Chương 41: ALTERNATE NAVI?‽‽..

***In the Inner Outskirts of Continent Eclipse of the Ocean..

***Clingford's Martial Academy's Male Dormitory..

***Navi's Dorm-room..

For Navi, today's martial lessons has been over an hour ago.

After a very cold shower and a change of robes, Navi finds himself in his dorm-room.

He is lying down on his top bunk and looking towards the ceiling with a deep daze.

The *Patter..Patter* sounds of the pouring rain outside shows that the rain has no plans of stopping anytime soon and the chill of the night provokes a kind of sleepiness that Navi doesn't trust that he can control.

He does not dare slip into his half-asleep half-awake state as he fears that he might break the thin balance and slip into the dream world. Because of this reason, time slowly ticks by whlie Navi's orange iris remains pointed towards the celling.

His eyes moisten up from sleepiness as the minutes slipped by with the pouring rain still ongoing with a stable intensity.

Soon an hour passes by with Navi's lids half-closed as his body and mind begs for much required rest yet the rain remains as furious as ever.

Two hours passes by and Navi is slowly dosing despite his best efforts to stop himself.

He should stop, he shouldn't be lying down in this tired state,.. he might fall asleep soon if this continues.

Red alarms are ringing in Navi's head but he cannot stop himself from slowly slipping further into the familiar yet unfamiliar embrace of sleep.. or rather, he cannot even find the willpower to stop himself.

Lack of sleep really has taken a toll on his mind.

The third hour rolls by and Navi's breath is now even with his eyes completely closed as his mind settles from all conscious thoughts.

He has failed to fight it.

Navi falls asleep and now.. He would have to pay the price of resting!.

With a tense hitch, Navi's breaths soon gets sharp and heavy. His fingers dig strongly into his blankets, his chest heaves up and down in agony as cold sweat bonds Navi's silky fabric to his skin.

Navi's mind begins the experience of a very familiar type of hallucination as well as the extreme pains that comes with it.

*In Navi's subconsciousness..

Tonight.. as usual, Navi is viewing everything from a third person's perspective though the location of things is very much different.

He is currently lying in a place filled with unfamiliar 'snow' that seems to stretch endlessly.

Although Navi has read about it, snow does not pour in the Outskirts so everything about his dreams seems directed to break his mind and make him lose his grip on reality.

Or atleast that's how deeply his trauma runs.

One blurry scene flashes through Navi's vision then another with each scene carrying with it whispers of emotions. Each one more intense than the last..

The emotions each scene carries is one Navi cannot understand.

Happiness, Sadness, Joy, Pain, Heartbreak, Emptiness, Rage, Love, Hate, Passion and so much more!..

Navi cannot handle it!. No one can.

It is all too much for him and the familiar yet unfamiliar overlapping voices in the background are not making it any better.

'You Could Have Saved Them!..

'Why do you always have to play the hero?.. um!. Look at me when..

'Why do you always have to be the bad guy?. Do you know how badly they wanted to be saved by..

'You are a failure, a stain to the legacy!..

'I love you!..

'Why don't you just disappear?!!!!!!..

'I'm proud of the monster you've become, The monster the world have created. The world always creates monsters but you are different..

'When you look at the mirror, what do you see?.. Because when I look at you all I see is..

Navi does not have a physical body in his dreams but still, he falls to his knees while holding on to his hair in ultimate agony.

He cannot take it, not a second longer!.

"STOP IT!!!.", Navi yells loudly in his dream with desperation in his voice.

"PLEASE?!,.. PLEASE STOP.", Navi pleads this time with his voice completely shaky.

In reality, Navi's body is currently caught in an extreme shiver with his muscles toned-up as blood begins to leak from his eyes and nose.

The subtle sounds of his agony is completely covered up by the sounds of the pouring rain thus preventing his sleeping room-mates from hearing as Navi turns in his sheets.

*RUMBLE₹!*, A flash of lightning shines through the window while showing Navi's terrible state as once more, he suffers silently in his sheets.

