Chapter 27: Bound by Chains

Chapter 27: Bound by Chains

"His waking up, rise and shine sleepy head!" An overly excited voice greeted John as he slowly opened his eyes, shutting them again when the accursed existence to exist beamed into his eyes – sunlight. Trying to shield his eyes with an arm proved to be too much though; his muscles felt too stiff. The action caused a slight grunt from him as he couldn't seem to do so or move at all. At best, he could turn his head, but any action further proved too much for him. The fact that his left arm was entirely numb, as opposed to the stiff almost painful feeling of the rest of his body, caused him some concern though.

A poke at his cheek caused him to turn and slowly reopen his eyes, causing them to slowly focus. He saw Alice poking him while pouting in mock annoyance. "Helllllo, we know you're awake, you know, so don't ignore us! And you see? He does glow and everything, like I said, he did, washboard. Isn't that soooo cool!!!" Alice, in all her usual hype, seemed to greet him. Next to her, the fairy Greeny mutely just stared at him, her eyes showing puzzlement. "How is that even possible? As far as my knowledge of humans goes, they do not glow when they sleep. But it felt a bit like soul waves. That isn't possible. A human's soul, well strong in its own way, is too restrained in their bodies. Your race just doesn't have the knowledge or skill to use your souls. At most, it can leave your bodies in what you call astral projection, but even then, the body itself is left vulnerable to possession when you do that. But I do think it was soul waves." The fairy said and continued to mumble to herself, trying to understand the situation and her personal knowledge and grounding of what she believed to be possible and not possible even in worlds like this, currently crumbling down as she tried to rationalize how John was glowing in his sleep and releasing what she believed to be soul waves.

Alice, seeing the fairy completely zoned out in her mumbling, crept over and lightly rubbed her wings. This action elicited a loud eep from her and a glare in response. Alice proceeded to act innocently and pretend she did nothing. Instead, she turned to focus on John, noticing something odd. Slowly, she began creeping over and trying her best to act stealthy, yet being overly dramatic about it, drawing attention instead of avoiding it. If John could see how she was acting, he would no doubt laugh, but alas, it was just out of sight.

"I have no idea if it's soul waves or whatever, but it's happened every night so far. It could be a result of someone constantly drugging me without consent – something we need to talk about," John said, trying to move to sit up but protests from his body told him not to even try it. Sighing softly, he instead made himself as comfortable as he could.

"Also, it seems I can't really move right now. I guess the fight with the spider beast took more out of me than I thought. If I could get some pain killers or muscle relaxants, I might be able to force myself up and be mobile in a couple of hours. Then we can – Alice, what are you doing?" John explained his current state before noticing Alice crouched at the edge of the bed, her arm up and poking him, but oddly not feeling it. Forcing his head up slightly through the pain, he noticed Alice seemed to be poking a weird lump under the blanket, not him. Faintly, he wondered how he even got into the bed in the first place – possibly Alice took him to it, proving he really shouldn't underestimate her. Without saying anything, she proceeded to rip the blanket off him. Wrapped around his body seemed to be the same chains from the dream he had where he faced the keeper. The only difference was that the chain segments were thinner and had wrapped far more around him now than in the dream.

"Ooooh, I didn't know you were into that hehehe. You could have told me. We could have then had some interesting fun haha," Alice said. Her voice took on a sultry tone as she licked her lips, sending a strong chill down his back. He knew he needed to nip this in the bud before it had a chance to be misunderstood or before Alice tried something crazy due to any ideas it may have given her.

"No, no, these are from my dream last night. This time, it was a rather large fight in my dreams. Originally, these were meant to bind me, but I slowly converted them to my own using my energy while he was busy trying to convince me to accept a deal of giving over my body to him. He didn't exactly like when I refused a bit and shocked me with these chains. But that just helped me understand the pathways of the chains and better gain control of them, erasing any measure of control he had over them. Honestly though, I am surprised they came over with me. I thought they would just be added to the rest of my chains, weapons, and so on in my own psychotic little mental world of instability. Not that I'm complaining though; chains can be rather useful, especially if I can use them here like I do in my dreams," John quickly explained, hoping to set things straight before Alice's mind could run any more rampant with weird thoughts. He got a surprised and seemingly betrayed look from her, though. "How could you? It sounds like it was a very busy and bloody fight. How could you do something like that without me? We're supposed to be partners. I'm supposed to be your super special friend!" Alice almost yelled, seemingly about to break down in tears. At this point, John honestly seemed confused. He could understand her thirst for battle, violence, and fighting, but it happened in his dreams. How was he expected to know there was going to be a huge fight? Furthermore, how would he be expected to bring her into his dreams? Was that even something possible? Maybe if they had a way to cross dimensions, but the old man had made the difficulty of that clear. Or maybe someone could send her into his dreams when they both slept, but he very much doubted finding someone like that would be any easier than the first option. Not wanting to see or hear Alice cry, though, John tried to think of something to say. Luckily, it was the fairy Greeny whose voice managed to provide the much-needed distraction.

