The Dreamer's Epilogue-Chapter 25: Kill

Chapter 25 – Kill

The battle against the Lizard continued on, the difficulty heaved drastically by the smoking Old Navy.

The old man stood at the very back of the black cloud, his pipe in his mouth, a number of Tistis beside him — the soldiers and those with enough strength to give off their blood.

His affinity was Smoke, and by burning the blood of the Tistis and controlling the smoke with his pipe with his skill, the old bones was able to blot out the whole expanse in a thick black whirling smoke.

However, his sunken, folded-upon-themselves-until-only-slits-remained eyes showed a color of worry while watching the Tistis beside him.

One hour had passed since the start of this battle, and they were losing too much blood.

And considering they were not eating because of their own beliefs, this fight would lead to their death even if they won this battle.

Winning the battle only to lose the war...now, that was a thing Old Navy was quite familiar with.

"Water and food," Old Navy muttered as he took a deep worried puff on his pipe, "something we need, I say, to succeed. Where and how, are the questions I ask myself. Oh..."

Old Navy sighed tiredly, his mind going back briefly to his time back on Earth as a historian and a teacher at a university.

The current reality had robbed him of his passion and plunged him into a world of battle and wars. And this situation made him oddly feel that he had traversed back to those tumultuous times of war; those times of expansion of the superpowers of the world.

"History is repeating itself, I say. In a different way, in a different world, in a different setting..."

But it was all the same: War, blood, death, horror, sorrow and despair.

An unending nightmare none could awake from.

There was only one way to all this, and as a historian he knew it better than most. It was to dive inside headfirst, and walk forward.

And for him, he wouldn’t forget his role to record all this. For no matter if he was on Earth or not...

...Kausis Navy Safiya remained a historian.

Laughing, Old Navy finally stopped releasing black smoke. He closed his eyes — the difference quite lost to the one looking at him — calmed his breathing to regain his lost GeumGeum all while listening to the crackling sound of lightning, the growls of snarling hound and the cries and begging of the lizards.

He barked a harder laugh, and closed his heart even tighter and remembered the beastly faces of lizards. Otherwise he would believe it was human beings killed...not simple beasts.

"Oh, I must learn, I say, to open new eyes, new ears, and a new heart; and to accept and to make peace with death and blood, I believe."

He drew in and out a mouthful of smoke, and turned to the Tistis sprawling beside him like dead fishes, "Oh, water and food...water and food..."

Meanwhile, Victoria was not thinking so deeply like Emrys or Old Navy.

There was only one thing she needed to do — and it was to kill.

And as if it was something ingrained in her blood, Victoria’s nails transformed into claws befitting a hound, shredding the lizards with her hound.

She was merciless.

She and her hound seemed to be one, fighting with rhythm and control beyond understanding.

She slashed, evaded, and let her hound leap over and separate the head of the lizard with its sharp jaws. 𝒇𝓻𝓮𝓮𝙬𝙚𝒃𝒏𝓸𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝓬𝓸𝒎

Or her hound would immobilize the lizard, only for her to finish it off.

Their duo was seamless, and with the Lizards losing their mobility because of the poison, they were killed like chickens on a farm.

They didn’t die silently, though, letting out growls of anger and fear and sometimes even begs of forgiveness.

Victoria didn’t answer to their words, no matter how human it sounded. To her, lizards were enemies. And she never considered enemies as living beings.

Only as things. It made it easier to kill without guilt. And kill she did.

Just like how she was trained to do. Just like how the Hound did.

It was easy for Victoria, but Emrys wouldn’t say the same.

He was submerged by the fights around, and no matter how advantageous his situation was, he was still new in all this and so earned some wounds.

However that was the least thing Emrys was concerned about.

At the beginning it was fuzzy and strange, his Gift activating each time he killed, feeling something slither inside his mind like a worm crawling on mud.

But at the end of the battle, when the smoke cleared out showing a ground carpeted by the corpses and blood of the lizards, Emrys no longer could mistake his current situation.

He was remembering the sweet taste of the Tothblood flower, the feeling of embracing the scaled body of your lover, the feeling of wind on your face as you ran, the memories of playing on waters with friends while catching fishes and fruits and herbs...

He was remembering all of that.

But he lived none of that.

No, all of these were lived by the lizards he just killed. Lizards who had names and dreams.

He killed them, and they died by giving him...

"...memories?"

As the realization dawned upon him, Emrys’s eyes widened as the last words of the {Mother} echoed inside his mind,

{Beware, Bearer of Gift, the enemy of memories isn’t time. The enemy of memories is other memories.}

Emrys’s heart stopped, breath caught in his throat. He unconsciously kneeled on the bloodied ground, his mind reliving memories he never lived.

His lips trembled.

"No way..."

—End of Chapter 25—