The Seed of Khepri - Rough Draft Edition

Chapter 3 - The Dream

Sebastian found himself in a landscape of distinct colours and vague shapes.

All around himself, in every direction, were different shades of something that he couldn't quite identify. Each color had its own shape, its own identity, but they couldn't be identified through the constant fuzz that covered his vision. It was like wearing a pair of glasses, with a prescription that wasn't made to fit him. Casting a lack of definition onto everything that he looked towards, so that he could never truly understand his surroundings. Regardless of this, he couldn't help finding himself somewhat soothed by the experience. Although they were vibrant to an excess, enough that it hurt his eyes to focus on any one point, all of the greens, and purples, and oranges were the most pleasant renditions of the colours that he could possibly conceive of.

It was only when he began to move through the psychedelic environment that he felt as uncomfortable as he ought to have from the beginning. It was unnatural. Not just the way that the world warped around him, with the iridescent surroundings following his every step; changing their shades and shapes, yet never becoming more defined. But what was also bizarre was the feeling of his movements. As if his feet didn't touch the ground, and that he was simply floating through space. It was only once he finally had the idea to look down and check that he realized his intuition was right. Not because he was flying, but instead because he lacked feet. Or legs, or a body, or anything else for that matter. For all he could tell, he only served as a perspective in what was most certainly not reality.

In spite of all this - the visceral disorientation, the out of body experience, the impossibility of everything - it didn't take much effort for Sebastian to feel calm. Inexplicably, there was something familiar about this all. He wasn't sure what, or why, but he felt as if he had been here before. As if he was revisiting an old friend, whom had placed their life on hold in wait for him specifically. The feeling was just as odd as everything else right now, and that is why he didn't stop to question why he might feel the way he did. Unable to tell whether every pleasant pigment formed the horizon, or surrounded him much more closer. Not even when he found a break in them all, which he felt unusually close to, that was made up of a much less excitable shade.

It was some mix of a kind of orangey-brown. Like rust, though there was no way that he could extrapolate any more information that that. Even though it gave off a unique aura compared to everything else, it was also just a formless blob, and therefore wholly undefined in anything past a shade. Still, he moved in closer. Hovering strangely, in search of an answer or explanation to what was happening. He had no hand to reach out and touch the surface of the object, but still just being nearby and thinking about it implied an interaction. Prompting a response from the unknowable environment around him, as a glow of orange and red began to rise from the dark anomaly.

It started small at first, like highlights of an additional detail, though it took little time at all before those additional colours rose high over their source. Rolling like waves, moving without any input from Sebastian; lashing almost violently, with their shades being much less appealing and soothing as their brothers that surrounded him. There was an aggression to the warmness of their image, that he felt but didn't quite understand. He found himself frozen to the spot, even with no limbs to freeze up and keep him there, whilst the dancing orange and swaying red intermingled. Reaching a peak, where they settled for a while. Flickering up and down, in seemingly random movements, between this peak and lower valleys.

Then the man's senses were assaulted. His vision spontaneously encompassed by the colour he had instigated, and his hearing struck with the intense sound of an impossibly loud:

BANG!!

Sebastian jolted awake in a cold sweat. Sitting bolt up right in the chair he had fallen asleep in, breathing heavy and fast as his mind caught up with reality. No matter how many times he experienced it, the night terrors never got any easier to tolerate. Already now he was beginning to forget any memory of what had happened whilst he was lost in that dreamscape. Soon enough, he'd barely even recall that it had happened; leaving him with no way to prepare for the next, past the nagging of his subconscious that always tried to dissuade him from resting. The only real progress he had managed to make on the matter was that he now didn't scream by instinct whenever he woke up. Which was much to his benefit as, upon wiping his eyes, he realized he was now in the PD's office space.