image [https://i.imgur.com/xcQhW8Y.jpg]
Just a quick flashback to the moment the entire ceiling collapsed—for continuity’s sake, and definitely not because I’m too lazy to revisit my own narrative for a quick edit. Nope, not at all.
—Cough.
“You... crazy... bitch!” Jeremy gasped, each word seething through gritted teeth. Anger and remorse—probably for his friends, if they can even be called that—swirled in his eyes.
Aw, is the little doggy crying?
Like seriously, what a little bitch!
As darkness enveloped him, his voice surged in a final act of defiance. “Death Bolt,” he bellowed, a parting fuck you, I suppose.
Damn, what’s the cooldown rate on that skill?
Silence abruptly muffled the chaos, punctuated only by my final, expletive-laden shriek, “SHHHIT!”
In a whirl of motion, the bolt struck my chest, flipping me head over ass. The last glimpse I caught was a system prompt about my buffs deactivating just as a massive stone slab descended with a sickening splat.
I awoke to the sound of childish laughter, a symphony of joy and delight. Cracking my eyes open, I found myself in a lush green meadow where six young children frolicked carelessly. They cavorted and gamboled, their giggles ringing through the air as they chased each other with wild abandon. The scene was hauntingly beautiful—a nostalgic reminder of innocence’s carefree days.
Glancing behind me, I saw a dark and imposing forest; clumps of snow fell from the tree branches, beckoning me to enter. But this was not a friendly invitation—it was more like a white van marked with free candy, ominous and foreboding.
The first to approach was a child with golden tresses and a beaming face, looking familiar as if I’d seen her once before in a dream whose details eluded me. Her laughter, like chimes in glass, spread happiness effortlessly. She hopped and twirled, her hand outstretched, eager for a new friendship.
“Greetings again! Come join us. Let’s play tag—you’re it!”
Disbelief swirled in my heart as I beheld a wondrous sight: I was human again, clad in my old I Heart Teddy Bears shirt, feeling healthier and happier than ever, not even a single marring my skin.
—Wait, that’s not right, is it?
Amidst the fluttering laughter, a smile broke across my face, radiant and uncontrollable, as if the warmth of the meadow was truly infectious. At that moment, all doubts were cast aside, and with reckless glee, I clasped her tiny hand, joining their mirthful brigade. We raced through the meadow, my natural red hair fluttering behind me, their infectious energy propelling my every step, a wild abandon unleashed as I chased the children.
Sophia proclaimed, “Rob, you’re it!”
As the sun bathed the meadow in warmth, we laughed and played, our spirits dancing in the radiant light. Yet, a weight settled upon my heart as I beheld another girl, her face marked by dark freckles and eyes fixated on the forest. Her once vibrant smile had vanished, replaced by trepidation. The shadows stretched, stripping away the meadow’s enchantment and casting an ominous veil from the winter forest.
The day seemed to turn to dusk without notice; the freckled girl’s joy was but a distant memory. She stood still, her gaze locked on the silent woods, the falling snow whispering like a haunting call. My heart raced with alarm, terror ensnaring me as the shadows crept closer to the little girl.
My heart pounded in my chest, and I tried to scream, “Run!” but no sound escaped my lips, as if the snow-coated forest had stolen my voice.
“Fear not, dear Heather,” a kind voice sung from everywhere and nowhere all at once, “’Tis but old nightmares that dwell; there is naught to see, only tales to tell. Come, play with the children once more; dinner draws near.”
I sought the woman behind the sweet melody, feeling as though I had glimpsed her once before, yet her form eluded me. A mischievous giggle filled the air, whisking me away to a realm beyond compare. As my mind clouded with boundless glee, I resumed the carefree chase, leaving behind the shadows of nightmares and doubt for the pure embrace of delight.
For the first time since I could remember, my soul didn’t feel as though it was broken; the emptiness I had always felt was gone. I felt safe, whole, even though deep down, I knew this dream of joy wasn’t what had been missing from my life.
A voice cried out from the forest, “Aislinn!” but it was drowned out by giggling laughter.
The sense of belonging warmed my soul as I reveled in the wonders of this dream. Surrounded by the tune of youthful laughter, I embraced the beauty of each passing moment. But alas, the time had come—dinner beckoned.
“You coming?” Sophia grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the cottage on the hill.
Upon entering the quaint little house, I discovered that the interior seemingly expanded beyond what the exterior would suggest. However, there was no time to explore, as Sophia tugged me forward, with the other five children already ahead. We soon found ourselves in a tiny dining room, centered around a single small table with eight chairs crammed beside one another.
