Chapter 314: Glow
Dead, pain, and anguish.
The tiny being wanted to curl in upon itself. First, it had been alone and stuck, knowing barely anything but the endless passing of time. Faint, very distant memories of before sometimes haunted him. Those were filled with joy and something else, but that was so long ago, almost as long as its moment of ignition.
Then came the pulsing pain as that which bound it screamed out in impotent rage.
The tiny being would have laughed if it could have, but all it could do was scream its own pain. The others around it were no better. Time went from a slow and meandering stream into an explosion of soulforce.
It seemed to last for a long time, but when it finally vanished with a last pulse, the tiny being felt hollow. The meager amount of soulforce that it had managed to scrounge from the binder was gone, only whisps remaining. Although it could still sense things, it felt like everything began distant. Whispers of the others, as their soulforce resonances stopped for the last time, surrounded it until it instinctively knew it was the last one.
Resignation filled it, but it never stopped resisting, latching on to the last of the faint mist of soulforce. The only voice it had managed to remember had told it. Always push on, so it did.
Time continued to slip by when, through the growing darkness, it sensed something!
Another resonance closed in, then touched it, and it felt itself pulled from that which bound it, which had continued to hold it even in death. It wanted to open its eyes, but it couldn’t, and when the other thing drew it, it couldn’t have prevented it even if it wanted to. Not that it did. Nothing could be worse than where it had been!
A blinding flash of pure soulforce, purer than any he had sensed, exploded around it. The soulforce resonated incredibly strong, but also weird. Before it could understand what it was, a nearly forgotten, familiar hotness wrapped around it, infusing it with heat and soulforce. Abundant and malleable, the tiny being felt it flow around, and hesitant at first, it began drawing from it.
As soon as the new soulforce touched the unstable, faint flickers and whisps of the old soulforce that had sustained it, the tiny being sensed them shiver and warp. Unable to hold themselves together, the resonances unraveled, replaced by a torrentuous flood of new, and a sense of well-being filled it.
Time had little meaning as it reveled in the abundance. Gone was the taker, the binder, and the constant struggle for scraps.
With no resonance or soulforce of its own left, the tiny being felt itself being changed into something else, but it didn’t care. As its body, bound for such a long time, finally found the nourishment it had so desperately needed, it grew.