Waking up was never a right, but a luxury for a big part of his life. Illness and hunger undoubtedly made that clear. Upon joining the Sundai army, rising and seeing the sunset became an achievement.
Peteson was never an early riser, and the mere act of getting up was a headache, but wars make children learn to behave like men.
If you're big enough to be a threat, you're no longer a child.
And, curiously, even children can kill.
Much of his life is just a blur—a joke of life— but he remembers his last battle in the Koi mountains, against the men of Threta, and closing his eyes when the loss of blood caught up with him, surrounded by the bodies and entrails of enemies.
Threta enemies.
When you become a soldier, a man, you accept, at least subconsciously, the fact that you're going to die, sooner or later. You accept that information, so when you close your eyes expecting to be greeted by the golden gates, you don't expect to open them again.
The feeling of being alive to those who walk the earth is neither familiar nor possible to recognize, for they have never felt what it's like not to be alive. But Peteson died, so he can recognize that spark.
The first time he did was just as his consciousness was slipping away.
The feeling was strong, in its purest form, and it was intoxicating, to the point that while his consciousness was in a state far from sobriety, Peteson clung to it, being the only thing he had left in that eternal darkness.
He held on even when he couldn't feel his own body.
Even when the darkness was the only thing that seemed real.
Even when his memories felt like a dream. One of those dreams you don't remember when you wake up.
Even when his thoughts were his only company in the eternal passage of time.
Peteson clung on, and soon, even the notion of time was nothing more than a strange concept, and at that moment, doubt reached him.
Doubt and fear.
What was real, and what wasn't?
The doubt of the existential. His own existence.
To the point that Peteson fell to the bottom of weakness, questioning himself.
But even in those moments, Peteson didn't question that feeling, being the only thing that separated him from the thin line between sanity and madness.
"...'hink is… cor…"
But in one of those seconds that he couldn't distinguish between hours or entire days, Peteson felt something. Like that spark that surrounded him for the first time when his mind left his body and joined the eternal darkness, and the same spark that had kept him sane all this time, where time didn't move in the first place.
"...My wi'... leave…"
Peteson could feel something, like the waves of Sundai touching his feet when he was just a child, but slowly, those waves surrounded him completely, and he was no longer swimming, but drowning.
And as if he were a mere beggar, Peteson sought more of that feeling, trying to feel something. Anything. He could recognize it as painful, because he had felt pain and happiness, but Peteson didn't care, accepting the slap as if it were a hug.
"…not suicide, but a—times."
As if a veil were being lifted, Peteson began to feel the pain of his own body being pierced. The cold surrounded him, to the point that it began to burn him, his body, both strange and familiar, sensitive to such a feeling.
Such a feeling that was like a drug, coming and going in the darkness along with his consciousness. It was pathetic, but Peteson tried to hold on, as always, to the feeling of life, to life, even as he was drowning, swimming upward for the first time in a long time, with the simple notion of trying.
Trying to reach that feeling that burned him completely.
Clinging to life.
Clinging to his own body.
And, though Peteson always knew that waking up was never a right or something guaranteed to people, Peteson fought for it, as if it had been taken from him.
"Then don't do it!"
Everything was clearer, and in the distance, Peteson could hear sounds, which soon began to take on meaning in the disorder of his mind, transforming from sounds to words. For the first time, Peteson tried to listen and understand.
He was drowning, but he tried to swim.
Swim.
Swim.
Swim.
Swim.
Swim.
Swim.
Swim.
Swim.
Swim.
Swim.
"An honest sacrifice, and God will lend a helping hand."
But there was something holding him back, like giant chains, and although Peteson now had a body that suffered, he couldn't control it. The idea of opening his eyes was distant and stupid, his eyes being parts of his body that in the past obeyed him but were now completely separate objects.
Stuck together, yet apart from Peteson, along with his freedom.
Swim.
Swim.
Swim.
Swim.
Swim.
Swim.
Swim.
Swim.
Swim.
