Shades of the New World

Chapter 16: The dream

Evin would usually dream of himself wandering in some unknown place, mostly a ruined town or a dim forest. Lost and confused.

But this time, he dreamt of his old life.

Evin was born in a small, middle-class family and he was the third child with a sister and a brother above him. His family lived comfortably, as his parents worked in a very successful job at their time. He never had any needs, and he always found himself content and comfortable.

Loved by his parents and siblings, since he was the youngest, he grew with no worries. The amount of care and doting his parents showed him reached abnormal levels, but that, too, had a special reason. He had two younger twin sisters, but sadly they had contracted a terrible disease and passed away due to it.

His family was visiting some festival happening in the town, but they didn't realize something terrible was circulating around the neighborhood. A few of the community kids started vomiting during their visit, so everyone immediately went back to their houses. Evin was only four or so at the time, so he was still very childish and didn't know exactly what was happening. But he still noticed how everyone in the family became more and more restless.

He still played around with his elder siblings, but he could see that their minds were always somewhere else. Thinking. Worrying. Fearing.

A few days after, as Evin was walking around his home, he heard his mother crying outside the girls' room and he went to comfort her.

But as soon as she heard his voice, she screamed at the boy to get away, which made Evin flinch in fear and run away. He felt wronged and cried a lot afterwards. She never screamed at him like that before. And he just wanted to go comfort her.

He went to complain to his elder siblings, but they were nowhere to be found. He searched around the house for them, and he ended up in the girls' room door.

This was the only place he hadn't yet checked, and his mother, who was guarding the door, had also disappeared off to somewhere. Curiously, he entered the room. But he would regret that decision for his entire life, as the sight of his younger sisters were bare for him to see.

Lesions and rashes covered his little sisters' faces. Their faces looked fake, almost comic, like someone put makeover over one's pimples in a bad attempt to hide it. Some older lesions turned into indents or rashes, while others were leaking some yellowish fluid from it.

And these things covered every inch of their skin. Not a single part of their bodies were left untouched. Their limbs, chest and back, and the entirety of their faces looked like a badly done crocodile skin cutting ritual.

Most would recognize these as the symptoms of malignant-type smallpox. He later learned that only 5 percent of all accounted cases were malignant-type cases. But practically all of them result in death because of the excessively high fevers that occur because of it. Bad luck, the doctors would note.

Evin never saw such sights before and could only stare dumbly at the bodies of his sisters. Some part of him wanted to cry in a tantrum, but something inside him knew that the situation was too severe for him to cry about it.

His mother soon found him and rushed to take him out of the room.

She reprimanded her boy with a teary face, but soon started crying and whimpering that he was going to be okay, that he won't become like his sisters.

Soon his father came and took control of the situation.

They had to isolate him for quite a long time after that. His family would talk to him from behind a door, and they would take turns so the boy won't feel too lonely.

He remembered crying a lot during that time. Evin cried because he was alone, because he was sad for his sisters' deaths, but mostly because he didn't want to become like them too.

Only after three weeks, when they were a hundred percent sure that he was okay, they let him out.

Even after he was confirmed to be safe, he clearly remembered that some servants would look at him with wariness. Even his siblings didn't want to be with him for extended periods.

The incident became Evin's biggest trauma for most of his life, and he would often have nightmares about it.

In those nightmares, he would find himself in a pool of dark water, looking above. Expectantly. Fearfully. His sisters would soon descend from above and gaze at Evin indifferently. Evin would be happy at first, but soon his sisters' faces would turn from indifference to hatred and pain.

Their delicate skins would start forming lesions and pus rapidly. In a matter of seconds, such abrasions would cover their entire skin. Soon they would start popping and leaking fluid, as if his sisters were boiling from inside. Evin's sisters would inflate in ridiculous ways, almost like they were about to explode, but they never did. They would slowly... torturously melt down onto his face.

With the fluids falling on Evin's cheeks, the boy's fear of contracting the disease would flare up. He would imagine himself in a similar state, covered in abrasions. Leaking.

He would madly run away from his sisters, filled with fear and guilt. The fear urged him to faster, but the guilt ate at him from the inside.

But running through an endless pool of muddy water, he would soon find himself under his sister's dripping corpse.

