God'sAmong Us (Patreon)

“Jeez, Mother Ann! You’ve told us these stories a thousand times already!” A sick voice called out from an almost empty room from the other end of an open doorway. Not exactly masculine but as if still going through puberty. “You even named Hope and I after the leaders of Namakas and Shinras! Gods, this gets annoying…”

Sigh a light sigh, Mother Ann looked up from the small girl in front of her, Hope. Hope and Damien were both fifteen according to the records Ann had to make for them. Hope was sitting quietly as her dark yellow, near brown hues stayed locked onto Mother Ann’s fiery red hair. The poor girl was always jealous of that hair color, but was never allowed to dye her natural black hair due to the rules of the orphanage. She had the typical near-hourglass figure most teens had at her age. “Well maybe if you’d pay attention to your lessons, I wouldn’t have to repeat myself a thousand times, Damien!” Mother Ann shouted into the room she was headed to.

As she stepped through the frame, she could see Damien doing push ups with his bandaged arm. “We’re each fifteen, Mother. Don’t you think it’s time to, you know, teach us about what to do once we leave the orphanage due to the age limit of 18?” Stopping as his arm extended fully he looked up to the woman who was twice his age, staring right into her blue orbs with his blood red ones. “Or do you agree with the rest of the town about sending us through this so-called Trial of The Gods?” His tone full of sass earned him a quick slap on his cheek with the back of Ann’s hand.

“No! I don’t plan to send either of you away. I’ve raised you two on my own while caring for at least ten other kids who all grew and became adopted. I…. How dare you think I’d send you to do something so dangerous!!”Her voice nearly broke as tears welled up in her eyes. The thought of these two kids she raised, going through such a dangerous journey across the lands just because their town sees them as worthless. “You’ll be cooking your own dinner tonight.” Ann quickly said, covering her mouth and storming from the room, upstairs to her own bedroom, if you’d call a room big enough for a bed and a small desk a bedroom.

Just as Ann ran off, Hope came into the room, sighing herself as she saw the bandage around Damien’s arm began to turn red with blood. “I thought I told you not to push yourself while you were recovering from that fight you got in with that traveler.” The raven haired girl grabbed the boy’s hand and dragged him three rooms down, into the bathroom where she pulled his shirt from over his head. More bandages on his body and more blood to paint them red. “DAMIEN! REALLY?!”

All he could do was look away as she began taking off his bandages and cleaning his wounds. “No wonder Mother Ann gets so mad with you for being so reckless. You’re gonna die with a year if you keep this up.”

“I will not! Besides...her stories aren’t wrong.. I have that screwed up star on my foot.”

This caused him to get shot a look of idiocy from Hope. “Wait… No.. What? You have the star.. And I have the triangle pieces…”

“So… We know who are families are at least.. Or were. I found mine two days ago. You?”

“A week.” Hope got back to work covering up Damien’s wounds. It seemed the two had already had time to process where they came from and exactly why they were orphans. “Should...we tell Ann…?”

“Are you kidding? If we tell ANYONE, we’re going to be kicked out of the village in a heartbeat.” Damien near shot her a death glare as he spoke. “Besides… If we are forced to go… that’ll leave Ann alone and we both know that can’t happen again.” He sighed and turned to Hope. “Promise me...if things go bad with me and I have to leave you will stay for Mother Ann.”

The young girl nodded as she let out a heavy breath. “I promise, but we’ll do our best to make sure nothing like that happens.”

The next few hours went by with no problem. Hope cooked dinner for the two as the Mayor came to visit Mother Ann and talk to her. The two had usually talked for a few hours and the mayor had left before the kids went to bed. Things were different this time though. Mother Ann never came to tuck the kids in from her talk with him. After twenty minutes, Damien convinced Hope to go with him to check on their foster mother. “Come on, Hope. You know you can’t sleep without both of us in the room.” It was pretty easy to convince the growing teen to find the woman who raised her.

Following the mayor’s voice, the two teens soon came upon a scene that neither of them would never forget. Their caretaker bleeding out on the floor as the mayor stood over her with a bloodied knife. The young girl gasped and covered her mouth to quiet herself and that was all it took to send Damien into a frenzy. Everything went white and the young boy had no idea where he was.

"My my~ You subconsciously forced your way to see little old me." A strange a distorted voice rang through this mind as the boy stared into an empty white void. "That's quite a feat, but you are far from ready to see me properly." With a snapping sound, Damien watched as the white void around him changed to black and dissolved around him.

Hours later, Damien woke up with a start in the grass as Hope sat by his side crying. "H-Hope....what's wrong?" All the young girl could do was point in the direction of the burning town that the two grew up in. Everything was set ablaze and crumbling in front of them. Right before their eyes their home crumbled into the inferno on top of itself. Their life and childhood was being burned away and all they could do was stare.