Hello loyal readers of Perfect Insanity. This chapter may seem a little short compared to the others, but that's because there is something at the end. Make a choice...

Act 3: Perfect Insanity, The Deceived...

Bent double, knock-kneed, coughing like a hag, she curses her way through the sludge that has become the soil she's walking on. Trudging to what she was told was redemption; her loved one back in her arms. After so long and so much, they would reunited at long last. Leaving behind all they did wrong and giving their relationship a fresh start.

However she hasn't reached the end yet. Unable to see through the misty panes that lie ahead, literally fogging up her vision, the end seems incredibly farfetched from this point on. Stubborn, she pushes on and struggles through the somewhat moist, muddy dregs that make her feel like she's stuck in a filthy, with bug and predator-littered swamp. The only difference being the absence of any flora, fauna, and the freezing temperature that together with the haze and the stench makes for a very tense situation. And for the finishing touch on the attack on her nostrils, the gunk just happens to have a unique stink.

The sludge is getting thicker and harder to drudge through the further she moves on it. The bottom of this mess is also getting sinker deeper away. Instead of her feet being submerged in this brown-greenish slush, it's now up to her knees. To make things worse, she constantly feels observed, both from around her as well as something below the surface of the sludge.

This must be where the rest of the Slough has been drained to. Seeing how Dagon loves to take credit for everything he does to me, I suspect he drained it all to his layer.

A quiver runs across her entire body when she thinks she feels something touch her leg. Swallowing a short scream, she stops in her tracks. Her face contracted with anxiety, her teeth clenched shut.

That was nothing. That was nothing. J-just your imagination Krystal. she tells herself so she doesn't collapse like she did on the staircase. Don't let this place get to you again. Don't give them what they want.

She takes a deep breath and composes herself. Her facial expression relaxes more and her locked jaws open slightly to exhale. The chilly air around her makes her exhaust, slowly gliding over her pale pink lips, visible to her, like smoke rising upwards where it eventually thins out and disappears.

Krystal begins to move again, going straight forward even though she has no idea where 'forward' will lead her to. Her whole body feels cold and lifeless; as if she's being controlled by a puppeteer pulling the strings attached her useless limbs. Though she denies it, she knows that something she knows really well is responsible for this continued marching towards her ultimate goal. And given the circumstances, she gives it all the room it needs. Her stubbornness really excels here, giving her the strength to drag herself on to salvation lying ahead of her.

This does divide Krystal in two separate entities. Much like Fox and Délarbé were. One was the passenger and the other had complete and utter control over the body. With Krystal there's only one difference; that being that Krystal is not composed of two persons, though that is certainly the feeling she's getting now. She's looking through the eyes of a body, a robotic mechanism coated in skin and fur from her point of view, she's not controlling.

The one in control is her stubbornness. Unable to accept her responsibilities and unable to accept the consequences of her actions, instead switching them out or even entirely replacing them with poor excuses or putting the blame on someone other than herself. It was never her fault something bad happened after she made the decision to let it happen. In her eyes, it was genius. This part of her turned her into a spoiled rich girl, not capable of even picking herself up from the floor if she fell on it. Her servants would do that for her.

She herself, the real Krystal that was untouched, only came up when hiding behind all the previous didn't help; when the stubbornness fell off of her face like a mask without an elastic cord that sticks behind someone's ear. Then everyone could see that her as the person she really was. But she was too scared to do it herself. Afraid to show her real self for, in hindsight, obvious reasons. Because as soon as she removed that mask, the responsibilities that she ignored, exploited or even killed off at some points, came back at her relentlessly. Not able to see the mask that was the perpetrator, instead spewing it in Krystal's face.

But even then, she managed to resolve it. What the mask blocked and shoved aside as unnecessary, managed to slip through. Like liquid absorbed by the pores on one's skin, the knowledge, experiences and values that seemed to drain off the mask effortlessly, have penetrated that thick layer of stubbornness and reached the real Krystal.

This would also mean that serious accusations and threats made towards her during her tyranny got to the real Krystal as well. The horrific punishments she gave to those who opposed her, to which was so brutally reminded off in her visions, begin to dawn to her once more.

