Spike Quits His Job and Goes on Numerous Quests

by B_25

29 – "Stuck In Time"

~29~

“Stuck In Time”

The wonderful sensation of warmth wrapped itself around the dragon’s body, swirling deeper in-between the cracks of his scales to envelop his spirit. In the distance, church bells began to chime together in a soft melody, relieving his resistance to the warmth.

Above, where rays of light began to shoot forth, column-words sprawled around the sphere of light. And from everywhere and nowhere, angels began to sing.

‘Sail on~
Our little one~
To the port you wish to reach.’

‘Where at the docks~
You are never mocked~
For how you acted while at sea~’

‘Go home~
With a lot of fish!
For that’s what they seek~’

Spike floated at the center of the sphere, eyes squinting at the blurry words that refused to become unfuzzy. The words themselves began to slow down in their pace at his awakening, coming to an eventual halt, before twisting around and becoming a black line to the dragon.

Endorphins began to course through the dragon’s mind, rendering him unable to consider that the aligning words directed toward him could be a possible threat. He instead indulged in the lightness of his limbs and being surrounded by light after so long a period of blackness.

The paper-thin words began to vibrate in the space they occupied, before slicing through the rays of light as they shot forth inside the dragon. His body spasmed every time a word was absorbed into his body, slowly building the way for a new being to blossom inside his subconscious.

“Ahh.” The words now spiraling around the depths of the dragon’s subconscious began to grow together into a voice. “Now this is what I call vast! No more jumbled blurs or distorted voice hampering the flow that is your conscious mind.”

The light of the sphere intensified, numbing the dragon’s eyes until they blurred away into an inky whiteness. The thin air that had been so easy to drink in for the drake became thick like the breeze of the sea, while the whiteness subsided.

Spike’s feet pivot around the logs after he had phased through the Count’s embrace, coming to peer over the edge of the raft at the boundless orange sea below. Swinging his arms around like propellers, he used the momentum to step back on the raft to see in the distance a line of white cutting into existence.

“Now isn’t that a beautiful sight?” a voice asked from everything and nowhere, causing Spike to twirl around so his eyes could dance everywhere. “Steady your eyes on the final destination of your voyage. Leave this place you know not of but are bound to, and display your indifference to the place you call home.”

Spike swung back around to the whiteness that had cut itself into existence, creating a gaping rift that expanded by the second. Small electric currents coursed within the rift that drew the raft at an even quicker speed.

The purple dragon croaked as he was thrown back, being saved only by his claw grasping at the beam of the raft to steady himself. Electric clouds began to flow out from the rift that disrupted the orange currents, creating waves that rocked the raft.

“Fear not of the sea, for it will stir a storm inside your mind!” The Count’s familiar voice began to emerge in the back of the dragon’s head. “Sail onward to the rift that will take you home, though it may not be the place you’re expecting.”

Spike didn’t have a response to give to the voice inside his head or the electricity striking at the sea. Adrenaline began to course through his veins by the situation he was in, allowing him to take control of the raft, and focus slowly on fighting the newfound currents to reach the rift.

“I cannot sense any fear inside you, which would be a logical response to a situation like this.” Spike pulled hard right on the wheel to combat the wind the blew left away from the light. “Tell me, is there anything but energy coursing through you right now?”

“Not...really...” Spike grunted the words as his abs tighten to keep hold of the wheel against the wind, it slowly inching left despite his best intent. “Anything else would kinda clog my mind right now...so I’m using every I got to beat this accursed current.”

“Ah-ha!” The Count's laughter bounced off the walls inside the dragon’s mind, causing him to roll his eyes. “I like your new sense of objectivity my friend, but you better be not going off and stealing my dialect.”

That was enough to get Spike smirking, giving him the extra energy needed to pull back right on the wheel. “Don’t worry. I stopped emulating the superheroes from my comics a long time ago.”

“That’s certainly a good thing to hear.”

The attacking winds on the sail began to subside, allowing for it to flow forward instead and give speed to the raft. The rift was no longer on the horizon now, but only a few paces away that could be quickly covered.

“Tell me, Spike, without the fear of lying: are you not afraid of what’s going to happen to happen your body when you transition back into reality?” The Count spoke once more with a tinge of curiosity. “Do you not fear to have your body disintegrated, becoming dead for an unknowable amount of time until you’re brought back to your time?”

Spike shook his head at the question as his claw came to tighten around the peg of the wheel. “Usually, I would be scared.” The tension alleviated in his back, allowing him to stand up straight against the winds. “My legs wouldn’t be able to stop shaking, and I’d be wishing for my friends to take control of the situation to save me.”

“You still haven’t answered my question, Spike.” The Count voiced with an undertone that urged the dragon to go on with his thought process.

The waters just before the rift splashed together by the energy of the electric white line, where the raft trembled in correlation to the stirred waves but refused to capsize. “It’s like I’m no longer asleep now, but in a dream where nothing I do or say matters, always waiting to wake up to who I once was.”

“Is that why you were fearless in the face of the storm?”

Spike nodded his head in accordance to his answer. “Even if the storm were to take me to what lays below the sea, and I suffocated, it would only mean a chance for me to awaken from this surreal dream.”

The count’s laughter rumbled once more through the drake’s body. “That’s fantastic to hear! Now drift on into the rift, and allow it to take you to the place that was once your home."

The drake only smiled.

“Will do, Captain.”

Comments

[Draconicus the Reaper]

Interesting

[B_25]

7856076 thanks for the heads up. some of these chapters were posted just before midnight in order to remain in the bet still, but now that its over, I'll go back and clean them up sometime soon.