He traveled under the trees. Sometimes he would plod on waist-length rainwater. He would climb on roots, hoping, praying that his wooden box does not fall. When the rain does not fall he would walk on the foliage-covered terrain. Holding on to the strap of his box, and his other hand, smoking the rolled brown paper filled with herbs that smoke away the spirits. The world, or at least this world, had been filled with strays, newly made, but to the rest, it was already four hundred years since then. Men and women were primitive, nobles, they go on crusades, conquering lands, and harvesting as many perks as they could. Then they go back to their Emerald King, hoping, begging, that they would reward them.

The terrain was full of trees, roots, snakes, and giant protruding rocks that seem to sharpen like a rock. He had to cross bridges of vines and dodged flowers that released gasses. The walk through the forest was fun, in a way that any misstep would kill him. That a single purple-spotted leaf could murder him and with his stomach out of his body by the time he finished vomiting.

Then, Nolan found the opening which leads him to more trees. Trees dotted every corner and the mountains higher than it could ever be.

For the first time, in a while. Nolan sat on the edge of the cliff. The thoughts that should be present inside his head started to overflow - like a forceful fist that keeps hammering on the cover of the barrel. They keep on pounding that before he knew it. He was screaming while holding his head. His head sunk into the ground, forehead touching his face. There was something in his chest that he could not get out. He tried pouring out tears but he found out that nothing would come. It was like a dried dam. His chest tightened and there was nothing he could do other than try to breathe the pain out and let it passed. A bitter laugh escaped him. Then, he felt the rains fall onto him.

There it was. The painful feeling as if he could not escape. Memories that should not exist poured and he didn’t speak it out loud. When he spoke, time seems to warp, and he would feel like someone had banged his head. Silence, he needed silence, and only the sound of the rain wetting his face and hair. He spits out of the brown paper roll and sauntered to a tree where he could continue crying. He felt distraught as if he was screaming. The loss of something that kept all of it in chains. The foundations that held him crumbled and he didn’t know of all places would he break. He didn’t understand why he was acting like this. Only when the memories unknown to him flooded that he loses control of himself. No, it felt like something plucked a pinch of his soul and opened a dam worth of memories inside his head.

He dreamed of adventures. He dreamed of being abandoned over and over again. He dreamed of many deaths. Many times he was hung and left for dead, a woman looking at him with bland eyes. He dreamed of friends dying as they fight. Or when they found hope only for it that hope to be doused by cold water.

In the dream, there was a woman who had rejected him. Shamed him for armies to see and by the next day, they would leave him with broken lights, shouting at him saying that he had tried soiling their demigoddess and that he deserved to die. Then he was a slave to a Lord and the woman looked at him for half a minute before danging the pouch she earned in his face. He only cried while the Lord put him into the mines where he did not escape and died with a shiv plunged on the back of his head. Then, he was crucified and was then sold to beasts who fattened him up and would cut half of the fat he had grown to eat. The woman, whose red eyes, and cruel smile, who rejected his love, doing so horrible to him. For years, he spent chasing after this woman, and this woman shooed him away. Treated him like walking dung and sold him, simply because he was a creep who disgusted her.

“You follow me like a dog. You wag your tail and you don’t mind my boot on your face. You are worse than a slave, Salvatore. You know my scars, and yet you still come for me. You want me because you only lust for my body. You would sooner wrap a blanket to shield the scars on my face and have your way with my body. That is what you are. You are dung. A disgusting man who cannot give up. If you want whores then go down the street and have two or three. Do not bother me.”

Then he saw more memories of him failing and failing. He saw comrades and brothers to him falling because the woman abandoned him for a greater victory and he was forced to fight until the enemies caught him, tied him by a chariot, and dragged him across the sub-continent, while being kept alive through the use of the magic and was put in front of a King who skinned him in front of an audience while being called a flayed man. Then, he was paraded around an unknown street, his genital cut and turned into a necklace for him to wear. He saw the woman watch him from a distance. Still, with cold eyes as they threw rocks at him and made him walk coals for the amusement of the people. He recalled being nailed by the wrist on the cobbled gatehouse while men would pour flasks of healing potions on his wounds, preventing him from dying while unable to do with his body bound.

He did not know why. He did not know where these memories came from. All he knew was that he was afraid and he feared speaking out loud. At first, he did, but then he spoke, and the pain vanished.