Alex laid in the dream space, distraught. He no longer had control over the body, and no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t even make contact. He was stuck in the same empty void of a room he’d entered whenever the orcs from the rings contacted him. Except this time, he was alone.
What made it worse was no matter how much inspecting he did, he couldn’t find an inch of humanity left on himself. If this was meant to represent the shape of his spirit, it meant he was no longer human inside or out. What was the point of even fighting anymore? He couldn’t see, hear, feel, smell, or taste anything anymore. Nothing real, at least. Just whatever was in that room, which was a whole lot of nothing anyways.
Besides, even if he did somehow gain control of the dragon body, it didn’t matter. His window for returning to his body had ended. That annoying little prick had held him back for so long he’d fully lost himself. The only inkling he gained of how much time had passed was how bored he was getting.
If he was gonna be trapped in a dream forever, he might as well try making it a lucid one. He’d already completed the first step, awareness of the fact you are in the dream. All he needed to do now was imagine whatever he wanted.
The first thing he tried to imagine was some mead. It had been way too long since he’d last had a drink. Sadly, no matter how hard he tried to imagine it, nothing would appear.
Maybe he just couldn’t make something consumable. He tried making a bed for himself to lay on, hoping he could at least make eternity more comfortable. This endeavor was similarly successful as his last idea.
Alex, frustrated with his helplessness, racked his mind for something, anything he could latch onto and carry into the void with him. When nothing worked, he screamed out.
“WHY!? WHY ME!? WHAT DID I DO TO DESERVE ANY OF THIS!”
Alex punched himself in the head in frustration.
“I HATE THIS STUPID PLACE”
He took a deep breath before starting again,
“AND I HATE THIS STUPID SHITTY BODY!”
Using his claws, he tore at his face. Hyperventilating, he tried scratching and pulling off his skin, leaving gashes across his face. Searing pains stretched across his body wherever he clawed, quickly disappearing. While the dream let him feel pain, it didn’t let him sustain injury.
“Please… Just let me out… I want to go home and eat real food again… I want to lay in my bed and sleep peacefully for one night. I just want to have my thoughts to myself.”
Alex slammed his fists on the ground, pleading at nothing. He knew no one could hear him, and even if they could that there was nothing to be done.
By a cruel twist of fate, and through his own lack of caution, he had been resigned to this fate by that thing that took his body. He’d wished he’d never taken that stupid request, or at least been a little suspicious when a random man offered him a free night’s stay at his inn outside the town walls.
God, he was such an idiot. He’d showed the thing the rings he’d collected, told it what they were, and how valuable they were, and then just went to sleep in a room it had a key to. Hell, he deserved what happened to him. It was penance for his hubris, thinking himself to be such a powerful adventurer. If he’d just reigned in his ego he probably would have just woken up the next morning in that inn none the wiser to the innkeeper’s conspiracy.
Actually, now that he thought about it, really thought about it, something wasn’t adding up. Why was it that instead of just getting consumed by the thing and it taking his body, he’d woken up as a dragon? He searched through his memories of the weeks prior to his short stint as a human adventurer. Graduation, paperwork, more paperwork, nothing out of the ordinary. He’d taken a short trip home, but that was standard for him. He didn’t talk to anyone, as he’d been living alone since he was young.
Then he thought back on the main mantlepiece in his house. The skull of an adult dragon. The one his father, the only solo rank one adventurer to ever live, died fighting. It was too odd for that to be a mere coincidence, There had to be some kind of a connection between those events. Reaching further and further back into his mind, he dug up memories of his very early childhood. Unsurprisingly, there wasn’t much to draw off of. He didn’t remember much of anything from those days, and of what he did, he only remembered his emotions.
He then remembered he had another resource at his disposal. He had an entire second memory bank to withdraw from. He scanned the memories of the young dragon for anything abnormal. There wasn’t much to scan through, given it had been only a few months old at the time he woke up in its body, and most of that time was just spent sleeping and eating.
Where he expected that string of memories to end, he found the faintest hint of something. Something dug itself into the memory shortly after the young dragon’s capture. He tried to remember what it was, but it resisted, almost pulling back from him as he attempted to bring it forward. He wrestled with it, until finally it broke free and the thought rushed into his head.
The ritual in the young dragon’s memory, that was the key to figuring out why this was all happening to him!
The infant the ritual was being performed on must have been him, and the identity of the dragon was equally as obvious.
Alex tried to think of the faces of the three people in the chamber. He didn’t recognize two of them, but one of them was a face he could never forget.
While he’d never met him in person, portraits of his father hung in the halls of his home, and over the mantle, right on top of the dragon skull.
“I had hoped you would never find out”
Alex nearly jumped out of his skin when he heard the voice from behind him. In fact, he kind of wished he had, given that was so close to his goal. He whipped his head around and saw the same man from his memory standing right in front of him.
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“D-dad? What are you… How is this possible?”
Alex’s father knelt down to get level with his son.
“I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry. I never should have done this to you. It’s my fault you went through all of this.”
Alex was more confused than ever.
“I don’t understand, how are you here?”
Alex’s father reached out to his head and held it, darting back after making contact for a mere moment.