"MAKE IT STOP!!. PLEASE!!.. I CAN'T TAKE IT!!!..", Navi screams and begs for anything and anyone but the pain only gets worse with the mental torture of emotions getting more and more intense.

Over an hour passes in reality and soon, Navi can only try to breath as he no longer has the will nor strenght to fight against the pains or emotions that slowly overwelm and become one with him.

Finally, a specific scene amongst the thousands of blurry ones slowly became clearer.

The pain does not stop or reduce in the slightest but the slowly clearing scene cacthes Navi's broken attention with the sounds from the scene slowly getting louder while pushing all other sounds to the background.

Footsteps echoes over tiled floors with the sounds of dripping water in the background as Navi looks at himself or rather a young boy who feels like himself.

The younget boy is no more then ten years old and he is currently meditating in a wide room of absolute darkness though with his back turned towards Navi's point of view.

There is a blood covers claymore sword laying on the floor by the boy's side and his martial robes are in shades of midnight black.

These robes are in a colour that's barely outlined in the cold darkness of the room. Navi is not one to feel much fear at anything though something about the darkness in the room makes Navi uncomfortable but the younger boy keeps on with his meditation without so much as flinching.

The younger boy does not even seem like he is breathing.

*STEP¡*..

The sounds of approaching footsteps gets louder and closer though the boy(Seemingly Young Navi) does not as much as twich a nerve as he keeps up his icy lotus posture.

Somehow, Navi began to feel what the younger boy is feeling at that moment the footsteps approaches him.

Dread, hatred, anger and an underlying layer of care that the younger one absolutely despises!.

Despite the turbulence of emotions running through the child, the child's mind remains calm. It is almost as if the kid's emotions are distant and completely detached from his body and instincts.

Soon, the footsteps in the darkness stops and standing just a few feet away from the meditating boy is the outline of a woman. A tense silence remains for a while and then a cold female voice speaks out.

"Turn on the lights.", A tough femine voice orders coldly.

*PîM¡*..

*PîM¡*.

Massive lighting slates(Lamps) attached to the room's ceiling immediately bursts out with blinding white light.

In an instant after the woman's order, the dark state of the room gets illuminated.

The white light's shine is so sudden and bright that Navi feels visual pain even though he does not have a body yet still, the young kid that oddly feels like a younger version of himself does not at all flinch despite his open eyes.

The child's pupils does not even constrict as they calmly reflect the image of a tall and cold looking woman who's standing less than five feet away from him.

The tall woman is also looking down at the child calmly.

This woman whom Navi is currently seeing can be said to be dressed in such a way that Navi has never seen before. Infact, everything about the style of the current environment is in a way he've never seen before.

The room is in the form of a simple massive square while coated entirely in sets of plain square white tiles even to the roof.

Due to the monotonous tiling, if empty.. the room would probably look like an ocean of white with the only exceptions being the massive slates of lightings(lamps) on the roof.

As for the tall woman, she is wearing a red one-piece office dress that looks especially sharp while considering the aura around her figure.

A pair of red shoes accompanies her dress and although they are completely unfamiliar to him, Navi somehow recognises the shoes to be a pair of high-heels.

"Wow, look at the state of this room(Japanese).", The talk woman says coldly in slight approval with her gaze scanning over the white room's present condition.

She is speaking in a language Navi is completely unfamiliar with(Japanese) but yet, Navi can somehow understand every word.

Just as the woman's calm gaze roams around the room, Navi's point of view follows but what seizes him isn't astonishment or confusion but rather shock!.

Bodies!.

Dead bodies and chopped bodies.

Blood!. Dried blood, dark blood and flowing blood.

Limbs!. Hands, legs and even heads!.

This room is not a white room, it is a monster's slaughter-house and.. and the only likely person that has carried out such an inhumane slaughter is..

HIM!.

No.. no. Rather it is the little boy sitting calmly at the centre of the bloody massacre with a cold look in his eeriely calm eyes!.