My Journey with the Demon King

19 - The Second Dream

My dreams were memories of Zane from Before, when he was in something called 'High School'. I followed the memories of his life as he went to school and lived a life that he found mind-numbingly boring. I watched him come home to a mother who treated him worse than my own mother had treated me. But, different from what I had done, he actually fought against her. I had merely submitted, doing what was expected and asked of me, since it was all I had known. That was the type of world I lived in.

Zane was different though. He was a fighter, a rebel. One of the things he hated most was having another person try and tell him how to live his life, to control him, to tell him how he should think. When he wasn't fighting with his mother, he was trying to form some sort of relationship with his father. But the man was rarely ever home, so what good influence he might have been able to have didn't stick very well or happen too often.

Through it all, Zane's mind could only see the whole world through an angry, annoyed, bitter filter. The world was filled with shit: shitty people, shitty ideas, and shitty beliefs. He couldn't understand why people did what they did. Getting up everyday, to see people they really didn't want to see, pretending to care for them, going to work, doing something they hated to do. Dealing with other shitty people as they took out their anger and bitterness on others. Working to the bone, only to never receive any sort of recognition from it. Coming home to a family that was just as bad as the rest of the world, who didn't actually care about anyone or anything but theirselves. And then it would all repeat.

Slowly, he was hating the world more and more. What right did humans even have to exist? What right did they have to keep spreading, like a disease on the world? What right did he have to exist? Everywhere he looked, he could find no one else like him. No one else who saw the world the way he did, felt as he did. Did that make him better than the rest of the human race? Did that make him worse? Or, was he somehow something that was neither worse or better, and therefore, not even worth the attention of the world?

Perhaps he was just lonely. Perhaps he should try to 'get into a relationship', as his dad told him. Maybe, if he did...Maybe if he found someone to love him and to love back, life wouldn't be as it was to him.

No matter how he tried though, he couldn't find anyone to love him. He couldn't find anyone he felt like was worth his love, his time, his care. His father, he cared about, loved even, to a degree. But everyone else? All the women he tried to date, all the women he saw around him...They were all the same, every single one of them. No matter how hard he tried to force himself, he couldn't care about any of them.

All of this, my own mind knew, was one of the reasons he didn't want kids. Besides the fact that he hated kids. Mostly, he didn't want to bring another being into the world, only to have them turn out like himself. Or worse, to turn out like the rest of the world.

Thinking this, I felt something in my dream begin to shift.

Suddenly, I was no longer dreaming, not as before. I was inside the darkness of another's mind.

"...Ashna?" A very familiar voice asked aloud, incredibly soft.

Shock ran through me. How can this be? I thought, panicking. Isn't the ring suppose to keep my magic in check?!

"Ashna," he repeated, a little more firm. "It is you, isn't it?"

After three more seconds, I sighed. Yes, it's me, Zane.

He fell to his knees. Worried, I allowed myself to connect to his eyes, seeing what was around him. I was surprised to find the very familiar sight of trees. It appeared he was walking through a forest. Startled, I stayed quiet.