The Captive Titan [ManxMan]

Chapter One: Regret

~Chapter One: Regret~

The world is pain.

The world is pressure.

The world is heavy.

The world is lost.

The world is...in fragments.

It is easy to breathe, but there is little breath. There is feeling, but it is only the weight of the sky. There is nothingness, but I can see everything. There is panic, growing little by little, but it cannot be experienced because all there is is this.

For I am frozen in time, yet time continues for everyone else.

My hands want to reach down, want to claw at my throat, but they cannot move with the giant globe resting on my shoulders, held up by me but enforced by magic. If I could drop it, I would, but it would not truly be a prison if I could escape at any time. So, instead, I am here, forever lost yet present. Floating yet grounded. Feeling yet not experiencing. Hurting. Hurting. Hurting...

The dream breaks with the sound of shattering glass, and I roll out of bed in the opposite direction of the crash. My heart thunders in my chest, and the blood roars in my ears, but when nothing happens after a tense moment, I release a shaky sigh. As the ringing in my ears dies down, I run a pale, clammy hand over my sweat-slicked face, only now taking note of the fact that I am shivering. Or maybe I only started shivering in this moment. Either way, I am shivering, and my legs feel...wrong. Weak.

I reach for the wall before my knees can decide on whether or not they are going to give up, and as the already-dark room starts to darken further because of the dancing black spots in my vision, I rest my forehead against the cold wall of stone bricks. It is, by no means, a smooth, comfortable surface, but I am pretty sure if the room does not stop spinning, I am going to throw up. So, I remain still, pressed against the wall, willing the nausea and weakness away.

While it does not go away entirely, the sensation of standing in a spinning room fades after a few minutes, leaving me feeling cold, sweaty, and all around unwell. When I eventually lift my face from the stone and look around the room, trying to find the source of the noise that woke me, all I find is my bed, a small side table, and a dresser - there is no threat in sight. The only difference that I can place from before falling asleep is the missing glass of water that was on the small table near the head of my bed.

Running my hand along the wall in case I need the support, I approach the bed, and when I glance over the edge to peer at the opposite side of it, I am unsurprised to find a pile of glass settled in the new puddle of water on the floor. Whether it was my magic reacting aggressively to my dream or my limbs flailing in my sleep that caused it, the outcome is still fairly obvious, and while I am not happy that I broke a glass, as it is not mine since I am but a guest of Asgard, I do not regret that it woke me up.

Still, having figured out the source of the noise does not help me relax. In my sleep, likely because of my dreams, I sweat through my clothes, and the cold air in the room has not been doing me favors. Sure, it eases my mind a little to know that I am not on the verge of being attacked by something crashing through the windows in my room, but that does not mean much when every muscle in my body is tensing with each shiver.

I need to get out of these clothes.

Carefully stepping around the minefield of glass, remaining mindful of my bare feet, I approach my dresser, which contains the clothes I have been gifted by my Norse hosts over the many months I have been here. After carelessly tugging out a pair of soft trousers and a tunic, causing a second tunic to fall out of the drawer with them, which I then have to put back, I strip down out of my night clothing and replace it with the dry set.