A little over a month had passed.
Noth was still randomly getting those horrid dreams of the monster he once was. He’d wake up feeling so afraid and lonely after each and every one. He still wasn’t fully in good health, so he often only stuck to his bed. Sometimes, after the nightmares, he’d wake up to see Elillith tidying up his room and his heart would twist with a myriad of emotions. Even in his miserable life as a monster, Elillith had never abandoned him. In that life he never saw a single scene of him spending all those years to bond with her like he had in this one, and yet she still insisted on staying and taking care of him. Sure, he believed that they were infinitely closer now than they had been in that life, so he wasn’t upset that he’d spent the time on it, but… But he couldn’t understand why she’d stuck around back then. Could it have been that she truly had nowhere to go, as she’d told his monster self? It's true that she was quite apathetic, did she just not care what kind of monster she served? Did she just believe it was none of her business? Once again, Noth truly lamented how little he knew of his friend’s mind.
One night, Noth had a particularly terrible dream. He knew that the boy his past self fought with must have led to the end that his monstrous self so coveted, even if he hadn’t dreamt of it yet. Honestly, even the current Noth thought that it was the only answer to the awful and ruinous life that had plagued him. However, he hadn’t yet seen the final confrontation that had ended his prior life. He vaguely knew that the villa no longer existed in that life. He knew that Elillith and the butler had made a small shrine in front of the greenhouse, and would often place flowers there, as if they were in mourning. He knew, but his past self didn’t really care; The only person he had any mourning left for was himself.
Or at least, that’s what he thought.
Many people are fine breaking their own things, but get very upset when someone else does it.
One day, one of the lucky boy’s followers kicked down the shrine to start a fight. Elillith was there, and it was the first time that the past Noth had ever seen her lose her cool. She snapped at the offender and lunged at them, but of course was beaten back as easily as if she were a stuffed doll. Elillith’s crumpled form next to the shrine that she’d so devotedly loved enraged Noth. Monster that he was, he killed the offender more quickly than the lucky boy could react. It was the first time that the boy had ever lost someone he'd been close to. With righteous tears in his eyes, the lucky boy Kess vowed that today would be their last fight. The final battle began, with the odds ever in Kess’s favour.
And so was the end of the monster, Noth.
~~~
Noth always felt sick after seeing these nightmares, but this particular one felt like it would break him. He jumped out of bed. His clothes and face were covered in sweat. His hair felt matted and clung to him uncomfortably. His body felt cold and yet hot. He felt horribly ill. He panted as he raced through the halls. His eyes were wide open, and yet it was like he couldn’t see a thing. He ran from the mansion to the villa, desperately seeking out Elillith. He knew what he’d seen had just been a dream, a recollection of an erased past, and yet he needed something concrete and important from both lives to truly believe it. It felt as if he didn’t manage to convince himself of the truth, that the old monster he once was would come back and consume him once again. The villa was almost enough to be convincing, but his frazzled mind wasn’t paying attention to it at all, instead focusing on only one thing: Elillith.
Eventually he made it to Elillith’s room in the villa and flung it open, however only an empty room that seemingly hadn’t been used in a while met him. There was barely anything in the room to even show off that someone had ever lived in it, and only a cold and lonely feeling pervaded the space. Noth choked as a wave of emotion washed over him. Fear grew and ate at him from deep inside. His mind repeatedly reasoned again and again that he had simply missed something, and that he surely must be acting silly right now, but his heart wouldn’t listen to a word of it. His panic verging on hysteria, Noth ejected himself from the room and attempted to run down the hall, desperately looking around in a frantic hope that something might catch his eye that would give him a clue as to what was happening.
It wasn’t surprising at all that such a frantic and jumbled person came crashing down onto the floor.
The fall was hard, and jarred Noth’s mind. With a feeling as if everything came crashing down along with his body, the teen just laid there and decided to give up, no longer having the strength inside of him to worry. Perhaps letting himself faint like this would be the best thing he could do right now, anyways. He’d been weak for quite some time trying to integrate the two energies that were now twisting and fighting inside of his body. After such an awful panic and running around for the first time in a long while, Noth’s body felt completely exhausted. As he laid there and let his body be, his swimming eyes slowly scanned over the expanse of the carpet in front of them.
The creamy carpets with little accents of silver were very familiar to Noth, since he’d seen them in every hall of the villa since he was 10. And yet, now that he was down here looking at them, he realized that he’d never truly taken the time to get to really see them. With almost no strength behind it, Noth’s hand slowly roamed across the carpet, feeling it for the first time. It was actually quite a bit softer than he would have guessed. It always felt soft underneath his feet, but he’d always worn shoes when he’d walked over any of them, so he’d never felt one so directly before. A small smile graced the teen’s lips as he thought about adding one of these carpets next to his bed. He almost never rolled out of bed at night, but if he somehow managed to fall, he would have liked to have one of these carpets to catch him again.
Suddenly the hand that had been stroking the carpet caught on to something rough and a little sharp. His fingers had to dig in a little bit to pull out whatever it was from between the soft strings that adorned the carpet, but eventually after a bit of work he managed to pull whatever it was free. He brought the offending object up to where his eyes could see it, and after staring at it for a while in confusion, he finally realized what exactly it was.
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Jean had said that his rust had been hard to clean out of the carpets.
