No escape from reality

This was it, Takeshi was officially dying. He was sure of it. Why else would he be bleeding from practically every opening in his body, and strange, glowing colors at that. The boy of course normally glowed a little, but this was taking it several steps too far. Purple fluid dribbled from his ears, seemingly permanently wetting his cheeks, while blue fluid flowed from his eyes, making him look as though he were constantly crying. A bright orange fluid came from his mouth, as if his spit had suddenly become horrendously toxic, and flowed down his lips, chin and chest, staining it the same neon color. He looked horrible, to be perfectly honest, and he felt pretty horrible, too.

The voices, which had plagued him before, only seemed to get worse. He should have been elated that he could speak...well kind of. They were more squeaks if anything at that point, babbles that warmed up his newly fixed vocal cords and made them stronger, preparing to take on actual words. He essentially sounded like a pup a few weeks old, trying to mimic their parents’ voices. He’d only been practicing when he was alone, deciding to wait until he felt he was up to par before revealing the new development to his family. Not that he didn’t want to run to them and scream it from the rooftops, but a part of him was also afraid of it being taken away. That the great Firefly God was playing a trick on him, that he’d given him a voice only to take it away, or have him die before he could even get to use it. It would truly be a trick of fate worthy of his pathetic life.

A testament to his disintegrating state of mind was, perhaps, that instead of running away from the pool in the Shrine that had started the whole mess, was that he was spending an increasing amount of time at it. He’d sit for hours on end, staring mindlessly into the neon purple pool, which now seemed to bubble and boil like some sort of cauldron. Words whispered to him from the depths, telling him secrets that may or may not have been true, filling his head with the possibility of great and terrible deeds. He could kill his siblings and become sole heir, it reasoned to him. But he didn’t even want to be heir in the first place. In his right state of mind he never craved power, he just wanted to make his family happy. He wanted to make them laugh with his silly antics, be proud when he entered the room, and a part of him felt like that was only possible if he had power.

The voices told him that he would never be anything worthy of being proud of. These thoughts sent him deep within himself, into recesses of his mind that he typically tried to avoid at all costs. They told him he was an abomination, an atrocity that would only cause trouble. After all, why else would he look like a being from hell? Sometimes, he would look at the small cluster of blue scales, courtesy of the Firefly God0, and think that maybe he’d wasted his powers on him. He didn’t deserve the wonder that came with a voice, nor the beauty of the glowing blue scales that rested on his body. The being had placed faith in him that was undeserved, no matter how it had told him he was worthy. He stared into the depths of the pool, toward the center where the bottom was unseen, and wondered what would happen if he swam out, dove down, and never came back up. Would it matter? Would they look for him? The voices whispered they wouldn’t, that it would be quick then he would be gone. He would cause no more trouble, have no more fear, it would be bliss.

The boy poked a paw in.

The water was frigid from the winter, shocking him out of his thoughts and he pulled back, scooting further from the edge with neon blue tears spilling from his glowing red gaze. What was happening to him? Why was it worse? Would it ever end? Takeshi laid there and sobbed, wondering how he even had any tears left from how often he’d been crying. The voices continued in his head, screaming at him, and for the first time in a while, he developed a migraine. It felt like it split his head in two, cleaving him straight down the middle, and he gasped in pain. His paws flexed, digging into the dirt beneath and pulling away clots as he tried to keep from crying out. The world was sent into a fuzzy haze, the pain blurring his vision and making his large form quake. He just wanted to pain to stop, he’d been through it so many times before and it never got easier. He’d thought the migraines had finished, but obviously he had been horribly wrong.

Takeshi knew his grandmother had herbs that would help reduce the pain some, but he was too weak and too scared to get up and make the trek all the way to her room in the palace. The walk seemed impossibly far away. Eventually, the pain forced bile up his throat. He threw up into the pool, the fluids a teeming mess of almost rainbow, neon colors, and he stared at it in abject horror. Had that been inside of him the entire time, writhing and churning? Was it a demon, or something far worse? Then, somehow, the pain began to ebb, as if he’d just spewed the very thing that was causing his agony. It couldn’t have been...right? He began to wonder if he’d been possessed by some dark entity who had just expelled itself in front of him. After all, in nature, the brighter the colors, the more dangerous the animal was, and he’d just thrown up a bright ass rainbow.