"Hey look, his waking up, rise and shine sleepy head!" An overly excited voice greeted John. He slowly opened his eyes, only to shut them again as the accursed morning sun beamed its cheerful existence into his vision. A low groan escaped him as he tried to shield his eyes with an arm but instead his muscles felt like lead, stiff and unwilling well the effort for to move the other caused a sharp grunt as he couldn't seem to lift it or even move it at all. At best with the sore and stiffness he could turn his head on the pillow, but any further action proved impossible for the time being as a fresh wave of concern washed over him, the realization that his left arm was completely numb and unmovable, a chilling contrast to the stiff, almost painful sensation gripping the rest of his body.
A playful poke to his cheek finally compelled him to reopen his eyes, slowly allowing them to focus. Alice leaned over him, finger retracted and a pout of mock annoyance on her face. "Helllllo, we know you're awake, you know, so don't ignore us! And you see? He does glow and everything when his asleep! just like I said he did, Washboard. Isn't that soooo cool! And the glow is so gentle that he makes a perfect night light!" Her usual boundless enthusiasm filled the small space. Next to her Greeny hovered silently, her wide eyes fixed on John with an expression of profound puzzlement.
"How is that even possible?" Greeny murmured, more to herself than to them. "As far as my knowledge of humans goes, they do not glow when they sleep. But it felt a bit like soul waves which shouldn't be possible. A human's soul, while strong in its own way, is too restrained within their bodies and well malleable aren't resistant enough to exist for long periods outside there shell. Your race simply doesn't have the knowledge or skill to directly wield your souls like so many other races. At most it can achieve what you call astral projection, but even then, the body is left vulnerable to possession as you haven't mastered a way to tether or leave a small fraction behind to protect the body. Yet, I am quite certain it was soul waves." The fairy's voice faded into a rapid, almost frantic mumble, her tiny brow furrowed in concentration. She seemed locked in an intense internal debate, trying to reconcile this impossible phenomenon with her deeply ingrained understanding of how the world, even crumbling worlds like this one, should operate.
Noticing the fairy completely absorbed in her mumbling, Alice crept closer with an exaggerated, almost theatrical act trying to be stealthy as she crept up to Greeny before rubbing her delicate wings, eliciting a startled "Eep!" and a furious glare from the tiny creature. Alice, in turn, adopted an expression of wide-eyed innocence, pretending she hadn't done a thing before her attention then pivoted back to John, a strange glint entering her eyes as she spotted something unusual beneath the blanket. Again, she began to creep over trying to be stealthy, an over-the-top display of covertness that only drew more attention to herself. If John had been capable of seeing her antics, he would no doubt have laughed, but the way he was facing unfortunately prevented it.
"I have no idea if it's soul waves or whatever," John managed, his voice a low grunt, "but it's happened every night so far since this world went to hell. It could be a result of someone constantly drugging me without consent though– something we definitively need to talk about." He said well trying to push himself up even as his muscles screamed in protest, forcing a soft sigh from him as he slumped back realizing it wasn't going to work, instead he begun to shift into the least uncomfortable position possible, a difficult feat when his entire body felt like a stone sculpture.
"Also, it seems i can't exactly move right now," he continued, explaining his predicament. "I guess the fight with the spider beast took more out of me than I thought. If I could get some painkillers or muscle relaxants, I might be able to force myself up and be mobile in a couple of hours though, pretty sure there's some in the medicine cabinet, after that we can—" He paused, his eyes narrowing. "Alice, what are you doing?"
Alice was now crouched at the edge of the bed, her arm extended well poking at something beneath the blanket. Strangely, John didn't feel her touch. With a painful effort, he lifted his head slightly, just enough to see her poking at a peculiar lump, clearly not his body though much to his relief. A faint ripple of wonder passed through him though upon realizing what it was but how had he even gotten into this bed? He hadn't been conscious. His gaze once more turned to Alice, once more realizing he probably shouldn't underestimate her strength. Without a word, she suddenly ripped the blanket away from him.
