Lord of Annihilation

Hearing an eerie voice call her by her name, Olivia's thoughts chilled and her spine shivered. 

An intense feeling of unease and danger sprouted within her heart, and her instincts warned her to immediately leave this place, 'Run!' 

Olivia willed her body but the latter did not comply. 

'Run! Run! RUN! WHY ARE YOU NOT MOVING?!!' Olivia screamed within her mind. 

Gathering the entirety of her willpower she desperately tried to move her body. Alas, control over her body seemed to have left Olivia. Her body continued to stand in place, as she found herself unable to control its movements.

Her body seemed to have been overtaken by some foreign for its control, while her mind continued to remain free.

Despair flooded her mind as Olivia found herself unable of any action. She was unable to even move her head and could only helplessly stare into the dark interiors of the unexplored stone house. 

Unable to do anything, Olivia could only silently think, 'It must be that voice! Some strange power must have taken control of my body.'

Whether it was the correct explanation or not, this was the only explanation that made the most sense. 

She was perfectly fine before and had looked around the town without any trouble. It was only after the encounter with that eerie voice that she ended up in her current predicament.

'It's not going to make me enter the house, right?' Olivia nervously wondered. Her instincts continued to intensely blare at her about the danger radiating from the house. 

Due to the odd positioning of the house, Olivia was unable to properly view its insides. All that her eyes could see were darkness followed by more darkness. 

Her initial curiosity had been completely washed away by her desire to run away from this house. Olivia prayed that the eerie voice controlling her body would not make her enter this house.

Unfortunately, her prayers seemed to be futile, as Olivia felt her body walk towards the house. 

'No, no, no, no, no!' cried Olivia.

Uncaring of her thoughts, Olivia's body continued to walk towards the house and entered its doorway. Arriving inside, she was unable to view anything through her eyes, due to the interiors being too dark.

The ceiling, although largely broken and decrepit, did not have any holes or cracks through which sunlight could enter. Without any sunlight to illuminate the interiors, it was impossible to view anything. 

'What's the point in bringing me inside, if I can't see anything?' she complained.

As if hearing her complaint, a light suddenly appeared within the house and illuminated everything within. An orb of blue light appeared before her and dimly lit up the interiors. 

Seeing this change, Olivia was speechless. 'Why are you suddenly compliant?' she asked but received no reply in response.

Clearing her mind of such extraneous thoughts, Olivia focused her mind on the scene before her. 

Since the strange voice had brought her inside the stone house and had even provided a source of light to view the interiors, she figured that she might as well comply with its wishes.

Through her 'eyes', Olivia could see that the insides of this house were also as lacking as the rest. Debris, moss, and a blatant lack of furniture/items made up for the entirety of the house.

However, Olivia's mind wasn't focused on this but was rather immediately pulled towards something else. Unlike the other houses, this stone house had one jarring difference.

The entirety of its interior was painted with murals! 

The walls, the ceiling, and even the floor underneath her feet were densely packed with colorful images. Much of the paint had faded and the various debris and damaged blocked a majority of the murals. 

Nonetheless, the fact that every inch of the interior was painted with images already made this center-most stone house incomparably different from the rest.

'Wow, there are so many scenes,' Olivia thought with awe. 

Since she was unable to freely control her body and therefore her head, Olivia had to wait for the strange power to move her body and turn her head. Thankfully, her eyesight and field of view were rather good, allowing her to barely peek at the images on the sides and at the floor.

An image depicting a strangely-shaped fish floating through space.

An image depicting a sanguine-colored, octopus-like creature feasting on a brown planet. 

There was even one image that depicted two grotesquely shaped races locked in a war against each other. The scale and intensity of the war as depicted on the mural were incomparable to anything that Olivia had previously seen.

The images depicted on the murals inside this house were not only older than the ones seen in the previous houses, but they were also extremely detailed!

In fact, Olivia keenly noticed that some of the characters in a few murals had their facial features drawn.

'Do these murals depict real events and people that had taken place and existed within the Universe?' Olivia thought to herself. 'Does that mean that these murals are a sort of historical record?'

Any intelligent species have a habit of recording their history.

The fact that this uninhabited stone town had thousands of pictures depicting various events in the Universe, led Olivia to assume that these murals were a sort of a recording of history maintained by the previous inhabitants of this town. 

