Laures never thought to question his reality. To him, Inamalum was as real as anything could ever be, and though there were inconsistencies throughout his life, and little hints that something wasn't quite right... so deeply was he entrenched that he did not ever consider the possibility of it being a fabrication, or a dream, or anything but the truth.
Even in the dream, Laures struggled to remember his falsified childhood. Most attempts to remember were met with fainting spells, mental shutdowns, or emotional outbursts. He was given new memories to fill in the blanks, but they never quite took, and filtered in and out of mind during his time in Inamalum. He knew that, in this dream world, he came from a wealthy, tyrannical family — he knew that he was abused, and that he was cast out, though the details of why never quite settled in his mind. What came before mattered little, as the world gave him something more pressing to latch onto: Laures was a slave, and rather than allow him to think and have a life for himself (and potentially realize that said life was not real), he was denied an education or a chance to ever possibly rise above his station. For seventeen arcs he tirelessly served Emeyan denizens within a small, isolated city, never allowed to venture outside the walls or live independently.
During this time he was little more than a shell. Whatever kind of person he might have been before, Laures was made, over the years, into a demure, subservient creature, whose sole purpose in life was to care for the needs of others. Although he functioned properly when surrounded by Emeyans and convinced of the illusions, any time spent alone served to perpetuate his frequent memory loss, his strange outbursts, and his ever-present hallucinations. For a long time, he did not aspire to be anything else than the slave that he was. Even if he did not understand it, he learned to accept his unfulfilling life... until the end of his sixteenth arc in Inamalum, when he snapped and murdered one of the people he was meant to serve.
Things went downhill from there. Not wishing to awaken him from his carefully-cultivated state of unawareness, the world easily glossed over this slip, and Laures continued on as a slave for a few months more. He could not relate to the others in this world meant to keep him trapped, and over time he began to finally question who he really was. Laures never felt
real, but he was written off as a delusional servant. He never felt
right. but he was written off as simply uneducated. When every voice around him sought to keep him stuck in an illusion, the voices in his head grew louder. More insistent. Slaving away got harder and harder when he could no longer justify a life without purpose. Again, Laures was overwhelmed with his inability to reconcile his thoughts and his reality, and when he accepted that he would simply never exist as he was meant to, he continued his murderous rampage until the world was left with no other option than to separate him from the city.
Again, he was given a story to fill in the blanks, of escaping his city and starting over, and was placed into a new location within Inamalum for the first time during his seventeenth arc inside. Laures was naive, and Inamalum knew exactly how to keep him there — not as a traditional servant again, as he would have seen through that too quickly, but as a poor, indentured harlot. With the belief that he could at least one day escape this new form of slavery, Laures continued on, unsuspecting of the fact that his role had simply been switched. While he continued his murders of random Emeyan denizens, this new location provided a better-suited environment for such habits, where he might not disturb the world too terribly.
Laures met Carver in the cold cycle of Arc 719. Still completely unaware of the fact that he was in Emea himself, he did not think to consider that Carver might be another dreamwalker, trapped alongside him. He was drawn to him from the start, even if he was not sure why (for Laures had always struggled to relate to the Emeyans around him), and this strange pull was only strengthened when he discovered that Carver was from the same city he had been enslaved within for so long. Laures, already stuck in his mental instability, quickly became obsessed with his fellow dreamwalker. Finally, something felt
real. Finally, something felt
right, and the voices in his head did not conflict with what was right in front of him. And again, Inamalum tried to correct his path, doing whatever it could to keep them apart...
...and rather than live apart, Laures and Carver decided to die together. Laures was afraid, but nothing outweighed his fear of going without Carver. Although the decision was made quickly, his devotion would not have let him choose to do otherwise, and even though he was still unaware of the fact that it was all within a dream... he gave his life willingly, and the two killed each other at the same exact time.
![[Approved by Pig Boy]](.//images/icons/cs_ok.png "[Approved by Pig Boy]"){kind=icon}
Lars