There, wrapped tightly around his body, were chains. The very same chains from his dream, the ones he'd faced the Keeper with and taken control off. The only difference was that these segments were thinner, intricately woven and wrapped far more extensively around him than they had appeared in his subconscious battle.
"Ooooh, I didn't know you were into that, hehehe," Alice purred, her voice dropping into a sultry whisper as she licked her lips. A strong shiver traced its way down John's spine. He knew with absolute certainty that he had to cut this particular fantasy off at the knees before Alice's wildly imaginative mind could cook up something truly outrageous.
"No, no, these are from my dream last night," John explained, his voice urgent, trying to inject as much seriousness as possible. "This time it was a rather large fight. Originally, these were meant to bind me, but I slowly converted them to my own using my energy while he was busy trying to convince me to accept a deal of giving over my body to him. He didn't exactly like it when I refused and he shocked me with these chains. But that just helped me understand the pathways and better gain control of them even if I'm not entirely sure how that happened but doing so erased any measure of control he had over them before turning things around and having a very big fight against his army using my own that where possibly spawned by my messed up mind and even then before he went down he cut off my arm! Honestly though, I am surprised they came over with me. I thought they would just be added to the rest of my chains, weapons and so on in my own psychotic little mental world of instability. Not that I'm complaining, though; chains can be rather useful, especially if I can use them here like I do in my dreams." He said rushing through the explanation, hoping to derail Alice's train of thought before it barrelled completely off the tracks into areas he wanted no part of.
He was met with a look of utter surprise, quickly followed by what appeared to be a genuine sense of betrayal. "How could you?!" Alice almost shrieked, her eyes welling up dramatically. "It sounds like it was a very busy and bloody fight! How could you do something like that without me? We're supposed to be partners! I'm supposed to be your super special friend! You promised I would be part of those and a proper real fight yet you did it without me!" She looked genuinely on the verge of tears now and John felt a familiar wave of confusion. He understood her thirst for battle and the thrill of violence but this had happened in his dreams. How was he supposed to anticipate a massive fight in his sleep? More importantly, how would he even bring her into his dreams? Was that even remotely possible? Perhaps if they possessed a way to cross dimensions, but the old man had made it clear the immense difficulty of doing such a thing abundantly clear. Or maybe someone could project her into his dreams while they both slept, but he doubted finding such an individual would be any easier than the first option. Unwilling to witness Alice's tears, John frantically searched for something, anything to say.
Luckily for him though he didn't have to as Greeny's voice cut through the burgeoning emotional chaos, providing the much-needed distraction he needed. "You, but how?" the small fairy demanded, having seemingly snapped out of her trance. She zipped right over to John's face, her tiny hands reaching out to practically grab his cheeks, her eyes trying to bore into his very soul. "Astral projection should be the limit for your kind! Yet it sounds like you somehow soul travel while keeping anchored here in your world. That could be why you were letting off soul waves. A fraction was left behind linking to your main soul and thus allowing you to return. Tell me, how long has this been happening? Who taught you this? Do you even know how dangerous what your doing is? It's not your apparent fight, though you mentioned it causing your current state. It seems you suffered soul strain from it– like with a muscle when you push it too hard and it spasms or becomes stiff afterwards, needing to have something done repeatedly before it becomes used to it and can slowly be trained to handle more strain. A soul can be the same. You somehow pushed yours too hard and it caused strain that you are now feeling. But even so, a fight in an astral realm should not have caused this level of strain. Tell me what you did!" The small fairy, despite her minute stature, tried desperately to appear imposing as she flew directly over his face and grabbed his cheeks, her voice sharp with a mix of scientific curiosity and genuine alarm.
