V – 00003.5 – What Am I Becoming.

My eyes slowly pried themselves open, and I shuddered, feeling the ice-cold, disgusting puddle of sweat I had collapsed into clinging to my skin. I quickly pulled myself from the sticky floor, ignoring the dull ache my entire body felt and the strange fatigue that clung to me, as if my very soul was made of lead in favor of escaping the gross puddle.

The lit candles within my home had long since burned down and blown out, leaving the cabin feeling as dead and hollow as my core.

The world came to me as a mixture of harsh, dim grays before my enhanced eyes. “Gods, I feel fucking disgraceful.” I pushed the absolute abomination of a door out of my way and rubbed my eyes, trying to get the sting out of them as my irises contracted to pinpricks in the sunlight.

My hands fell to my side, mouth gaping as I took in the changed forest; the landscape was practically unrecognizable, the mana in the air felt sinister, dark, and wholly mine, the soil was closer to an ashy black than brown, and most of the grass had turned a bone white, while the rest had either withered or turned a watery shade of blue.

The ambient mana felt like a chaotic mix of storm, lightning, thunder, water, death, and Infernal, and each of them seemed to be slowly diffusing into the environment; the unnatural energy types felt like they had a taciturn agreement with each other, simply avoiding one another by some unknown process, whereas the other energies seemed to fight for dominance, trying to claim stones and blades of grass from each other.

Centered on my home, the fight between the energy sources looked completely one-sided, with almost all the plant life sporting hollow whites, deep black bark, and violet leaves with teal-colored dew gathering on the plant life. Meanwhile, anywhere with exposed inorganic surfaces, such as stone, had reddish hues and veins arcing through it; my lake took on a red, bloody tinge.

Further on, as I walked through the forest, I found that there were bright purples, electric and aqua blues, grays, and all sorts of other colors that crept into the forest with only the occasional touch of infernal and deathly mana; some places looked completely normal, however, as if the storm hadn’t changed a single thing. The entire situation left me utterly astonished.

“What the fuck?” I asked aloud as if something or one was just going to jump out of the shadows to explain this insanity; the further out I walked, the less familiar the forest felt, and the more distinctly foreign I felt, like I just wasn’t supposed to be there, and I quickly noticed that feeling correlated strongly to how strong my mana’s presence was; near home I felt welcome. But out here, where black, purple, and red were absolutely absent, I felt alien even to the normal stretches of green.

I turned back and jogged home, feeling a weight I hadn’t noticed I was carrying release me as I got back to my valley. I wasted no time in stripping off and diving into the comforting water; it was inviting and friendly, more than a little malicious, but I felt at home in the water; the lake stripped the grime, blood, and sweat from my body with ease, washing away my genocidal jaunt like a priest taking confession.

The waters lightened the lead pit in my sternum; leaning backwards into the water, I cast my mind’s eye inwards and immediately saw the source of my issues: my core was practically dead, the omnipresent smoke was non-existent, with barely a couple of wisps floating around.

I could see the dark mana recuperating, but I’d never been this empty before. Certainty I’ve been low enough in the past that I couldn’t use my magic anymore?

I thought before a slew of memories struck me as if my brain was too tired to lead me on the goose chase that was realization and decided to just spoon-feed me the answer. Many times I’d used so much mana that I couldn’t materialize any more energy, but never had I been this low on not just death but infernal mana.

It’s the inflated mental stats; you’ve never been capable of overdrawing and spending this much of your energy in the past. That is until you had a wisdom and intelligence score that made Einstein look like a drooling dumbass.

My infernal mana stores were just as pitiful; barely a few links of the usually endless chains floated around my core, and the souls I had collected were just roaming completely free on the celestial body that was the engine of my magic, looking confused.

I’d always viewed my core like a world, a living thing, and perhaps that was true, but looking at it now, so lifeless and empty, full of mindless shades and stupefied souls, all I could think about was how it looked like a dead engine, trying and failing to cycle.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

Slowly but surely my mana was regenerating; from where I had no idea, but I could see and feel my core growing in strength, slowly kicking back to life, or un-life, as it were.

“Alright, I’ve confirmed I haven’t crippled myself at the very least, so let’s stop lollygagging,” I said as I began to swim back to shore. Lollygagging… are you eighty? Came a sarcastic voice, which I promptly ignored, much to its annoyance.

I dressed in my last clean pair of pants and set the shirt I was planning to wear on fire after smelling and recoiling from it like it grew teeth and bit me on the nose.

“Nope, we are going shopping,” I declared to no one as I cut and lit a cigar and shoved a backup set of smokes in my pocket. With plans to make up for lost time, I flamed the cigar tip while pulling on it with a lighter fluid Zippo and allowed myself a moment of levity at the memory of an old friend who lost his shit the first time he saw me do that.

I made the trek out of my forest looking like an utter lunatic, as I emerged from the woods shirtless but wearing fancy dress pants, with no shoes, sharp clawed toes, and fingers with soaked long cascading black hair.

