Dreams have a funny way of feeling so real in the moment of their conception in your mind, regardless of if they were as implausible as you becoming the world's wealthiest man or spontaneously becoming a nudist.
Chris might not have had the conscious thought that he was not reliving this particular memory. But alas his mind was locked into a delusion that he was his eight year old self once more.
The boy whose body he noe inhabited was w stark difference from the man he became. The boy was a skinner thing with a much longer tangled mess of blue hair that sometimes obstructed his eyes.
Physical appearance aside, he was overjoyed as he ran through the halls of the palace. Besides him ran a young she elf of similar age and to the adolescent mind of Christian Ambrosius Medraut Ddraig, she was the most beautiful girl that he had yet seen.
Of course he would never admit this to Pyrrha Ulster, the daughter of Morrigan Ddraig, one of the legendary paladins and a close friend to the family. He would also not dare tell his sisters, they could be mean with their teasing sometimes.
"Its not fair, slow down!" a young female voice shouted behind them.
Chris cast a glance to a young girl who almost looked like a female version of him. She chased both him and Pyrrha, though they managed to stay a foot ahead of girl who was now panting with exhaustion.
"Not a chance Joan" he shouted back to his twin sister.
Joan in frustration stuck her tongue out at him and Chris returned the gesture. A grievous mistake as it took his eyes off what was ahead and he crashed into Pyrrha, sending the both of them spiraling onto the ground.
"Really Chris" Pyrrha groaned in irritation and Chris quickly lifted himself off of her.
"I.... I... S... Sorry... Sorry... Sorry.... Sorry" he kept repeating as he felt his cheeks beginning to burn up in shame at both his mistake and the fact that he was laying on top of Pyrrha.
He felt a open palm smack upon his right shoulder followed by Joan shouting into his ear "Tag, You Are It".
" Wha... What, that's not fair, i tripped" He shouted in a righteous indignation.
"It's fair alright" Joan snapped back before turning to Pyrrha and asking "Isn't that right Pyrrha?".
" I guess so" Pyrrha replied with a shrug and Chris had never felt so betrayed in his life.
"How could you. I thought that you were my best friend" he whined
" Na ah, she is my best friend you dummy " Joan said with a smug pride which made her bother feel like he was boiling over in anger.
"Its you who is the dummy".
" Oh, how clever. Is that the best you got" Joan was now laughing and Chris considered using the big words that their elder sister Ishtar used when she was with her friends and she didn't think that him and Joan were paying attention.
"I can say way worse, but you are my little sister, so i will take it easy on you " he said with a stabbing smugness.
"Just by twenty minutes, it doesn't matter that much" Joan retorted with frustration and Chris could not help but smile as he knew that he had pocked her one nerve.
"Doesn't matter, still makes me your dear eldest brother and you are just a little kid to me" he grinned as he saw the fire in her eyes ready to erupt, a sign that he had won the argument.
"Guys, stop arguing" Pyrrha said, interceding between the two of them.
"Only if he stops being a mean jerk!" Joan shouted as she pointed at Chris.
"I am not being a jerk".
" Yes you are, yes you are " Joan was now stomping her feet into the ground.
"I..." Chris began speaking, but he stopped as a strange coldness rolled across the room.
Every breath that he made was like a thousand needles were being driven into his nostrils and throat from the cold air. He gasped in pain and a thick puff of mist escaped his mouth like smoke from a dragons maul.
"What is this?" Pyrrha asked, her teeth chattering as she hugged her body while trembling.
"I don't know" Chris fought to need his mouth from chattering as his body continuously trembled in an attempt to generate heat.
"Its so cold" Joan said.
Joan raised her right hand and she tried to materialize a flame, but the unnatural cold snuffed out the budding flame and all that came to life on Joan's hand was a puff of smoke.
A loud banging sound followed and the wall to their right shattered, sending in debris into the room. Amongst the mixture of concrete and wood was a figure who he recognized, it was Morrigan Ulster, Pyrrha's mother.