A light whack to her head from Alice mercifully put an end to Greeny's interrogation as the fairy tumbled to the ground before glaring at her furiously. "Don't forget your place, Washboard," Alice said, her voice dripping with an overly sweet, almost menacing tone. "You're at our mercy, not the other way around! Honestly, unless you start explaining all this to us and what you know about it I may just decide you have more use as an experimental pixie stick than as our mascot." Greeny shivered, her eyes wide with fear, uncertain whether Alice was making a cruel joke or genuinely contemplating such a horrific fate for her. John however knew better. He had no doubt Alice would follow through with it.
"You didn't just project your soul somewhere, did you?" Greeny's voice held a note of disbelief as she stared closer at him, tinged with a grudging respect John couldn't quite decipher. "You've somehow established an anchor here, a tether for your soul to find its way back and sending everything else that makes you who and what you are elsewhere."
At their confused looks she tried to simplify it so they could truly understand. "Think of it like a stone thrown into a deep pond. Without a tether, it's lost to chance if you would ever find it again. But you, you've tied a string to your stone which allows you to pull it back, to always return it to your hand, its place of origin. It means you can send your soul anywhere and still come back." She told them, trying to make them understand how profound something like that was. "The perils however, are glaringly obvious. If the tether is cut or broken you could become lost, trapped or even gravely injured." She said, eyes wandering over to his arm. "Like what's clearly befallen you, there's even the biggest risk of all, total dissolution from your base reality."
Greeny then tried to elaborate on the nature of soul travel, enjoying that their focus was on her and puffing with pride as even Alice seemed to be listening intently and nodding along. "While exceptionally pure souls often navigate these paths with greater ease, they also become prized targets for darker entities. My teacher warned of their value as ingredients for truly vile rituals or to corrupt them for fun." She further explained that such interdimensional transit where typically the domain of highly spiritual beings, demanding extensive soul tempering or expert guidance to properly do. "Furthermore, even they must possess an inherent spiritual resilience, a unique property within their very being to withstand the increasing power their soul accumulates unconsciously from the various realms they enter. Even then, their souls are susceptible to corruption if the place they go is polluted making such random jumps and journeys far more arduous."
Her tone soon shifted, dripping with condescension. "Humans, with souls notorious for their corruption and defilement, lack the innate strength for such feats, even the purest among you hold those traits, your youth tends to be the most susceptible. Should a miracle somehow allow it though, you'd inevitably be swallowed by the myriad of dimensions and lost in them with no way or understand on how to get back if you're lucky and torn apart in a rift if your not!"
Her gaze narrowed on John, filled with a mix of frustration and disbelief. "I cannot fathom how you managed this, let alone how you pulled something back! Only the most formidable, high-level souls possess such power and typically they belong to the purest and most ancient bloodlines who reside in realms far better than this one. To them, humans like you are less than the dirt beneath their feet. So tell me," Her tone now taking on a somewhat pleading edge. "How did you, a human, manage to accomplish it?" Greeny explained and demanded with a growing sneer, showing she held a profound contempt for them or humans of a certain age in general. Whether it stemmed from jealousy or sheer frustration at the impossibility of John's feat, her distaste was palpable. Whatever the reason though neither John nor Alice appreciated it.
"So then," John interjected, his voice deceptively calm, "what exactly do you and your fellow fairies believe humans are good for if were so untalented for soul travel along with being so easily tainted and corrupted?" He seized upon Greeny's visible frustration and diminishing control, hoping to glean more insight into the fairy race, any information however unlikely to be immediately useful, could prove invaluable if he ever encountered others like her.
"Humans are cannon fodder, crude amusement for how easily you're all duped by stupidity or greed and your souls are excellent ingredients for bolstering our own soul po—" Greeny caught herself mid-sentence upon realizing she had, well being caught up in her contempt and self-importance that she had spoken to much, that it was a pair of humans she was currently at the mercy of. A panicked backtrack followed. "No, no, that's what most fairies think. I don't though! I know humans are capable of… many things? Even if you're all inherently lazy, stupid, greedy and utterly useless once you've grown past childhood." Her frantic attempt to extricate herself only plunged her deeper into the hole she'd dug.
