The darkness was pleasant.

  Charon didn’t have to worry about the MAZE. He didn’t have to worry about graduating before his friends. He didn’t have to worry about stupid orange juice or New Dawn. He didn’t have to worry about whether or not his stats were going to be high enough. He didn’t have to worry about his parents.

  Then, in the corners of Charon’s consciousness, something flickered. A fuzzy ephemeral existence standing out amongst the hazy uniform mindscape he found himself in. He willed himself towards it, drawn to the irregularity. To the wrinkle of change that seemingly manifested out of the nether. As he floated near, the existence began to materialize almost as if his vision was coming into focus. It was vaguely humanoid. An empty translucent being whose existence he would question if it wasn’t positioned directly before him. Charon reached out expecting his hand to pass through its intangible form when it suddenly… turned.

  It had no face but it had twisted its head around to look at him. A pulse of surprise raced through his mind for a mere moment before the empty “creature” suddenly appeared before his face, completely filling his vision. Charon didn’t even have time to react before it had embraced him with its form completely and his entire vision was filled with a fog of opaque brightness blinding him from within his mind.

  When the fog faded instead of the dark dreamscape of before he found himself standing at a gate. It was the front entrance of the orphanage. It was a breezy summer morning. Everything looked familiar from the red bricked pillars that end up the cast iron heavy gates except it was from the wrong perspective. The gate was much larger than he remembered and the suitcase he was standing next to was comically oversized. He couldn’t understand what was happening. The perspective was completely off for him. When the door opened and his head turned to the sound he became even more confused. It was Gran Gran Molly. She was still the same person but looked… different. She stood taller and had less wrinkles. Charon tried to look down and realized he had no control. It was almost as if he was a spectator inside someone else’s body. It was at this moment the head turned upward to stare at a less grizzled Vardan and he saw the little hand dwarfed by the man’s callused fist.

  Charon understood. This was a memory. His memory. The first real memory he could clearly remember. It was the day he was first brought to the orphanage.

  Why was he seeing this? Charon’s confusion was palpable. It was like he was bearing witness to a first person view of his own life narrative.

  Grandma Molly walked up and gently crouched down next to him.

  “Hello there. What’s your name? I’m grandma Molly but you can call me Gran Gran,” she said as she gave a warm reassuring smile.

  Varden gently grabbed his shoulder reassuringly.

  “Don’t worry. She won’t bite.”

  Charon heard his own voice, “My name is Charon. Charon Steele.”

  Grandma Molly patted him on the head and said, “Well isn’t that a strong name. Let’s go inside and get you settled in a room. I will introduce you to the other kids. They will love to meet you.”

  Charon looked back at Vardan who nodded with a smile and gestured with his one arm for Charon to follow.

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  As the little Charon walked forward and crossed the door way into the orphanage, his vision began to change. In a disorienting blur, he watched as the vision in front of him fast-forwarded rapidly, only slowing to normal speed the moment he met Athena for the first time.

  It was at this moment Charon suddenly realized what was happening. This… thing attached to him was sentient or something similar to it and it was reading his memories. It was starting from some of his earliest moments and skimming through to the parts it felt were most relevant almost as if it was trying to casually read his life. Charon felt violated. This was his life, his memories. No one has the right to just riffle through them like some coffee table magazine left for people to pick through while they wait for an appointment. He desperately tried to take control of what was being shown. Working to try NOT to remember certain moments in an effort to deny whatever was looking through his past. Unfortunately, his attempts were met with failure. Whatever spell, skill, or creature was touching his memories was able to completely ignore his attempts to stop it and had absolute control over the situation. All Charon could do was witness the memories as they flew by.

  Uneventful days would fly by in seconds and surprisingly many of his more private moments were skipped over. As he calmed down to try to assess the situation he began to realize that the memories the creature was stopping at were primarily focused on his interactions with other people.

  It stopped at the moment where he met Finn for the first time: when they got into a silly argument over which hero was the strongest and then when Finn came back to apologize and ask to be friends. It stopped when Charon was crying and Grandma Molly hugged him, offering comforting words to the little one.

  It also stopped frequently at moments where he interacted with Vardan. Such as the moments where the old explorer told and retold the stories of the three heroes and hinted at some of the things explorers did within the MAZE. It also stopped frequently to witness the physical training he gave the kids.

  It also stopped at some moments that Charon honestly didn’t want to remember. Like when he was young and heard Grandma Molly arguing with Vardan about finances. This was when he promised himself that he would go into the MAZE and send back money to the orphanage so they wouldn’t have to worry about finances anymore.

  His memories also stopped at the moment where he got into fights with older kids who were bullying his friends. Fights he oftentimes lost and afterwards swore to himself that he will train and get stronger.

  Whatever this creature was, Charon had to admit, it was thorough. It quickly moved through his childhood and into his teenage life, skipping his classes in middle school and high school only stopping whenever the MAZE was mentioned or when he was training. Vardan’s training regiment towards the children as they got older was thorough. Going through everything from basic survival skills, martial combat training, and physical conditioning, to lessons on first aid and human physiology.

  Oddly enough the creature seemingly had no interest in Charon’s dating life, choosing to completely skip his first time taking a girl out to dinner. It only stopped to witness how Charon handled the subsequent fallout as the girl’s father yelled at him to stay away from his daughter and that it would be a “cold day in Hell before he lets his daughter date some dirty orphan.”

  He chose to walk away from the situation and coldly ignore the girl at school despite her attempts to initiate a conversation. Something that to this day he was ashamed of. He could have handled the situation better, standing up for himself. Instead he focused his frustration and anger at studying and training.

  More days sped by until it stopped at what happened that day. For the first time the memory wasn’t just watched through once, it was outright stopped and played back when Vardan started to talk about Charon’s parents. More interestingly the creature also took a moment to play and replay what Charon saw right before he had passed out.

  Charon felt a sudden odd sensation. A strange suction like pulling his head out of water. He blinked and realized he was no longer witnessing his memories. He was back in the hazy dreamscape of before.

  He spun around in space looking for the creature and saw it just… standing there.

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