Waking up with a headache on the horizon, Nox slowly opened his eyes, still confused and dazed. Expecting the familiar room he had grown accustomed to, however, what he saw was not the familiar vista of his room; no, it was a world of golden strings, with shapes, sizes, and tones differing, colors mixing into each and every string.
"Ahhhhhaaaaargh"
Letting out a scream, two dried rivulets of blood beneath his eyes were washed away, replaced by new, moist ones, flowing freely. Every rush of movement splatters a fine layer of blood across his room.
Rolling on the floor, as he tried to forget the image ingrained in his eyes. Failing miserably while trying.
Is this my ability!?
Shit, body can't take it!
Fainting.
Aweakened "Ahhhaaaaarr", "Have to deactivate it."
Fainting.
Awekaning "Ahhhaaa", "deactivate it."
Fainting.
Awekaning "Ahhha", "deactivate."
Fainting and awaking to the sight of fate, tetering on the brink of insanity, Nox held one word dear to his heart, grasping it tightly as blood started flowing out of his orifices, grasping his head with force, pulling out a few strands of hair, with the white ones standing steadily, unaffected by his attempts. One word, the only pillar of support, combining with his thery own determination to survive, instincts slowly fusing with his wish.
"Close!"
Have to close my eyes, have to see less. If he did not, ignoring his eyes that would soon become nothing more than charred balls of coal, his mind would not take this for long!
Blacking out shortly after his thoughts were occupied with the pain and deactivating the ability, closing his eyes before reality, his body was unable to take the abuse.
He woke up again, this time just a short while later, his eyes opening abruptly, the tapestry of fate revealing itself before him once more.
"Ahhh"
Letting out a new soul-crushing howl, as a new round of tearing at his face and head began.
Ignoring the cocking brain, a nosbleed, indicating that it was slowly liquifying, and soon would replace the blood red trail, running down his nose with a more pinkish brain matter color.
"Must... stop... ability!"
Fainting once more, fully concentrated on deactivating the ability; however, one could do so.
"Ahhahaaa"
Waking up once more, repeating this process again and again and again and again.
Something changed unbeknownst to Nox, who was desperately trying to find a way out of the predicament, to avert his gaze from fate, to avert them from the truth! The tapestry of fate he perceived, for a moment after every awakening, had changed; some of the threads receded, colors fading into the background, fusing into a less detailed whole.
Details were fading, becoming more generalized!
"This..."
Feeling a glimmer of hope, Nox held onto it, using it as a new pillar of support, going toward his next rounds with renewed perseverance.
Again and again and again...
Fewer and fewer threads would fall into his eyes the moment he awoke, less and less pressure he felt with each awakening, with each pear into fate.
After hours of this process, Nox sat upright in his room motionless, his eyes wide open, a golden web engraved into his Iresses forming a web, as he stared awkwardly into the room, no thoughts visible in his actions, his movements utterly unlike him, or were they so much like him that they seemed unnatural?
"Beep beep"
An alarm went off next to him. Maybe freeing him of his stupor. His body was moving for the first time in a while.
Looking down, Nox picked up his phone, his movements clunky, he put on his clothes, as if following a strict regimen, and stepped out of his room, so utterly natural that it felt unnatural.
A certain dazedness encompassed his every step.
***
In class the next day.
Letting her eyes wander, the lecture of little interest to her, Trisha let out a sigh, boredom clearly tugging at her nerves.
What to do? What to do?
Looking over, she watched Noctis for a few seconds, who was sitting there with an absentminded gaze, staring holes into the air, as his gaze shifted from time to time, as if in an attempt to simulate the nature of a human.
Seriously, it was hard to get a read on the guy; half the time, he was lost in his own little world, and the other, he'd amuse himself at the spectacle before him, only to foolishly get pulled into it. Yet, she had been fairly confident in her deduction abilities and her judgment of him, believing that if not able to read and predict all of his thoughts, she would be able to, at the very least, understand most of them.
But somehow, his gaze, which enjoyed wandering, seemed different today. Pointing a finger at it was difficult, to say the least, gnawing at her pride quite a bit.
Staring at his eyes for a few more seconds too long, looking like a young girl in love, a golden light seemed to flash past repeatedly, so fast that it could easily be played off as a delusion on her side, but Trisha did not believe so; she was no one to doubt her senses, and even more disliked closing her eyes before the truth, a instinctual distaste twords even the motion rooted deep within.
Seeing the gold flash once more, this time brighter than before, she gave up simple observation and continued with her preferred method. Probing.
"So what are you looking at, Noxy?"
Trying to provoke a reaction out of Noctis, she was fated to fail, as he did not react in the slightest, maybe too deep in thought. This felt very unlike him, considering his usual aversion to the nickname. He had tried his best to hide it, but something inevitable had slipped through the cracks, giving her keen mind enough to put the pieces together.
Not deterred, Trisha tapped on his shoulder, approaching it differently.
This time, he reacted slowly, turning toward her direction, the physical contact clearly having an effect. Noctis's absentminded gaze fell on her questions in his eyes, his gaze feeling like he was not looking at me but right through, the weak golden light still appearing from time to time. No, questioning eyes was the wrong way to describe his absent-minded gaze; it felt much more like he himself was completely clueless.
