Heavy eyelids struggled to open, burdened by the weight of exhaustion that perated Seth's entire body.
He lifted his head slowly, which had been hanging limply forward, until it hit softly against the wall he was leaning against. His vision was a ss of blending colours and vague, blobby shapes that stubbornly refused to co into focus.
Part of him wanted to gasp for air, like a drowning made that finally broke the surface of the water, but the best that he could manage was a crackling wheeze before he hacked up another lungful of blood.
He closed his eyes for just a few more seconds, letting out a low groan, before opening them again and making another attempt at figuring out his surroundings. His mind was hazy, struggling to rember what had happened. Even basic thoughts were becoming hard to keep a hold of, slipping through his grasp like sand, and all he wanted to do was curl up next to a fire. He was just so cold. Why was he so horrifically cold?
The world finally started to co into focus, at least what was directly in front of him.
Legs outstretched from where he had fallen, he was sitting in a sticky red patch of sothing on the floor. Only when his fatigued eyes drifted over the gaping wound in his left calf, did he finally piece together what it was. It was obvious now… He was in a puddle of his own blood.
Moving his gaze away from the growing crimson puddle of his own mortality, he next saw the corpse of the raven. Its mouth hung open much wider than it should naturally be and with its tongue flopped out. Its previously black feathers were not stained with so much blood there wasn't a single dot of black to be seen.
He wasn't even sure how much of it was his blood or the birds. It's form mangled by his rage, that it barely resembled the creature he had once feared.
Groaning again, sothing in the back of his haggard mind was nagging at him. Telling him that he was forgetting sothing, sothing important. Yet the damned thing refused to tell him what it was.
Shaking his head to clear away a bit more of the fog, he quickly scanned the room and took in the sights, trying to see what it was he was forgetting.
Nest, Egg, Mannequin, Bird corpse, Soul fragnt, Leg, Blood, Bone, Egg… No wait, he had done Egg already
Then what else could it be?...Shit!
He had to suppress the urge to slap himself, quickly disconnecting his threads from the mannequin he whipped them across the room towards the sapphire. Quickly wrapping them around the precious final fragnt, which was partially phasing through the far wall, and started to reel in back.
But even though he had just started the process, he knew he wasn't going to make it. Moving the threads took energy, they taxed his mind, especially when he was reeling in sothing that was constantly fighting him.
If before he was scraping the bottom of the barrel for so energy to kill the raven, now he was licking at the barrel desperate for a single drop.
He could already feel the sinking feeling setting in, his eyelids drooping like they were made of lead as he constantly fought for just a few more seconds. The entire ti, part of him was telling him to just let it go.
'Just a few monts of rest… It won't hurt. Just a little nap and I'll be fine.'
His eyelids sunk so more, almost sealing themselves closed before he snapped them open again. Hitting his head a few tis against the wall, he forced the sleep away.
When he heard the dulcet tones of Morpheus calling his na, he dug his teeth into his lip until he tasted the tallic tinge of life wine.
But he couldn't fight nature forever. Eventually, despite his best efforts, he succumbed to his body's desperate urge to slumber, even just for a few monts.
So it was, in an eternal struggle, Seth slipped in and out of consciousness. Every ti his body succumbed, the threads would unravel themselves from the natural repellent force of the fragnt and it would drift further away.
He would awaken, ensnare it once again and deplete the few morsels of energy he had gained bringing it closer towards him. Back and forth, the progress of one undone by the other in a struggle much like that of Sisyphus.
In the monts he rested, Seth dread of many things; He dreamt of his fallen friends and the battle they had fought, envisioning ways that it could have gone had he made different choices. He reminisced on his ti with Cynthia, the days he spent hunting alongside the sli girl and growing together. He rembered the look on Sirius' face before he had gone to face the monster, the last ti he would ever see the golden eyed man.
But most of all, he dreamt of his family. Of his sisters and brother, the only ones he had who truly cared for him in this world. Part of him wondered if he had made the right choice in choosing the book. Perhaps, if he could go back, he would choose differently just so he could hear his sister's voice one last ti. Just so he could know they were safe.
When he opened his eyes once again, he didn't think about his actions or dwell in the regrets that plagued his dreams. He simply lassoed the fragnt and once more started to roll that boulder up the hill.
At this point, Seth wasn't even sure how much of this was real, or if this was just another dream filled with the torture of hindsight, but he never stopped his labour.