The elvish Paladin slowly staggered to her feet, groaning in pain with each step that she took. Chris gasped as he looked at her bruised and bloodied face.
"Mother!" Pyrrha shrieked in horror.
"Pyrrha..." Her mother uttered as she looked at her daughter with a mixture of surprise and horror "Stay back, please get out of here".
"Don't scare the children away, Morrigan" his mother's voice danced into the room and Chris could help note a frequency of vindictive mockery laced in her voice.
A thin layer of ice spread across the hole in the wall and some how it seemed as if the room had gotten colder. His soon mother stepped through the hole and Chris recoiled in horror as he beheld her.
Her flesh was a milk pale that looked more corpse like than of a living being. Black veins pulsed across her flesh, her eyes were onyx orbs and out of her mouth flowed a dark purple tar that stained her chin and the floor with every word that she uttered.
In her hand was her sword, Excalibur. Drawn from its scabbard, the steel of the blade burned with a bright blue flame. Any other time Chris would have been excited to witness the legendary blade free from its scabbard, but his mother's current physical state only made him more fearful.
Stolen novel; please report.
"Hello children, what a lovely day" she said with a wide grin which showed her now black teeth and made his stomach churn in revulsion.
"Mommy" Chris whispered as he tried to comprehend the familiar yet foreign entity before him.
"Don't worry too much my little perl. I will get on to you in a second, me and aunty Morrigan need to chat for a bit" .
"Natalia, please stop this. I understand that the shadows are strong, but you can fight this, don't let it control you" Morrigan pleaded through winced pain as she used her glaive to keep her wounded frame upstanding.
"Fight what, this..." Natalia gestured at the twisted parody that her body had become "... this is good. Morrigan, this is freedom, this is pleasure made manifest. I understand how difficult it is to get it, but you have to feel it to believe it".
" No it isn't, you killed those people.... innocent's, you would never..." Morrigan's plea was cut off with Natalia's hysterical laughter.
"By the Phantom King, you sound like that nagging other me".
" Other you? " Morrigan asked as perplexed as Chris felt.
"The blessing of the dark, it took away the weakness from me, a little half which did nothing but slow me down. But don't worry, she banish to some craves away from us and i can show you... all of you, the gospel of the dark" Natalia declared proudly to a stunned Morrigan who could stand with a agape mouth.
"Then i am truly sorry, you don't deserve this" Morrigan spoke with tears rolling down her cheeks.
She rushed toward to attack his mother and try as Chris might to see what was happening, the two warriors fought were simply so fast that they appeared to be all over the room at the same time.
He joined Pyrrha and Joan in terrified screaming as the room was filled with shockwaves from the collision of the two warriors weapons. This clash of Paladins shook the entire room and uprooted much of the concrete floor.
A final great shockwave came and it launched him off his feet and upon his back hard enough that the pain left him in tears.
The clash between his mother and Morrigan ended and much to his horror, he saw his mother standing over the downed body of Morrigan. The elf lay motionless with a pool of blood beginning form around Morrigan.
"That was easy" Natalia mockingly said with a small chuckle.
She turned and Chris almost loosened his bladder as her black eyes fell him. She slowly took steps with a self assured sense of purpose in her step which was almost predatory in its grace.
Chris wanted to scream, to turn and flee, but he could neither find his voice nor could could he feel his legs. All he could do was whimper out half way audible pleas and look around hopping for someone to rescue him from this horrible fate.
But Morrigan lay upon the floor, unmoving and potentially dead. His sister Joan and Pyrrha were equally frozen in fear and they could only look on as the twisted spectre of his mother gracefully stalked up to him.
"Please..." He pleaded.
"Don't worry my little perl. I don't want to hurt you, i would never hurt you" she said said almost sounding like her normal self once more.
She extended her right hand out and from it the same dark purple tar that flowed out of her mouth began to flow out of her open palm as if an invisible fountain lay just beneath her flesh.
