Crusader King-Chapter 126: Beneath the Statue(11)

Cades was just there, sitting pressed against the monsters corpse, his eye shut, the one he had lost not really able to be closed, something that would've normally been very bad, but in this world not so much, and as he was there, with no-one watching but the world itself, it seemed as if he had gotten even better at this task, as if he had started to ever so slightly, truly, understand this, be it just a tiny bit more than he had before.

This was barely visible while one looked at him in on itself, but in truth, there was quite the big change, something that was incredibly different from before, first of all the fact that he could perceive and understand more of the active, perhaps also because the active this time is of a much lower rank and power than the previous one, with there barely being a light inside at all, and on the other hand it was also fairly obvious due to a simple fact.

Cades sat there for a whole week, and only then had he finally arrived inside the active, only then had he finally perceived it, only then was he finally able to see something he had never seen before, only after a whole week of sitting, after a week he had lost, a week he would never be able to recover, was he finally able to connect his self to the stone, and perhaps even keep his self inside of his body, something he had been quite terrified of happening once more.

He did however lose that fear once his self actually left his body, perhaps because of the slow speed, perhaps because of the fact that he simply didn't know anything that was happening as he was leaving his body, perhaps because he was barely able to comprehend the simple fact that his self was leaving it's home, or perhaps it was because all of these thing worked together for a single conclusion, for him not to have any fear as he left, for him not to disturb the process with his hunger for knowledge, his fear of being incomplete, his anxiety, his anger, his thirst for revenge that had been brooding in his heart all the time since he left ehetria.

And now, finally, he was able to truly perceive the inside, and what he saw was not really shocking, it was not really that interesting either, at least not from the little that he could truly 'see', or rather, perceive, no, it was simply there, and he was not yet allowed nor able to see it truly, to understand it completely.

But he felt, he felt a world colliding, he felt centuries of pain, at the least, he felt despair, he felt uncomfortable, he felt as if he was in the wrong skin, he felt as if reality was changed and no one knew it, a feeling one could truly not understand however much they tried, he felt many things, countless, and yet, this was it, he perceived nothing aside of a small, pulsating, bluish light, a light that exuded the very same intent as before, just a bit desperate, desperate to stick to itself, not to Cades, as if forced to leave itself, something he knew too well.

To Cades it was however already too late, as soon as he saw the bluish light and was even able to perceive the colour, with him only later on realizing everything while it was all already vanishing to a place he knew well, however, instead of leaving this collapsing stone as he had done before, banishing himself out of everything and towards the nearest being from what he had understood, he followed the active as it ran towards something that to him who could currently neither see, nor smell, nor feel, nor wholly think, seemed as if it was a wall of something, something that now seemed to exude a delicious smell that he somehow felt inside of his self instead of through a nose, and as he did, he finally entered it, he could feel it, he was inside of his own body, but he was not in charge once more, at least not yet. ƒrēewebnoѵёl.cσm

It was indeed a weird feeling.

As soon as he had entered his body, that very body that had housed him since he was born, though some tweaks had been made as he had entered this accursed realm, began to feel and hear once more, of course he heard nothing, aside from a weird rushing noise, one that he could not really describe and seemed more of a feeling translated into noise, and he felt his body pressed up against the monster, though barely, as far as he could tell the monster had already turned cold, and his own body was feeling weird as well after all.

Finally, he rushed through his own body, guided not by knowledge, not by intent, but simply by his self, he was guided by the part of himself that already knew where he sat, where his self had resided all this time, and after just a short bit, a few minutes of returning at most, he was finally back, barely having learned anything, and yet having gained so much more, he had gained a second active, and one thing was clear from the two experiences, one thing that might not have changed much, but it was still interesting and a piece of expensive knowledge nevertheless.

Cades tried to smile but failed, his body tingling all over as he finally began to move once more after a, to him, unknown amount of time that had to have at least been enough for the corpse his back was still against to run cold and for his muscles to stop their constant work of keeping his body, a wonderful instrument as he had now realized, afloat.

After a failed attempt to move his arm that resulted in him hitting the charred side of his face, specifically the missing eye, something that would've hurt had it hit the other side, he however finally began to mouth something, something he wished to say aloud despite it undoubtably being doomed to turn into incoherent blabber as soon as the tired muscles of his face picked it up.

And indeed it did turn into blabber, a inconsistent continuous noise that resembled a kind of loud groan, but what it was intended to convey to the invisible people in his head that watched this as if it was a theatre, was simple and yet, to himself, astonishingly interesting.

"They are all different."