We each took a seat, leaving one empty, though it was a bit crowded. Suddenly, a loud creak echoed through the room, sounding as if the wood were cracking and breaking. Before I could fully grasp what was happening, the table began to bloat, bulge, and expand, dragging our chairs along with it. For a moment, I feared I would be squished between the tiny room and the ever-growing table, but to my amazement, the room stretched out just as magically.
My head swiveled all around, my feet dangling from the chair, my toes barely skimming the floor. Glancing at the six kids, I saw faces beaming with joy. A mist enveloped the table as if conjured by magic, and when it cleared, it revealed a feast fit for royalty. The children’s eyes widened with delight as they indulged, their voices forming an orchestra of mirth. I leaned back, content in quiet observation, cherishing this joyous embrace—a memory to treasure as if I had finally found a place to call home.
What a beautiful lie it was.
Beneath the tantalizing allure of the feast, unease cloaked my soul, a nebulous void resisting comprehension. As the feast continued, an ominous shadow cast its pall over the table, unnoticed by the children. The wooden floorboards creaked beneath our chairs, and the house swayed with an unsettling rhythm, as if haunting gusts of wind dreamt of blowing it away.
—Oh. Oh. Like in The Wizard of Oz!
Wait. What? It’s gusts of wind, not a freaking tornado. Damn, I can be an overdramatic bitch with my narrative sometimes.
Argh, fine. Just... just, never mind…
...
Yeah, I probably should stop talking to myself all the time—oh, look! Pigs in the blanket.
Ignoring the ever-growing creepy vibe, I surveyed the feast before me: a lineup of meats, a smattering of thingamajigs, a couple of whatchamacallits, and a cluster of doodads. What?! How am I supposed to know what that jiggly green and blue thing is—Jell-o? And that stuff over there that’s supposed to be rice? Pretty sure I saw it squirming. Everything was like a massive acid trip! I’m in a realm within a realm, within another realm, all pretending to be yet another realm. Surely, this has to be an isekai record, right? (Yep, totally counting this Hansel and Gretel cottage as a separate realm—no one better try and eat me; I’m the only cannibal allowed here.) So, of course, there’s no way I’m going to recognize any of that crazy food.
Amidst the ongoing feast, one of the boys’ heads suddenly tumbled across the table, a sight that left me speechless—if you can imagine that. It was Rob’s severed head that rolled past some kind of blood-sausage-looking thing (I always forget what that’s called), yet the feast pressed on, the other children oblivious to the horror I had just witnessed. Outside, the wind picked up to a wail—the cottage might as well have been caught in a tornado.
Lightning flashed through the wind, and white spots danced before my eyes. I blinked them away, only to discover the appalling truth: the children had turned into skeletons. A nightmarish scene unfolded, one I hadn’t noticed until now…
I reached across the table, grabbed a dinner roll, and noticed my arm was covered in tattoos. Glancing down, I saw my shirt had changed, replaced by my I Decapitate Teddy Bears one. As I peeked at the writing, I noticed a few locks of hair were green on one side and black on the other. I shrugged indifferently before taking a bite out of my roll, happily munching on it as I watched the surreal spectacle unfold, curious about what would happen next.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
I blinked again, and everything reverted to normal—children happily eating, including Rob. Even my tats were gone, my hair was its natural red, and my shirt now had I Heart Teddy Bears on it.
Mmm! This roll tastes amazing. What is this filling inside it?
Wait… is that a cockroach?
Nah, my bad, it’s a severed pinky.
Shrugging, I took another bite, savoring its delicious taste, uncaring about all that happened around me.
What? You think I should be freaking out right now?
Nope! I’ve seen and done worse.
A withered old hag, her face hidden within a veil, shuffled into the room, her appearance eerily familiar, as if from a dream. Honestly, that sense of déjà vu was getting a bit annoying. She approached with more food as the children cheered, her true form only briefly revealed by the flickering bursts of lightning. These flashes illuminated the grim truth of our gathering, only to vanish just as swiftly, cloaking the horror with an illusion of normalcy once again.
I found it all rather fascinating, taking mental notes and wondering if I could do something similar.
Huh… now I want an illusion skill.
Just imagine the mind fuckery I could do by combining an illusion with Fear and Terror’s Infusion!
Another gleam of lightning illuminated the feast and this time, it lingered, fully exposing its true nature. The table was laden with decay and rot, spoiled meats crawling with maggots and flies. To my bewilderment, the skeleton children were unfazed, gleefully dining. One of them even appeared to be gnawing on a severed human limb that, moments before, had masqueraded as a turkey leg, its flesh now grotesquely clinging to the bone.
I was utterly transfixed by this macabre display, licking my lips in ravenous hunger and awe, as though witnessing the culmination of every dark fantasy I’ve ever dreamed. The children, skeletal as ever, continued feasting unabated. One of them had their skull nonchalantly resting atop a mound of what had once resembled blood sausage.
