Snudo laughed. “Yes” he said “YES! The king of Edwawor, dead at my own ha-“

“NO!”

Snudo woke up with a jolt. After a month of camping alone in the forests outside of Edwawor, he had been having nightmares for weeks.

Nightmares where he had been a murderer.

His clothes were beginning to get torn and dirty, but he wouldn’t dare show his face near the villagers of Edwawor. The rumour of him murdering the king had been passed straight from the Prince (now the new King), that he had brutally stabbed the knife in the king’s neck.

Snudo shuddered.

He picked up his ragged blanket, folded it small enough to fit it in a pouch around his neck, and kept going.

The power. I could kill the prince too! Nothing, NOTHING will get in my way. I will not stop until I am the SUPREME RULER OF ALL OF THE CONTINENT!

His head ached. He could vaguely remember everything he left at Edwawor. His family and a friend he couldn’t remember the name of.

He realised he couldn’t remember anything before the assassin killed Sir Edward and Sir Karlio.

Then he heard a twig snap.

“Oh!” he thought “Oh…” he was thinking in a sarcastic fashion now “Oh no! Come to kill me for being done with of the king?” He scoffed “Nothing will be able to kill me” he said “NOTHING WILL STAND IN MY WAY!” He was talking aloud now, unaware that he was being heard…and then

“AARRRGHH!” screamed Snudo. The voice in his head was slowly driving him insane “WHO ARE YOU? GET OUT OF MY WOODS! GET OUT OF MY HEAD! LEAVE ME ALONE!”

He slammed head first into a tree, dazed with anger. “COME OUT HERE AND FIGHT!” he yelled “YEAH, COME OUT! YOU WILL NOT DEFEAT ME!”

But, as he thought this and said it aloud, he realised that he was already defeated by his conscience.

Then his eyes closed without any eyelid-moving on his part.

He could see a shade of maroon. Then brown, in an outline inside. Then more outlines of nothing, empty squares, getting brighter and brighter.

He saw a young child the age of four at most, with another one, this one was around three. They were in a lake of mud near a log cabin in Edwawor. “AAAY! YOU SPLASH THE MUD IN ME FACE” said the three year-old boy “YOUUU! I WILL TELL YOUR MOMMY, AYYY!!!” he screamed, as the other one dissolved into giggles as he threw a chink of mud in the other one’s face.

And it was over. Maroon again, brown, peach, then lighter, lighter. There was a hazy text he could just see. “PAPEA AND SNUDO – 11 YEARS BACK” it read.

“Papea” Snudo gasped, back in the real world.

“My memories…”

Someone, undoubtedly the one sending him visions, taking over his mind, was tampering with his brain.