My neck began to bleed as I scratched it to oblivion. I didn’t want to hear my voice. I didn’t want to remember.

Don’t let me remember.

Don’t let me remember.

Don’t let me remember.

Don’t let me remember.

Don’t let me remember.

Don’t let me remember.

No. I don’t need to meet them. They don’t need to know I exist. I won’t need to remember.

I don’t want to talk… These senses. These new lights. These bangs and crashes. They should go away but they don’t they decide to keep me occupied.

You have a task to do.

‘I know. I know. I just need time for the sounds and the lights to go away.’

There aren’t any lights, but I guess that’s what happens when you see an elder spirit’s hell and don’t come prepared.

‘I don’t understand.’

You don’t need to. Get on with the task, it’s for your own good.

‘Ok…’

I went on with the task and went on again after he got me out of another fit.

‘What was the task? I can’t seem to remember talking about a task.’

Don’t you remember? You need to get Solteq’s memories before escaping this planet.

‘Oh… Ok.’

***

‘This Mind Palace is hell. I swear I’ll kill you one of these days.’

“That’s what I’m hoping for. In the meantime, you want a drink?” The old man passed along a cup that came into existence with a chuckle and grin.

‘You’re fucking joking.’ It was blood. My blood. It was from my eyes and nose. I was bleeding. He was mocking me for it.

I threw the cup away and just watched reluctantly my mentally ill counterpart listen to whatever the old man, with a book in his hand, said.

The book had crescents and circles with a bit of what looked like brain matter smeared across the cover.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

I took note of that.

***

I was walking to where he told me to go. The direction was to the right of where the sun sets.

There was a new annoyance in front of me. Instead of the noises and the lights going in and out of my peripheral, there were spirals of deepening hints of clarity at the center. It suddenly went away along with the spot of my vision that saw it.

‘I felt like I saw something. But it wasn’t there.’

I soon needed to forget about it since he told me to focus only on the task.

I continued walking north toward the mountains. I don’t know what I’ve been eating. My basic desires for food and thirst were full from whatever I had just eaten. I looked and saw an eye. A spherical eye. One from something that walked on two legs and could talk.

I didn’t recognize it. It’s a spherical eye that comes from something that has two legs and can talk and think.

I still didn’t put two and two together. For the life of me, I couldn’t recognize it.

I blinked.

***

I woke up in a bloody mess of a campsite. It wasn’t my blood. I continued with my task.

I walked with a full stomach. I walked past the damp and messy forest, filled with clumps of mud and red-hued logs of trees, into a green land with a hint of moderate wind.

There was more walking to do. It took five, with three reduced, days to keep my stock full. I went to a village in that amount of time. I didn’t need to pay for food.

After that, I went past the capital. Some people chased me saying I was a Southerner. I wasn’t.

It didn’t take much to outrun them. I reached a colder place than before. Was it a tundra? I don’t know. I think it was, but the ice was almost melting. It could be an after-battle ruin of a green plain. That’s better. There must have been a mage who was proficient in spells that used the cold.

I dismissed the fantasies and continued walking. A hand crawled out from one of the few patches of ice and snow. It whispered, “Help…”

I ignored it. I didn’t have time for independent hands and their delusional whisperings.

I stomped the hand and heard cracking. There was a whimpering sound, but I dismissed it as I continued on my way. Throughout the months I’ve been walking, I learned that the previously heretical followers of Solteq became officially recognized and set up their capital to the east of the Greyserf Empire’s capital, Telok.

I took a few days to stock up for my travels; luckily though, there was a rugged farmhouse that had a small seven-membered family living there. The food was free, again.

I soon started walking back to Telok. I reached another small village that seemed to have crucified or lynched each of the few remaining followers of Zothozeft left in the empire.

I thought it was a satisfying sight to see his people lynched, Zothozeft’s actions against me had an effect.

I got chased out of the small village for the murder of one of the stablehands. I never murdered anyone; I just had a satisfying and messy meal that day.

Walking toward Tolek, there was an owl, with its brain exposed, perched on the branch of a dead tree. It was the same place I stomped the whimpering hand. The owl looked at me with an unwavering gaze.

I felt nervous for a reason I didn’t know at the time. It looked at me almost like it knew what I did. But what did I do? I couldn’t answer

I didn’t know what I did. That might be the reason it looked at me like that.

It hissed at me after I started to feel dazed. I passed out soon after that.

I woke up and saw myself atop a mountainous area. I wondered how I got there until he explained.

Did you have a nice nap?

‘It was a dream?’

Depends on what you count as a dream or not. But I will say that you are doing your task incredibly well. Continue with it.

‘Oh… Ok.’

After he said that last sentence, all the questions in my head were answered and I continued with my task.

I looked around and saw an abandoned and barely put-up town. I wondered where I was.