"Don't run, i will make you perfect, i will make us all perfect" she whispered with the soothing voice that she used whenever she was comforting him.
"Please" he pleaded once more.
"Don't worry, it won't hurt for long. In fact, it will be euphoric. Now come here...... And Let Me Get Ahold Of You!" She shouted as she lunged like a lion that had finally cornered its prey.
He wanted to scream and run, but all of his limbs remained in place and even if he had, he knew that he could not truly escape her. Her right palm with the strange substance was the first thing to make contact with his throat and with it she easily pushed him to the ground.
His back violently meeting the ground was enough to knock Chris out his terrified stupor. He thrashed violently to escape her grip but it was all in vein and could only elicit laughter from this twisted mockery of his mother.
"Don't worry dear, you will feel it all soon" she said in between her laughter and splattering some of the dark purple tar from her mouth, upon his face.
From his throat, he felt a cold grip spread across his body, like all the heat within him had been ripped out. He gasped in agony as it felt like every breath taken was followed by a thousand cold needles were being driven through every part of his body.
But his pain did not cease yet as he felt every as if his bones were being cracked and shattered by some invisible force. He wanted to die, he screamed until his throat hurt and the pained only seemed to get worse.
"Don't scream, just accept it. It is freeing, my dear, it is heaven made manifest!" She declared with a mad euphoria.
Just then, the pain ceased and Chris felt a strange void within as all sensation was stripped away from his body. All pain and sound did not exist to his nervous system for a few minutes, and then came what could only be described as a rush of euphoric pleasure.
It was just as paralyzing as the pain and he could only lay upon the ground as he fought the urge to lose himself within the sensory overload. With this feeling of mad elation came a strange thought in his head
" Why are you fighting this, this feels so good and so right. Your mother is right about the pleasure and you know this ".
Chris didn't know why, but this thought felt extremely foreign in his mind, like it was a train of thought that belonged to another person entirely.
" No, i... " he tried to argue against the voice but he could think any coherent thoughts, that was except for " She is right, she is right ".
" Yes, now thou shall be I, and I shall be thee " the voice whispered back and against all logical senses, Chris found every part of him accepting this.
All restraint and self being was slowly torn down by mental hands as Chris felt his very being change to the desire of the voice. Above him, Natalia grinned with a wide smile.
"Now you are ready my perl, let us fin..." Natalia never finished her words as a green blur came from the right and it knocked her off of the young prince.
The euphoric pleasure that had drowned his mind went with her and the pain returned like a sledgehammer to the face. Chris screamed in agony at the sudden rush of pain and finally his wish was granted as he instantly fell into the deep waters of the subconscious.
And that was when he awoke, not the boy of eight but the young man of nineteen. He was mid scream and ready to leap up wards but a pair of hands grabbed a hold of him and pushed him back into a bed.
"Let me go, let me go" he frantically demanded as he tried to fight off the hands, his mind still believing that his mother stood above him.
"Calm down" someone said.
"Where is the damn doctor, shouldn't any of them be here already" another person angrily shouted.
Eventually Chris stopped fighting as he fully realized that what he had experienced with such realism was but a delusion of the sleeping mind and not his waking reality.
He looked to those who held him down and his mind finally recognized Hamanymu, Ursa and the giant redhead who Hamanymu had befriended. Chris tried to dig up the mans name from the still fuzzy recesses of his mind, but nothing came.
"Chris, its okay, calm down. Breath, its okay" Ursa said and Chris noticed that she was wearing a sky blue gown that he had never seen her in.
Hamanymu and the red head besides him were dressed in their armor unlike her, making Chris even more confused.
"Where are we?" Chris asked her as he settled into the bed.
"The garrisons infirmary, you took a serious bump out there" the giant redhead responded "Tell me, how do you feel".
" I feel..." Chris wanted to say that he was perfectly okay, but a dull pain struck every action that he took "... Not so great, but i am not dead yet. Thank you for asking...".
