Chapter 73: A Swath of Red
They multiplied, pulling from the mist as it thinned, each one hardening until the red in them deepened and went solid.
The solidifying droplets then pressed together and fused.
A skeletal and splayed guard took form first, its prongs curving outward with hollow openings running through the bone.
Then the blade extended from the crosspiece, lengthening and tapering to a point.
Dark hide wrapped the handle, and the pommel at its base, as well as through the form of the blade; there were hollow, uneven grooves that looked like marks left by claws dragged through it, almost in a honeycomb pattern.
The blade was the colour of old, dry bone.
’Forming a vestige out of blood... is definitely a sight to see. If there is anything that i can say about the apocalypse... it’s definitely given me cool capabilities. The weapon doesn’t even feel like it’s a longsword... It’s as light as a golf club, if anything.’
Dion had inadvertently found himself smiling to himself with the magical nature of everything.
Be that as it may, a part of him had remained sober, thinking to himself more about the way that the weapon had manifested itself.
’The thing took nearly, or just over a second, to fully appear. In a fight, it’s best I have it already drawn instead of trying to call for it too late. Otherwi—!’
Suddenly, his hand released the weapon and the crack of the blade’s edge cutting into the floor resounded in the quiet room.
Dion staggered a full step back, hissing in a breath through tightly shut teeth and his eyes down on his hands.
The bone beneath the grip’s wrapping had cut into his palm. Thin cuts opened across the meat of his hand, blood dripping down through the partitions of his fingers.
"What the hell?" he muttered under his breath, glancing over at the grip of the sword that was still slightly stained with his blood.
Dion looked at his palm once again, and by now, the cuts were already closing, with the blood that he had lost flowing through the air and back into his wounds, disappearing under the skin.
’Vestiges can hurt their user?’
In that moment, he had immediately once more thought of Anastasia. Were she to have been here, he wouldn’t have had to feel so immediately helpless with his confusion. However, then, he shook his head, the bubbling irritation snapping him out of thinking about her.
’I can figure this out... There has to be an answer in the things that she has already taught me.’
Dion didn’t want to touch the damned thing again, so he immediately tried to dismiss it without holding it. And the weapon once more took the larger part of a full second to do so, dissolving into flakes of red that swam back into him in several streams.
The sight reminded him of the flowing light that came from creatures that he killed and harvested their essence from.
Within the thoughts of that comparison, his eyes gradually widened.
’My soul sea!’
Dion hurriedly collected his thoughts about what Anastasia had said to him about it. Soon then, even though he didn’t think that it would be so easy as she said that it should be for him to get in, his legs carried him over to the door.
He didn’t have a key for it so there was no way that he could lock it. But he could block the door so it wouldn’t be easy for anyone to come in without him knowing. So, he did so with his body.
Dion dropped himself to the ground with his back against the door. Not knowing what would be the best way to approach this he simply copied ideas that he knew vaguely about.
’Trying to meditate should help.’
With that thought, he put himself into a bit of a crude lotus position, and he closed his eyes. At the very least, he understood that breathing was also important to meditation so he controlled his breath.
For some time after that, Dion’s brows furrowed at times, trying to lose himself to slipping into whatever meditative trance that he was meant to bring himself into.
His mind was consumed with the thoughts of getting into his soul sea, where vestiges were supposed to lie.
It would have been simple enough to just look at the chronicle description of the vestige, but when Anastasia had specified that the things were associated with his soul sea, he had the feeling that perhaps he might be able to get a better understanding of it should he bring himself into it.
His frustration grew because of all this, in his failures, where rather than meditating, he would find himself enhancing his senses, and all of the sounds and sensations that came to him from that compounded upon his distraction.
A harsh breath huffed out of his nose for the umpteenth time, and Dion opened his eyes a little, looking down to his lap. There wasn’t anything there, but he could hear the groans of the material that had been used to block doorways and halls down on that floor, his eyes sharpened to slits.
’Let me just try not to fight it all...’ he muttered internally.
Dion eased the tension in his shoulders, and he released a long sigh thereafter.
The noise of the people sleeping on the same floor that he was on, some sniffling and brief conversation, filled his ears. Especially the sound of their heartbeats, and the scent of that woman’s blood.
However, this time, because he had fed on Anastasia, he didn’t feel the urge to feed coming from them because of hunger.
Be that as it may, he did feel the sensation of desire grow inside him.
He wasn’t hungry for human blood, but a part of him still wanted to taste it, purely for its satisfaction. And through all this, he simply let it fill and possess him.
At some point, he didn’t even know when he had begun to focus on the sound of the ticking clock on the wall, showing the time to be 3:41 AM.
There, in that stupor, he felt the entirety of his awareness slipping away from him, getting lost in the darkness of his closed eyelids.
And finally, he saw a wide swath of red.