Chapter 3: Quella's divine realm: Goddess of dreams
There was only darkness.
Drake's sight had been cut off, and he only had his thoughts to keep him company as unease sprouted in his mind.
Drake felt like he was falling, and vision formed in his mind.
His body sinking through a pool infinite darkness and his limbs flailing like a puppet with its string severed. The endless darkness surrounding him was only held back by a shell of dim grey light, vestiges of Morpheus's gift.
An inestimable amount of time passed in this void, and Drake mulled over the paths his life had taken him.
Drake was an orphan of sorts, his biological mother was an alcoholic and a junkie, his father, her dealer.
He had been 'conceived' after one of his mother's attempts to 'persuade' some 'free produce' out his so-called father, and so came about the boy called Drake.
Drake's early childhood was miserable, but because of it, he became independent out of simple necessity; otherwise, he probably would have already been dead.
Without the warmth of a caring mother and his supposed father having been arrested for attempted murder, he had to mature fast, or otherwise, he would have starved to death.
That was only if his mother didn't end up beating him there first. She was a cruel drunk, and Drake, as a child, had no way to defend himself from her attacks.
To get by, when his mother wasn't feeling charitable enough to feed him or if she had wasted all her cash on drugs and booze, he resorted to alternative means of surviving.
From the ages of three to seven, Drake would break into one of his neighbor's houses to steal food. As a small malnourished child, he was able to push himself through cat flaps, doggy doors, and the gaps of cracked-open windows.
He waited for opportune moments. When his mother was too buzzed out of her mind to recall, he existed coinciding with his neighbors driving off to work. Only then would he sneak off to steal food.
Initially, he went after inconspicuous stuff, old noodles, canned sardines, and the like, nothing that would be noticed missing, but over time, he got greedier, more daring, stealing enough to eat his fill.
He was eventually caught and no longer quite as malnourished he was found trying to force his way through a now slightly undersized doggy door.
The local bobby was called, chiefly as a scare tactic for young Drake, but when they went to look for his mother, they discovered her curled up on the couch in her own filth.
With a soot-blackened spoon on the table and a needle still injected into one of her scrawny arms, she didn't even protest when they took him away.
That was the last Drake, saw of his mother, without a goodbye, he was carted away by social services and fostered with an elderly couple.
At the time, he had been scared, fear of the unknown outweighing any joy at the prospects of living a better life, but by some miracle, he lucked out, hitting the jackpot on the roulette board of foster parents.
His new parents were called James and Rosie Mallory, and Drake took their second name as his own, after only a month of knowing them.
They were, without a doubt to Drake, the best, most caring, people he had ever know.
James was a retired army veteran, and Rosie, a nurse, both were passionate about their careers and had respectively used them to help as many people as they could possibly reach.
They cared much for Drake, Rosie giving him the motherly love he had missed out on before, and James teaching him how to be a man.
James had tried to act his part as the strict parent, but whenever Drake had got up to some mischief, as children often do, he couldn't help but crack a prideful cheeky grin, much to the dismay of Rosie.
Drake was a bit spoiled by the couple, and he grew up with all the games and manga he could ask for, but under their nurturing, Drake grew up to be a fine young man, and inspired by his parents, he decided to join the army.
They both influenced him in his decision, and he decided to become a combat medic with the royal medical corps, so he signed up when he came of age.
At sixteen years old, he attended fourteen weeks of combat training at the Sir John Moore Barracks, Winchester, followed by a further twenty-two weeks of education to be a medic.
Once trained, he served for two years in a non-combat zone, before reaching the age of eighteen and deploying to Mali, an active combat zone, to suppress the rise in islamic extremism in the region.
It was there that Drake made his most steadfast friends among the British, French soldiers, and the native troops he helped train.
After six years total at the age of twenty-two, advancing to the rank of major because of his outstanding service, he applied for termination.
His parents were already in their fifties when they adopted him, and time had taken its toll on their health. They had become regulars at their local hospital over the last two years, and Drake wanted to spend time with them while he could.
Drake spent a few months cooking cleaning and just generally taking care of them but, try as he might, no amount of his care could stop their passing.
They died on the same night, sleeping in each other's arms.
Their passing left Drake feeling empty inside, the world was bleaker, his life, less meaningful. He almost turned to alcohol, wanting to drink away the pain, before remembering the disgusting mess that was his biological mother.
Being unbound by commitments and wanting to burry the anguish in his heart, Drake decided to visit as many countries as he could. He had always wanted to travel, see all that was worth seeing, and there was no better time than the present to search for the world's beauty.
That was what had brought him to Greece, his first excursion into the wilds. While following along a hikers trail through the mountains, his GPS broke, he got lost, and by chance, stumbled upon a god, Morpheus.
"Huh, so I'm supposed to save the earth then?
Become someone powerful enough to assist a god?
Mom and dad always did say I was gonna be a hero,
save lives... Guess they really had no idea to what extent,"
Sighing internally, a sickly sense of unease, like he traversing to someplace forbidden and diseased, continued to grow, gnawing at his mind.
"I wonder where I will end up?" Drake asked himself.
"A world that had drifted into our dreams... maybe that's where fables come from, or even modern stories? Echoes from distant worlds,"
Drake's mind drifted off as he ruminated on the places he could end up, and eventually, the tender arms of sleep enveloped his conscience, sending him to a dream.
He dreamt of towering spired castles, of bubbling putrid darkness rising from the depths, of divine souls forged by powerful flames, and of the undead, sealed by a now cursed fire.
Primal fear built up in Drake, waking him, as he felt a malicious intent lock onto him, an unknown entity that had an aura of endless greed and savagery.
It seemed to claw at Drake, wanting to devour him, but something shifted, and the world around Drake changed. His ears popped from the change in pressure as materialized in a place that was utterly alien to him.
His sight returned, only for him to be blinded by a sharp, bright light. After a little while passed, his eyes adjusted, and he bore witness to a strange new world.
Drake stood on a small island, at its center, it held a colossal tree, its roots protruding out from the soft brown earth, before diving into the mirror-like blue water that circled the isle, forming a barrier-like ring of roots.
Each of the trees splendid leafy branches formed an individual iridescent dome that gleamed with a shimmering jade and cyan light, its bark was a vibrant and holy white, marred only by small streaks of black.
Coating the earth was latticed veiny blue moss that seemed to vibrate with powerful magic.
Drake taking in the sights, couldn't help but say aloud.
"How beautiful."
The tree hummed, the sound akin to the purr of a cat, and Drake heard a voice in his head.
"Thank you, unblemished one, for your words bequeath me considerable grace.
I am Quella, the goddess of dreams for this ghastly world ruled by endless cycles of dark and fire, chaos, and death...
If I may ask, who might you be? Human untainted by the Pygmy's darkness."
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