***
'What is this that I feel?'
My hands, which choked my neck, grasped harder.
'Rage?'
Absolute, unbridled rage to the point of madness.
'Why?'
They grasped even harder.
'Why do I wish for the world to burn?'
Was it because of those people watching from outside the room?
Or was it because of my innate corruption?
Maybe.
I let go and I staggered forward as if pulled by a weight, my shades dropping to the ground.
Clack!
The sound stabilized my... self?
It did.
But where even am I?
I... rember, it's blurry, yet I can make out the reason for why I was sent, no, pushed here.
I am to learn of my 'flint.'
I am to include the Embodint thod in my path, alongside the others.
I am to-
Pa~
Subtle, almost unnoticeable, but I suddenly felt so of my Aether leaving my reserves. It was as if I was a balloon that was poked by a needle, deflating.
My instincts kicked in and Temporal Perception activated.
Wasting not a mont further, I attempted to close that hole, but I couldn't, as if I were a mortal trying to push a mountain.
Whoever was responsible was-
No, I knew Mr. Player was the one who was siphoning Aether out of .
'There's no use resisting.'
So, knowing that I could do nothing against him, I let myself go and sat on the ground in a lotus position.
I then picked up my sunglasses and put them in the breast pocket of my suit.
During that ti, all the 'air' inside didn't stop its exit.
Slowly at the start, but it quickly ramped up until it left at once, almost instantaneously.
My breath hitched as I lost all that made a Celestial. Any attempt at absorbing and replenishing my reserves was t with failure, so I remained stuck on the ground, eyes blankly staring at the 'fog.'
Ti went by as I sat there, waiting for sothing, anything to happen, and eventually... It did.
I heard a voice that ca from all around , echoing endlessly, like an orchestra's symphony.
"Child Of The Sands..."
I imdiately recognized who was speaking to , so I stood up and bowed, now understanding that this was no mistake, grateful for the opportunity he had given . "You must learn; grasp the essence. You are not rely a prince nor solely a weapon, but sothing greater and sothing lesser. Understand this, and you shall comprehend how to embody."
"...I shall."
Our exchange ended at that, as I didn't hear his reply.
After a second of hesitation, I sat back on the ground and began to think about what the "essence" was.
He took away my Aether for a reason, and that reason must relate to what he told to understand.
The essence of sothing greater than a weapon, lesser than a prince.
It was humanity.
Was it consciousness? Intelligence? Self-awareness? Empathy? Compassion? Creativity? Innovation? Morality? Adaptability? Resilience?
Or might it be our never-ending quest for aning, for purpose?
Perhaps.
But I could go further; there was no need to stop at what was known.
I needed to expand, swim away from the shallow waters, and dive deeper into the unknown. What connected all of what I ntioned?
Pain.
Consciousness caused pain, as did intelligence and self-awareness. Empathy, compassion, and morality did too. Even adaptability and resilience for human might didn't co with no
consequence.
What about creativity and innovation? Well, the people who led the charge into unknown lands were often not the most welcod; at tis killed; so were burned at the stake while others were ridiculed into career suicide, literally speaking in so cases.
Many might argue that love could replace pain, but what is love without pain?
What were joy, curiosity, wonder, and the pursuit of aning without pain?
One could not know true pain without love, correct. Yet one could not know true love without
pain.
A yin and yang, balanced and harmonious like Mr. Player's every word.
However, that wasn't the case for .
Despite the love I hold for my family, the pain, the hate, and the suffering, I experienced were
tenfold.
So it was no wonder that I would choose pain over love ten out of ten tis, for it was what I was most familiar with.
Now, what could my Aetherless body have anything to do with pain?
Well, in my current state, the lack of oxygen or nutrients could prove fatal, as my Aether was what supplied my body with essential energy.
This neutral energy could be absorbed in all forms, whether as the oxygen in my lungs or the food in my stomach, so without it, I'm not much different than a mortal, only astronomically stronger in body and mind.
With that forming a base for my future actions, I chose my thod of pain.
I chose starvation.
Suffocating to death, while painful, wasn't sothing common, which was quite unlike starvation, for that was sothing common even today where food was manufactured from
essentially nothing.
Hitting myself was out of the question, I didn't even bother thinking about it.
'This'll take long...'
I chuckled as I began to recollect my senses freely.
I thought of the pain that soone would experience while dying from starvation, but it was
tough for to imagine such a scene.
Familiar to hunger I was not.
The sensation was lost upon , for I have never experienced true hunger, in fact, I was never hungry, not even once, I missed my mom's cooking at tis, sure, but it was a want, not a
need.
I was privileged, soft, and stuffed like a pig always ready for slaughter. My mind wandered back to the longest period I'd gone hungry, which wasn't long.
The training in the Well of Eternity didn't count, as hunger couldn't plague then. The most urgent sensation one could feel, starvation, was impossible for to experience. A pain that everyone should feel, both the impure and poor, the pure and rich, was sothing I left behind as I ascended the hierarchy.
So no, it was a ti before that, a ti when I was a mutt chasing after low-level gangs.
And as I thought about where I once was the slums, the torture, the thirst, the subsequent revenge, and the massacre of those under Alex's command-my mind drifted to what I craved
most at the ti: my mother's cooking.
Oh, how I missed it...
And now I needed to miss it again.
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