As soon as we entered the inn I was whisked to a room and promptly dried. I didn't like it, the feeling of being touched was so alien and nauseating that I had fought back, thrashing about until the girls were eventually satisfied with my condition. I changed into too big clothes that must have belonged to the man with the big scar, Aaron was his name, I thought. Then I sat on one of the three beds, the smallest of the three. I curled up and passed out instantly.
My world was once again thrust into that sense deprivating darkness. Its clutches cold and nightmarish. The darkness pulsed with its primal and familiar way.
Another nightmare?
The darkness suddenly sifted grotesquely wrapping me in its chilling embrace with mocking love. "How are you little one?" said a voice that seemingly came from everywhere, all angles all at once. A sudden and deafening rushing of sound and senses that shouldn't be able to penetrate the darkness of my dreams.
It hurt the sound, the voice. The voice was mocking then it said something that sent shivers down my spine, "You're a rat too." that snake like voice. Damian's voice. The Tyrant.
Suddenly i felt the ground tilt and i was falling fast. My body felt weightless and out of control, my limbs flailing sickeningly. Light exploded around me illuminating a village. A village with a mountain range in the background and a large swarth of forest surrounding it. Suncrest. It was untouched and clean the sky was a beautiful shade of blue, but something felt off. The huts and cottages looked artificial, fake, the wind neither hot nor cold, just a feeling of some invisible force tugging at my hair and clothes.
"Hello rat," the voice cut through the air once more, the shadows of the village started swirling, converging on a singular point directly in front of me. Golden armour made of shadows formed, its wispy and translucent form shifting demonically, the voice was further distorted and manipulated. The figure started to come into focus, a serpentine golden warrior with glowing red eyes visible despite the helmet. It was that demon of a man, Damian.
The figure approached me, a small dagger still dripping blood held loosely in his hand. "Did you enjoy watching her die?" he cackled his laughter assaulting my senses, forcing it's way into my pores. I trembled my ears ringing from his words, my whole body aching at his implied meaning. Of course, I didn't enjoy watching her die. Watching the light slowly leave her perfect eyes as her crimson life force splattered the ground and the blade sliced up her doll like skin. Why would he even think I'd enjoyed that? "You seem confused boy, you saw my blade descend slower than anyone else surely as the big brother you should've been able to make it in that moment...right? Oh, wait that's right, you just stood there and watched as time stretched on, watched as i tore her throat up with my dagger." he mocked me twirling his bloody dagger with the practised ease of a psychopath as he advanced, his shadowy form elongating and bloating, gigantifying. Ten feet twenty feet thirty feet, his body just kept growing until what stood before me didn't even resemble a man... it resembled the cannibalistic giants of legends.
"If it helps, she is safe with me," the figure rumbled a small gate like indent appeared in his chest and inside was Mari, bloodied and dishevelled. Her once vibrant eyes dead and gloomy, judging. She spoke words I couldn't hear, but i read her lips. She said something along the lines of, "all your fault you useless big brother, you useless failure of a human being," at least thats what her lips seemed to say.
Her face contorted grotesquely, and the indent slowly started to crush her. Her skin slowly compressed as the indents walls closed in, her eyes popping out of her head, her lips becoming thick, like an over ripe berry ready to burst.
The indent closed and her body burst like a ball. A crimson gut filled ball. The blood splattering, her insides raining down on me, painting my skin that sickly red colour.
"Pop goes the weasel," the gargantuan Damian sang eerily. I screamed. Fear coursing through my veins faster than my own blood. I tried to move back, to run, to flee. But I was stuck in place my legs slowly sinking into the ichor-soaked earth.
The shadow Damian leant down, the serpent helmet seemed to become real, the vapour of his body slowly wrapping around me as he became longer, his arms retracting into his body with an unpleasant crunching pop. Until I was wrapped within a giant snake's coil. His mouth opened revealing his fangs, dripping with venom. They were triple my size and each smaller fang was about the same size as me. The coils tightened around my body, my ribs felt like they were beginning to break, each rib point felt like it was piercing something it shouldn't have.
