Gritting his teeth Tatsuo exploded his anger. "WHY?????"
Standing still i simply stared up at the silver and crimson eye in the sky. Like a painters eye for detail scrutinising a canvas' every detail. it watched me and the world around me. Trying to decide whether or not it would stay 'real' for me.
"Just why will you never accept yourself?" Tatsuo asked tired with rage. "Why do you keep hiding in your stories. Your pictures. Your musics. Your paintings. In everything you create you try to... hide and become someone else. You are such an imaginative person and i am envious of that. You create so much but only to try and destroy yourself."
"Have you ever heard the quantum physics theory of quantum jumping, Tatsuo?" Interrupting him i lowered my gaze back down from the massive eye to look right through my imaginary friend. "It suggests a person can shifts realities or experiences by changing their thoughts or beliefs. The simplest explanation i can surmise it into... is like making a new version of yourself by dreaming of another life of what you could have been."
Staring at me oddly Tatsuo was left perplexed. His body shifting between his modern clothes and battle-monk attire as the world convulsed and breathed around him and the bodies of the insane patients turned into monsters of dripping ink. Their ravenous silver eyes locked on me.
"That's what this has always been to me." Shrugging my arms i gestured around at the twisting world that turned more into a nightmarish hellscape under the silver-crimson eye's gaze. "Its why I'm so afraid of dreaming like this. Because its such a simple and nice life that i wouldn't know what to do with myself if i actually stopped."
"I can help you-"
"No you can't." Still with a bleak smile across my blood covered face and lips i met Tatsuo's despairing eyes with an empty look. "The Tatsuo of my world said to me once. 'You never know the violence it took to be gentle. It breaks the flawed souls.' And he was right. Know one knows how much turmoil external or internal i went through before. I must have broken a hundred times by now. I'm in no way special enough to pretend what I'm doing has ever been healthy."
Making a face like he had never said that before or it was never in the books written by this I version of me Tatsuo made a face. Shaking his head though he focused. "Then you should understand what we are trying to do for you!"
"Here's what Thorn said immediately afterwards." Brushing both hands up through my hair as it was soaked with my own blood, I grinned and said, "I'm here to have a good time, not to be seen as cool. It was followed by several insults and curses with a whole speech on not giving a damn, but there was one phrase thats right for this situation. This isn't a mental breakdown—It's mental clarity, and it's pissed!!"
My shout scared Tatsuo for a moment and he raised his arms into a boxing stance expecting me to lash out but got perplexed when he saw me just flashing him the middle finger smugly.
"I'll have a meltdown. As a treat." Sucking in a breath i then yelled, "that man has food in his pockets!"
The former mental patients that were now just nightmarish shadows in my eyes all swapped their focus from me to Tatsuo before all diving at him and tearing his clothes off. Trying to find the food before one of them did.
"It was just an apple!" The mental patients exclaimed as he held it, before all eyes swapped to him from Tatsuo and a brawl for the apple began
Meanwhile i had ran for the wall and climbed up a tree's trunk, going along one of its branches before looking over the wall to see a white sea of turbulent thoughts on the other side. My thoughts. Each wave a different voice of insanity bashing against the wall trying to get through.
"—they're against you! They're for you! They will change you!—"
"—three go to war. Two never return. War found the unbroken—"
"—so ugly. No hammer or nail needed for a portrait. For it hung itself—"
Glancing back into the mental institution briefly, i saw Tatsuo getting pulled out the piling nightmarish beings by Vera before they both spotted me. Horror of realising i was escaping on their faces.
"See you on hell's dance floor." Waving goodbye with a two fingered salute, my legs pushed off the tree branch and i leapt over the wall. Jumping feet first into the white ocean of insanity on the other side.
[skill: horizon chain — sanity anchor!]
Black hands reached through the waves immediately latching onto me before dragging me down into the waters with a bone chilling splash.
The next instant i opened my eyes i was back in the shallow and clear waters i was in. Before being dragged down into the depths of my mind. Lifting my head and upper body out the pool, water dripped from my drenched clothes and i looked around.
The waters still had multiple weapons embedded through its surface but there were no hands or eels skeletons any longer. It was just the clear waters, clear skies with the two bright suns above, and my waking self.
Grinning to myself i shut my eyes and said, "what a drab dream that was."
"You awaken once more, Dreamer." Casting a hallucination a golden leviathan emerged out of the waters. Coiling its titanic body across the horizon before glaring down at me with four of its eight crimson eyes on one side of its skull while its booming voice reverberated through me. "This time your dream was... clingy. Latching onto you as a desperate newborn no matter how many times you rejected it."