Alice's earlier excitement had vanished at this point, replaced by a cold glare fixed firmly on the fairy. Her knife having been pulled and gripped firmly in one hand well her scythe was firmly in the other, her eyes burning with an unspoken thirst for retribution at the small fairies words.
John however was already moving. While feigning engagement in the conversation and knowing normal movement was still beyond him, he split his focus, half on Greeny's tirade well the other half on a familiar sensation, the same as what he had felt in the dream when he commanded the chains, slowly willing his energy to flow into the chains that still held him like he had in his dream. He meticulously recreated the sensation from his dreams, drawing energy from himself and channelling it into the metal bonds. He felt them respond to his mental commands, a strange, half-forgotten second nature now manifesting in the waking world.
As Alice remained fixated on the fairy who had lost herself in her panicked self-defense at this point, John subtly extended the chains, allowing them to coil and crisscross more tightly around his limbs well testing their new obedience. Greeny's words had indeed stirred a quiet fury within him but a swift end at Alice's hands felt far too merciful, she would need to have that attitude changed at the very least.
With his limbs now intricately wrapped in a lattice of chains that seemed to obey him John took a gamble. He had no idea if his plan would work, or if it would only exacerbate his still-recovering body but he felt he had to try something. Utilizing the chains as a crude exoskeleton, he willed them to brace and lift him from the bed. He was unsteady and it seemed like the chains bit into his skin but he managed to now stand now. With a swift, almost imperceptible flick of his wrist John managed to have a chain extend into his palm before flying out and wrapping snugly around Greeny's neck before coiling downwards around her body, binding her utterly and taking both Alice and the fairy by surprise who let out a stunned gasp.
"What the hell?! No! Let me go! You can't do this to me! I cannot be bound by a pathetic race like yours! Release me now! I refuse! I refuse!" Greeny shrieked, thrashing against her sudden captivity. But her strength failed her, causing her to collapse to her knees.
"If we're so contemptible," John started, his voice low, "why didn't you simply leave last night? Why persist in our presence if you find us so utterly detestable?" Alice, meanwhile seemed to care little for Greeny's answer. Her eyes, now sparkling with an almost childlike wonder as she circled John, utterly captivated by the seemingly self-moving chains. She even reached out with her scythe to gently poke a link as if to confirm it was real.
"Because of you fatty!" Greeny spat, her voice thick with venom as she glared at him. "You looked like a soft mark and an easy means to keep surviving till I can find someone stronger to latch onto! Play the poor innocent fairy who lost everything, just wanting to live free and you'd gobble it up like a feast. Tsk, I shouldn't have lost my composure at the sight of your potent soul energy or spoken so much. After you woke and explained things I resolved to cling to you even tighter, that way I'd just need to wait for the right chance to seize your soul and give myself a monumental boost and even consume your knowledge on how to soul travel." She hissed out at him.
"So what will you do now?" Greeny challenged, a sneer twisting her lips. "Kill me? No, you'd probably have the madwoman do your dirty work for you. I saw how you struggled last night; you're far too soft and weak to do the deed yourself, even with me chained like this and just needing you to tighten the chain you don't have the balls to do it." A condescending smile playing on her face with each word.
"Oh no," John replied, his voice slow, measured and dangerously cold. "Killing you would be far too good an end for you. And the way you speak of souls suggests that simply killing you would allow yours to escape, to dissipate somewhere, probably why you seemed to be egging on Alice, pretending to make slip ups in your words." Her eyes seemed to widen for a brief instant at that as she began to stutter. "No, for now you'll remain exactly as you are, chained to me and within reach. I'll keep you close and restrained until I decide precisely what to do with you. And I assure you; it won't be pleasant."
Alice felt a shiver trace down her spine at the icy resolve in John's tone, her eyes gleaming with an unreadable light as she watched him well licking her lips, enjoying this side of him and wondering what had happened to bring this side of him out. Greeny meanwhile, simply stared at him, her face a mask of frustrated terror.