What the hell?
Vince stood motionless in a state of shock. The pain in his heart had gone, but the bloody hands remained on his hands.
The former will go first to visit you.
The wrong but soft female voice passed by his ear. As it came the pain was returning, slowly at first, then increasing in velocity, becoming sharper. The fingers melted into his flesh.
"Argh!!"
The agony roared back. This time not locked out in his chest, but everywhere. His hands were on fire, it seemed as though razors cut them with each movement. His head was so sore it felt as though thousands of rubber bands were being stretched, and then tighter until it may be broken. His heart and lungs were twisted, pricked and broken in the ruthless measure. His legs hung with the feeling of being melted.
His face was flooded with tears, his mouth was falling at the open and his body was trembling.
"M-My body hurts! The pain, the pain! Is it being rebuilt?!"
A flood of strength swept out of him, viscous and alien, and made its way in all the bones and nerves. A pull toward the book was being exerted on his body. Bound to it. Fused with it.
The pain rose higher.
His ears were threatening to burst, as he groaned.
"R-Remember… the quote!"
Vince attempted to breathe but his lungs tightened up, refusing him air. He stammered, voice quailing with pain, the words.
"T-The first made today… but will soon fall astray… to the hand of the mortal. I pledge to say, the first will a-always be the last… in the mind of…"
His very soul twisted. His body was deformed, his being reconstituted. He gulp and gulp, and could not get the last words out.
"Vince Huamán…"
Then his eyes widened. His hair rose as if alive.
The distress was doubled, and worse than ever. Something was watching him. The eyes of the heavy, ruthless, were touching his back, more choking than the very pain. It was no gazing--it was invasion. He touched each vein, each vessel, as though it were he who now had the blood in it.
And then Vince realized.
"They lied! Those MOTHERFUCKERS LIED!"
The pain was tempered with anger. He tore the soil with his nails, and was desperate, but something in him, a warning, primeval, cried, do not turn. Do not meet that gaze.
"AHHH!!"
His body curled, and his head was throbbing with the thoughts, breaking into incoherent bits. His mind splintered.
Crack.
His right arm was broken at the middle. He screamed and as he watched horror-stricken, bone forced its way through, expanding, reforming. New bone substituted the broken fragments in a beat of the heart. His arm had been lengthened, hideously long, three inches farther.
His breath caught. His eyes grew clouded and light faded away as he realized.
This was no gift.
It was the rewriting of his humanity.
Am I going to become a monster...?
SNAP! CRACK! SNAP!
each of the fingers of Vince snapped in two in a heartbeat, and then they struck out at grotesque distance.
I'm sorry…
"Please stop this! First coming!"
The agony shrieked through him this time with more intensity.
Vince fell, kicking in the ground. His vocal chords got knotty until the sound which arose out of him was no longer human, a hideous scream, which shook his throat to the bone.
His fingers became even longer.
His legs came after, and the bones lengthened with each second.
"Stop… th-this…"
But his voice sank, and he was gagging and cawing like a crow.
I'm sorry, Father…
Hours blurred. Two passed. Vince was exhausted, his body deformed. His hair was long and dirty, and full of insects. His robe was torn, with holes in it and smeared with dirt.
his skin grew pale, festered to a deprived blue-purple. His eyes dimmed, had almost blinded up. His nose was protruded and twisted. His chest was jutting, with the bone bare.
What was left of his teeth, which were chipped and frayed and gnashed in chewing on dirt and stone, was used. Like strangled strings hung nerves. New bones stuck out at acute angles.
Vince was becoming a monster.
And yet, his thoughts had gone. His mind became detached in that it was not stuck to his body and was floating over to see what he was.
Even now, pain flushed up through every nerve.
He gazed down at himself in terror and remorse, the expiring soul. A tear traced his cheek.
"Why? Why?! WHY?! The one time I trusted somebody, the one time, I lost! Why is this happening?! Please… let this be fake. Wake me there again, as before, in that place! I want to be young again! I would prefer to go back... to communicate with my siblings... this time!
His sight was smoked and floating above the city of Gita. His body was shaking underneath and his soul cried.
"Please! I would like to repeat and change my mistake!
Vince opened his eyes, in despair. He has not witnessed his burning childhood home. Not the past. Not salvation.
Only Gita.
The city.
Nothing changed.
He closed his eyes, and gave the inevitable. his body jerked and twitched and pulled him back to flesh.
His monstrous frame writhed. His skin burned.
And then, cold. There was a steel circle pressed on the back of his head.
"Well, well, well, huh, you did the rhyme, huh kid?"
It was a voice that had slipped into his ears and it was smooth, almost pleasant. Adam's voice.
It was quite friendly now as never before.
A chuckle followed. Adam bent over the contorted body of Vince.
"What do you say, Salomon? Wanna make a deal?"