Noth fiddled with the piece of rust as he looked it over, and eventually it could no longer take it and crumbled. The tiny specks fell from his hand and back into the carpet, getting buried in it more quickly than Noth could react. He tried to dig whatever he could of it back up, but he seemed to just be further mushing it between the carpet’s strings. Yes, Jean was right, it really was hard to get the rust out. No wonder it was still there 2 months later. The kids had put so much work into cleaning the place up, too. Noth’s wandering mind remembered back to the day Jean had asked for her wish. She’d said she needed help cleaning the place up, hadn’t she? Noth assembled whatever strength he had left and sat up, his head slowly scanning left and right as he looked over the long hallway. Perhaps it was a bit nicer than it could have been since at least a few of them had to walk through it every day, but it certainly wasn’t as clean as it should have been. How much worse were the areas that people rarely went to? Probably a fair bit worse, if Noth had to guess.
As Noth sat there and thought, a piece of his heart seemed to slowly start burning. At first it was just a slight glow, but eventually he could feel it becoming stronger and stronger. It almost felt as if something was trying to escape up from his chest and out of his mouth. He’d felt this sensation a number of times over the past month and a half of bedrest. Usually so long as he stayed focused on it and tried to keep it stuffed down, then it wouldn’t bother him too much. However, for some reason today it felt like it was particularly flaring. Could it have been because of the disturbance in his heart after today’s nightmare? Noth wasn’t sure. All he could do was clutch at his chest and resist against the flaring heat as best as he could. He tried to keep his mouth shut and not make too much noise, worried that if his mouth opened too wide that the suddenly stronger surge of heat would somehow manage to finally escape.
At some point, as Noth struggled as silently as he could, a small meowing sound called out to him. He slightly turned his head in the noise’s direction, and saw the smallest of the villa's cats coming towards him. The cat quickly scampered over, jumping onto Noth’s leg and pressing a paw on the arm that clutched at his chest. The small furry thing meowed again and again, seeming as if it might be worried for the teen. Noth smiled weakly through the pain and raised his other hand to lightly pet the cat. He wanted to call out the cat’s name and thank it for its concern, but he didn’t know what its name was. The children had all gone through the various cats and given them names, but Noth hadn’t truly been paying attention when they’d quickly told him about them months ago. Now he regretted his lack of care.
After a few moments of looking at the cat, and trying to distract himself from the pain by pondering over what its name could be, Noth suddenly noticed something. All this time he’d been petting the cat with the hand that he’d been playing with the rust with, and now its calico fur had been decorated with streaks of the reddish-orange dust. If only he’d been more proactive in helping Jean to clean up the mess he’d made, he wouldn’t have smeared this horrible stuff on this poor cat. If only he still had access to his powers, he could have easily fixed everything already. If only he wasn’t so weak and stupid right now…
With a small bit of guilt tingling inside of his heart, Noth opened his mouth before he realized what he was doing. He wanted to say his apologies, but instead something else began to surge forth, tickling its way up his throat and past his tongue. A white, almost blue mist puffed out along with his breath, shining ethereally as he spoke.
“Would you change yourself to be of help?”
The teen’s hand let go of his chest in surprise. He tried to bring his hands up to his mouth to seal the lips that had spoken unbidden, but instead they came forth to cup the cat’s face against his orders. The cat’s eyes stared into his, and a small mewl escaped from its mouth. To Noth’s ears it sounded confused and unwilling, but the power seeping out from him seemed to believe otherwise.
“Then breathe in my power and begin anew. Gather your brethren and be reborn.”
The heat in Noth’s heart felt as if it was bursting as it welled up and then overflowed out. The mist emanating from his mouth grew thicker, and gradually began to be sucked in through the cat’s mouth, nose, ears, and eyes. By the time the mist had stopped seeping out and the heat in Noth’s heart had died down, every last bit of the sparkling magical fog had been taken into the small cat’s body. When the odd phenomenon came to an end and the teen’s hands finally let go, Noth found that the tiny cat had collapsed and was no longer breathing, laying there motionless as if it had met its end. Tears threatened to well up in the confused Noth’s eyes at the tragic scene. He gently nudged the cat and tried calling out, worried that he’d done something unforgivable to the well-meaning creature. His nudges grew stronger and stronger as he was given no response, eventually shaking the cat violently a few times with his fingers before he finally gave up.
A single heart-rending tear fell down onto the motionless body.
As if that were the signal it was waiting for, the cat suddenly rose. Using its front paws, it curled itself sideways, lifting its small mouth straight up into the air, and then let out a deafening, siren-like meow. When the cry finally ended, the last tiny bit of strength seemingly left the fragile creature, and it once again flopped down as if collapsing. Noth stared down at it wide eyed, his hands fisting back against himself in both confusion and alarm. After a few moments of silence his confusion of what all of this could be finally won over any fear he might be feeling, and he once again reached out to nudge at the cat. However, before his hand could reach, he was shocked once more by a loud, rumbling sound. The sound grew louder and louder, and by the time it sounded like it was right on top of him, Noth finally saw the source of all the noise.
A hoard of cats appeared.
All of the remaining cats that he’d brought over with the villa were coming.
While he sat there like a statue, every single one of the cats dove onto the one who’d called them. They dog-piled on in a way that Noth was sure would suffocate the poor motionless cat on the bottom. However, despite the way they were piled up on top of one another, not a single one squirmed around or fought; They all just laid there calmly and quietly, closing their eyes as if they’d accepted something.
Once more, Noth’s hand reached out.
“Hey… Get-”
Before he could speak another word, the pile of cats collapsed with a splashing wet sound, forming a strange black puddle of goo.