Chapter 96: True fear
Clack. Clack. Clack.
The sound of Ren’s boots on the hard surface was the loudest thing around. Ren had made it so far up the mountain that the air was extremely cold. Every breath let out a fog, and he could see the blacked-out clouds.
Soon, he arrived at a cleared-out terrain at the top of the mountain. This was where whatever was meant to be would be, but he did not see anything. Rather, he noticed that there were smaller floating rocks that led to a platform at the top.
He looked up and tried to count.
"I still have to get up there?" he muttered.
"You have to go through me first."
A deep, resonant voice came. It caused the air to tremble and the hairs on Ren’s body to stand. Ren turned and looked into the distance, and at the other end of the platform, fog gathered around and created a dragon.
Deep purple scales gleamed, and it was at least four times the size of his own dragon form. The dragon was curled up at the edge of the platform with its eyes fixed on Ren.
[Mirage - The Illusionist, Psychic ]
"I’m guessing that you are the final dragon Sereth spoke of."
"Ahhh, that mage never gave away my identity, haha. I guess that cannot be helped. She must believe you are worthy since you got past her," Mirage replied.
"I have a feeling that you don’t," Ren replied.
"No one is worthy to take the legacy of my master, not even you. But I must say, you are the best that has come this far, amongst all the many that I have seen."
’Hmm, so it’s safe to assume that I am not the first to this trial. That changes a lot of things in perspective.’
"I am sure that she told you I’ll show you your greatest fear."
"Yes, she did, and I’m hoping that since I know that, I can get through this easier."
"Hahahahahahaha."
His laugh thundered, the kind of laugh you heard when someone had heard the best type of comedy.
"If only it were that simple, a mere show of fear that you can overcome. But it is not. I will dig into your soul, and I will show you what even you would not expect.
I’ll make your mind believe it’s reality. I’ll cripple you where you stand. The greatest causes of suicide are anxiety and depression. Anxiety is merely a mutated form of fear, a fear that eats so deep that it becomes your reality.
You get stuck in a mental loop that eats at you daily, and the more you try to break free, the deeper you get, until one day, you snap like a dry twig under someone’s foot, and then you take your life."
His head shifted as he raised it to look down at Ren.
"Do not underestimate the power of fear, because it is the greatest power there is."
He opened his mouth slightly, and from it, purple gas flowed out, rushing out very fast and covering the entire platform.
Ren tried to cover his nose, hoping that it would somehow stop whatever was to come next, but that naive thought was nowhere near enough to stop it.
A few seconds after the fog spread, everything began to change. In that moment, Ren expected to see what he believed he feared the most, and that was living his life for someone the same way that he had done when he had still been on Earth and being unable to protect those he cared for as well.
What he saw broke his mind.
He was transported. The scene changed back to a place that was so long ago that he could not remember it properly. His childhood home, the place where he had been born and brought up.
A small kitchen where a man and a woman stood. The woman was putting on a dress and had a bag in her hands. She was screaming at the man, who was also yelling back.
Ren was hidden behind a counter in the body of a ten-year-old.
’This... this scene. It was the day Mum left.’
When the thought fully settled in his mind, he realized what this was, and panic set in.
"No, no, no, no," he began screaming so much that the boy behind the counter also began to yell it out, but the parents’ argument drowned out those screams.
"Your fear was never being controlled or being unable to save people."
Mirage’s voice came through to Ren right then.
"All those were a mutation of what you really fear and what you have tried your best to bury."
"Please stop, please," Ren cried out as he watched the scene. He watched as his mother finally shoved his father back. She gave one look behind the counter and met Ren’s gaze before she walked out the door and slammed it shut.
"Your fear is being left, being abandoned."
Those words triggered a fear in Ren that he had not felt ever since he was little, a fear that he never wanted to face and had forced himself to bury.
"You asked yourself if your mother ever loved you. She left you and did not bother to come back for you.
You learned to suppress that fear. She was an addict and had problems. You told yourself that as you grew, blaming her over and over again in your mind for what she had done, but in reality, you felt you had a role to play.
Maybe you were not a good enough son. Maybe you were not giving it your best, and you needed to become the best possible human to be able to be loved. So you did just that, hoping to keep your father as well.
But on the night of your fourteenth birthday, as you came home on that rainy night, expecting to see the man you changed yourself for...
You heard a sound.
BANG!