“Pst, pst...Hey, Jill...Run away with me,” said Jack.

I blinked. It was late at night. I was sleeping in the little tent that I’d set up on the corner of the Marrow estate because my [Tale of the Soldier], my [Tale of the Hunter], and my [Tale of the Scholar] had apparently teamed up to take my behind to crazy town and I was starting to have nightmares again. Honestly, if my Wisdom stat wasn’t as high as it was, my mind might have just given up and quit. 

The [Tale of the Scholar] made my knowledge and awareness of the things I was experiencing more acute and in-depth. Then the [Tale of the Hunter] and my [Tale of the Soldier] tossed me into a series of millennia-long nightmare wars where frail mortals were forced to fight against titanic entities that were to them what entire nations of men were to individual ants. Creatures that were faintly familiar in outline, but so massive in scale that truly comprehending what they were was impossible. 

I watched hundreds of trained elites fight and die. Then I was one of those trained elites marching into the maelstrom as my ears bled and my nose bled, and a great urge to weep fell over me. There was singing, horrific singing, angelic singing. Demonic singing. A song that could wipe away nations like sand washed away by a tidal wave. Then I fought on the monsters’ side. 

I was the beings that stood so tall that their heads hit the stars. I was the singer and the song, and I was possessed by a profound feeling that I was having a dream within a dream. More dreams followed the first stacked dream, and the second, and the third. All of them layering into one another. All while the soles of my feet and the tips of my fingers itched. Eventually, inevitably, the itching would always stop, as the tiny rocks and pebbles that happened to be in my way, were pushed aside, while I sleepwalked my way to the promised land. 

I...I think I lost myself at some point. At some point, I forgot that I was human. Fortunately, that was the point where [Tale of the Empty Archivist’s Heir] would kick in and reel me back into myself. However, there would always be a punishment. A chastisement for losing myself in such a small and minor story. A painful refinement of my wisdom and will that I could sense was hurting me as much as it helped me. Crushing parts of my mind in its efforts to make the whole of my mind stronger.

 While I was propped on the knee of my future-self, and was getting metaphorically paddled, I looked down at the tale I’d just left and was awed to find that to whatever, whoever, I would one day be, that titanic tale of cosmic horror and impossible odds, was simplified into a tale sleepy toddlers kicking over anthill on the way to snack time. Or something along those lines. 

Then the refinement would be over, and I’d wake up confused and lost, and screaming. The last time I woke up this way, to my everlasting shame, I found that I’d pissed myself. Urinating in abject existential like some scared animal. In consideration of that, a part of my mind felt grateful. Grateful that I’d been awoken before the nightmares came again. 

Another part of my mind couldn’t help growling at the rest of my mind. Hating my weakness, and urging me to go out and hunt so I could up the multiplier for the growth of my wisdom stat, until I had a mind as sturdy as the mountains and as deep as the oceans. A mind that could neither be moved, nor broken. A mind immune to the torments that my Stories inflicted on it. 

*************************************************************************************************************

“Did you hear me? I asked you to run away with me? What do you say?” said Jack. 

I blinked fully awake now as I considered her question. 

“Why are we running away again?” 

“Because my stupid dad decided to sell me to the Ulysses clan, and Count Ulysses's fuck-upped, fuck-head, ultra-gross son. All so the guy can marry me…and use my yin-physique to boost his cultivation,” said Jack. A bitter smile crossed her face. Her eyes bleak. 

I looked at her again and saw that beneath her bravado lay fear the same abject fear as the kind I fled, each time I surfaced in the waking world. I understood her fear too. The Orsinos were a proper noble clan. Not a pseudo-noble clan like the Marrows. Thus one could trust that one had to be especially messed up and scandalous for news of the misdeeds of one of their number to have spread so far that even the likes of me had heard yet. Yet, Ciril Orsino, Count Ulysses Orsinos's favorite son, was exactly that kind of fucked up. The kind of monster parents tell their young daughters about, to try to kill any unrealistic dreams of being picked up by, or married off to, a noble clan.

Nothing could be proven, but it was well known that Ciril Orsino was a depraved creature. An immoral man who played with his victim's bodies and then threw them away after he was done playing with them. It was bad enough an issue that the Orsino clan, despite their lofty status, was forced to hire maids and cooks from far-off lands where their reputation had yet to be besmirched. That was the kind of man that Conrad Marrow married his daughter off to. 

It’d be one thing, if I could say that these rumors were mostly just rumors, but my truth-detection heard no lies, or untruths in what was being said. If anything the rumors were downplaying the awful goings-on in the Orsino household. As much as Count Ulysses loved and doted on his monster of a son, he didn’t dare make the boy his heir, for the simple reason that the boy was so dim-witted that he’d likely out himself, and for the sake of defending its honor, the empire, and its vassal nation, our Cornichon Kingdom, would have to send an army to execute their clan in the name of justice. That was just how many skeletons the Orsino household had in their cumulative closet. Enough that their status wouldn’t be able to protect them if the truth was ever outed. 

I’ve said it once, and I’d say it again, Jack really was an unlucky girl. Who’d have expected that her bid to win her father’s love, and her family’s respect would see her sent off to marry a deviant. Now I sighed and considered Jack’s question. I had a steady job, regular meals, decent pay, and when my nightmares didn’t force me into my tent on the outskirts of the estate, I had a bed with a roof over my head. 

Logically there was no reason to leave. However, my data-sampling and what I knew of the young woman in front of me, told me that if I let her go on her own, she’d either end up dead, or in chains, within a week. Or she’d come back in hellish, dark and fiery, glory having evolved into a malefic being on a scale that even I could barely predict. 

Beyond that, Jacqueline Marrow was my friend, my best friend and after all the help she'd given me, I felt a sense of obligation to her. I think she reminded me a little of the two sisters I’d lost, in a way. Thus after properly waking and re-considering for half a second more, I sat up, wiped the drool off my face, and mumbled,

“Sure...But let me pack some stuff first.”