You are a legendary warrior, with a several decades-long reputation of tirelessly prevailing over hordes of monstrosities. In a sudden moment of clarity, you come to your senses in a psychiatric ward.

I laid upon a bed, staring at a blank, unfamiliar ceiling. I turned my eyes to barren walls and missing trophies. I searched for the four-pointed star of the Hunter god, but that too was gone. When I moved my hands to wipe this cruel illusion from my eyes, I found my limbs were held fast. I voided my lungs to call for help, and with my mouth pried open, all that escaped was my roar.

I heard commotion beyond my the door that had once held my blades and waterskin, and through that door came the blue clad seers.

"Explain this, seers," I tried to say, but my mouth did not shape the sound into words.

"Bring him in," one seer said to another. "He should see a familiar face," they said when they thought themselves far enough away from my hearing.

"Bring in whom?" the unmolded sound gurgled again from my throat.

"Be calm," one of the clerics said as he released the vice from my mouth. "Please, be calm."

Another body came through the door. My eyes met the eyes of my son, and my rattled panic eased into calm. He drew beside me and placed a hand on mine.

"Silas," I said. The feeling was odd, as though my mouth had forgotten how to shape his name. I looked into my son's eyes and saw sorrow. He looked not to me, but to the seer in blue who nodded. I grasped my son's hand and it felt small and unfamiliar in mine. I felt a chill creep over my heart.

"Grandpa, Dad is -- it's not your fault. You have to know--"

I stared hard into eyes that were the piercing blue of my son's, and of his mother's.

"Dad, he -- Nobody blames you."

"My son."

"It's not your fault, grandpa. We know it's not your fault."

"His eyes." I said, as I saw them go wet with anger and pain and sadness. "Return his eyes!" I screamed at the ghoul wearing my son's face. How nearly perfect was the illusion. How nearly I was fooled by that visage equal parts right and wrong. I lunged forward as far as my binds would let me and snapped with teeth at that stolen skin. "You do not fool me, wight. When I am free of these binds I will bury the parts of Silas that are his and burn the rest." The blue seers lunged for the pretender but pulled him away instead of brining him to me. I felt the sting of betrayal, "You heathen seers," I spat, "I will peel away your trappings that carry no sigil and I will free the flesh from your bones."

"Again!" a seer screamed, and I felt another sting. The light went from the corners of my vision and crept to its center. I willed myself to see these villains, to remember these faces that dissolved into shadows.

Elvis is not an elf.

I thought that, and ceased to hope --- because I understood.

The picture on the wall was not a king, clad in white, twisting past unseen arrows, but the King, Elvis Presley, American, modern.

On the other side of the abyss of memory, me, in concerts, at tailgates, selling lawnmowers. And here: a metal bed, and the silence of a million bricks and a thousand souls, all afraid of making a noise. A prison or a mental ward --- what the Realm would have called a bedlam-mansion, like that of the Iron Masked Prince ---

That was the problem.

I, the son of Alabama, rider of trains, passenger on planes, or I, the red-handed hero, the bloody bane of all the cultists, heretics and foul demons threatening the Sacred Realm of Elves and Men?

Was I both?

How to get back? What foul, cowardly imp had exiled me to the land of my birth, of lowly Alabaster, AL? I would have my revenge! My bloody revenge! I would have to escape the nurses and the guards, find the way back while I still remembered ---

Oh, memory. What if it was not real? Why my memories were so uneven, the glories like dreams, the fights a mist of anger, but the blood on my hands so vivid, so real? My flushed cheeks and the cooling bodies.

God, what had I done?

I had been a soldier or a police officer, that explained the memories. A hard job, such strain, no shame in dreaming a good reason for it. (Spoken like a true sophist of blood-drenched heresy.)

Steps along the corridor.

Be thou any monster, the worst demon of the Pit, the King of Hell himself, and I can and will kill thee.

Be thou human, no more than myself, and I am vanquished.

A hand or a claw on the door.

The Elvenking looks down with a careless smile, ready to twist away.

(First comment here on Tildes; just another nose poking across from Reddit. Hello all.)

This is a placeholder, and also a question. Are there any limits or rules for the responses? :3