Staring up at the leviathan unamused, i asked, "must you always enlarge your own ego so much when speaking to me like this, Forhorn?"
"Hmph." Equally unamused the golden leviathan, Forhorn, began slithering through the waters making them seem unfathomably deep with his hallucination when it was only a couple inches deep.
Grabbing a part of my hair i stared at its wetted dark silver threads before asking, "how long was i gone for?"
"Twenty years this time, little mouse." Forhorn answered with a boom.
"Thats much shorter than usual." Dropping my hair i then looked at my hands. My left, a normal hand with some calluses. My right, still bandaged in wraps to hide the burn scars beneath it. "Well, it was a different dream to the usual episodes of insanity."
"Indeed." Forhorn grumbled with a guttural tune.
Making me look up at him as he was staring before asking, "...what?"
"Are you certain that it was just a dream? Or not another universe your mind fled to in order to protect itself? It was your sickness encroaching that twisted your perception of that world. Not the world twisting to keep you there."
"Can't it be both?" I said simply. Getting a surprised reaction from the golden serpent. "Just like a story. It can be both unreal and real at the same time."
Standing up from the water i punched my hand against my chest and my clothes instantly dried off. My powers and authority as a kralscell fully returned.
"Besides, so what if i did accidentally inhabit another universes version of me? Not the first time i travelled to different universes." I said.
"A first without being branded a prisoner nonetheless, little mouse." Forhorn quipped. Tilting his titanous head slightly he looked closer at me. "Your insanity has started aiding you rather than drowning you."
"Its still exhausting to deal with." Kicking my foot through the water with a splash i enjoyed the sensation. "But twenty years.... That should have been enough time for Sathuna to finish the details of her plan. Might as well go and help her out to fill in any loose ends." Stretching my arms behind my back i felt my spine pop with invigoration. "Ingrik, whats been happening while i was out?"
Stepping into existence above the water. The black knight knelt right next to me. "The [witch queen] has been hard at work orchestrating discord with the CGA's many internal factions. The two main political parties,
"Oh really?" Twisting my waist i decided to start stretching fully. "Ben, Arthur and Seer, huh. Don't worry about it too much. If Dryden sensed Seer awakening as a component of the Axis Anchor on Shatterre. Sathuna definitely would have noticed Ben's awakening who was being trained by Zhan at the time. And, Arthur, well... he's the reason we're doing this in the first place trying to solidify Thorn's existence. What about Silven and Cayde?"
"Both vanished completely." Ingrik reported. "The universe's causality has erased [Sentinel of the Dreaming] and the [Verboten Imaginant]. There's not an entity left in the inner universe that remembers them, the same has not happened for Thorn yet. But... your creator, the outer god Incursik, has some faint memories of Raum's inheritor. But he is unaware of them himself as the witch sealed them away on contact with her pawn and disciple in her scheme. The Cayde Barbaten of this timeline that she saved from the forest. She call's her Cayden and is his divine sponsor."
Chuckling at the news i stretched a little more while Forhorn vanished from sight back into the recesses of my mind. "How like her to play god. And it was nice of you to help her out while i was out of use, Ingrik."
"I was merely following your desires in saving Thorn, my lord. I am loathe to admit it but his crass humour would be missed by us all in
"And you won clearly." I said with a joyful tone and the eldritch black knight nodded trying to hide his pride. "She have a message for me when i woke up?"
"Indeed." Lifting his knight head up Ingrik said, "come take your seat."
Finding her gall humorous i slowly muttered, "such a diva." Kicking my foot through the water one last time aether spread out into a glowing circle beneath the shallow water. "She must have been hanging around Vita too much without me and Thorn to annoy her. Let's go crash a party."
[skill: hollow void — mach void]
"As you wish, my lord." Standing up Ingrik joined me in the circle. "Ah. Before we go there is something else I should mention."
Holding the spell for now i lifted a brow curiously.
"The prodigal of limit. Sathuna's schemes led her into becoming the leader of the Nameless Cult that worships you."
Finding that humorous i said, "Clarity must be pissed. But thats just like Seer, building herself foundations in religion for stability. She's no different to the Seer i knew from the future i was made in. I guess i can play the role of a god-king until the end of this show Sathuna has been orchestrating for twenty years. If only for Seer's sake at least."
"The ink-spirits are always ready for your orders, sire." Ingrik reminded with a calm bash onto his breast plate with his fist.
"I know. Lets see how much i can lean into being a sovereign."
In a burst of light the orange circle shot up into the sky carrying my freshly awakened self off to begin traveling towards ruination and madness.