"Why are you being so silent? Giving me the cold shoulder all of a sudden?"
Hearing this, Noctis showed no reaction, but it wasn't like he had put on a poker face like he usually did when he wanted to hide things; no, this was different. It seemed more like he was simply not... understanding?
"Pwity colors"
"What?"
***
Looking at Trisha, Nox stared her down for a few seconds, and answered as if on a bad autopilot-
"Pwity colors"
Shaking his head, instant regret flooding in, Nox smacked his face. Meanwhile, Trisha was staring at him, bewilderment clearly shown in her eyes.
"What?"
Not registering her words, he blurted out in a suppressed voice.
"This is bulshit!"
Accidentally blurting this out, Nox suppressed the urge to smack his head once more, indulging in self-deprecating thoughts, and attempted to justify his idiotic behavior, all in an attempt to salvage some of his shattered dignity.
Feeling his mind in total chaos, he tried concentrating the best he could, his mind repeatedly swerving off, with every possibility it was given.
When he stared into the vast tapestry of fate like a suicidal idiot, he had somehow survived this act of madness.
It definitely had its consequences, though!
When he had awoken the day before, Nox's thoughts were slowed to an alarming degree; his mind had basically been scrambled by the glance into fate.
Whoever said dont look into the abyss, or the abyss will look back, should have first warned about not staring into fate, or fate might turn you into a retarde!
Seriously, I have looked into the abyss a bunch of times, and it has yet to become a problem!
While he grumbled inwardly, Nox decided that it would be too difficult to deal with Trisha at the moment and simply turned away from her, planning to ignore her for the rest of the day, until his brain was in a state in which he might be able to find a fitting excuse.
What would she think? Maybe that I'm playing a prank, or she might decipher the real...
"Stop!"
Screaming this inwardly, maybe the word escaping his lips as well, he truly couldn't tell. Gathering himself was almost impossible at the moment, maybe only possible when the functions of his brain were less liquified.
The brain that had most likely been incinerated and turned into a drinkable supe after his foolish curiosity was luckily not permanently damaged, at least he hoped so. When he first woke up, he had not even been in a state to think; his boy simply followed his usual habits, going to eat, training, and so on.
To his dismay, everything around that space of time was quite hazy, almost like a dream, watching as a lone spectator. How badly he had embareced himself, being least of his concerns for the moment.
Now his mind had started working from time to time, with his motor skills still not really up to par, but at the very least, he could think somewhat straight again, blacking out now and then, his control over his mouth truly horrendous. Is this how people with Tourette's feel?
Shaking his head once more, preventing himself from swifing off again!
The biggest problem he had right now were those!
Looking at a random student, he saw not just the student's body, but also multiple golden strings, some wrapping around the student, others connected to the student next to him, and others again connected to some far-off place, simply floating upward or through a wall.
He watched them chain the student, holding them in place, making them follow a certain path. Nox's eyes started glowing once more; he felt his brain overexerting itself, his eyes slowly heating up, luckily to a lesser extent than with his first attempt at looking into fate.
Averting his gaze, Nox leaned his head on his hand, covering his eyes, not entirely sure how others perceived his abnormalities or whether if perciving the strings had any visible physical effect.
His reaction this time to seeing the strings of fate had been comparatively mild. This was not because he had built up resistance. No, since Nox had activated his ability, he had not managed to deactivate it. He slowly recovered, then scrambled his brain again and again, slowly deactivating parts of the ability every time he regained some control, through pure instinct and luck.
It wasn't a pleasant experience, to say the least, especially because such pain was something he had never experienced in his life. Well, who would know how it felt to repeatedly lobotomize oneself? The only reason for his staying sane throughout the process was that he had forgotten part of the pain, ironically enough, because of the lobotomy.
These few threads he could now see were the result of his repeated attempts to disable the ability.
Taking a quick, resentment-filled glance at the threads still blotting out his vision, he had a problem with deactivating the last layer of his ability.
Because of the way he saved himself, which used the instinct to survive, ingrained in every living being, he was now finding it difficult to deactivate it fully; his survival was no longer at stake, making the way before ineffective.
Now that he was out of the death zone, he was not entirely sure how to get rid of the last layer, clouding his sight. Thinking about it, a bit of curiosity found its way into his very being.
Nox had undoubtedly built up quite a bit of animosity towards fate because of this experience, but he was curious by nature, and understanding what his ability exactly was was something he was greatly curious about.
Looking at it, the fragment of Authority he was in possession of was clearly of the branch of sight. Fate had multiple main branches, just like all other Authorities, with the most well-known and fundamental ones being Control and Sight.
Now that he knew that he was of the sight branch, he had to find out what exactly he was seeing: future, past, present, or luck, maybe?
There were many aspects of fate, and which branch of the sight he was in possession of was difficult to say, especially when his eyes started burning up every time he looked at what part of fate he was privy to and was shown to him. This was further complicated by the fact that he had deactivated most of his abilities facets, making what he saw less specific.