NOVEL NEXT Chapter 427 – Third trait
Writhing atop the jagged stone platform, Percy clung desperately to the rock, trying to keep himself from sliding into the sea below. His nails split and his palms tore under the pressure of his grasp, blood mixing with the salty spray. But the sting on his hands was ultimately nothing – a mere tickle – compared to the agony ravaging his soul from within.
'Zoris wasn't kidding about this!'
The second trait had indeed hurt a lot. But this? This belonged to a different category of suffering altogether.
At first, everything had seemed manageable. The fiend had been small and round, just compact enough to fit inside his core with ease. Even if it had been larger, Percy was certain he could've forced it in. Its carapace had been glossy but not smooth, covered in etched markings – otherworldly symbols that had defied comprehension. Stranger still, the engravings hadn't been static. They'd kept shifting at irregular intervals, pulsing in and out of existence like some maddening poem too wrong for a mortal's brain to comprehend.
Percy hadn't wasted a second before beginning the process of grinding the creature down, disseminating its remains along his soul. He hadn't even stopped to ask Zoris what the trait actually did – because it didn't really matter. Whatever ability the fiend was about to grant him, he wanted it. And the sooner he got through the torture, the better.
Or so he'd thought.
As soon as the ever-shifting symbols had appeared on the surface of his soul, his existing traits had reacted with violent hostility. The spider-like limbs of the Argalios and the long, flowing hairs of the Nyctovios had sprouted like weeds, lashing out in fury.
The limbs had stabbed inward, clawing at the "tainted" regions of Percy's soul, trying to peel them away like infected scabs, more than happy to flay him alive to destroy the intruder if they had to. Meanwhile, the silken hairs had coiled tightly around the crumbling flakes, trying to yank the symbols out before they took root.
The engravings hadn't taken this without a fight either.
Whenever the older traits had succeeded in shaving away a marked layer of his soul, the symbols had formed themselves again on the next one, stubbornly etching themselves even deeper. Worse still, they'd forcibly rearranged Percy's soulscape in the process, shoving the limbs and the hairs aside.
That had only enraged the older traits further, however.
In their fury, they'd even turned on one another, the tentative truce they'd reached and maintained over the past year all but forgotten. Each of the three traits had fought against the other two in a complete free-for-all, turning Percy's soul into a battlefield. The chaos hadn't stopped at the edge of his vision either. Percy had felt the battle raging beneath the surface, stretching to the deepest recesses of his soul.
Gritting his teeth, Percy cried out to his familiar.
'M-Micky! Pin me down before I fall in the water!!'
He didn't get a reply. At least, not immediately.
Then, he heard it – a splash, loud and sudden. Percy twisted his head in the direction of the noise just in time to see a great bloom of white foam erupt in the distance. A massive beak broke through the surface a moment later, Micky gasping for air.
'Can you stop this?!' the clone snapped, irritation cutting through the cord. 'You're sending us your pain!'
Percy blinked.
He hadn't even realized. Unconsciously, he'd used the connections as an outlet, flooding them with raw emotion. Sure enough, another surge of protest arrived from Nesha's end.
'Damn it…'
Forcing himself to clamp down, Percy sealed away his broadcasted anguish, thanking the gods his other three clones were currently away from Remior – well outside his range. There was no reason to ruin their day too. Especially since they'd all bring him the memories back eventually, forcing him to relive this hell another five times.
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Percy watched his familiar freeze a lump of ice into his surroundings before using it to climb out of the water. Percy sure hoped they wouldn't get attacked in the next few minutes, or they'd be sitting ducks.
Left with no other choice, he did his best to hang onto the cliff by himself as he turned his senses inward, accelerating the fiend's disintegration. At this point, it wasn't even about the trait anymore. He just wanted this to end. And he had to succeed, because he really didn't feel like starting over. This was torment he wouldn't even wish on his worst enemy…
Acton and Rhaziel's faces popped up in his mind.
