Stranded Pixels of Us

How costly is Immortality?

"You know, I get them too. Those nightmares, the scary ones that keep haunting me…" She said plainly to Drake who was both surprised and happy that she somehow figured it out without him uttering a word.

    "So, what do you do?" Drake asked.

    "I survive. Some nights are just worse than the others. I try my best to take my mind off them and most times, I get stuck in a distraction." She replied.

    "A distraction?" Drake said softly as he remembered hearing that before.

    "I think that food has been patient enough, you might want to have it now" Alessia said as she chuckled lightly.

    Drake smiled and laughed slowly as he looked at her. She was gorgeous, brilliant and funny and here she was, right in front of him. Drake picked up a spoon of his salad and ate it slowly as he looked at her frequently.  

Back in the other world, Thaxis, the man who helped Prargrus escape the prison earlier stood in the delivery room beside Reikus who just had a child. He collected the baby without an iota of compassion or love within his dark and cold eyes. He then looked at Reikus in the eye and said, "See you after a thousand dusts" and he vanished. Reikus was speechless, the type that happens when fear motivates helplessness and all your organs seem to fail.

    "No, not my child. Please!" Reikus shouted as she woke up from this dreadful nightmare. She was lying down, with only her two eyes open and sweat spilling from her every pore like a broken pipe. She just kept mumbling these words to herself. 

    "Another one of those nightmares?" Hoder asked with a face of curiosity and concern. "That is what this place feeds on. It consumes us with our worst nightmares and memories we hate to keep" Hoder continued.

    "It was so real. Thaxis took my baby from me" Reikus said as she let out a few drops of tears.

    "At least your dream was honest about him being a traitor"

    Hoder continued talking to Reikus who was lost in her own thoughts. She remembered the war of Titanomachy which she and the other eleven survived alongside Zeus. She smiled as these memories flooded her mind. 

    "Ahhh! Victory is now our song" A soldier said, in the midst of the corpses and blood that seemed endless after the battle of Titanomachy.

    "At what cost?" replied Zeus with a deep voice that sounded like the earth was about to break open and a face that looked like rocks adorned with beautiful ornaments.

    The twelve who survived of their clan that came to support Zeus looked at the bodies with sorrow and despair.

    "They fought a good fight and this victor would never have been ours without their sacrifice" Zeus said in a calmer tone.

    The twelve alongside the other survivors who helped Zeus followed him to the fortress. When they got to the fortress, Zeus asked the twelve to come in and when they did, he offered them drinks in cups. They graciously declined the drinks considering the recent death of their comrades and Zeus turned to them and said, "That is no common wine I have offered you. It is what makes men gods and you have all proven yourselves worthy of it. Gold and riches would do no good in honouring the lives of your friends and people lost in battle, but your glory will make them proud."

    The twelve fixed their gaze on Zeus and turned their faces to each other as they drank whatever it was in the silver cups. It didn't taste like water or wine, or any liquid at all. It wasn't solid either, it was indescribable.

    Reikus snapped out of these memories as she turned her attention to Hoder in the other hole which she couldn't see. Hoder had been talking the whole time without noticing Reikus' absence.

    "He is a trusted associate of mine…" Hoder said to the currently attentive Reikus.

    "That word, "trust" is now very expensive and scarce too" Reikus cut him abruptly

    In a room that expressed class and pride with exquisite furniture and a light smell of lavender, a fairly old man, in his early sixties searched the shelf by the right side of the room looking for a book. He searched every corner quickly but quietly as he entered here secretly without the knowledge of the guards in the hallway.

    He was relentless in his search and he bent to the floor to check under Hoder's desk. He got up and still found nothing, he was already tired and sat down on the chair by the desk trying to think. He felt discomfort in his buttocks as he sat down and after a few seconds, he got up from the chair and turned back to look at the chair. He discovered an imperfect seam of loosened thread on the chair.