Coming in like an unexpected headache, making her feel like she's in the middle of an earthquake. Rapid flashes of her past appear and disappear right before her eyes. Her breathing is getting faster and shorter as her heart beats faster. Her eyes widen as if she was witnessing the most horrible sight she had ever seen. Her lips separate from each other, feeling bone-dry. The urge to fold her arms and fumble around with her ring finger comes up again as well as the lingering, cold chill she had in the beginning.

The flashes continue to plague as her body slowly plunges further into the sludge, now up to her waist. She feels her boots filling up with dirty goop that gets in between her toes. She also feels it against her chest as the spot where Délarbé made a large cut in her suit, allows the sludge to flow right in.

A sudden loud noise from behind her makes things even worse. A normal reaction, turning around to see what happened, causes her to get her left boot stuck in something on the bottom of the mush pit.

"Aaah! Dang it!" she shouts as she tries to get her boot out of whatever it's stuck in. But no matter how hard she tries, she can't get it out. Eventually, her pulling and tugging make her foot slip out of the comfort of a relatively dry boot. She loses whatever balance she had left and falls backwards into the muck.

With her head below the surface, she finds that the muck isn't so bad-looking as its appearance made it look like. The top might have been thick and felt like waging your way through goo, but beneath that Krystal can see a clear sea. Still in various brown shades, but she can at least see the seabed go up and above the muck surface meters away.

However, the muck around her starts to bubble and churn. The bottom just below her breaks open with an astoundingly loud noise and sucks her in faster than she can realize. The force in which she's pulled down is overwhelming. She feels like she just a blow to the head, getting weaker and weaker.

As she looks up to the sky, she sees the hole she got sucked in close down. The clear brown sea gives way for a black void as her eyes feel too heavy to be held open. Too weak now for giving even the slightest twitch, she gives up and let it come over her.

A loud gasp is uttered as her eyes shoot open wide. Waking up with a kick-starter up her butt, she sits upright only to get a real blow the head. Her vision blurs as the back of her head falls on something soft and fluffy. From what she can hear besides a grandiose beep in her ears, it is cutlery clinging, porcelain cups and plates shattering and people apologizing and muttering.

The beep slowly fades away as her vision clears up. She finds herself in her own room; her own Cerinian room. Looking around, she's in her bed, covered in a layer of her own sweat. To her right, she finds one of her servants trying to clean up the mess that she unconsciously created.

It's a male grey wolf with a large scar on his muzzle, running all the way to his forehead. Around his left eye, he has a large scald and fuzzy coal-black hair covers the other eye. Looking very manly and all but he's dressed in a female maid outfit. Complete with a corset, sliver dinner plate, skimpy skirt, tiara and after he bends over to clean up some shards, she can see he's wearing some pink panties.

It doesn't surprise her however; it's Sciltch. An outcast from some unimportant tribe that seemingly thrived on the far east of Cerinia. Unrest among the unclear ranks of the tribe caused him to flee and seek refuge in Krystal's kingdom. Neglected and haggard he arrived after struggling after hundreds of kilometers. Krystal agreed to take him in on one condition; he has to do whatever she wished for.

"Hey Sciltch." she greets with a hoarse voice, dry from her screaming. "I like this nice view when waking up."

Sciltch looks up, having collected all the shards and without any shame or blush appearing on his face he turns to Krystal. The compliment is something he has received several times during his time in the castle. Shame wore off very quickly the more he got into it.

"Oh. Good... uh..." He takes a look outside, towards the balcony where the late morning light of the sun works its way in through the semi-transparent silky drapes that are supposed to be curtains. "... late morning Princess. How are you feeling?"

Sitting upright, she rubs her forehead where the plate hit her. "I feel terrible. Hitting my head against a plate isn't a way to get by my day. Especially since I have that stupid meeting today."

"Meeting? That was five days ago Princess." informs Sciltch to a slightly confused Krystal. "You have slept for six days."

"Six!?" she exclaims.

"Uh-huh." he acknowledges as he walks away, putting the plate with shards and leftover cups on a piece of furniture. "You have been asleep for six days."

"How is that possible?"

"Well…" He sits down on the bed with her. "After our night, you closed your eyes for two days. Your parents got really concerned and called upon the doctors. They told us all that it was a disease known as "Sleeping Beauty". What you had, was a weak variant of the disease. Others, with a stronger variant, would never wake up again till their time has come."