'On second thought… maybe I would.'
Before he could spiral deeper into his delirium, the world began to whiten at the edges, his vision blurring as his thoughts scattered like leaves in the wind.
'No. I have to stay awake.'
Percy used the pain to slap himself back to his senses.
'Percy. Focus on my voice,' Zoris said, his calm words echoing through Percy's soul. 'Stop thinking about the pain. Let's talk about something else – anything else.'
'Easy for you to say! You're not the one being eaten alive!'
Percy resisted the urge to swear, reminding himself that the former god was only trying to help. And to be fair, Zoris had warned him.
'Think about the trait you're going to get,' the god urged. 'I promise it's a useful one… especially for you.'
'You recognized it?' Percy forced himself to ask.
Though he still found it difficult to get excited, any bubbling traces of enthusiasm buried beneath the suffering. All he wanted now was to vomit the half-absorbed fiend out of his core and black the fuck out.
Ignoring the edge in Percy's response, the god nodded.
'The fiend is called a Symbolon. It will help you with runecrafting.'
This time, Percy's ears perked up. Clearly noticing that, Zoris chuckled before elaborating.
'It'll help you with the grunt work – you will be able to draw even the most intricate symbols as easily as breathing. It doesn't even matter what tools or medium you use – ink, paint, chalk, carvings… it applies to any kind of writing. Ah, but it won't help you express meaning into your enchantments. Visualizing their effects is something you'll still have to do by yourself.'
Hearing that, Percy's feelings were mixed. On one hand, this was excellent timing, since he was planning to shift his attention to runecrafting for the foreseeable future, and any edge would help. In some ways, this was his luckiest trait yet. Not that he was dissatisfied with Weaving or Insomnia, but their effects had been pretty random by comparison – especially the first one. Finding applications for it had taken him a while.
On the other hand, he couldn't help but feel a little underwhelmed. It sounded like the new trait's effect was somewhat modest. Drawing the runes was only a small part of the craft. Visualizing their effects was the real challenge – especially once he delved into more complex enchantments involving multiple runes.
'It could have been worse. I get to have three, different and useable traits. That's more than most people can say.'
Percy still hoped the trait would be worth all this pain though. Suddenly, he found some newfound respect for those people who stopped after their second trait. Perhaps, they weren't as lazy as he'd initially assumed…
The war within his soul dragged on for several more agonizing minutes. The ghostly appendages cannibalized one another with wild abandon, while thin, glowing cracks webbed across the grey flame inside him. They reminded Percy of the early injuries he had endured as a teenager – back when he'd misused his bloodline.
That said, this was a lot different.
The cracks were much shallower – less life-threatening. Percy didn't think his soul was in any danger of falling apart entirely and killing him. He probably had his blessing to thank for that. Shallow as they were, the cracks were still more numerous, however. They densely permeated his soul from head to toe, making every moment excruciating.
By the time the process ended, Percy was a wreck.
His traits had finally receded into dormancy, leaving behind a battered husk. His soul throbbed and burned, his body shaking with exhaustion. He sure hoped that none of his clones returned in the next few hours, since he wasn't in any condition to deal with them. Blood and sweat soaked his tattered clothes, still oozing from the countless tiny cuts his spasming had inflicted.
He didn't even have the strength to celebrate what he could only describe as his greatest victory to date. Thankfully, his Status did that for him.
[Congratulations! You have absorbed a new spectral trait: Scribing!]
Percy struggled to raise an eyebrow, too tired to be surprised.
'What the hell? That's new…'
His previous traits hadn't triggered notifications. In fact, very few things did. Originally, his Status had only acknowledged new spells, adding alchemic principles to the list after Atlantis. Evidently, its latest upgrade had done more than just extend its features to Micky…
Winning over his exhaustion, his curiosity prompted him to pull up the whole thing, his eyes landing onto the new entry.
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[Scribing]
– Boosts one's proclivity in expressing meaning onto any written medium.
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