“The ritual took more out of all of us than we expected. In order for it to work, I had to leave a piece of my spirit with you. I hope I can at least ease your mind with explanations before I fade away.”
He stood up and took a step back.
“There were some… Complications, at your birth. As you know, your mother didn’t make it, and the same was nearly true for you. It was true, for a moment. You didn’t cry or move, and you scarcely breathed. You had no reflexes, no responses, nothing. The doctors, they told me you were lost too. And I couldn’t accept that.”
Alex was taken aback. He’d always known his mother died giving birth to him, but the rest was new.
“What do you mean, I was lost too? But… I’m here. How is that possible?”
“That’s why I had to do what I did. Most adventurers knew of the cave in the mountains that was home to a family of dragons. An adventuring party stumbled upon their nest, lucky enough that the mother wasn’t home, and found a hatchling. Ever since they’d killed it and sold it’s parts, it became common knowledge. Uncountable raids of greedy adventurers entered that cave with gold in their eyes, and only a handful ever made it back out. With the knowledge of how potent even one scale from a dragon hatchling was, I knew it would be strong enough to keep you alive. So that’s what I did. I joined a party with some decent fighters, and while they distracted the larger dragons, I kidnapped you from your nest.”
Alex was shocked to hear this. While he’d figured the dragon didn’t just suddenly attack his hometown out of nowhere ever since living through the memories of the young dragon, this finally confirmed why she’d attacked that fateful night. But one thing truly perplexed him.
“Kidnapped me? What do you mean?” he scoffed. “You mean you kidnapped the hatchling, right?”
His father turned away.
“I couldn’t bear it. I couldn’t lose my wife and my son. The doctors said you were alive, but that was it. You could breathe, and your heart beat, but that was it. There was nothing else in there. I held out hope, waited for months before acting, but your condition only worsened. So I performed the ritual.”
That didn’t make sense. Nothing else? But he had thoughts, memories, and emotions. He was feeling a lot of them at that very moment.
“I don’t understand what you mean. If what you’re saying is true, why am I here now?”
“I knew better than to try to raise the dead. Necromancy is torture for all involved, and has a toll greater than any could imagine. But your body was an empty vessel. Alive, but with no spirit or magic for itself. I knew If I could turn you into a vessel, a strong enough spirit could fill it, and you would finally be whole.”
“I still don’t understand. Why are you referring to that hatchling as if it were me?”
His father looked back at him.
“Your body was nothing but a vessel to be filled. There was no spirit inside. You never were a separate entity. While joining your spirit and body, I locked away your previous memories, and the ritual required nearly all your mana to maintain. I’m sorry, but your spirit was never human to begin with.”
Alex’s head spun. This was too much at once for him to learn.
“Are you telling me… I was never human in the first place?”
Alex’s stomach turned and his face twisted into a grimace.
“I’m just some beast you stuffed into your brain dead son to puppet it around? All so you could feel better?”
“I should never have done it. I should have left you with your family. All the lives lost in the attack, including that of your mother.”
It didn’t make sense. Why would his father do that? He was supposed to be this great man, a protector, a warrior, a friend to all. It was what everyone told him. Hell, there was even a portrait of him in the dean’s office at his academy as their star alumni! How could he go out and do such a thing? And more importantly, how could he be saying this to him?
“So.. So what you're saying is… For my whole life, I haven’t even been me? I’ve just been some beast you shoved into the corpse of your brain dead son?” He nearly screamed out the words.
“I’m sorry.”
“And-and all so you could feel better about yourself?”
“You were never supposed to know. No one was. There was supposed to be nothing in the world capable of breaking the seal!”
“Supposed to?” Alex let a nervous chuckle slip. “Wow, supposed to! You really must have thought this through then, didn’t you? Oh, oh this is just great. This is perfect.”
It wasn’t perfect. His entire life had been one long string of lies. Not just about himself, but about his father’s, no, this man’s life.
“You know, I wanted to be you so bad. You were my idol. I wanted nothing more in life than to meet you, for you to see me, and you, or at least part of you has been here this whole time, and the worst part is… The worst part is you didn’t even say anything!” Alex choked out the last of his words. It was too much. The revelations, his situation.
His father, no, the man stepped forwards and sat down, resting his arm on Alex’s slumped form.
“Please believe me. This whole time I’ve wanted nothing more than to tell you. Tell you what I’ve done, tell you that I’m sorry. I can only do so now because you’ve been pushed so far down in the recesses of your mind that you’re close enough for me to reach you.”
The man turned Alex’s face towards himself with his hand.
“But no matter how many times I apologize, I know it won’t change anything.”
“There. You’re finally right about something.” Alex ripped his head out of the man’s hands. “You can’t change anything.”
“But I can help you.”
Help him? Alex stood up and glared at the man he once called his father.
“Just like you helped me before? Because if it’s anything like that, just stay away from me.”
“I can free you from inside this space. For twenty years this fragment of my soul has been trapped in the recesses of your mind. I’ve stayed here, binding your spirit to your body, and I fear my presence is what holds this fragment of yourself hostage.”
Alex paused for some time.
“But doesn’t that mean-”
“Yes. If I release myself, you will be able to regain control, and with some practice even merge with the rest of your spirit, but you will never get your body back.”