"They would sleep until they eventually died?" she asks flabbergasted by this news. Not just because she has been sleeping for six days according to Sciltch but this might be an actual disease. "That's just crazy. And there's no way to heal?"

Sciltch shrugs. "There is. But it's impossible for normal folks to get it. The doctors said that the only way to heal from it is to be somehow hooked up to Cerinia's core."

"I see. Only we, of the royal bloodline are able to use it."

"You got it Princess." says Sciltch as he gets off the bed, ready to leave the room with the plate. But Krystal halts him even before he can lift himself off the bed.

"Wait. You said I was asleep for six days… how are my parents?"

For Sciltch, this is a hard one to convey. Her parents' reaction was unexpected and someone as sensitive as Sciltch completely inappropriate. Krystal can see it in his face, despite his best efforts to hide it from her.

"They said that… it was your fault. That you deserved it."

"Excuse me?"

"I'm sorry Princess. But your parents being the religious loonies they unmistakably are, they actually dismissed this as your own fault. Punished by the Gods they said." He can see Krystal's shocked and non-believing reaction. "But… they were genuinely concerned about you."

"In what way is dismissing me as "Punished by the Gods" anywhere close to being "concerned"?" she says with a raised voice, using quotation marks gestured by her fingers.

Krystal brought up a good point and Sciltch doesn't really know how to answer that. Her parents didn't actually notice her not waking up. It was Sciltch who came back to her room at least every hour of every awake-moment of the six days. Just to check up on her. He was also the one alerting her parents and calling in the doctors.

But he doesn't wanna tell her that. The relationship between her and her parents has been going downhill for months now. So he tells her that he didn't alert her parents, afraid something might happen to him in case they accused him of doing something to her. That her parents found like this and called upon the doctors.

"Oh wow." says Krystal unimpressed when she suddenly realized something, coming very up-close to Sciltch. "Did they see that my chastity belt was loose?"

Luckily, Sciltch doesn't have to lie about that. "No Princess." he answers sighing relieved. "After our night, I put it back on, locked it and stored the key where it belonged."

"And all the residue you left?"

"Cleaned up." he says with a smile. "They had no clue."

Krystal calms down after hearing this. Assured, she falls with against the pillow. She gestures to Sciltch that he can go as she can be alone with herself for a bit. Sciltch nods, understanding her needs and gets off the bed.

She begins reflect on the dream she had. With her eyes staring at the ceiling, she suddenly feels to urge to shoot a huge poster-sized picture of Fox with a BB gun. That strange thought alone raises a lot of question. Even if that thought has been circling in her mind for only a mere second. If she understands this all right, she has been sleeping for six days straight. But how about all she has lived through? Wasn't one of her most vivid, at the same time most horrifying experiences a memory? As in, it happened in the past?

She looks down to see Sciltch walking towards the door-post carrying the silver plate with all the shards and spilled drinks out of her room.

"Sciltch. Wait..." she calls out to him as she sits upright a little bit more to give him the impression that what she's going to say actually matters to her instead of lying in bed, looking like she doesn't care. "... you said I slept for six days?"

Sciltch turns around with a soft smile on his face. "I would never lie to you Princess. Why start now?"

Somehow, that rhetorical question makes a chill run down her spine. Like she heard those same words in a more sinister and far less friendly situation.

"Is something wrong then Princess?"

At first she dismisses it as nothing with a simple hand gesture, but Sciltch doesn't take that. "If you really wanna know... I don't believe it."

"Why is that?"

"Because..." She finds it hard to explain but she pushes on despite a lingering feeling of shame. "... well because I felt like I have lived 10 years already. How can that be a dream?"

She expected Sciltch to roar out of loud but he takes it calmly and very serious. He places the plate on another piece of furniture close to the door-post and comes closer to Krystal's bed. Resting his paws on the graciously decorated woodwork of the bed, he tells her that dreams like that have been declared as common symptoms.

"Six days can easily fill 10 years of living in the dream world like you said. The longer you are asleep, the more realistic it becomes. Both in experiencing the events unfolding as well as what is unfolding. Everything becomes closer to reality and sooner than later you will find yourself believing that the dream is real life." He starts to get a slight blush. "I was afraid that when you would wake up, you might not remember your life here."

Surprisingly, Krystal still knows everything about her life here. She laughs a bit. "I bet that your plate saved me from that state of mind."

