A week later.
A white thread slithered along another, slowly reaching its place, and crawled up the intricate tapestry.
A pattern of white string had formed, its origin and anchors the ten things of a young man. One string collides with another, creating a small, less finely woven three-dimensional web than the golden one in the Soulsea.
Trying to imitate the shape and form of the web he had seen, Noctis created another thread, slowly flowing out of one of his fingers, like so many others were already. This time it came from the hand above, slowly descending instead of arduously climbing up.
Concentrating fiercely, a drop of sweat slowly ran down his hand. It slid down his index finger, made contact with the web, and ran seamlessly from thread to thread, eventually reaching its center. Meanwhile, two manually controlled threads slowly extended toward the center.
They used other threads for balance and gravity's inertia to propel their descent. It was not that they needed gravity to move forward, but resisting it was far more difficult than letting it take control.
Feeling the drop of sweat run down the center and begin its own journey towards its end, as it ran down another thread and, with growing inertia, suddenly collided with the hand of Noctis.
The droplet reached the end of its journey, or maybe just began a new one. One outside the maze of threads.
Despite its insignificance being a small drop, he himself created the droplet that caused great changes beyond his control. After all, he might have created it, but he had no control over it.
The impact traveled along his nerves, making him immediately aware. He had felt it cross the web, but the sudden stimulus still surprised him, heightening his awareness of his surroundings and sweat-drenched body.
Unable to ignore the overwhelming stimuli he had previously tuned out, focused completely on the task, Noctis gave in and fell onto his bed with a resounding thunk. Out of breath, he lacked the energy to check on the web he had woven with such effort.
Of course, he knew internally what had become of it. logically, he knew he was connected to every single thread, as if it were a part of his body. So how could he not know?
The moment he let himself fall, the moment he let go of the control, it ripped apart.
What a truly feeble construct.
It did so because he had weakened attributes like Durability, a great point, trying to discover the limits of how far he could manipulate the attributes.
Looking at the time, it was midday. Nox was going to have a free day tomorrow, so he decided to just see how far his Symbolism could go. This ended up in him spending hours constructing this mere imitation, just for it to go up in flames like this.
He had trained the Moon sickle, as he called it, a few more times at the training grounds, slowly… very slowly, seeing some progress.
The days before had been quite uneventful, as far as Noctis was concerned. At the very least, a huge burden was taken off his shoulders after he told Professor Anderson about his Rank.
All things considered, Professor Anderson's reaction was quite weird. Just for a moment, Noctis had the feeling that he was being seen as a delicious snake instead of a person. That feeling quickly disappeared, but Nox couldn't help but frown every time he thought of it.
To add on, Anderson seemed aware of the stage he was in, merely having waited for him to report.
A question Noctis was asked repeatedly, to his dismay, was "how intense the call was." Not wanting to admit that he felt almost nothing, he always answered in half-truths, pretending it was stronger than it actually was.
Things like "It's bearable", or "the matter of the Call is annoying but not much more".
Of course, it was unbearable—he couldn't even feel it!
Of course, it was annoying—why couldn't he feel it!?
Luckily, that was the worst part of the procedure. Anderson didn't tell Noctis to do many things differently and simply reminded him that he would get a few new books on speeding up assimilation and that he should not neglect the basics, since they would keep him alive.
Other than that, during the second academic lecture, Trisha started calling Noctis 'Nox' to annoy him.
Originally vehemently opposed to it, Trisha simply continued with it, without considering his opinion, deriving pleasure from his discomfort.
Man, she can be stubborn!
Giving in at the end of the day, Noctis, or now Nox, accepted his fate indignantly.
Internally cursing her and her seven generations of ancestors. What made everything even more painful was that it seemed most students avoided her, which, in turn, meant they started avoiding Nox as well.
Noctis had pictured many ways he might become an outcast in this class: saying uninteresting things, using a different kind of humor, or simply lacking the social skills to converse properly with people from different backgrounds.
