As the tsunami of starfall radiation inundates the restaurant, ripping the entire structure of its foundations, Breath pulls me hard by the sleeve, throwing both of us bodily into the wall. Reality shifts and churns as Breath tears a micro rift into existence, our path of escape from the Fat Kid's reconciliation. We plummet into a yawning abyss, the micro rift sealing itself behind us, silencing the cries of dismay and terror that had surrounded us mere seconds prior.
"Hang on to me." Breath commands and I sense a sudden surge of power from the man. An astral expanse opens up in front of us, a network of blazing stars and burnt out constellations. The Fat Man's soul gem array in its full, if diminished glory. The stolen potential under the Fat Man's control rages unabated, desperately trying to stabilize itself after the Fat Man's defeat within his own reconciliation.
"Can you guide us out of here?" I scream back at Breath, my own bearings lost the moment we dropped into the array itself.
Breath scans the area, noting the star we had emerged from bleeding potential like a freshly sodomized asshole. The array diverts more potential into the wound, trying to staunch it, to nurture it back to health. A cold, empty wind lashes both of us and I hear the Fat Man's pained scream in its wake. My hunger stirs but this time there's a sense of infuriation behind it, that I had been unfairly denied the spoils of victory.
All mixed up together, the potential from a thousand different lives. We can't feed like this!
"Pull yourself together." Breath snaps, "Control your inner voice. Don't let it distract you."
"I got it." I murmur back, wiping the sweat from my brow. Breath's correct. There are other, more urgent, problems we're facing right now. Like escaping with our lives.
Breath sinks into a corpse like silence as he starts hauling me along, plotting a path through the array. Each individual star burns hot, the metaphysical gravity ravenously trying to pull us into its orbit. My senses scream in panic and I know full well that without the protective barrier offered by a reconciliation, I would quickly burn out from being in the presence of so many disparate, individual potentials.
Like a mote of ink, swept away by a tidal wave of ocean water.
Breath decisively swims through the array, cutting through the dead spots whenever possible to relieve the pressure on both of us. And to my delight, the array continues to destabilize as we make our way through it, with more and more sections of the constellation shorting out in order to mend the Fat Man's injuries.
"Its big but surprisingly fragile." I grunt as both of us dart through another dying cluster of stars.
"An achievement in balance and artistry." Breath remarks, "But something so complex would inevitably fail when put under stress."
"I don't know. The array seemed pretty strong from where I was standing." I shudder, recalling the battle I had against the Fat Man.
"That is a matter of perspective." Breath dismisses airily, "Your opponent literally led an army of thousands against you. And yet you had taken down hundreds of souls before I intervened."
Wow. That does sound impressive when Breath puts it that way.
"At the end of the day, the Fat Man was merely pretending to wield power that he did not have." Breath shrugs, "He did not understand what it truly means to be Awakened."
"I'm not sure I do either, to be honest." I confess, "Been flying by the seat of my pants mostly. Listening to the "voice of my heart"."
"We are lost souls, Seeker. The world has no need for us. For instance, you live past your appointed hour." Breath starts to explain.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
"Not feeling better about our condition. Just saying." I groan in reply.
"A lost soul instinctively understands the world's rejection. And we return that rejection. We have no need for anything other than ourselves." Breath continues, ignoring my commentary.
Both of us continuing drifting onward, steadily making our way toward the edge of the array as it dies around us.
"And so everything we see, everything we meet, is turned into an appendage of ourselves. There is no "you" or "I". Only "me"." Breath nods to himself in satisfaction.
"That's the feeding process." I frown through the implications of what Breath is saying, "The people we consume literally become part of us."
"But not the Fat Man. The soul array is separate from him." Breath concludes, "Unlike us, his own soul is a province of one, a desolate hell of his own making."
Both of us stop at the edge of the array and Breath vaguely gestures at the sputtering constellation.
"Even now, the Fat Man sacrifices countless souls to preserve his own. Do you see the problem here?" Breath asks me with an inquiring tone.
"Fat Man's not absorbing the potential. He's using it like water to put out an out of control fire." I answer with some consternation. The gnawing hunger rises in me again before I manage to tamp it down.
"And that is why he lost." Breath slashes down hard into empty space as another micro rift opens, "Despite all the potential at his disposal, the Fat Man is still bound to the concepts of "you" and "I". He pretends to power that is not truly his own."
Breath begins ripping another hole in reality and urgently tells me to step through. Nothing for it then. There's only one way forward at this point.
The void embraces me again and -
------
Burning heat lashes my skin as sweat drips down my brow.
"It hurts. It fucking hurts." the Fat Man groans, wobbling unsteadily as he slowly backs away from me. Blinking the confusion away, I abruptly realize that firstly, I'm back in the Fat Man's apartment, notwithstanding I probably never left the place physically. Secondly, I'm still swaying on my knees in front of the homicidal fatty.
"I'm going to make it hurt even more." I grunt while getting back to my feet. The physical soul gem array mounted in the background is literally on fire now, the acrid smoke mixing with the scent of the Fat Man's narcotic incense. The portraits hung on the wall are well into the process of being incinerated.
"Everything's gone ...." the Fat Man mutters in dismay as he flees from the prayer room, "Generations of effort, gone!"
"Get back here!" I roar in anger, stumbling badly. Both of my legs had fallen asleep and my entire body feels lethargic. My back audibly pops as I straighten back up. How long was I in that reconciliation anyway?
I crash through the door, into the apartment's messy and obviously impoverished living room. The decor is cheap plywood shit you can buy at discount, spruced up by the tackiest knick knacks available on the market. Being a cult leader obviously doesn't pay very well. Or maybe the Fat Man just sucks at running a cult. This topic isn't exactly within my scope of expertise.
"Get away from me!" the Fat Man cries out and chucks a bulging bag of groceries right at my face. I manage to bring up both arms to block and as the groceries scatter all over the floor, the Fat Man waddles surprisingly quickly out of the apartment's front door. Kicking the groceries aside, my eyes widen at one of the items knocked loose from the bag.
Sanitary pads.
VALU PACK WITH MOTION FIT TECHNOLOGY NO SIDE LEAKAGE!
Or so the packaging cheerfully proclaims. Why would the Fat Man need sanitary pads in the first place?
Unless he was buying it for a woman.
Like maybe the missing woman Breath had tasked me to help find.
"Damnit!" the realization hits me like a truck and I begin to pursue the Fat Man out of the apartment, hoping to bring lard ass down quickly.
Only for my stomach to suddenly clench in protest as a wave of sickness overwhelms me. My gut is gripped by the urge to puke but all I manage to do is dry heave. This feeling of sickness, its just like that evening with Boggs in the park when -
"Shit! My gear!" Cold sweat breaks out along my back. The Fat Man had separated me from Love. And the gun was summoning me back to reclaim it.
Better get to it then. I charge back into the prayer room, the soul gem array now resembling a blazing tattoo, with flame gushing out of it in every direction. The prayer room was well in the process of being devoured by the fire and by my estimate, the entire apartment would go up in smoke within the next few minutes. To my immense relief, my gear had been left stacked in a corner of the prayer room, the still untouched by the flames. Ned Ted Fred's corpse however, had fared far worse, completely engulfed in fire and filling the room with the scent of barbecue.
Gross. Also made worse by the fact that my stomach had started to rumble.
As I reclaim my gear, the soul gem array explodes, rocking the entire apartment complex. A tongue of flame shoots out of the array, cutting me off from the rest of the living room.
"Same way in, same way out, huh?" I grumble to myself, clambering through the prayer room's window.
Just in time for another explosion to send me flying into the night.