The dripping would follow him until he woke up gasping for air and finding his bed soaked in a cold sweat. Silently, he would sit there, trying to calm himself. Hoping to forget. Even though he himself knew exactly how futile it was.

He soon started hallucinating. Just sitting outside in his family's fields, he heard the sounds of dripping water. Panic would fill his entire being, as he tried his best to ignore it. He never learned how to cope with it, since the sounds came so suddenly. During the worst times of the hallucination, he would feel a drop of liquid splash on his head. Startling him beyond belief. He would fearfully feel his head, afraid to find some kind of viscous liquid leaking to his face.

Even after Evin had died, turned into a spirit, then went into another World, these feelings resurfaced in his mind.

Again, Evin heard the muffled sounds of dripping water. Then a rising feeling of dread and panic. And then, the feeling of liquid splashing on his head.

Drip.

Drip.

Drip

Evin woke up from his dreams and found Arza drooling over his head.

'Fucker' he cursed.

Evin sighed and shoved Arza off himself. He found a towel and wiped the drool off his face. His hands were trembling and his gaze was quivering.

Those dreams of his sisters were his biggest fears when growing up. Perhaps it was a twisted attempt by his subconscious to force the child to face his traumas. But it was too much for the child to bear. He even developed a rare form of aquaphobia. While it wasn't a fear of water bodies in general, sounds of dripping and the sight of leaking fluid would instantly rile him up.

He overcame these fears in time, but it still gave him an irrational sense of discomfort.

'Fuck' he cursed again and tried his best to forget about the matter.

Since it was still bright in the room, he must've been passed out for only a few minutes. Perhaps half an hour at most.

To sooner forget about his fears, he forced himself to focus on the matter of the Heavy World again.

Arza was trying to catch Evin's attention in the background, but having not much success. Evin had begun to learn how to best ignore Arza's attempts at bullying. One had to show an insurmountable front, and not show any reactions. And when the child tested you out, by trying to punch you or grab at you, you had to do the same back to him, to show him that you're not to be messed with.

And since the kid was the source of his discomfort, Evin would not give him any face.

Thinking of it like that, it was a bit sad when one realized that Evin was a three centuries old man, but child opted to ignore this point completely and focused on the magical problem at hand.

'Two Tales told me I'm safe from the influence of the Worlds until I am 15 years old. This means that working with the Worlds should be much easier than before,'

Evin checked the Worlds one by one again and found his thoughts to be true. It also became much easier to exit and enter them. The Heavy World that almost pushed him to insanity before just by being inside, only made him feel slightly gloomy now.

He also spent a bit more time in the World of Time, to see if he could hear the laughter again.

The discomfort and fear that the World instilled in others was still there, so he hurriedly left that place after checking that there was no additional effect. He could swear that a gaze fell upon him after he entered the World, but the child obviously did not have any way to confirm his speculations.

He wondered if the special effect of the World was to instill fear in a person. Obviously, the concept of time is the most unknown to humanity. And the unknown is usually what creates most fear in people.

Evin hurriedly made himself forget the incident in the World of Time. He liked to think that he was quite proficient at conditioning himself to suit his needs and priorities.

And his current priority was to decide his future actions.

Fifteen years seemed like a lot of time, especially in this World with 400 days a year and 26 hours in a single day. But Evin knew very personally how time passed in the blink of an eye.

He needed to become mentally strong enough to resist the effects of the Worlds in the future. And for that, he definitely needed more strength and fortitude. He was also extremely lacking in the department of information.

He had a rough plan of studying under Aran and gradually accumulating wealth in his mind, but now he had to take a more active approach.

The first thing that came to his mind was the Cosmic Felines. Perhaps he could ask them to teach some of their magic and exchange it for some benefits.

But for that to work, he would need concrete information about the felines. He decided he should ask Aran everything the man knew about the Felines and evaluate their credibility. If Evin decided they were trustworthy, he would go with the plan. But if he found them too mysterious, or too unpredictable, he could only beg Aran to teach him early.

As he had very little cards to play, he only had these two choices at this point of time. He could also decide to practice alone and hope to achieve some sort of enlightenment, but he found that to be very unlikely.

But he couldn't slack on training, so he promptly entered the World of Thoughts and started training his imagination.

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