Editor's note: this story contains scenes of incest or incest content.
*****
"Right over here, you scum! Enjoy your fucking stay!"
Those were the words I was given before a couple of royal guards tossed me into a cold, cramped dungeon cell. My bones still hurt and my knuckles were still bloody, even more so there were spatters of blood all over my body.
As soon as I hit the ground, I got up and raced for the bars of the cell gate and rattled them as the guards locked it. "You have to believe me! I didn't start it! You're imprisoning the wrong man! I have witnesses! I have..."
"SHUT YOUR MOUTH ALREADY!" One of the guards yelled. "We don't need witnesses. We saw it with our own bloody eyes. You were relentlessly beating this poor man's face in! What the hell are you going to explain to us that would change that fact?"
"Poor man... POOR MAN?! Do you even know who you're talking about? That was Lester Mulligan back there! The scourge of the underground! He was the second hand to the leader of the Banshees! He killed more people than the demons took from our town!"
"Well, it don't matter who he is now, does it? We can hardly ask him about it anymore. You broke the law regardless and I wouldn't hope on ever getting out of here. At least as a living man that is. Now shut the fuck down and use the time to figure out what went wrong in your life." And with those words, they left me. This was it. This was where it was gonna end.
My name is Jack Cormac. Citizen of the city of Valencia in the Empire of the Order. I knew the city better than my own pockets. Every tavern, every gambling table or guild hall knew my name. If you needed to know the streets, if you needed someone who knew where to go or who to talk to, I was your guy. Or at least I used to be.
This night, I was a prisoner.
I sunk down onto a small bunk that was apparently supposed to be my bed. I used the white blanket lying on it to wipe down my knuckles. It still burned a little when I scrubbed over the scrapes and bruises.
"I didn't want to kill him. How did this all get so fucked up?" I put my hands over my face as I leaned my head back against the stone wall. It was redundant to ask myself that question, because I knew exactly how it came to this.
The evening started off so promising. I was at the tavern, having a good time, doubling and tripling my winnings at the gambling table. Chugging ales and celebrating with my friends...
"My friends..."
I looked down at my bloody fingers, recalling what happened later. My hands were trembling with anger and frustration. "Toby... you better be fucking okay, buddy. This can't have been for nothing... This can't..."
I let out a sigh. There was nothing I could do about it now. Or ever. I didn't know. Maybe this dark cell would be the last thing I'll ever see.
Regardless, the day was coming to an end. Through the small barred window, I saw that the moon was already high up in the sky shining its light into the room.
I decided to call it a day and even though chances were slim, maybe tomorrow would be a better day. Maybe the others will come and vouch for me. If the guard is even going to listen.
I lied down on my bunk and covered myself with the bloodstained blanket. It was hard, but eventually, I found a tolerable position. Not like there's ever been a surface uncomfortable enough for me to not be able to sleep on it.
I closed my eyes and hoped to reach the only place that I could be free right now. The land of dreams.
Hours later:
I woke up. At least it felt like I did. It certainly didn't feel like I was dreaming, but something was very, very wrong.
I opened my eyes not to the sight of a gray, low ceiling, but the sky. A clear sky of vibrant blue. I wasn't lying on a bunk anymore either. To be honest, I couldn't even tell what it was. Cotton? Wool? It was a puffy cloud of an unknown soft fabric. It was springy enough to carry me without falling in.
"What the hell? Is... Is this actually a dream? Is someone fucking with me? Did they give me something while I was asleep?" It couldn't be! I could move my body freely. I knew what I was seeing. And the more things I saw, the more I was bewildered and confused.
"Well, this is definitely... new? Heheheh, ahhh shit, I finally lost it. I'm going FUCKING insane!" I laughed almost maniacally at my own misfortune. First I get locked up and now I'm hallucinating. This day couldn't get any better.
"Suppose I should at least explore my own madness. See what kind of weird shit my brain can come up with. Come on, brain. Bring it!"
The immediate area around me was filled with a flower bed. From the cotton cloud I slept on to the dirt road a bit up ahead, lilacs grew almost as dense as grass. They were dripping with some sort of purple ooze. Were lilacs poisonous? Can't really say. I never left the city really and it wasn't like I ever learned botany. Just to be careful, I ripped off some of the cloud and attached it to my shoes and calves as an additional protective layer.
It looked like I was wearing fluffy, white, thick boots. Great, now I looked insane too.
I put my feet down into the flowers and the second I touched the ground, it was almost as if the plants came to life and they started turning towards my feet. The cotton around my legs quickly became stained with the purple ooze. Whatever the hell those flowers were, they definitely weren't lilacs.
I stomped through them as quickly as I could, leaving the field with an almost soaked pair of cotton boots. They were covered in purple blots from top to bottom. Avoiding the risk of the possible poison seeping through to my skin, I shook it off and left the it behind in a pile.
Finally, after that small ordeal, I got some solid ground under my feet in the form of a dirt road leading towards a distant river. I checked behind me and noticed the in the other direction... there was nothing. The road started right here at the field. Right here where I woke up. Maybe it was a sign that I should follow it. Or it was a trap. At this point I expected pretty much anything.
I could probably handle it; the streets prepared me for this, I thought. I couldn't have known back then what would be ahead of me. It was my own imagination, what would I even have had to be afraid of?
And so, I headed out on the road, headed for the unknown. The walk wasn't anything I didn't expect from a hallucination. Black dragons in the sky, talking, weirdly human sized, talking mushrooms. Though I couldn't help but feel watched by both of them. It wasn't just paranoia; it seemed like they were actually turning their heads and stalks as I walked past them. I sped up my pace a little bit. A trip like this wasn't worth traumatizing myself over.
With my hands in my coat pockets, the rest of the walk was fairly quiet. I would've at least expected that something had jumped out at me by now, but nothing happened. I still felt weird looks on me, like something or someone was just urging to get their hands on me but for some odd reason held back.
Soon I was close enough to hear the rushing of the river. It was rapid and splashing over its sides. Almost as if it was in unrest. I couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong here.
Further down the road, I suddenly hear a commotion up ahead. There were people talking. I could make out 3 voices. 2 sounded like adult men and one... like a little girl?
I got in closer, hiding behind one of the massive mushroom tree's stalks as I stumbled onto a strange scene.
Two men, their clothes drenched in water had cornered a small girl with blonde hair that reached down to the bend of her back in a frilly blue and white dress. She had white stockings, black, tiny shoes and blue ribbons tied into her hair. Although they didn't seem to be directly to her hair but... a pair of horns? Now that I looked closer, that wasn't the only weird feature about her. She had a set of red wings protruding from her lower back and a demon-like, pointy tail that poked out from the back of her skirt.
She looked scared as the two men approached her. "I've...I've helped you already, so... I...I'll leave now."
