Elyas and Noah left the seer's house and the north backstreet. "...What am I supposed to do Noah?"
"Hey, it's still manageable. If you don't want the tumour to visit again, you just have to stay inside—"
"Managable?!" Elyas interrupted. "It's easy for you to say. Even if I only sleep in the void, I can only function for eight to nine hours a day… I don't have life anymore."
Noah placed a hand on Elyas' shoulder. "We will figure something out, don't worry." He said gently, trying to ease Elyas' worries. But seeing that he had failed in that aspect, Noah tried a different approach.
"It's strange though, with that Cost… I don't understand how you managed to survive all this time…"
Elyas kept his pace, filtering out Noah in favor of his thoughts. You ask like I know! I've been in the void for four hundred years! Shouldn't I be free for the rest of my life? What kind of joke is this?!
Elyas was just starting to feel like a normal human again. He had blended in and got accustomed to daily life. He was even about to get a job. So it was especially devastating to be dealt a bad hand now.
The wait, it makes me invincible… yeah I can't technically die because there's literally nothing in the void that can kill me!
Each of his steps became heavier than the last, thumping the ground with a mix of ire and resignation. He exhaled continuesly, trying to calm down a little to maybe, just maybe, come up with a way to fix this.
But there was no way.
This was his reality now.
Through complaining and sheer frustration, Elyas traveled half the city without noticing it. Standing in front of the house that had sheltered him at his worst, looking at his friend opening the door, he made a decision.
Elyas turned to Noah standing in the doorway, the moons lighting his back.
"...I think it's time."
Noah sighed, "Yeah I figured… It was nice while it lasted." He turned, a genuine smile plastered across his face. Strangely, it felt alien to Elyas.
"It was fun living with you."
Elyas stared at him for some time. Not knowing what to say, he simply waved his hands. "Good night." With that, he opened a window and walked in.
…
Noah watched the empty space his friend occupied mere moments ago before shutting the door behind him. "Sis, it's been a bit since we talked."
He spoke softly, his shoes tapping against the wooden floor as he headed towards the stairs.
"Its been a long, long time. I've missed you so much sissy." He examined a distended part of the wall behind the stairs. Opening the crack slightly, he crawled forward, reaching a small room.
The only object of interest was a single metal door framed by big stone bricks. "Stories, ohh I've got so many to tell. Let me think…" He said with enthusiasm as he opened the door and walked downstairs.
After the spiral staircase ended. He was met with cold, uncaring stone forming a dimly lit hallway.
Noah's eyes suddenly shone with a silver glow, causing the darkness to bend under its pressure and part, making way for the happy man.
He suddenly raised a hand.
"Oh! I got one. I had a mission which was given directly by that old fox. It was to find a rogue Dreamer who's been sent to spy on—" He stopped, then elongated his gait.
Tap Tap Tap
His footsteps echoed off the stone walls and empty cells to the sides. "Why am I even talking about that? Forget it! Just wait till you hear who I found!"
Noah stopped in front of an iron door. He fiddled with its key until he heard a click. Pushing the door open, shadows receded under his gaze. They parted like the curtains of a living room at day. seeing her made his smile widen.
Looking at the twitching, vaguely humanoid corpse leaning against the cold wall, he muttered enthusiastically, "Oh sissy, we're going to have a brother again!"
…
"It's funny…I never wanted to come here again. Ever. But as it looks, I have to spend half of my life in this empty hell."
Elyas glanced around, he had forgotten how… full of nothing the void was. He could already imagine losing his sense of time, his voice, his new life. All of it again.
...Let's get it over with. He tried to sleep, but it didn't come to him. So to tire himself out and for the sake of having done something, Elyas tried to exercise.
It was quite hard to pull off. Doing squats on nothing was not easy. But there were benefits in training in the void. A few days ago, Elyas discovered that he could manipulate the gravity of the void. Albeit in an extremely small radius, it's still a useful ability.