Perhaps they were scholars or observers, who liked to watch various events in the Universe and record the most historic ones within these murals, as a sort of hobby or maybe even a duty of sorts.

Of course, there existed the equally likely possibility that the people living within this town simply liked to draw random nonsense and she was just overthinking the meaning of the murals.

Without concrete evidence of their motives, Olivia would never know.

Minutes continued to pass as Olivia continued to view one image after the other. The strange power controlled her body bringing her to specific points in the house while forcing her to look at specific events.

The first time, it forced her to look at an image depicting a scene of a large, flame-covered giant picking up a small, red-colored humanoid figure in outer space. Both parties were featureless and Olivia was unable to make sense of the image without any context.

The second time, it brought her in front of another image depicting a scene of a tall, blue-colored humanoid chained against a wall. The head of this humanoid was lightly raised, allowing Olivia to notice the ruby-colored gem on his forehead and a leisurely smile on his face.

The third time, the mysterious force, placed her in front of an image depicting a scene of a hooded, golden-colored figure sitting atop a crystal throne while looking down upon a brown-colored humanoid.

The fourth time…

Like so, Olivia was forced by the strange and mysterious force to view seven different images. Each time, she was only allowed to move on to the next spot after she had finished committing those specific images to her memory.

While Olivia found this odd and wasn't able to make any sense of those depicted scenes without context, she had no choice but to oblige to the whims of the strange power.

Also, it wasn't entirely bad either. The seven images were rather far from each other, allowing Olivia to view and memorize many other scenes during the process.

When she had finished memorizing the final image situated in the kitchen, the strange force, controlled Olivia's body once again and brought her back to the living room.

'Is it over?' Olivia wondered, seeing her body return to the first room within the house.

'Strange, I never saw the black-colored figure appear in any of the images within this house. Is it perhaps in one of those images that I missed?' she thought.

While she found it strange and was slightly disappointed, Olivia felt mostly relieved. Her body had already been brought near the entrance of the house. A few more steps and she would be able to exit and house and hopefully be rid of this strange control.

'I will move as far away as possible from his house and never return. The feeling of having something else control your body is terrifying!'

Just as her body was about to leave the house, it was suddenly brought to a pause.

Olivia's mind instantly turned nervous, as she regretted thinking her previous thoughts, 'Shit, I forgot that this thing can read my mind! I'm sorry strange power, I promise to return if you let me go now.' She hurriedly promised.

However, the strange power paid no attention to her promises and forced the body to fall on its back. Turning her head to look at the ceiling, the mysterious power forced Olivia to look at the mural painted on the ceiling.

Unlike the other murals which consisted of dozens to hundreds of different scenes, haphazardly strewn together, the mural covering the entire roof of the living room depicted a single scene.

An infinitely large, grey-colored land, upon which stood an uncountable number of creatures, painted with different colors. Every single creature had its weapons drawn and stared towards the sky with incomparable bloodlust and hatred.

Covering the sky, encompassing it in its entirety, was an endlessly large black-colored cloud with a swirling center that resembled a mouth. Endless avarice and desire leaked from this mouth as it gazed towards the creatures on the ground, ravenously.

'It can't be…!' Olivia's thoughts came to a stop as her eyes landed on a specific feature of this black-colored cloud.

Just above the mouth was a single pair of eyes; one bright-golden, and the other crimson-red.

'L—' 

Before Olivia could complete her thoughts, grey-colored energy exploded out from the ceiling and flooded her body. Her body rose into the air and rapidly convulsed as endless grey energy continued to pour from the ceiling and forcibly flood her body.

Eventually, Olivia lost consciousness and her body disappeared from the living room of the house. The grey-colored energy also disappeared following her departure, returning peace to the stone house.

The queer stone town had once again become uninhabited and everything went back to the way it previously was, before Olivia's arrival.

----------

Within the Medical Room of a certain spaceship.

Olivia, who was motionlessly lying on top of a bed with her eyes closed and soft breathing, suddenly jerked once before snapping open her eyes.

Bright white light assaulted her eyes, making her flinch and squint her eyes with difficulty. Taking a few seconds to gather her thoughts, Olivia thought back to the last scene before she lost her consciousness.

'Did I successfully kill that sword b*tch?' Olivia wondered, before noticing the softness surrounding her body. 

Belatedly, she thought to herself, 'Where am I?'

Just then, she heard a cold voice question her in a monotonous tone, "How did you do it?"