Red Sun Rising

02.27.41

I see the same darkness every night. They aren’t my dreams! These images don’t belong to me. Well I mean they do belong to me but I didn’t make this happen!

The pitch black furred Amber Krowen that walks across the blood soaked field with the crimson twilight as his backdrop wasn’t me! It’s the monster inside of me. I don’t know where he came from or how this happened but it turns my stomach realizing that these nightmares aren’t really just figments of my imagination. He told me this is all true. He told me to sleep.

They had no chance to survive. These nightmares… I scream and yell every time I have to watch those Caistealians die. My heart breaks and crumbles with each innocent women or child I watch this shadow version of myself slaughter. I killed them all. No… he killed them all! Everyone is dead. I saw them all. Counting bodies like sheep. Their blood is everywhere and there are hundreds of bodies that won’t get back up again. There was so much blood. Sprays on the wall. Puddles on the pavement. It was everywhere! It was in on my hands, my hair, and my fur was drenched in it. I could taste it as it ran down my muzzle into my mouth.

“Forza! Wake up!”

The voices are everywhere! Who is this man that killed all these people? I don’t remember any of this! My face is wet from tears and my throat is sore from all the screaming, crying for this to end.

My blood is there too. The monster, this Shadow Forza, fully armored in the prototype Sun Jin armor on his knees looks up at me in the darkness with a big grin on his face. His blood drenched hands covering a large gaping evisceration, self-inflicted, stretching from navel to hip. The wall before him splashed with his own blood and words written in smeared blood by hand, JETHRO.

I don’t belong in this dream world anymore but the voice keeps telling me, “Go back to sleep!” I can’t wake up. Wake up from what? These events are real. Is this really a dream? I executed those people! The black feathers that fall from the sky and softly drift hither and yon in the wind told me that this is true.

“Forza!”

I felt the hands on my shoulders but all I could see was the bloody sword in his hands. Go back to sleep…

With a sharp and deep inhale my eyes snapped open. I slowly closed my eyes again breathing hard in a panic. She was there too. Shiinx. I had been hearing her call my name during the nightmare. She was sitting on my lap as I rested on my back on the bed. Only Varuna knows how long she was sitting there witnessing it.

The look on her face broke my heart. Though I could only see her a bit through my half open eyes I knew she had been there while I was sleeping. She’s seen this before all too many times. I absolutely hated having to expose her to this worry. I felt like such a burden. She placed her hand my cheek as I laid there. I was stilling panting and in chaos.

In a way the nightmare was still continuing. I was consciously hearing it in my head and I couldn’t make it go away. All the blood, the darkness, the screaming and yelling of all those people still echoed. Her hand though was an escape. I tried to focus on it against my cheek even as small drips of water were landing on it as they ran down from my eyes.

“Forza, honey it’s okay,” she said. “Come back to me. Come on.” She ran her hand through my soft wavy white hair trying to dry it a bit and smiled.

I fully opened my eyes and fixated them on the ceiling above us. Taking a few long staggered breaths I lifted my hand and put it on her cheek, matching how she had hers on mine. I smiled a little bit the best I could.

“Was it one of those ‘worse than usual’ ones?”

All I could do was nod.

“It’s been getting worse, hasn’t it?”

“Yes,” I said. I closed them again for a second and opened them with a twist of my head, checking the time on the clock. I hadn’t even been asleep that long and Shiinx was supposed to be on post. What was she doing here? Maybe she was on a break.