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// I can see 
// Story: Deer Me: Black Snow 
// by The Psychopath 
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"Ow, my head." Stelimus strained himself onto his haunches. His head pounded something fierce. Looking around, he noticed that he was still in the hut. Without the sunlight coming through the clouds, he was incapable of knowing how long he had been out.

"I knocked you out," Grimliss said.

"Huh?" The young prince turned around to see his uncle.

"I knocked you out. You were going crazy so this was the best way to let your brain and soul assimilate everything." The god-king lied down in front of his nephew and huffed. He didn't seem to be as jolly as he was earlier. "Speaking of souls, yours is rather...peculiar."

Stelimus started to sweat and his eyes were darting in all directions. "What? What are you talking about?"

"I suppose your 'teachers', Grimliss gestured quotation fingers. "told you about reincarnation or rebirth."

"Something. I was too confused and scared to understand and am, quite frankly, still confused."

"Well, when a soul is reborn, it takes the shape of its new body during the first few months that the baby is alive. You see, souls have no form. They take whatever form the body has."

"Like putty or memory foam?"

"Uhhh...maybe like clay? I don't know what memory foam is."

"Dear God. The horror. In what hellscape have I fallen into to not have mattresses with memory foam."

"Anyways, that comes to my previous point. A diamond dog that chooses to be reborn as a pony still has a diamond dog soul and vice versa, but you...your soul is still the same as that of some type of ape."

"..."

"A soul cannot lie, Stelimus." Grimliss started to glare at his nephew and the air around them started to feel stuffy and heavy.

"I...Are you going to kill me?"

"What? Why would I do that?"

"Be...Because I'm not from this world?"

"So you ARE someone who retained memories of their past life! That's amazing. No one has that happen to them."

"Well, this feels very...anticlimactic. So?"

"Or...your original body is not dead yet your soul somehow left it and inherited a new body."

"What?"

"What I just mentioned is not uncommon. You see, some people, when they dream, actually end up in other realities. Whether you acknowledge this or not is not important. However--"

"Most people who dream don't realize it and have 'memories' of that world?"

"Exactly. Sometimes, the beings of that world will remind the dreamer that they had met in the past and what had happened, and that person will suddenly not only remember that but also remember their real life."

"So, it's like lucid dreaming?"

"Yes!" Grimliss cheered. "The problem with this is the soul itself. It will not remember without proper spiritual and mental training...or simply being dead, like me. If you're dead, you're always your soul, buuuuuut you don't really sleep, making that fact moot."

"So what does any of that mean to me?"

Grimliss looked at his nephew and poked him in the chest with a hoof then smiled. "It means that you're a case even rarer than a reborn soul with retained memories. You're a creature who transcended realities and entered our own, but your soul was pulled in by a new body, hence, you became Stelimus Anglacite."

"Wait, so I lost my old body?"

"No no no!" Grimliss assured. "This is your chance to live a new life and bring these experiences back to your body when you awake. Why, this even explains your bizarre amounts knowledge and ability to manipulate those around you as well as how you survived and tricked your sister when you were just born. Heck, that even explains why your body developed even faster than normal."

"My aged soul manipulated the growth of my body?"

"Yes! Your past experiences imposed themselves on your new body, making it think it could already do all those things, but your brain probably thought your body was 'atrophied', so all the magic that was in your body at your birth was directed towards accelerating muscle growth and bone density."

Stelimus' eyes widened briefly. "Wow. That's...something."

"This doesn't mean you're not still my nephew!" Grimliss hugged the young stag and horrified him.

"Don't put me so close to your bones!" Stelimus pushed himself away.

"Ugh. The living. So whiny. 'Oh, a skeleton'. 'Oh, a rotting corpse!', 'Oh! The body of my grandmother dead for two weeks on the couch'."

"Uhhhh...that last one,"

"Stop whining."

Stelimus obliged, allowing his mind to settle and his memory to return. "Speaking of my sister, she wasn't too hard to escape. She was quite predictable, really. 'Cliché', as one would put it."

"...I take it 'cliché' is a bad thing?"

"Quite often, actually."

"Say, if my soul was 'reborn' here and this experience is similar to a dream, would that mean that someone called me here or something like that?"

Grimliss laughed. "What, you think you're 'The Chosen One' or something?" Stelimus said nothing. "Of course not! It's simply an extremely rare occurrence, but other creatures have had this happen to them. You're not the unique case. The only difference, as I've mentioned several times before, is that you retained all your memories."

"Huh."

"Now, why don't you eat? There are several cooks in my realm that haven't been able to cook for a pony in many, many centuries. You'll get meals from several centuries ago using recipes that no one knows anymore."

"Many centuries? What about Mix-Up?"

"Hm? he doesn't live here. He lives in one of very few towns that I've let settle near the swamps. He's probably deciding for a new shape and color for my sky."

Stelimus gulped."Oh no. I bet it's going to be worms or some horror like that." A brief thud knocked Stelimus out of his thoughts. There were quite a huge amount of dishes finely decorated with many plants, some edible. There were even meat dishes. "I thought deer didn't eat meat."

"Not normally, but all herbivores are opportunistic predators...well, maybe not all."

"What's an opportunistic predator?" 

"Basically, when a herbivore sees the opportunity to eat  an animal, it eats an animal."

"..."

"Yes. I still find that gross and many of my subjects waltz around in rotting corpses."

The young prince hesitated to eat, as something else gnawed at him. "How long did you know?"

"About your soul? When you first escaped your sister."

"That quickly?!"

"You thought I figured it out later when you got older, didn't you?"

Stelimus tapped the ground. "Well..."

"Ha. Like I said, I've encountered your kind before, and I SEE souls." Grimliss readjusted himself on his spot. "This is how I'm where I am."

"That's true. How did you become like that."

"The god-king looked down briefly and his smile faded...literally. "That's a tale I'll tell you when you leave here to meet your aunt and learn from her."

"But I hate her."

"Trust me, we all hate here. I'm not into narcissistic brats."

"I just didn't want to tell anyone because I thought they would kill me if I broke my dream."

"Hm. You don't need to worry about that. You have many friends and family members who love you and I certainly won't let you die before you're supposed to." Grimliss smiled widely at his nephew.

"Even with good intentions he looks terrifying."

The next day, Stelimus was back to facing the giant deer creature and learning from it. It hadn't taught him anything new, but he learned how to focus and take strength from his own soul and mind. These teachings continued throughout the weeks Stelimus stayed in the swamps, and he was getting pretty used to it.

"You see, the mind and soul are essential to functioning together. The body cannot call upon the soul. Only the mind can. With a strong mind, you can become the most powerful when it comes to channeling spiritual essence," the giant said.

"Does that mean I can phase into the spirit world with my thoughts?"

"Yes. You can do that and see the spirits around you. Go ahead, try it out. Use what we've taught you."

Stelimus stomped the ground with is hooves and started to concentrate. He heard a loud vibration, signaling him to open his eyes. Everyone was there, like he had seen before. Many creatures and many different people all walking around or floating. It was amazing, really."

"Remember, Stelimus, some of the creatures are from long crumbled civilizations. Be careful around them."

That was something Grimliss told his nephew, and it was something he was going to retain in memory or his time there. He just hoped nothing 'special', like discovering a cursed soul would happen. He really wasn't in the mood to encounter something like that and hoped his uncle had proper control over the swamps he governed.