Music for today (highly encouraged to listen with the chap):
My Aching Heart
https://youtu.be/J8JPwNn26_Q
Chapter 473: The Present
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- Dagr/??? ~
The blending of souls.. the combination of beings at the deepest, most fundamental level... Without the proper skills, it was the most dangerous thing anyone could ever do.
Over the years, be it on Delphi or travelling through the universe before our arrival, Nott warned me about it endlessly. No amount of mental strength or willpower could save someone who didn't know how to handle it...
But.. the cost of ignorance to that warning wasn't death—no. It wasn't losing your mind to insanity, nor falling into the depths of despair.
Failing to heed that warning merely led to unpredictable change. Change that.. I didn't think I had any reason to fear.
So, I ignored it. Thinking I'd never have a need to blend my soul with another, I didn't take it to heart.
...Even after my brother did the very thing he told me to never do.. and payed for it.
Giving up everything he had earned, from knowledge to power, he reincarnated himself as a baby dragon, and was consumed by a mind completely unlike his own—childish, and increasingly arrogant.
I hated it. I hated him. He always acted like he knew what he was doing, like he could never make a mistake—an omnipotent power that could never lose a gamble...
And yet right before my eyes, I watched the bright soul of my brother be consumed by an arrogant brat that lost itself in the warmth of childhood and the glimpse of strength.
I was angry.. furious at the arrogant, immature child, that was born at the cost of my brother's life—graced with perfection yet blissfully unaware as he slept and squandered his days away...
I couldn't stand it...
Every day he breathed without the slightest glimmer of my brother in his eyes, my anger boiled.. growing and spreading like a fire through brambles before I finally decided to do something.
Brother's plan had failed, but instead of merely watching as the culmination of his efforts rotted in the hands of the unfit, I decided to succeed him. To continue his legacy myself...
It was what fate had chosen.
But I couldn't take it right away.
Understanding enough of Brother's teachings to remember what would happen if I possessed that body before it had grown, or before I had a way to attempt to recover Brother's soul from the child that possessed him, I needed a way to influence and protect him.
It was something I couldn't do as I was. I needed a body.
But finding something suitable was difficult. If I possessed a more grown dragon, I wouldn't be able to approach him while he was young, and if I possessed something weaker, I'd destroy the body entirely.
So, in the end, I compromised and possessed that fated pup...
That one, young.. Ilios...
'I was still just a puppy, abandoned to die after getting lost and breaking my paws in a fall.'
He was weak, with a soul that was barely large enough to consider existent.
The perfect subject.
Knowing I couldn't possess his body entirely, I simply tethered my soul to his, granting his body mana and divinity while injecting pieces of myself to consume him, and grant myself the ability to control the body as I needed.
'I wasn't even sentient yet. My soul didn't even have a defined core.'
So I didn't think much of it. Brother's warning didn't even come to mind.
'But that was your great mistake...'
At the beginning, things went smoothly. Not noticing much of a difference, I took control of his body when I needed it, and did what was necessary. I got close to that boy named Vasilias, and stuck there like glue, reinforcing the pup's body with his mana over time while pushing more and more of my soul into him through the tether like a stream of water down a thread.
But then it came. Long after the initial takeover of that body, that piece of me, the growing mass of my soul I used to possess and control that weak body...
...It defied me...
Forcefully taking control of the body from me despite my efforts to use it, it acted on its own, defying me as if it weren't merely another part of myself...
At first, it was infuriating beyond what words could describe. That tiny, negligible existence, instead of giving in to the futility of resistance as it should have only been capable of doing, had somehow remained independent in the wash of my soul.
It felt like an ant protesting a god.
But it wasn't until later that that anger twisted into fear.
While that tiny, insignificant being should have known nothing beyond instinct, after absorbing pieces of my soul and forming its own core, I found it inherited fragments of memories, knowledge, and thought processes from me...
And using that knowledge.. it not only gained its own sentience.. but began twisting and warping my desires like I had been trying to do his...
Despite my soul still being countless times more massive than his.. the connection went both ways...
...And in time, my mind began slipping...
My soul was still incomparable to his, so strong I could have disconnected myself from him at any time.. but while I should have cut our connection in that moment, a part of me churned and hesitated with a ripple through the tether.
'That was the beginning of the end...'
Pulling in more of my soul than I was wishing to give it, Ilios began consuming me—defying my desires to treat that scaled shell like a fruit, and amplifying my will to protect and nurture it.
With time, he had absorbed so much of my soul that it began getting difficult to ignore the wash of warmth that echoed through the tether every time we pushed up next to the dragon I told myself I needed to hate...
And eventually, it began wearing me down.
