Chase woke with a violent pain in the right side of his head, but that was before the pain in his catalyst arose to realization.
He frowned, pulling his body up to the smell of smoke.
It was all too familiar...
Part of him wanted to call for his father, reach out and maybe stop what he had seen over and over for many nights of his childhood.
But his eyes had still not opened yet, and the smell of smoke was still eroding and numbing his entire body.
"Stop! Lie back down!" A familiar feminine voice pleaded with him from his side.
That wasn't how it usually was...
His frown deepened as he refused her pleas.
He was scared to open his eyes.
The sense of Deja Vu far too much for his childish mind.
But eventually he did open his eyes... Tears threatening to form at the corners of his emerald eyes...
"Damnit all..." He croaked silently, as a numbness washed over his body before fading and allowing the pain to return.
His arms hung lazily at his sides, littered in bandages and red stains as he limply let his shoulders untense.
He watched with a strange sense of uselessness as green flames threatened to devour half of the forest West of the clearing.
Neo and Luna desperately carrying buckets on buckets of water from the pond to put it out.
Chase sighed, as internally, he demanded that his flames unsummon and disperse.
Sure enough, they listened.
And he watched silently as the flames slowly died down and left only ruin in their wake, as so many trees and plants had been completely decimated by his loss of control.
Then he felt it...
The reason Luna had warned him not use energy that wasn't Axis...
A feverish decaying was felt along his catalyst, as cracks began to from at its edges.
His eyelids lazily fell and rose several times, before eventually giving up and remaining open much to the needs of his will.
"I'm sorry..." Poppy mumbled, sitting on her knees beside Chase.
She had a look of frustration in her crimson eyes.
Although Chase felt that she had nothing to apologize for, and if anything he should have been the one apologizing for his outburst.
"I didn't know..." She eventually let out a sob, as Chase slowly looked down at his chest in confusion...
It was worse...
So much worse...
Purple veins were spreading far and wide through his flesh... Showing that the corruption had taken a leap far beyond what Luna was capable of holding back...
Chase could feel it now...
The eroding of his mind, possibly the very same that had taken Rider's ability to think logically.
Chase could feel certain memories start to fade, but he forced them to return, unable to let go of everything he had fought so hard for...
But nonetheless, he had lost... And even used dirty tactics to even have a chance against the royal...
'If I had just had my sword...' He thought for a second before shaking his head in frustration and bringing himself back to reality.
Poppy was still crying, her hands pressed against her face as her now freed ivory hair hung over both her hands and her face.
"I'm fine..." Chase groaned, sitting up further much to the disapproval of his body.
"You are a liar..." Poppy growled, grabbing his wrist and staring dead in his eyes.
It was quite unbearable...
The look of her crimson eyes stained with tears, and her lips curled into a dreadful frown.
"You're dying... I'm not a fool Chase... I know what that is..." She sobbed again, forcing herself to look away from Chase's shirtless body covered in the very proof of what she had said.
Neo was about to walk over and say something, but quickly smacked himself in the face before turning around and gazing at the giant mess that Chase had made.
Meanwhile, Poppy was tightly gripping Chase's wrist...
Much harder than Chase would have expected her grip strength to be...
But she had lifted Apocalypse surprisingly easily, which made him retract his original thought.
"Sorry... I'll be fine... This is nothing..." Chase chuckled nervously, unable to look at her any longer.
He sighed as he grabbed at his sternum with his right hand.
"I know of a cure..." Chase mumbled, taking a deep breath as he ignored the intense pain from the corruption.
"Then why haven't you taken it!" Poppy bursted out, squeezing his wrist even tighter.
"It- It's complicated..." He said with no expression.
"Mhm... More complicated than the fact that you have people who care about you, and you are just letting this disease eat you alive?!" She punched the ground with her clenched fist, before taking a deep breath and cursing at him quietly.
Silence was all that filled the clearing for a long moment, before the both of them spoke up.
""Sorry...""
Neo walked over, gripping the back of Poppy's head like a pet, and kicking Chase's leg.
"We should get lunch before I head out... Ya know? Like as a group?" He laughed, before Poppy felt the need to smack his hand off of her head.