"Even our greatest enemy does not need to hate us. We stand on opposite sides of a goal; our objectives will lead us to clash, which is a fact you cannot escape. But we can still offer remorse for something outside those goals. You can still openly respect them for things outside your differences. You need not hate them, as they need not hate you. Just the same, you need not like your allies nor trust them implicitly. The world is not black and white. Nor is it all a wash of grey. Every part of our world is painted in the true color of intent, with an overcoat of deceptions. Remorse from an enemy is not something to take lightly. Respect from an ally is not something to expect unconditionally. That was a lessonI learned repeatedly, especially when dealing with the parasite."
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"I'm sorry." He said with as much genuine concern as he could muster. "I wish I could give it back. I'm so sorry." He reiterated.
"What game are you playing?" I asked, voicing my suspicions.
"No games. If you know how I can give it back, I'm willing to do so." He spoke while dropping the facade he'd crafted using my features.
"Why? There is no benefit to you." I told him the truth. "Keeping it gives you the perfect leverage to guarantee I don't kill you," I added.
Using an odd face crafted from an amalgamation of thoughts, he gave me a look of pity. This was not the pity for an enemy you've bested but the pity for someone who does not understand what they've given up. It was the look that you give a child when you know what they are saying is beyond wrong.
"You wouldn't get it, and considering your circumstances, I don't blame you. But a soul is beyond precious." He said sadly.
"What do you mean, my circumstances?" I asked, confused. "Are you referring to my soul being broken and scattered?" I added another question.
His only response to my questions was yet another look of commiseration.
"Each soul is unique, they are fragile but flexible, and no being can ever have more than one. I have one, as everything that can develop an ego does. I can do nothing with yours." He said sadly. "You're unique, walking around without your soul, your ego intact. But no matter where it is, IT. IS. YOURS." He emphasized this heavily. "And to rob you of that, even unintentionally, is something I wish I'd never done." He said genuinely. "So, I repeat. I am so sorry. If I can return it, I will." He sounded depressed.
"I do not know a way to regain what you have taken. But, you may relax in knowing it is not the soul itself." I said.
"I understand." He acknowledged. "Regardless, what are you going to do?" He turned his head in askance.
I felt waves of resignation roll off of him. Emotions he felt but could never convey outside of this place. Pity, self-hatred, disgust, remorse, acceptance, and a few others mixed into waves of thought drifting from his form. It was distracting at first, then reassuring. It told me that while I waited to think, he would take no action to hurt me or force my hand. He was willing to stand and await judgment, like a criminal who'd confessed from guilt. So I let him stand while I let my mind wander, searching for a solution.
It was beyond frustrating, infuriating even. I knew so much about the world. I could negotiate with fate and ask a favor from the world itself, but matters of the soul were beyond me. At this moment, I was lost. I could think of no way forward. Before today, I wasn't even aware that I could lose something I'd thought was only a memory. I'd mistakenly believed that it was safe in my mind, and now I paid a price that I couldn't even begin to understand. I was enraged.
That anger washed off of me. Waves of rage spread out from the pebble of my mind in this grand expanse of thoughts. I could see it in the space around us. Massive swells of emotion rippled out from the two of us, standing in a place of dreams and minds. I could feel fear coming from him, but my fury smothered those tides before they reached the sea around us. I wanted to smash something, I wanted to break everything, I wanted to rip something to shreds… but I couldn't. This place had nothing physical for me to crush, nor anything worth ripping apart. That lack of outlet only added to my peaking emotions.
It was both fascinating and horrifying to watch my emotions turn from thoughts in my head to waves on the sea of forgotten dreams. My unbound feelings of rage and self-loathing grew from small ripples like a rock in a pond to massive billows displacing the sea around us. I saw the false horizon vanish behind them, and I watched them crest, enormous tides of dreams altered by my thoughts. I wanted to cry out, but even now, I felt this was not the correct course of action. I so desired to let my delirium turn this ocean of lost ideals upside down. But, I knew that if I did, I would solve nothing and only create another problem I'd one day need to solve.
Because that is what my life has always been, failed plans leading to new issues and innumerable solutions for predicaments I created. So, for one of the few times in my life, I decided to let a problem be, let it wait, leave it for a day when rectifying it was significantly more manageable.
As that idea crossed my mind, the waves I'd created in my outburst vanished like a sea breeze. This plane, lenient in nature, let my outburst fade, the consequences lessened by a quick resolution to my meltdown.
"Well, that was a show." He said, his voice once more mine.
"..." I kept my thoughts to myself about what I took as him provoking me again.
"Well, what did you decide? Did you think up a way to fix this problem? Am I dying today like I thought? Maybe you're dying? Are you going to dissect me in search of what I've taken? Did you even do any thinking?" He bombarded me with purposely non-constructive questions.
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I held up a hand that was so far from being a hand that to equate them was impossible. And with an effort of will, I waited for him to stop talking to explain what I was planning to do.
"Maybe you went crazy? Did you forget something? Did you actually think about the problem? What are you thinking about now? Are you stupid? Do you think I'm crazy? What do you think of me? Am I a spec of dust to you?" He continued each question further and further from the topic of conversation.
