Chapter 34: Realm Of Madness [30] Death And Denial
Cold...that was all that he felt. The world was a pit of nausea and vertigo, his thoughts swimming faster than his body. The wave of endless darkness had crashed into the group with a thunderous roar, decimating the ground with earth-shattering force.
Though his eyes were closed, he had heard the screams from Rani and hints of a curse from Willow. He found himself surrounded by billowing waves of abyssal waters.
His arm was clamped tight on his nose, his ears filled to the brim with the detestable liquid.
Ahh, I’m going to die. Why...?
Why was he going to die? What had he done to deserve it?
Why? Why? Why!?
Nothing...
He had done nothing, but the world was cruel. It punished weakness, but Leonidas wasn’t weak, not by any ans. He was probably one of the strongest in his age group...yet he was still dying.
Barbossa...yes, it’s all his fault. He knew this was going to happen, he knew!
Yet he didn’t warn Leonidas; he had done nothing to warn him. He was supposed to be a seer, an oracle who beheld the possibilities of tomorrow. And all he had said was ’Good luck.’
Leonidas would have laughed if not for the fact that water would drown him...but then again, what did it matter?
He was going to die anyway. His ribs were shattered beyond repair, his only arm was going to splinter soon enough, and if he was unlucky enough, the sheer pressure of the endless sea would crush him into crimson paint.
Do I just give up...? After everything I went through?
He very well could. His dreams were not possible, and a life without dreams held no aning.
But what would Seridius think? He said he would kill
if I didn’t bring back his mother’s blade.
It was a weird thing to think in the face of certain death, but life wasn’t logical. Slowly, clarity made its way back into Leonidas’s mind, images of people he had t and had promised to kill, passing with hazy clarity.
He would have taken deep breaths to calm himself...but it was a little hard to do while being crushed by an oxygenless environnt. So Leonidas resorted to his next best option.
Imagining himself breathing.
Imagination was the key to all doors, and his problem was one such door.
So Leonidas just opened the door. He circulated the Insenium inside his body, desperately making it flow despite his fracturing body and mind.
A relaxing feeling soon settled over his body, as if he had been wrapped in a warm blanket. Only that the blanket was inside his body, and the outside was still freezing.
Shivering once more, Leonidas forced his legs to move. He didn’t know which way was down and which way up, but he figured that it wouldn’t matter much.
After all, even if the abyssal body of water was deeper than the void, it still had an end, and that bottom would be the ground, which he would identify without fail.
And if Leonidas reached the top, he would simply feel the rush of air.
The best option would be the back of the flood.
That way, he would be able to leave the damned thing altogether.
Leonidas swam, his legs struggling against the strength of the flood. It was as if he were kicking a tub of bricks each second. The water was just that strong and tenacious.
Yet Leonidas’s will was deeper than a vast ocean, more elastic than rubber, more adaptable than a shadow. If the ocean were to fight against him, he would simply move faster than its obstructions.
Leonidas forced his legs to move, pushing past his limits, the burn from exertion colliding with the cold ocean water.
A little faster and he would have started steaming; thankfully, that didn’t happen. Leonidas pushed and pushed until nothing remained, only he and his goal. Escape.
Ti passed in tandem with his efforts, but he could not tell how much had actually passed, only that he was making progress.
I...feel like I’m about to die. Ahh.
Even his thoughts were weighed down by exhaustion, every mont an opportunity for pain to bloom. How ironic it was, he was supposed to be the heir of peace, and yet not once had he been in true peace after awakening his Source Elents.
If anything, life had been getting hectic with every passing mont. He would have lanted his fate more, but the water beneath him suddenly vanished.
"Huh.."
He snapped his eyes open in an instant, and his heart sank at the sight that awaited him.
The ocean was still barreling forward, and it seed he had reached its end. It would have been nice, except for the fact that he was falling from a thousand feet. He could see the rainbow ground of the spire—which still looked like a massive plain, despite his impressive distance from it—approaching close.
His arm flailed uselessly as he tried to grab onto anything...only that there was nothing. He was in the sky after all.
Think, Willow survived a much bigger distance than this. You can too. I’m better than her.
But what could he do? Make a flower bed?
But that would kill him. Even if the velvet sheets were soft, he was falling far too fast for it to do anything aningful.
If the velvets won’t work..Aha.
Leonidas quickly entered the imaginative world, carefully designing a giant plant. He first made the stem, a thick branch of blackwood, easily wider than his chest. Then Leonidas attached a massive inverted flower onto it.
By the end, the thing looked like a titanic crimson umbrella with an onyx stem.
This worked in Art’s world, I just hope it works in mine too.
The idea behind his thoughts was simple. From the mories he had inherited from Art, people in his world would jump from buildings and use an umbrella to float slowly to the ground.
Gritting his teeth, Leonidas poured a torrent of Insenium into the build and manifested it into reality. As soon as the stem appeared beside him, Leonidas latched onto it like a monkey to its mother’s back.
Let’s hope this works...
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