Re-entering the city I braced myself for the pain I knew would come, yet it never did. Long minutes passed as I walked through the city streets, and I never felt the gut-wrenching pain my usual visits came with, and no notification warned me of my mutations failing.

A soft chuckle escaped my lips as I looked deeper into the city and sucked in a deep lungful of mana-rich air. “The storm, I think it’s cleared out whatever airborne disease kept attacking my mutations.”

Sadly, the city didn’t seem that much worse for wear; the uncared-for city edges looked moderately more shit, and the air was thick with magic, but the damage from the storm appeared minimal, and the energy that permeated the sky didn’t feel at all hostile.

Treading deeper into the city, signs of life slowly became more and more evident, as I could feel eyes on me; my enhanced senses keyed into the sounds, movements, and smells around me, amplified by my sensory skill. I became uncomfortably aware of all the eyes on me and the bloodlust that I could feel itching in the back of my head at the presence of humanity.

A subtle voice I had heard most of my life, one that demanded I kill, made itself known again. You know, Viktor, you’re getting worse. After a kill, that voice used to stay quiet for weeks, but now we can barely go a day without feeling it.

“I know,” I mumbled numbly in response to my more coherent voices, uncertain of what, if anything, they were getting at.

I waited for several long minutes as I walked aimlessly through the town, my own version of window shopping. “You going to add anything… make a suggestion, I asked, somewhat irritated at the silence in my mind.

“Nope.” Came a response that only irked me more; I felt my eye twitch subtly, my own insanity attempting to and succeeding in annoying me.

I stepped into a clothing store and stopped; cocking my head to the side, I stared at the small group of five who stood in the store sifting through shirts and making inane idle chatter. They’ll do.

I rolled my eyes as the group of what looked to be teens took notice of me, and then did a double take, looking me up and down. They stepped back a bit, practically in unison, and I watched one of them whisper to another, their voices coming clear to my high sense stat.

“Is that him?” asked one of the boys in the group.

“How the hell should I know?” Came a swift response; the group appeared tense to me, but I wasn’t entirely certain; perhaps they were afraid? Or just annoyed at being disturbed.

I shook my head softly, trying to silence the incessant voice in my head that kept telling me that they were the perfect thing to whet my appetite.

“Shut up!” I roared after moments of trying to quiet the incorrigible voice.

I stormed off, walking into another section of the store away from the group who I could feel watching me, their gaze infuriating me with every heavy clacking step I took. Who the fuck do they think they are… staring like I’m some sort of fucking clown.

“Stop!” shouted one of my voices. “You need to calm down, Viktor. Just relax, brother; you're spiraling, alright… No one is making fun of you; let’s just take a walk, ok?”

“Yeah… alright, we can take a walk,” I said, shuffling into the back of the store. Pushing past the doors, I threw myself down on a patchy couch in the staff break room.

“What the fuck is wrong with me?” I asked aloud.

I think you just need to stop for a bit, ok Viktor? You’ve gone through so much shit so fast we’ve been forced to change so much. I stared down at my clawed fingers as the voice in my head kept speaking at me, and I watched blood drool off the tips of my bone claws and stain the couch.

You keep killing and nearly dying and killing and changing; your body is getting all twisted and fucked up, and who the hell knows what exactly these wisdom and intelligence points are doing to your head.

“I mean fuck me, Viktor, it’s been what, a month? And you’ve killed like forty people; you became a fucking cannibal to top it off. I’m pretty sure that’s what’s wrong with you… Frankly, the reapers giving you a place to focus your mind and hate is probably the only thing that’s kept this breakdown at bay.”

I sank into the couch, listening to my own voice as it shrunk my head, trying to feed me a list of answers to my question. “And we both know this isn’t going to end here. That cop Alexis, if he’s still alive, he’ll gun for you, and I’m sure he’s already told people what you look like, the soldiers… Reggie probably told them who you are.”

“Hell, those people out there seethis? to have some sort of idea about who you are or who you’re supposed to be.”

Why is it always like thisI thought towards the voice, “Why can’t I just be left alone? Why can’t I just be alone?”

“I… I don’t know Viktor; honestly, for most of your life, it feels like the universe has singled you out for special abuse, and for that, I truly am sorry.

I shifted and lay down, resting my achy body on the soft material, and I spoke.

“I feel like I’m being torn apart, you know that… It’s like I’m constantly of two minds; I want to kill, I want to… Eradicate! Every person in this fucking wasteland of a city… Since I came back, it’s gotten so much worse. But other times I just want to be left alone; I want to sit down and let the world forget I’m here until I’m nothing but a memory even I can’t hold onto.”

It’s like the person I am is fighting the person I was, and neither of them can win… They’re just dragging me back and forth from complete inaction into explosive, volatile destruction.

“I can’t keep living like this,” I said with a sigh. “This isn’t even living; I’m just barely surviving like this.”