He felt horrible as he tried and failed to remember his name, but that did not seem to bother the redhead who smiled as if this was some inside joke between the two of them.
" Its Thor, Thor Hadrada ".
" Right, thank you Thor " he committed the name to memory and he hoped to not forget it, he turned to Hamanymu and Ursa and he asked them "What happened?".
" You got messed up bad, i mean you were kicked at roughly..." Hamanymu began speaking but he paused as he tried to remember some fact before turning to Ursa "What was it again?".
Ursa sighed in her usual disappointment before responding " Thirteen kilometers, you and Pyrrha got kicked by that thing for thirteen kilometres ".
" That must be a world record or something, i do hope that you have informed the media of my latest feat " Chris immediately regretted his joke as Ursa looked ready to try and kick an extra thirteen kilometres herself "Sorry".
" We managed to chase off the night terrors, but some of us got hurt. I had a dislocated shoulder, but you and Pyrrha got the worst of it" Ursa replied and as she spoke, he recalled the memory of the last few moments before he was knocked unconscious.
He remembered the elf leaping between him and the Dullahan to protect him from its kick. He knew that he should be feeling gratefulness at her, but he could not help but feel a tinge of hatred for the elf.
"Oh, her. Is she okay" he asked Ursa.
"She is, in fact she woke up before you. But then she went to sleep again" Hamanymu answered and he directed Chris's attention to one of the beds where the elf in question lay asleep.
Perhaps it was piece of his mind still clouded in the insanity that he was his young self again, but looking at the sleeping elf, he felt a swell of affection that was washed over with a wave of hatred. His face telegraphed these emotions to everyone around him.
"Is everything okay?" Hamanymu asked, his usually humorous self abandoned in swell of seriousness.
" I am good" physically he was well, but emotionally was a very different story.
"Now that is a lie. It's so obvious that you and Pyrrha have as much compatibility like water and oil. So spill your secrets, what happened?" Ursa interjected.
"Look, its nothing" he tried to steer the conversation away but he knew Ursa too well.
"Chris, remember the rule. On lying" she told him and he knew that she would not back down.
"I...it's...just...when i was eight and my mother fully split into an entity of darkness and light. The darkness tried to corrupt me by forcefully shoving dark energy into my body. it didn't work at all and they were side effects".
"Side effects?".
"Imagine having to live your life with knowledge that your muscles, bones and tendons were nothing more than mushed mincemeat tied together by magic. Now on top of that imagine always getting sick and having every heavy action feel like your body is being torn apart with painkillers being a staple of your diet all day, everyday" .
The memories of his past were painful to say the least and he would have preferred to keep them dead and buried.
"Sounds like a crappy childhood".
"It was my childhood" he said with a laugh, but there was only bitterness in it, not mirth.
"And Pyrrha, where does she fit in all this?" Ursa's asked, her voice much softer now.
"She was a friend once, until she turned out to be that one of the children who thought bullying the child who could fall over dead at any second was a fun pass time".
Everyone winced and Thor asked " But if you're body was fragile then...".
"Sometimes words cut better than sword's" he whispered back.
"She seemed...nice back there. Do you think she changed?" Ursa asked as she cast a glance at the still sleeping elf.
Chris had heard this a million times since he returned from Morrigan, his mother, and every one else, with words like ' oh, Pyrrha is nice now', ' she has changed' and 'you two should definitely make up, i mean forget her nearly killing you".
"She may have... but just keep her away from me" he respected Morrigan enough to try and murder her, but it didn't mean that he would try to socialize with her unless he had to, and he truly did not want to.
"Visiting time is over" a nurse said as she walked through the wing.
"Well, we have to go. I am in a different wing" Ursa said as she turned and walked away with Hamanymu and Thor.
She paused before saying once more " Chris, i hope that you and Pyrrha sort this out. Anger and resentment doesn't suit you".
"I hope that too Ursa" he said still feeling that cold grip in his heart unwilling to let go.