He was currently using it to keep himself from floating away.
Elyas stopped his exercise. A strange expression on his face. Why am I even exercising? I do that every other day.
He had grown so used to his new routine of waking up, going to the D.E.B, eating a snack from a bakery and training with Julius. So much so that he subconsciously acted out his daily warmup… To think he was already missing his couch or waking up to the sound of neighbors in the alley.
It didn't matter.
Yeah… he can do without them. He diverted his attention from anything reminding him of normality, and as he did, Elyas came up with something to do.
Test.
The first thing he planned to test, or rather, experiment with, was the windows. Mainly, Elyas wanted to recreate what he had done in Telly Burger a week ago.
So he did just that. He opened a window, shattered it, and held onto the needle-like pain in his head. Afterwards, he grabbed onto a single floating fragment and felt as if another needle was stabbed into his brain.
Elyas looked down, grabbed one of the pieces and let go of the bigger anchor. As he did, all the broken shards disappeared like dying embers, fading into the gray and becoming one with nothing once more. Only one remained in his hand.
"Julius called it a Spell… am I technically a wizard now? Or is this something general to all Dreamers?" More than the answer to that question, Elyas was fascinated by a single prospect.
What he could do with the broken shards.
The pain is almost unnoticeable… so it's related to the size. But what can I do with the equivalent of a piece of broken glass? He stared at the fragment in his hand, fiddling with it as he thought.
Thinking about how he created the windows in the first place, an idea formed.
He acted immediately. Creating another window and repeating the process, this time, he anchored several pieces. The pain and pressure on his head was still small, but his chest felt almost empty. "I'm running out of Will this fast?" He continued regardless.
Remembering the image of the shards forming a seamless door, Elyas found himself inspired. He wanted to see if he could force the fragments into something other than a portal.
He wanted to make an arrow.
Releasing the shards, he controlled them by pulling the anchors in his mind. Like marionettes, they acted as he wanted them to, jumping from left to right in the air like excited children. Elyas melted two, and combined and elongated a few. Using the rest to create a sharp edge, he felt pain rapidly rise, and his heart grow even colder.
Just a bit more. Elyas felt sleepy, as if life itself was being drained from his body.
He grabbed onto the elongated shard, now taking the form of a glassy, transparent stick. He placed the head on it, as he did, his thoughts slowed down significantly, his grasp on the anchors loosening in the process.
Come on…
One of the melted shards floated away, turning to a distant blur. Elyas bit his tongue to keep focus. He grabbed the last shard, using its melted form, he tried to mend the handle and the arrow head together.
Before he could do that however, his heart finally went empty. He found himself paralyzed, unable to move a single inch despite all his efforts. An electric shock ran down his entire body, snapping away the last bit of focus he had.
The world became blurry and his grip around the anchors wavered. Elyas could see the half finished spear float away from the hands of its creator and vanish like all the other shards.
God damn it, I was so close!
He was still awake, but unable to move. His body did not belong to him anymore. It wanted rest, and he had to oblige.
These past few days I've been too occupied with others' matters. Running errands for Joshua, keeping Sandle alive for the time being, training with Julius, trying to find a job… I need to focus.
Ever since getting the confirmation from Joshua, I have turned passive in my search… A sour thought washed up in his mind. What if Josh is wrong?
He is alive, Elyas is sure of that. What are the chances of surviving two apocalyptic events? The chance of becoming a Heartless and living through four hundred years?
Stop.
He needed to stop thinking, slow down, breathe in, and breathe out…
You can't live with that Cost.
...Yeah. I can't. But so what? I've lived through worse. I've been here for centuries, doing nothing but uttering the same sentence over and over again with no hope of achieving anything.
I had no power then… but I do now. No matter how long it takes, I will understand this place. I will shatter it to pieces and remold it to what I want, fashion it into a sword, a set of armor, a throne for my own empty kingdom.
No matter how long it takes, or what I have to do, I will see him again.