There is a lot about me you don't know -Tales of Arcadia ENG

3- Too Much

TRACK 3

Your secrets keep you sick, your lies keep you alive

Snake eyes every single time you roll with crooked dice

I felt the darkness as it tried to pull me down

The kind of dark that haunts a hundred year old house

I wrestle with my thoughts, I shook the hand of doubt

Running from my past, I'm praying feet don't fail me now

(The Drug in Me Is You -Falling in Reverse)

********

The rest of the night was heavy and slow for Douxie. There had been the division of guard shifts, but despite these, which authorized him to let fatigue grip him, he could not close his eyes. He had tried, but being surrounded by people prevented him from doing so. He felt alert even though he did not want to be. Unfortunately, the need to be defensive was die-hard, so much so that it seemed an insurmountable obstacle.

He had even tried to lie down, closing his eyes, but every single noise kept activating a side of his brain that he thought he had long since abandoned. All it took was a rustle, a light snore, someone's cadenced breathing, a swallow, and... And he could feel the danger building up and trapping his breath in his throat as his heartbeat proceeded at an abnormal pace. It too was making far too much noise.

Archie was silent against his belly. A solid, reassuring presence for him. The only one he wanted near while feeling so helpless. The only one who allowed him to let his guard down. Even so, even with his fingers running repeatedly through his fur gently, it still was not enough.

There was too much of everything . Really. The overstimulation running through him was devastating, so much so that it was unbearable.

Too many people he didn't know so well that he had grown accustomed to them in his living space -and their age, to his mind, was unimportant. It was not important, that these people would not hurt a fly if they could. It was a chance that had thrown them into battle. The Amulet had made his choice. If he had not chosen Jim Lake Junior, neither he, Toby, Claire, nor Steve would have been there at the moment.

Too much noise . It made his ears ring. He could have tried to cover it up with loud music, attaching headphones to his cell phone, but he feared missing something important. He feared not hearing a suspicious noise. Or the castle alarm bell. His mind didn't even suggest the possibility of putting on only one of the two headphones.

Too much oppression . Oppression that sent his mind spinning through a spiral of past images, none of them pleasant. Which then made him feel every millimeter of clothes on him and the choker tighten much more than the norm. They led him to remember fingers touching his bare back before aggressively planting the blade in his flesh, dragging it slowly. Just the sensation made his eyes burn, but he started pulling strands of his hair back and forth. He refused to fall into an emotional breakdown at any moment in a situation like that. It would have been pathetic, shameful, and inappropriate.

Too much need to get up and change the air before it began to seem poisonous in his lungs, making him feel as if he were dying. As if his internal organs were rapidly wearing out.

Everything was too much. A too much that was out of tune, that put his essence in such disarray that his magic was restless. He felt unstable, to say the least. Archibald was the main reason why his upper limbs had not yet begun to tremble intermittently, dragging other parts of his body along.

When it arrived, he felt the Jump in its entirety -maybe because of his exaggerated state of alertness- exactly after the four hours that Master Merlin had estimated, a fact witnessed on the screen of his phone.