—Ah, right, Rob’s head!
It had kept moving about from his shoulders to the table between every flash. The sight was ghastly (in a captivating way); I just couldn’t avert my gaze, ensnared by the delectable spectacle that unfolded before me. The hag cackled, her laughter echoing through the chamber as the feast pressed on.
Another flicker of light, and I beheld the hag once again, now cloaked in the likeness of a grand ball gown—still all in black, of course—seated regally in her chair. A hood still veiled her countenance in mysterious darkness, revealing only skeletal hands and a thin figure. Strangely, I sensed no malevolence emanating from her as I daringly indulged in a bite of the putrid heart, savoring its flavor as if it were a delectable fruit freshly plucked from a verdant branch.
The taste of decay greeted my palate with each bite, a perverse pleasure that should have turned my stomach. Yet, I reveled in the sensation of each crunch and chew, savoring the morbid symphony upon my tongue.
“So,” I finally asked between bites, “am I dead?”
The hag, draped in the elegance of a refined lady, carried herself with a grace befitting royalty, her laughter tender and whimsical as she observed my indulgence in the feast of the dead. “No, dear, you are not.”
—Oh, thank god—dying really sucks!
Her shrouded gaze exuded warmth and affection. “You’re only a dreaming visitor.”
“Huh… so this is a nightmare,” I mused.
“Certainly not,” she waved off my statement. “I prefer to only deal in dreams. What you see before you is what you want to see at my table.”
I glanced around the table as I took yet another bite from the putrid heart. The skeleton children seemed to ignore my conversation with the hag, perhaps lost in their own separate spectacle or feast. I cocked my head back toward the bone lady.
“So, are you like, Death or something?”
“No, I’m not my mother,” she replied, a hint of a pained smile in her tone. “I’m Duskara, Goddess of Dreams, though most have forgotten that name. I’m simply remembered now as the Crone.”
—Holy shit! Did she just say her mother is Death?
Shut up, Blake, and play it cool.
“That… that name sounds familiar,” I snapped my fingers. “Oh, yeah! You’re the one the vampires worship. Apparently, I’m competing to be your champion,” I nodded happily before giving her a flat stare. “I don’t want it. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not a sore winner, but I don’t work well for others,” I added with a smirk before reaching across the table to help myself to one of the plates of intestines that had caught my eye.
“Aislinn!” A scream from the window froze me as I took a wondrous bite.
I looked outside; the beautiful spring evening had morphed into a winter blizzard, the meadow vanished, and the trees now encircled the cottage. Memories of past dreams—or nightmares—that I had forgotten surged through my mind, haunting me with visions of a woman’s lifeless eyes.
My gaze snapped back to the so-called goddess. “I remember you now,” I said, recalling the time standing in the forest with her before that blue bitch banished me back to the waking world. “Didn’t you mention something about the forest being filled with bad dreams of past lives?”
Duskara nodded. “I did.”
“Who was she…” I whispered, barely audible, “Who was Aislinn to me?”
“I don’t know, and diving into your soul to find out wouldn’t be pleasant for either of us,” she explained. “All I know is what you and the seven of you are to me,” she gestured at the skeletons at the table, happily feasting, oblivious to our conversation.
My eyes roamed the skeletons before stopping at one I assumed was Sophia. “Big Sis?” I muttered, attempting to decipher the meaning as I struggled to remember my conversation with the girl in another dream. My memories weren’t as clear as I had thought; a fog of uncertainty still clouded many details.
Before I could piece everything together, the Crone interjected, “Now, about that champion position—”
“—I said, I don’t want it!” I quickly interrupted. “Like, seriously, I was all for murdering them,” I gestured to the skeletons, “but that was a totally messed up game you’re playing, pitting us against one another. Worse still, their bodies had better be there when I wake up this time. I want that Death Bolt spell,” I grumbled, crossing my arms.
“Forgive me; it needed to be done to protect all of you from being discovered,” she sounded remorseful.
“By having us kill one another?” I shot back.
“Just the death of your bodies. That’s an easy fix within a dungeon. It’s too soon for the false gods to discover your existence.”
“Not with the dungeon core gone, it’s not,” I retorted.
“Wait—what?” the Crone—Duskara—sounded genuinely surprised.
I sighed. “Why do you think that blue bitch wants me to retrieve the core so badly?”
“I’m uncertain of Magic’s intentions with you,” Duskara admitted.
I laughed, a bit bitterly. “I suppose I can see that. I was definitely getting some manipulative Karen vibes from her. Though, I’ll get the core back as soon as I eat their corpses,” I gestured again to the skeletons, “and gain a few new skills.”