"It's pointless. You know that, don't you brother."
A calm, ethereal voice echoed through the room, or maybe Seth only thought it did. It was a stern voice, like a familiar teacher, with a hint of disappointnt laced within its tone that expected more from their pupil.
"I know… But what else can I do?"
Seth could barely speak, his voice hoarse as each whisper crept its way from his torn throat. Movent caught his eye, causing him to lift his lead filled head and watch as a mannequin dressed in a crisp, well pressed suit strolled into the room.
The faceless white plastic on its head morphed, keeping its deathly pale pallet as it grew features. Not the minimal features that the other mannequins had to create a pale imitation of life, but instead this mannequin grew a living, breathing face.
High cheekbones, a soft jawline that gave him the appearance of a porcelain doll. On either side of its small, button nose it had a pair of glowing, silver eyes that stared into Seth's soul with a mixture of adoration and sympathy. It even grew itself a head of shaggy, black hair that he pushed from his face as he crouched in front of Seth.
It was if he was looking at a ghostly apparition of a twin or his own father, or at least what he assud his father would look like. All that was different were the eyes. This apparitions eyes were entirely silver, while Seth's were limited to simply the iris.
"Did I ever tell you the definition of insanity?"
Seth couldn't help but smirk at those familiar words, letting out a soft chuckle which quickly beca a short and violent cough.
"This isn't your ti brother, you can do better than this. So stop acting so stupid, so insane. You are made for better things, for great things. So be great."
The living mannequin poked his chest three tis as he emphasised his final words. Then, after giving Seth a reassuring smile and a pat on the shoulder, he simply stood up and walked away. His back growing distant, he gave a wave behind him.
"Until next ti brother."
Seth moved his eyes away from the shrinking back of his hallucinatory twin/father and focused back on the fragnt that floated in the air, mocking him with its disobedience at his will. His mind replayed the words of the figure, letting them sink in as he gave up his madness in search of a better way.
'Be great… be great, huh? Well, I know how I can do that.'
Smirking to himself at the idea, he imdiately set to work. He couldn't stop himself passing out, no matter what he tried it was an inevitability as even now he felt his energy morsels slipping, and every ti he did the threads would unravel.
So the solution was simple. Don't let it do that.
Instead of using the energy to draw the fragnt back in, where it would escape the next ti he passed out, he started to weave the threads around the fragnt.
There was no structure nor reason, he simply weaved the threads around in whatever fashion he felt like. Not even bothering to keep them tight around the fragnt, instead using its repulsion against it, he spun the threads into a ball that completely encased the sapphire.
'Alexander used his sword to get through it, so let's see you get out of that…'
His mind trailed off as his eyelids pulled themselves shut once again and his head dropped forward.
Yet as the monts passed and quickly turned into minutes, then hours, his construction stayed intact. The ball refused to unravel, the fragnt unable to float away as it trapped itself in its own repulsion. Of course it wasn't perfect, how could it be? On the surface of the ball was a gap, just barely large enough to fit the head of a pin. It wasn't enough to compromise the structure of the knot, however under the stress of being contained by the ball the fragnt had one last act of rebellion.
Like a lump of coal being pressed into a diamond, it couldn't handle the pressure. Its surface cracked before it shattered into even more pieces which were thankfully still contained within the ball, clustering together in the middle. All but one.
A single piece, no larger than a crumb that couldn't even satisfy a mouse, soared out of the gap in the knot and sailed freely towards the nest.
But Seth didn't wake to witness his almost perfect victory.
Even when a full day passed, he remained unconscious. One being, however, did see it. One being, ford of a swirling sphere of alien runes, not only saw the knot he had ford but saw the constant stress his soul was under as it contained the fragnt as well as the others within his Abyss.
Angel hovered silently over Seth's barely living body for a few monts, before finally speaking. Not into Seth's mind, however, but to sothing far above them.
[Additional Mutation forming, Catalyst is required. Requesting supplentation package for Catalyst…]
[Request denied.]
[Alternative source of sustenance required, acquired now.]
As Seth slept soundly, the threads that branched out within the abyss of his soul began to manifest outwards. Emanating from his chest, they began to swirl themselves around his unconscious body, much like he had done to the now shattered fragnt.
Whilst he was being wrapped up, a few strands danced through the air like an octopuses tentacles and began to drag the ruined corpse of the raven closer to him.
[Subject will be forced into a suspended state until the process is complete.]
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