Despite his inane questions, I kept silent, waiting for him to exhaust himself or get the idea that he should stop talking.
"Back to being as boring as ever, I see." He commented. "Well, what is it you want to say?" He finally closed his mouth for more than an instant.
"I'm not going to solve it," I said flatly.
"huh?" He asked, confused.
"I'm going to leave this problem for the future. So, I'm not going to solve it right now." I repeated my intentions.
"THEN WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO?!" He yelled in shock.
"Stick around, continue assailing me with inane thoughts and ideas at inopportune times, and harass me as you have. I imagine you're now as bound to me as I have been to you. So I don't believe you can stray far. Whatever you do, mind you that the more you cooperate, the more likely I am to spend excessive effort to ensure you survive whatever rectifies this situation." I both dismissed his question and tied his life to me simultaneously.
The expression he gave, I imagine, was one of incredulity. However, his placement of my eyes was akin more to surprise than disbelief. He was learning quite fast, though, how to use the shape of my face in a seemingly accurate manner.
"You can't be serious." He said, astonished.
"I am," I replied. "I have zero ideas on how to solve this problem as of the moment. So instead of fretting over it to no avail, I will postpone rectifying this issue till a later date." I once more stated my intention to leave this problem to the future.
Once more, the sea around us churned with the impact of one's rage. This time the waves of anger did not originate from me but him. Watching him, I understood what he meant by it was quite the show. Emotions sloughed off of him like a waterfall. The sheer deluge of new thoughts joining the sea around us pushed the water into swells. Those waves gained weight amongst the sea, old like-minded ideals mixing into the new liquid, generating massive swells that shifted the landscape of this plane. It was fascinating to observe, especially since the purity of his anger obscured any detail of his thoughts from entering the false waters around us.
Watching him, I wondered if he was always capable of such strength of will in this place or if he'd reached that recently. I didn't get much time to wonder, as soon after the question crossed my mind, he appeared to calm down. Like myself, he'd ceased his outburst before altering this plain permanently. With similar leniency to before, the waves of his rage vanished. The impacted flows of thought around us slowly swept back to well-worn currents and eddies.
"Well?" I prompted him to start talking.
"I have a proposal." He said with a look of glee. "I don't have much desire to cooperate with you. But as you said, I'm stuck with you for the foreseeable future." His smile grew wider, showing far too many teeth. "So, let's play a game." He suggested ecstatically.
"What type of game?" I asked, dubious of his intent.
"Don't sound too unsure of me. I'm not going to hide anything." He started. "The rules are simple. You and the two you follow around like a lost dog are one team; I am the other." Somehow his smile grew wider as he spoke. "My goal is simply to harass you. Cause as much havoc around you and your goals as I can." He giggled out.
"That does not sound much like a game," I said, my voice taking a darker turn.
"True, but that's where the next part comes in." He said with a finger in the air. "I'm not allowed to do anything to the degree that I just did." He referenced the time he'd spent in my body. "I can take over your body only when you let your guard down and only while your team has at least two members alive. If one of your pets catches me while I'm in your body, a touch is all it would take; I'm sent back here." He said gleefully.
"What's the point of this?" I asked, my suspicions growing.
"I get a near-guaranteed chance to play around again, and I'll get information." He said, his gleeful smile shifting to a smug grin.
"Information?" I parroted.
"You didn't think I'd give up my playtime for nothing?" He asked smugly. "No, not at all." he sang. "Every time I get control and come back here, I get to ask three questions. You have to answer one of them entirely honestly. For that information, you get your body back." He sounded so confident in his proposal.
"What could possibly be in this for me?" I asked, flabbergasted.
"You know that maddened half of you that you keep locked away; I'll keep as many of its thoughts at bay as I can. You also wouldn't have to worry about me causing you trouble most of the time." He dangled the words like bait. "I mean, how long does it take for those two patchwork dolls of yours to spin through the cycle?" He asked a rhetorical question. "And the final cherry on the cake, at the end of it all, when you finally end our little agreement, I'll go along with whatever you do, zero resistance." He said dryly.
At first, I wanted to deny him out of principle. His existence preyed on the psyche of the weak. He drifted across this sea, looking for the half-sane ramblings of some poor soul, and then he fed on their dreams. He was no monster nor beast, but he wasn't one of the races. He was too departed from those concepts, his mind too functionally different. He was precisely the type of creature I wished to slay, something that thrived on chaos and madness. Off of this alone, I wanted to dismiss his deal.
But, he'd already proven himself useful, long before he'd proven himself dangerous. He fed on the hellish images produced by the part of me I could not recall. I'd never slain him because he was helpful. Now, he offered a guarantee that he'd continue to fill that role and lessen his acts of harassment at times. From some perspectives, this was a deal with a demon. But I walk in the body of a monster, so honestly, who's the worse one here?
With that thought, I reached out, a palpable magic filling the area around us. My hand was not a hand, my form not my own. His hand was mine, lost long ago to time. Both passed each other like boats in the night, the sea around us bursting with energy ignited by ideals. And with a swell of thoughts and magic that left a scar beneath the waters of dreams around us, a deal was struck between a monster and a parasite.
"I look forward to playing with you." He said with a monstrous grin as he released the fluid representation of my arm.