"Tasssssssssssty little rat, you ssssssshould'vvvvvvve joined your ssssssissssssster. Ill ssssssend you to her," he hissed opening his maw widely engulfing me in its slippery insides.
I was forced down his throat, his thick mucas coating my skin, it was surprisingly comforting, being wrapped in that warmth. It reminded me of better times. I looked at my hands, it was a struggle since i was still in the process of being swallowed but i noticed the same glow from before, the glow that had dragged me from my nightmare, no from my punishment.
The light was that warm feeling not the slick insides of this beast's throat. The throat constricted and suddenly burst open spraying that shadowy fog out. Damians snake form receded; his form melting into the earth like water after the rain.
I dropped like a stone, the floor evaporating and my body turned weightless. I tumbled into darkness, the light emanating from my body slowly started to fade plunging me back into the sense depriviating darkness.
The scene of my sister being killed lights up my view, her throat being torn out playing on repeat over and over. I watched the knife slowly gliding through her skin, a stream of her red life slowly flowing from the wound. The darkness staining itself that beautiful yet eery crimson colour. Her life slowly leaving her eyes. Her eyes slowly glazing over like a gutted fish. Her skin slowly paling, it was as if I was watching water slowly wash away all colour from a piece of paper. Her emerald, green eyes slowly greying, beginning to resemble the colour of a mossy stone in stagnant water.
I reached out or tried to. That same disgusting feeling from my first nightmare had come back, I was unable to move at all, unable to even yell. I was powerless. Always powerless with no way to fight back. Why am i cursed to live like this, cursed to live forever in this dark dank space in my head? Seeing flames every time I close my eyes.
I stared back at my sister and her gaping mouth, blood still pumping slowly from her open throat. "You let me die." those words sputtered from her cold grey lips with the confidence and casualty of someone telling the truth. It was the truth, wasn't it?... I let my sister die.
The shadowy figure started reforming from her blood, the thick liquid rising unsettlingly, "You will be mine." the gargled voice of Damian spews from the hole that would make his mouth. "Run little one, run while the cats are busy."
The world exploded around me an avalanche of dark masses and flickering flames, monsters forming in the corners, monsters in the dark watching and waiting for me. "No no no no no no." I wailed, gripping my skull like a vice, trying to crush my own brain in one last attempt to escape myself.
My eyes snapped open, she was touching me, that priest, her hand on my wrist. "Get off!" I screamed as I saw her face melting into that shadowy blood that had been Damian's last figure in my head. Her hand quickly retreated. The same feeling of emptiness that plagues my waking-self washed over me but that familiar feeling of fear, the instinctivity of my reactions remained.
My body retreated away from her and her strange face, "hey hey hey, I'm not gonna hurt you," her voice was distorted and echoey. Her body is rigid in... fright? It was hard to tell without a face. "Breath, take a deep breath. That's it, look this way," the voice instantly numbed me, it was the human sedative's voice, Eron's voice. My head swivelled towards it, her face was also melting but its progress had stopped. "That's it, calm down, your safe here," her voice gentle and slightly strained.
I took a deep breath, allowing her words to wash over me, and slowly ever so slowly, her face started to unmelt, her face going back to normal. I started to calm down, my body slowly letting the fear slip from my body as it had my mind.
"There we go, breath. In," she takes deep breath, I mimic her instinctively, "and out." she lets out her breath in a small sigh. I copied.
Once I had calmed down the priest apologised profusely, "I'm sorry, I was making sure you were still breathing," her voice is distressed and strained. It also came out too fast like my sister used to when she did something wrong or broke something. "You look like you are dead when you sleep so i check your pulse every hour or so," she added with the same childlike speed of the first part of her apology. She continued like that for at least three minutes.