"Glad you still got your humor Princess."

"I'm just glad I got everything right in head. Instead of turning into a loony like my parents, I'm just honest me." she says more to herself than to Sciltch.

"Speaking about your parents, if you wish to see them that is, they are in the dinner hall."

Krystal rolls her eyes around. "I bet they'll be happy to see me."

"I can assure you Princess. Even though they don't give that impression, they will be thrilled to have their daughter back."

"Yeah sure Sciltch. They'll be thrilled to have their daughter back. Their slutty, cursing and out of control daughter. Yippee..."

Sciltch understands that Krystal is in no way ready for parent-related stuff. Since that's all his mind occupies, because it occupies Krystal's, he remains silent and goes about his business. Krystal in the meantime sits on the side of her bed. Her feet feel the cold but very familiar ground as she rubs the sleep out of her eyes.

As she does, she can feel the silky softness of her white long-sleeved nightgown on her eyelids, softly tickling as little whiskers wipe by her eyelids. It surprises her a bit, not remembering putting the gown on. She went to sleep naked if she recalls correctly. Right after she "played" around with Sciltch for a while.

He must have put this gown on me while I was sleeping. concludes Krystal as she takes a closer look at the whiskers. Sciltch has quite the rough hands and messy looking nails so it's only natural something gets ripped whenever he touches it.

She looks in his direction. He's sighing deeply, trying to focus his mind on something else. A small telepathic look in his mind reveals that he has been lying about how her parents found out about it. It makes her gasp softly, soft enough for Sciltch not to hear it.

Why would he lie about something like that? Was it because...?

She hops off the bed. Not the smartest move after 6 days of continuous sleep as her legs feel like jelly when she hits the floor with her feet. A non-painful shock runs through her, all the way to her brain where it causes a moment of light-headedness. She almost collapses but manages to catch herself. With some encouraging words spoken to herself, a deep breath taken and a soft slap against her own cheek, she steps out to Sclitch.

"Uhm Sciltch?" she asks nicely as she tabs on his shoulder. Sciltch flinches for a second before uttering a startled squeak, which he immediately swallows down.

"You don't have to be afraid." says Krystal with a friendly smile. "I wanted to ask something."

Once he recovered from his unfortunate squeak, he turns around with a slight blush on his cheeks and his hand scratching the back of his head in embarrassment. The nervous smile etched on his face is so feigned, that even the most gullible man on the planet wouldn't fall for it.

"O-of course Princes..." he answers. "What is it?"

"Do you think... t-that the dream I had... that it could have been real?"

Sciltch doesn't really have an answer to that question. It's more of Krystal's experience instead of his. He only knows what Krystal went through thanks to her telling it but she might have left out parts that seemed unnatural. Not making any sense whatsoever.

"It seems that you doubt whether this is the real world or a dream." He lets the gears in his brain turn around for a bit before he comes to an honest conclusion. "Look Krys- I mean Princess. If this is reality, I can't answer that for you. If this is a dream, it might not be the best choice to ask that to someone part of that dream."

Krystal laughs a bit.

"All I know Princess, is that I'm happy… to see with your eyes open." he ends with a genuine, soft smile on his face.

Krystal is speechless. She doesn't really know what to say, but his words filled her with so much happiness all of the sudden. She puts her right hand on her heart that suddenly started to pound a little faster, a little harder. She closes her eyes and bows her head a bit as she lets the good feeling stream throughout her.

"Thank you so much Sciltch" she says slightly emotional when looking up. "You are indeed my best friend. And maybe… even more than that…"

"Maybe what?"

"Huh? Oh… nothing Sciltch..." she replies absent and even ashamed.

She can clearly see that Sciltch is not taking a simple dismissing for an answer. He has been dead honest with her and feels that she needs to return the favor. In indecision, her eyes dart up and down. From looking up at Sciltch expecting facial expression to the lame grey-ish carpet on the floor. Neither help much in her choice.

Choose to see this as reality= Next chapter beginning with "(R)"
Choose to see this as a dream= Next chapter beginning with "(D)"

Choose wisely for you decide how Krystal will live her life. Be sure to leave a review seeing as this story will include another one of these choices.

Also, I'm sorry for the long delays in between chapters. I've been distracted a lot and couldn't properly finish this chapter. I promise that delays will be shorter from now on.