Chapter 67: Rooftop
Dion took in a deep breath, rather slow, with his eyes closed.
He couldn’t, unfortunately, literally see what was going on within his body. So in his efforts to look into himself, he was feeling for everything, more than trying to see it at all.
And he found it a bit of an odd experience... because in so many ways, even as a normal human, your brain already knows precisely where all of your organs are. The only matter is that it doesn’t give you the active awareness of them, and everything from the nerves to the veins and arteries connecting them.
But with having become a Sanguinis... and perhaps even because of his sensitivity toward his blood, once he was trying to feel within himself, in his chest, he immediately became aware of a strange, central... thing, deep in his chest.
’The Sangour... is an organ, something like a heart?’
Dion immediately thought so to himself. He had no idea how it looked, but he could feel how his blood was flowing within it, and out, into his body. That flow, even though it didn’t feel particularly fast... felt empowered and charged.
Of course, his heart was still there, but in comparison to what instinct told him about his Sangour, his heart felt almost secondary to it.
After all, in the first place, the blood that was going into the Sangour wasn’t blood that had been coming from his heart.
It was coming from his body itself, and that brought him to the second thing that he noticed.
All of the blood that was coming from the organ was spreading out from it and back into it through an entirely different layer of veins; and with how it felt, it was somehow also like... a nervous system?
He had come to the feeling of it being like a nervous system because in his thoughts about the delectable blood within that building.
He could feel all of the chills, that itching desire for it to strain through every one of the paths that branch throughout his body, and his sangour.
Dion opened his eyes gradually, and laughed a little.
’I have a whole damned new organ... and maybe even more at the rate that this is all going.’
With some kind of awareness to it, as the bright night city filled his vision again, he called for his blood manipulation.
His logic was that perhaps he could use it to try to actively calm down his blood-centred urges. Without understanding anything about it all, he simply tried to slow down the flow of his blood in those two systems, very gradually.
Nothing happened for several seconds, then he began to feel a little cold. And gradually, he felt clarity wash through him.
’It works!’ He smiled widely to himself.
Finally, then, he allowed himself to relax that little bit more.
It was probably only a temporary measure that he had figured out, but it would definitely work for now.
’I still have about eighty percent of my mana... well, seventy-nine percent now. I’ll wait for the rain to go down to sixty-five, and regardless of if its settled by then or not I’ll just leave. I don’t have time to wait any longer than that.’
Doing such slight control of the blood within his body, he found that it didn’t drain any of his mana at all. If it did drain anything, it was so slight that he didn’t notice anything.
Thus, having spoken about the rain, Dion looked up a little to the sky, and he began sniffing the air.
The smell of approaching rain had gotten thicker.
’It’s closer...’ This being said, how close exactly, he couldn’t know. His senses were just too strong now for him to tell a timeframe.
With his senses already focused that bit more, he was able to hear her as she was on the last few steps before reaching the door. Then she paused a little without opening it.
’Is Madeline reconsidering coming up here?’ he laughed internally to himself.
It was a little amusing to have found someone as shy as herself here. And interesting to think about how she had managed to survive this long.
It was great for her that she survived, don’t get him wrong. It’s only that from what he had heard during the Blackout Armoury fight, it made her survival a little surprising.
He respected her for the effort that she had put in thus far regardless.
The door opened behind him, and Madeline stepped out onto the roof, finally, after those several seconds.
She stood near the door with her arms close to her body, and for several seconds neither of them said anything while the wind pushed between them.
"Hi." Dion gave the slightest smile, greeting her, and then he turned to look back out at the city.
His greeting brought Madeline’s feet forward as she responded, "Hi..."
Then, as she came to stand a little away from him at the railing, looking out at the city herself, she continued, "I’m... Madeline. Madeline Walsh." She took a step closer. "We never... properly introduced ourselves."
"My name is Dion Borealis," he said. "It’s a pleasure to meet you properly then."
"...Yeah, it’s a pleasure to meet you properly." She paused faintly, her gaze drifting to his side profile for a moment, as her hands brought themselves together, playing with their fingers, "I just wanted to do it normally. Everything else tonight...and the past few days has been so rushed."
"It has definitely been a demanding past couple of days. I mean, there’s no way to really make it through without forcing yourself to move at whatever pace the world is going at, at this point." He shrugged faintly as he said that.
"Mhm... You know, you shouldn’t... take what happened in there too personally," As she said so, her voice fell a little lower. "They’ve been doing this for days without a break, and it’s... a lot. For everyone. We hardly slept more than two or three hours each."
"I know. I’m not taking it to heart."
Then, Dion glanced over at her, and perhaps having heard him move, Madeline as well looked over to him as he asked, "Do you always do that?"
"...Do what?"
"The pausing. When you’re in the middle of saying something, and you stop for a moment before you finish."