Swim.
But even though his body was surrounded by chains, they were long, and Peteson tried to keep moving away, and the cold became something distant, and the light began to emerge.
With desperate hands and soul, Peteson clawed his way out, and soon, along with his tactile sensitivity and hearing, he could smell metal and taste blood in his mouth.
Familiar.
The blood was familiar.
It always had been, in illness and in war, and Peteson swam toward it, embracing the blood like an old friend, and kept swimming. He kept going until the surface was not just a legend, but a possibility.
Surrounded by water that pressed on him on all sides, Peteson tried to scream, but his mouth wouldn't cooperate, and only muffled sounds came out, lost in the water.
"Your own adventures, and that…"
Everything started to become distant, and Peteson no longer tried, but fought to hold on to it.
To the living.
To the real.
To what was taken from him.
Peteson continued to scream until his throat was sore and hoarse, but he kept going, trying to be heard.
Not to be silenced.
"I'm not—!"
He screamed until his own ears memorised his voice, and the pain in his body continued, piercing every cell until the feeling of suffering wasn't just a dream in his mind, but a vivid experience in his memories.
The light grew brighter, blinding Peteson's untrained eyes, though no longer virgins to evil.
To cruelty.
"—Not going to!"
Peteson kept going until his body ached all over, but it was a feeling he could endure.
Not like the darkness.
Not like the uncertainty.
Not like loneliness.
"I'm not going to go back!"
Peteson emerged from the water, his breathing a chaotic mess and his head pounding, but he emerged.
Closing his eyes and opening them to adjust to the light, Peteson tried to stand upright, but his legs trembled as if he were a baby who had never used them before.
A chill ran through him, but it wasn't the same cold he had felt before; it was a gratifying one. A real one.
A sound from ahead, however, made him realise he wasn't alone.
Recognizing that there was someone else alive made the surroundings around the dirty blond begin to clear, taking on colour and shape.
A huge room, filled with treasures and sharp objects.
Peteson turned his gaze back to the other person in the room and found them already watching him, their green eyes tracking his every move.
A woman.
There was insecurity and doubt in those eyes, and everything still felt like a dream.
Peteson continued breathing, this time more calmly, and looked away, scratching his neck—a habit of his—while speaking with a still-hoarse voice, addressing the elephant in the room, "Excuse me, but... do you have any spare clothes?"
The woman, dressed in strange clothing, seemed to snap out of the trance she was in and realised that Peteson was without clothes, now looking him up and down. If Peteson didn't feel so disconnected from everything around him, he would have felt embarrassed.
If before there had been doubt and insecurity in those green eyes, now there was a dangerous edge in the other person's gaze, with a glint of a survivor.
The woman nodded and slowly walked to the other side, and Peteson just watched, noticing that she was holding something, like a weapon, and although she walked giving him her back, she kept Peteson in her peripheral vision at all times.
Like a lever, the sense of survival and the situation fell on Peteson's shoulders, and instinctively, his back straightened.
He should be dead.
But he wasn't.
He should be dead, but instead, he was in a strange place, with a strange person, and with nothing on him.
No clothes.
No weapons.
No information about the situation.
His mind quickly categorised the stranger as someone from Threta, and slowly, Peteson began to retreat.
Danger.
"What are you doing?"
For the first time, the stranger spoke, holding what seemed to be a long, silk shirt, trying to sound merely curious, but they both knew the answer.
"Eat shit, Thretian." Peteson spat, and without waiting for a response, he ran and grabbed one of the large paintings in the room, not measuring his strength and ending up bending it in the process, but it still worked. Peteson threw it at the stranger, who with the rectangular object, fired a light that completely evaporated the painting, leaving only flames in its wake, which began to spread, but both, the Thretian and Peteson, ignored it completely.
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Feel free to tell me if you are feeling this is getting too long, or tedious, of both.
I'm not an expert in writing fight scenes, so in the next chapter you will evaluate how bad I am at it. Hope not that bad.
That's all!