but not today. This day, she could only stand inside the darkness, weeping silently.

What was the point of her existence? What was the point of her children's existence? To live inside their perfect bubble through eternity until they got bored with it all one day and decided to take their own lives?

If so, then why wasn't Kyune running into the vast wilderness, embracing death like her own children were doing? Hasn't she lived enough? Hasn't she waited enough? Shouldn't she be running along her children? What was she waiting for, anyway?

[Mother…]

[Don't die…]

[Please don't die…]

[Someone will come…]

[One day they'll come…]

.

.

.

Sweating and panicking, Kyune woke from her dream. It took her a minute to gather her thoughts, as she carefully petted the group of sleeping World Sprites with her tails. 

'Such a powerful being, but can't even cleanse its mind of nightmares. So utterly pointless...' she then thought with a deep sigh.

…

Half an hour later, Kyune sat in silence, once again reminding herself of the permanent nature of her boredom. She would usually be sleeping away the boredom, but one could only sleep so much before sleep became too much. And besides, most of the time, sleep came with some nasty friends called nightmares. 

Thus, she had to sit in her little cave, with only her thoughts and memories to accompany her. 

'It's truly fascinating how I was able to live this long, if I think about it…' the recurring thoughts reappeared in her head, 'But the problem is, I truly don't think it should be allowed for cognitive beings to live this long.'

'At least they should be able to move around and maybe destroy a country or two while they're out,' Kyune sighed once more.

The peak of the world was a boring place to be in, especially so if you weren't at the top, like the Empress or the Authorities. Kyune was at the level where she just wasn't strong enough to just say, "Fuck it" and suicidally try to take over the World.

According to most stories, such villains and dark lords would later find themselves dead at the hands of some random village boy, but in Alvox, scary beings were sitting on top of Kyune's head, reminding her to be a good little girl.

'Sigh… and even if I'm so bored to act so daringly, I'll never go far with the act, because it's just so tragic and wasteful. I mean, what was the point of me gathering my strength for a millennium or so, if I were to just lose my life at the hand of some random Authority who was tasked to bring me down?'

It was doubly more unfair for her, since she couldn't even move away from the spot she chose to settle in. It sometimes felt uncannily similar to the stories of delusional children living their perfect lives inside their perfect little worlds. They were unmatched in their world, everyone accepted them unconditionally, they controlled every little detail in their world… but when reality came knocking, they would find their perfection shatter into a million pieces. 

Oh? You could cast a hundred different kinds of magic perfectly in your delusions, but when the time came to prove it to people that lived outside your world, you couldn't do it? Perfection shattered. 

Oh? You have a cast of loving people who would practically do anything and everything for you? But does anyone outside your world feel the same way? No one? Well, that sucks, doesn't it?

Oh? You could fluently and captivatingly speak to literally everyone inside your world, but when you had to perform the same feat in a real life situation, you turned into a incoherent stuttering mess? Perfection shattered once more. 

But the problem was that for Kyune, the delusional state of things was her reality, but the catch was that she could not escape from it.

She always lived in her perfect world, which was of course, her cave.

The loving and caring people that lived inside this world were of course, her offspring - the World Sprites. 

And naturally, the impossible magical feats and the unparalleled social skills she could perform were all abilities that she acquired over the years and beyond. 

But she really couldn't perform these miracles for the outsiders to see, since she physically couldn't leave this perfect world of hers.

'Definitely, cognitive beings should be banned from living this long in such a manner…' Kyune sighed once more. 

The Empress' arrangements allowed beings to reach almost unimaginable heights, but there was simply too little space to play around. Not to mention the Authorities and the Empress herself, the few dozen super-imposers and the various Beast Lords were more than enough to make hell out of Alvox ten times over. 

In a way, they were like a group of adults stuck inside a boxing ring along millions of children of varying ages, some of them even barely born. The adults had to always be considerate of the young ones they played with, lest they accidentally destroy the boxing ring entirely. 

Obviously, some of the adults weren't happy with this arrangement, namely the Beast Lords. After all, they didn't give two shits about the laws and constraints of humanoid society. Kyune was fairly sure the territorial limit that the Beast Lords had was some kind of shackle that the Empress was forced to put on them for the sake of the more normal denizens of the Empire.