But being ostracized because the first friend he made was hated by everyone… was not the way he had pictured it going.
At least she enjoys bets, that's something, I guess.
The lecture's content over the week seemed mostly focused on the surrounding cities and the animals thriving there. What one should look out for and how to react to certain situations, and so on…
Having half-heartedly listened to the lecture, instead, mostly creating future plans, Noctis might have drifted off a bit. But he would "definitely" go over the material again later. Obviously, he never neglected such things in favor of more interesting activities. He would never!
Turning his head to the pillow seductively lying beside him, his head slowly started wandering towards it.
His strength was still drained to its limits because of his prior activity. He quickly fell into the embrace of sleep, filled with dreams he would never remember.
***
A man still sat in the center of the same golden web, still holding golden threads and weaving something with his ten fingers, looking up once more. His face, now in full view, remained indistinguishable. Veils of threads hid him from the world, hid him from me.
I couldn't identify any of his features, but for some reason, I felt he was wearing a bitter-sweet smile.
Slowly standing up, he tenderly caressed one of the thousand golden threads. This thread was particularly thick, most likely woven out of countless smaller threads. Suddenly, tightening his grip, he spoke in a harsh, disappointed tone, maybe to me or someone else, "Pathetic,… truly and utterly pathetic."
Slowly extending his nails into the string, he pulled it in two directions, splitting it from the middle outward, as his muscles strained and lightly shook as the surroundings reacted to the act, washing him in a river of gold.
He now held two threads, half the size of the original, which he connected at both ends to restore their original finger-breadth. He stopped his actions when the thread's distance reached the span of his arms and became unable to extend the hole any further.
The sight looked like a painting melded from many colors that combined and blurred, with the frame made by the split string and the hole in the middle, filled with many indistinguishable colors that bled and drooped down from the painting's frame, fusing with each other.
As a whole, it painted a hard-to-distinguish picture. The whole scene appeared as a giant golden-black eye, with the unknown man serving as a slit pupil, and countless shades of color bleeding into each other, gold the most prominent, shone upon him, elongating his shadow to encompass half of the web's center, to encompass my insignificant self.
Turning away from his creation, he looked towards me with an arrogant smile, or what I assumed it to be. His face was still hidden and indistinguishable.
With golden light shining upon the veiled man's back. He took a slow, measured step to the side, revealing the sight of the thread now shaped like a puileless eye fully.
The indistinct figure no longer covered the grandness of his creation.
In the space between the now-split threads, one could see golden light mixed with all sorts of pastel tones stream upon them, and beneath that light, something more was revealing itself.
A scene slowly depicts itself, but of what?
Not knowing why, I desperately try to decipher what is shown to me…
Suddenly, a strong desire drove me on.
A desire to understand.
I needed to know!
I needed to HEAR!
I needed TO FEEL!
I NEEDED TO SEE!
***
"Ahhhhhhhhhhh"
Suddenly, Nox jolted awake, sitting up and seeing his room in the same state he left it.
Feeling relieved for some unknown reason, a strong headache was on the rise. The remnants of his dream still lingered in his mind, and a cold shiver ran down his back. Since his last rude awakening, he had developed the habit of checking his surroundings upon waking. To his luck, nothing seemed amiss.
While trying to remember something, anything really, Nox rubbed his head with his thumb and index finger.
The headache he had since awaking slowly started to fade, taking with it the remnants of the memories, as if he had just lost something terribly painful, yet at the same time so very important to him.
Feeling tears running down his face, Nox wasn't surprised, as he had gotten used to such phenomena as of late.
Slowly wiping them away, he noticed that they seemed to be a lot thicker than usual. Rubbing them between his fingers as he cleared his eyes and turned on the night light. His eyes still drowsy from sleep, as everything appeared a bit blurred, he stared at his hand.
Red?
Bafeled Nox touched his face again, only to find more of it, so much more.
If he had a mirror right now, he could see two bright red streams of some kind of thick liquid running down his face.
Blood?