My soul should have been far too strong for him.. far too strong to influence even with what I had given him.. yet despite having opportunities to take Vasilias' body, every time one arose, I found an excuse and hesitated... The times I'd consider it.. hope that my brother would return, or doubt in my ability to separate him from the possessing child was relayed and amplified through the tether.. and I'd freeze up...
"Maybe another year..." The voice would echo.
It was manipulating, but as if it were the manifestation of my deepest desires, I could never defy it.
Deep down, I yearned for my brother to return. Each time that child nearly died and I felt his presence suddenly shift, I yearned to greet my brother again...
But it never happened.
At every opportunity, I pushed back my possession of that body again and again...
Until eventually.. it was too late...
When the day finally came that I decided it was enough, and tried to forcefully disconnected myself from Ilios to possess the boy, it was too late.
Vasilias was too strong, my 'fated' desires were too weak, and even in those final moments, I could hear it...
'Your brother is right in front of you.' ...Even after disconnecting the tether that should have been the only thing binding us, I could hear him... 'Yet you can't even acknowledge it.'
'No... That's not my brother.'
'It is.'
'It's not...'
'Look closer.'
'...I can't...' Even in that moment.. standing before Vasilias in the Tree of Prayer just as Nott and I had countless times.. I couldn't find the strength to look him in the eyes...
'His plan didn't fail, it just hasn't finished.'
I was afraid...
'You fear change, even when it's necessary.'
'No...' Afraid the voice was right as it always had been...
Every day I yearned to go back home and snuggle up to Mother as Vasilias did with his new family... Every day I dreamed of going back in time and correcting the mistakes I made no matter how small their impact...
'You have trapped yourself in the past, yet refuse to move on...'
My memories had become a cell.. my personality—a prison...
'You refuse to learn, and accept that change is the only way to move forward.'
I hated it...
'You are nothing like our brother.'
I hated myself...
Yet even still.. I was too afraid to stand...
'Change isn't something to fear, it's something to embrace.'
It was inevitable. No matter how stiff and stern I chose to be, change wasn't something even the almighty could avoid...
And even in my final moments, I couldn't understand that...
Or rather.. I chose not to...
The brother I loved.. the brother I fought, and argued with for eons, was gone... Left beside me on the peak I believed we had always sat on, only memories of his figure remained.. with a trail of weathered prints I refused to acknowledge decorating the mountainside that led higher.
Despite my mind telling me we had been sitting beside each other until his soul was possessed.. he had never sat down to begin with...
He hadn't only recently left my side like I wished to believe.. the gap between us hadn't only just widened...
'You were strong. You endlessly raised your limits with blood, sweat, and grit, but yet when you reached a wall, you stopped.. thinking he was stuck with you.'
At some point, I alone sat down—deluding myself that Nott had done the same.
'He found his limits, set his sights higher, and accepted the change that would get him closer to his goal, while you sat idle expecting him to do the same.'
He grew, while I stagnated.
'He found things to change, while you found things to ignore...'
And in the end, it sank me into the delusion.
In the end.. I didn't hate that young dragon... I didn't hate Ilios, or the world that had led me there...
I hated myself...
'It only took you losing everything you had.. your mind, body, and soul, to realize.'
'Yeah...'
'It could have been so simple... You could have grown with him.'
'But I didn't.'
'And now, after doing everything in your power to betray your brother, he's forcing you to start over.'
Forcing me to change...
...Forcing me through the very thing I thought I hated him for...
'But maybe.. I can live a life with less regrets this time...'
Somehow, even in the face of the unknown—in the face of that change I feared more than any other—I was content...
As Vasilias scattered a vast swath of my soul, I didn't budge... When my consciousness faded, I didn't fight it.
I had finally given in to the whim of fate. I had finally stopped resisting.
And with it, time slipped. Years passed. And changes flowed.
Thanks only to the grace of the one I once hated most, I was granted another chance.
But as my soul was re-bound to flesh, growing and writing with spreading, weaving fibers, the other part of me.. the piece I believed to have disconnected from myself.. awoke before me.
'You really accepted it...' It was Ilios... Still eerily understanding, yet openly spiteful.
'It took me too long...'
'I know.'
I didn't know how long it had been since I let go, but feeling his soul through the tether, it was no longer any smaller than what was left of mine. 'I'm sorry I dragged you into all of this...'
'I know you are.'
I paused, feeling the complete disappearance of the control I once had over his body before easing. 'I hope you can forgive me one day...'
But Ilios stayed quiet, pausing as his gaze turned up to me in the canopy.
His spite—his detest for what I had tried to do to Vasilias.. to my brother—would likely never fade...
But neither of us could blame the other...
Forgiveness was something I'd never deserve.. we both understood that.. but even still, as he left, and the tether thinned with distance, I didn't dwell on it...
At long last, I understood.
Though it took countless years.. I learned to let it go.
To separate myself from the burdens of the past after acknowledging my mistakes...
And live in the present.
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