"You, but how? Astral projection should be the limit, yet it sounds like you somehow soul travel while keeping anchored here in your world. Possibly why you were letting off soul waves. A fraction was left behind, linking to your main soul, allowing you to return. Tell me, how long has this been happening? Who taught you it? Do you even know how dangerous that is? It's not your apparent fight, though you mentioned causing your current state. It seems you suffered soul strain – like with a muscle when you push it too hard and it spasms or becomes stiff afterwards. A soul can be the same. You somehow pushed it too hard, causing strain that you are now feeling. But even so, a fight in an astral realm should not have caused this level of strain. Tell me what you did!" The small fairy practically demanded, seemingly trying to be imposing even with her small stature. She floated right over to the side of John's face and practically grabbed his cheeks, seemingly trying to stare right into his soul. A light whack on the head from Alice thankfully put an end to that, though, causing her to fall to the ground and glare at her. "Don't forget your place, washboard. You're at our mercy, not the other way around! Honestly, unless you start explaining all this to us and what you know, I may just decide you have more use as an experimental pixie stick than as our mascot." Alice said to her in an overly sweet tone, getting a shiver and frightened look. She wondered if Alice was making a cruel joke or actually being serious. John, though, knew she most likely would do it.

"He seems to have used his soul not only to go somewhere, but he has something here that's created an anchor for his soul to find its way back. To put it in an understandable way, imagine a long string tied to a rock. If you threw the rock into a pond, it would be lost and you could only rely on luck to find it. But the string makes it so it can be pulled back and can always go back to where it came from. The dangers, though, should be obvious. You could get lost, trapped, hurt like what seems to have happened to you, or even die! Strong pure souls often have it a little easier, but become valued by dark forces and often hunted for ingredients for some really bad stuff – according to what my teacher told me. Often, it's very spiritual beings who can travel easily and often require a lot of soul tempering or guidance to do it. And they need to have special physics to handle the stronger their soul gets. And even then, it's easy for their soul to get dirtied, and that makes it much harder to do it. Humans, having some of the most corrupted and dirty souls, and even the purest ones don't have strong enough souls, especially when they're young, to accomplish travel. And if by some miracle they do, they would end up lost in the many dimensions that exist or even in a rift! I don't know how you can even do it, let alone pull something back! Only very strong high-level souls can do that, and they tend to belong to pure and very high-classed bloodlines. Humans like you are considered less than dirt under dirt to them, so how – how did you, a human, do it?" Greeny began to explain before showing her own disdainful feelings about humans to the pair. Whether it was due to jealousy or frustration at not understanding how it was possible remained unclear. But neither John nor Alice liked it. "So what exactly do you and other fairies think humans are good for then?" John asked, deciding to use her current breakdown of Greeny to see her true feelings. He took advantage of her visible frustration, anger, and current lack of self-control to try and understand the fairy race a bit better – even if she was apparently the only free one left. It could prove useful if he were to encounter any others of her race in the future – as unlikely as it was.

"Humans are cannon fodder, amusement due to how easily you're all tricked due to stupidity or greed, and your souls are good ingredients for strengthening our own soul po-" Greeny began before quickly catching herself and realizing what she had said. "No, well most of the fairies may think that. I don't. I know humans can do many things, even if they're lazy, stupid, greedy, and good for almost nothing after growing up." She said in a panic, trying to get herself out of the hole she had dug. Instead, she dug it deeper and made it worse. Alice at this point had lost her overly excited look and instead was glaring at the fairy. Her knife in one hand and scythe in the other, her eyes practically calling for the fairy's blood. But John was quicker. While listening and talking, he knew he wouldn't be able to go anywhere for a while through regular means. So he only half-focused on the conversation that was happening and used the other half of his focus to will his energy to move the chains. He slowly replicated the feeling of his dreams where he had the use of chains – from the flow of energy out of him into them, to how they could move on his mental commands. It was truly weird to now have to do it in the waking world but felt like a weird second nature to him. While Alice was focused on the fairy and the fairy with her explanation, John slowly had the chains lengthen and wrap more around him, testing them secretly. Hearing how Greeny spoke of humans though did upset him. But if Alice ended her, it would be too kind. Having lengthened the chains till this point, all his limbs were wrapped in crossing chains. He had no idea if it would work, but he decided to give it a shot, even if it could aggravate his body. Using the chains as an exoskeleton, he forced them to help him out of bed – unsteady but seemingly working so far. John raised a hand and wrapped a quick, small chain around Greeny's neck. The chain then snaked its way around her, binding her. This surprised both Alice and the fairy. "What? No! Let me go! You can't do this to me! I can't be bound by a pathetic race like yours! Let me go! I refuse this! I refuse!" Greeny screamed as she tried to break free. But most of her strength had left her, and she fell to the ground on her knees. "Why didn't you leave last night then? Why still stay if you feel so upset by us humans?" John asked her. Alice, though, seemed to not care much about the answer. Instead, she somehow had sparkling eyes and circled around John, absolutely captivated by the chains wrapping him and seemingly being used to help him move. She even poked them with her scythe to see if it was real. "Because you, fatty, seemed like a softy! If I played the poor innocent fairy that lost everything and just wanted to live free, you seemed like you would have eaten it up like food on your plate. Tsk, I shouldn't have lost composure like that due to seeing you have such strong soul energy. When I fully realized it after you had woken up and explained, I was going to stick even more with you till I had a chance to seize your soul and give myself a boost." Greeny said sourly to John. "So what are you going to do now? Kill me? No, you would probably have the nutcase end me. I saw how you couldn't even handle what you did last night, so you're way too soft and weak to end me after having me chained up like this." Greeny continued, giving a condescending smile at John. "Oh no, that would be way too easy an end. And the way you spoke of souls makes me think if we kill you, your soul would just escape somewhere. Rather, I'm going to keep you chained like this for now, well, I figure out what to really do with you. And I can promise it won't be pleasant." John told her slowly and coldly. Alice got chills at hearing the hardness in his voice and looked at him with a glint in her eyes that John couldn't identify. Meanwhile, Greeny had an expression of frustrated fear, her eyes seemingly hoping that her glare would cause him to burst into flames.