"WAKE UP!" Someone screamed as an explosion rang throughout the background.
Chase lifted his arm up, trying to rub his heavy eyelids.
Panic was beating against the edge of his chest. The sense of security had been completely abandoned, and yet Chase could still not convince his body too rise.
"What the hell is going on?" He muttered with a raspy voice.
"Chase! Come on kid! Now isn't the time..."
'Wait... That voice...' Chase's body rose instantly, and his eyes snapped open.
Above him were the burning image of a collapsing wooden structure. Beyond that was a very familiar night sky; however, the countless white speckles, followed by their empty backdrop of void-seemed to take on a distant, yet unforgotten memory.
'The stars seem more beautiful then I remember...' He thought, rubbing at his bleeding head as a figure curtained by embers shook his shoulders with urgency.
Chase's eyes lowered, forming a visual image of the figure behind the fire.
"Come on kid... We have to go, I promised your mom..."
Chase's eyebrow cocked, and his pupils dilated at the sight of the orange haired man with an unhealthy slim man-showing true fear in his fatherly sight.
"D-Dad?" He choked out, while wiping his eyes-unable to believe the scene before him.
"Kid, I don't wanna scare ya, but there are people here who want you..." He urged on, lifting Chase up by his shoulders.
"You didn't say that last time..." Chase groaned, backing away from Blaze with a newfound sense of clarity.
"What the hell are you talking about?" Blaze slammed the wooden door of their crumbling living room, causing the entire house to shake and tremble from his immense force.
Chase shook his head, grumbling and mumbling as he tried to snap himself awake. Which technically was still a possibility, since he had became lucid quite early in the dream itself.
However, when Chase tried to feel his catalyst...
"What?" He asked himself, in a voice of nothing but shocking confusion.
"Visions already?" Blaze asked, tilting his head with an annoying look of pity and regret on his face.
Chase backed away, leaning against the furthest wall that was still intact.
"How much do you know? I'm not from here... You- You are already dead..." Chase choked out again, trying to ignore the lump in his throat.
Blaze only nodded, lowering himself to a knee and leaning against the pole of his topaz battle axe that was far too large for a man like him to be carrying.
"Y-You believe me?" Chase asked with a gasp of gnawing fear.
"Course, kid..." He paused, probably wondering if what he was going to say is worth the risk of letting Chase know too much.
He smiled. "Kid if this is the scariest thing you have experienced... You aint seen shit!" He laughed, and smacked his hand against his battle axe. Even though Chase had seen the outcome of this event, even though he knew this man was dead...
Seeing him laugh and smile like just some joyous adventurer... Chase had never gotten to truly know his father...
Blaze paused, tilting his head with a snarky grin.
"What? Unfamiliar? Don't answer that. You probably have already seen what happens, so I'm not gonna bother. I've played out my last days countless times within my dreams and nightmares alike. Yet, never have I seen a version where you are lucid... Quite strange ya know?"
"Yeah, I guess..." Chase replied, collapsing next to the wall.
"This corruption shit did get me pretty good... I coulda taken both Sazir and Rhysie easily if this fight took place ten years ago..." He chuckled to himself, then slamming a fist in his chest and continuing on about how he would have steamrolled his old friends. However, Chase had not let the first sentence go.
"Stop." Chase demanded.
"Shit." Blaze's expression diminished, and his eyes quickly showed the immediate regret in his mind.
Chase scowled. "I was told that contact with a goddess is what got you killed..."
"Not just any goddess. Your mother was a Primordial... But nah, that aint what killed me, although it does play a part in my current predicament. What is really killing me... I don't think I should tell you much about it, but it's called corruption, kinda destroyed most of my organs, but that sneaky relevance poison or whatever the hell the mages call it-wasn't anything."
He explained, shrugging it off like a monthly cold.
"How do I cure it?" Chase asked with urgency in his tone, afraid of the dream ending in that exact moment.
Blaze's eyes flickered, and his mouth twitched.
"Cure it?"
"Yes, I- I get- later on get into a big fight with this Rider guy, and kinda sorta get exposed to quite a bit of corruption..."
Blaze's left body seemed to go numb, as his form swiftly drooped into a hunch. He lifted his left hand and rubbed his eye, as he had now wore a look of dread.
"You can't, at least. I don't know of any, but if you have it that must mean..." Blaze's facial expressions shifted to sadness only for a split second, but Chase was able to catch on, looking back at all of the moments in his life, but still not understanding what meaning there was to this revelation.
"I'm sure you will meet someone who knows how to cure it. After all; Human evolution can be incredible, so there will probably be a healer who knows a spell that vanquishes concepts of void, but I would not worry about that. You are strong, far stronger than I have ever been. And you will surpass that of your mother as well. So you may end up reaching an unbelievable peak that simply erases the concept of weakness itself." He continued, and Chase listened intently.
Not because he cared of the pointless rambling of his father, but because this could be the last time that he gets too see his father.
Chase grew impatient as the dream continued.
It kept going, and kept going.
And Chase replayed scenes that he did not have the interest of repeating. However, this time...
He seen the battle that killed his father.
He watched from the top of a tree within The Dark Forest as his father was killed.
He waited and watched for quite a while, burning the image of his father's resting place in the back of his mind.
But the dream kept going and going and going. Until his suspicion had been proved.
Until the emptiness where his catalyst should have been started to grow with young and eerily familiar energy.
It was not a dream at all...