The Wayfarer by Zachary M. Kekac

SPFBO9

"Burying sorrow is like burying water; it simply seeps into the soil and up into everything that grows from it." ___ The Wayfarer stands on the rim of insanity. Forgetting everything. Everyone. He doesn’t know when the forgetting began, but the Shadow does. A doppelganger wreathed in darkness; a figure only he can see; it claims to know both why he is losing his mind, and the way to restore it. Wary, desperate, with what seems no other way open to him, the Wayfarer submits himself to the Shadow, its warning compelling him forward: Move on. Or wither. As the Shadow leads the Wayfarer through sentient forests, the graveyards of dragons, and realms between realms, so too does it lead the way into his forgotten past, restoring fragments of memory throughout the journey. Only the memories are distorted, nightmarish. In them he sees his friends, his family—dead. Impossible. His friends are alive, aiding him on his journey. His family is safe, awaiting his return. Disillusioned by these perversions of past, the Wayfarer decides the only way to salvation is within himself. Aided by a psychoactive mixture, he descends into his subconscious, seeking the truth of his unravelling mind, the memory of his madness' beginning. You are not ready. Though the Wayfarer can sense the truth lurking within the abyss of his subconscious, something in the Shadow’s words waylays him. Something in the Shadow’s words holds a truth of its own, warring with the truth within himself. Frustrated, fearful, his mind fraying at its seams, the Wayfarer stands now on the rim of a choice: to trust the Shadow, to hope on a fool’s hope that its way was the way to remedy; or to forsake it, to do as he willed and seek resolution his own way, knowing with the wisdom of a man prone to folly that it may very well be the way to ruin.