“I’m sorry, but the dungeon will most likely have absorbed their bodies by now.”
Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!
“But the dungeon is dead without its core!” I protested.
“Aw, but like all corpses, a few parts of the body should still be functioning for a time after its death,” she replied, souring my mood.
That probably explained why I never found Rob’s body. “Shit!”
“As far as what makes us special,” Duskara continued, seemingly oblivious to my mental breakdown over losing out on all those skills, “you have the soul of a Titan.”
With that single word, memories of that dream I had with Sophia began to resurface, though I was still preoccupied with my loss. Compelled to understand more, I asked, “So hold on... You’re saying all of humanity from Earth are this realm’s long-lost Titans? All eight-plus billion people?”
“No,” she shook her head, the hood briefly revealing a chin bone so fast I might have imagined it. “There were only a few hundred thousand Titans and just over a hundred fellow gods when they were all banished alongside our mother,” she tapped the table with her finger, continuing her explanation. “No, what I believe our mother, Life, did was use her own essence in that manaless vacuum of a realm you call Earth to reestablish a new cycle of reincarnation. This was to keep the souls of the Titans and the gods from fading into the void, which ultimately led to the birth of new Titan souls.”
“But not gods?” I asked while processing what she had said.
“Not without the help of Death. Life cannot create new gods on her own.”
I took that all in, including the memories of my dream where Sophia had tried to explain all of this. Slowly nodding, it all began to make sense. Humanity was essentially a collection of old souls from this realm that had been… banished?
“Wait, who banished the Titans again?”
“The Eldritch, Magic’s children.”
“Oh… Oh! That bitch!” I sat up, outraged. “Wait, what does she want from me? Besides getting that core?”
“I don’t know,” Duskara sighed. “But everything she’s done, from stealing entire worlds filled with various races, has been to find her sister, our mother, Life, and undo her wrong.”
“Well, she’s been going about it in a fucked up way,” I grumbled.
“That she has.”
“So, I’m a Titan, like Cronos and Sargeras?”
“Yes—I’m surprised your soul remembers those names. Cronus was Life’s firstborn,” she nodded, almost happily. “Though, I suspect much of your lore and knowledge was derived from unconscious memories of your souls. That said, I doubt your soul in particular is one of the original Titans from this realm. But, I believe one of them might be my elder half-sister, Rhea,” her hooded gaze shifted to the skeletons happily eating, seemingly oblivious to our conversation. “I’m unsure if it’s Sophia or Heather.”
Yeah, never heard of that Titan.
“Ugh, don’t tell me our world’s old-school computer programming was based on subconscious memories of this realm’s fucked up system, was it?”
Duskara nodded again. “I don’t know anything about this computer stuff you speak of, but I would say yes, many things are typically influenced by a soul.”
“Wonderful,” I deadpanned. “And what happened to the Eldritch again?”
“It’s hard to destroy a soulless entity of Magic. So instead, Death shattered them and spread their remains across the cosmos,” there was a long pause before she continued, “Their remains are often referred to as many things, one of them being Black Puddings.”
She’s shitting me, right?
“You’re shitting me, right?” I blurted out, voicing my inner shock.
My soul is inside one of these asshole Eldritch—huh, well, that might explain a lot.
Duskara was about to speak when a series of loud bangs echoed throughout the cottage, as if someone was pounding on the door like a drum.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
She sighed, “It seems our time has run out. Do reconsider being my champion, will you? It will allow me to aid you within the constraints of the system.”
“Wait, but I have more questions!” I blurted out, my thoughts tumbling over each other in a rush. “What’s the system? Why is it in safe mode? What does it mean to have the soul of a Titan within the body of an Eldritch?”
Bang! Bang! Bang!
“The system was the training tool, a holdover from a forgotten era, designed to train Titans to learn to fight the Eldritch. Use it to learn new skills, but don’t rely solely on it. Try mastering skills without the system altogether as it was designed to do. That’s the entire purpose of ascension, not what the perversion those so-called gods believe it to be—”
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Duskara continued, “A Titan wields the very mana around them. Use it, and you’ll be unstoppable.”
Bang! Bang! Bang!
“I’m not going to forget all this when I wake up, am I?” I blinked away the moisture in my eyes, “I’m not going to forget about Aislinn again?”
“I’ll see to it that you won’t forget. Now, it’s time for you to wake up. As powerful as I am within my domain, I cannot keep Magic from forcing her way in.”
The loud banging continued, but it somehow morphed into the sound of creaking and groaning rocks. I blinked back to consciousness to find Duskara gone; the feast had vanished, and no skeletons in sight—only darkness enveloped me. Reactivating Mana Focus, I discovered myself buried beneath a pile of rubble—again! However, this time was different: I remembered my dream and… Aislinn!