Chương 22: Fault

June had felt his mind reeling before. It was a sort of infectious insanity. Will was not the primary power of Dreamers and Nightmare, not even for beasts; it was merely an auxiliary power, according to June. And yet, the beast encompassed his world; it drowned his mind with its own. Infecting what logic was left in his human brain with what was broken. June bent her will. Dreamers bent their will. Monsters bent their will. will bend reality. The beast God broke it. Reality broke. It infected his mind.

Even now that he left the beasts' world, it was still broken. Parts were shattered; those parts can be put back together. But other parts were ground to dust and blown away. June was broken. He beheld the beast. and it beheld him. The sky had teeth, and the teeth had clouds, and the clouds were the sky. His eyes were bleeding, but he did not stop pulling the APC. June learned more of his power. Julian taught him theory. He didn't get the chance to teach his weapon mastery. Shade taught him how to work.

She didn't get to see his efforts. In the end he figured it out himself. His broken mind did; yes, it did. The leash that June used to pull the APC was sprouted from his forearms. Muscles, veins, and tissue. The leash bled, June bled, and the APC covered in vines of flesh bled.

"Blood, blood, blood." June said to himself. There were no other voices for him to hear anyway. Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. The deathly voice he was granted made it sound like a jovial song. But it was more a weep of agony. Every millimeter of the vine felt the breeze and shuddered. June felt it all. This is all the beast's fault. God's fault. He should have learned slowly like others. Adopted an orthodox way of shaping his will.

Others would strengthen their bones; some would sharpen their flesh. But at the end of the day, they would only coat their feeble flesh with an imitation. June was going mad; he hadn't learned to coat his body. So instead he tore it and let it heal, then tore it again and again. until he was satisfied with its length. But one would snap, and so would two, and three, and four.

"Blood blood blood blood." There were hundreds of veins and vines, more than the body would have. The wind would make them brush against each other. His veins burned; they were bare to the element and another. June had become aware of his body to a degree. Too aware. Functions and pains of those functions were laid bare to June. Digestion hurt, a drum beat his heart with each movement, and his organs shifted to accommodate each movement. To the outside viewer, a demon was pulling this massive vehicle.

It weighed hundreds of tons, and its beast of burden was but a man covered in bloody vines, shedding tears of blood, singing a harrowing song, and reciting poetry with a voice that delivered prophecy instead of promise. June replayed the events again and again; his rage grew again and again. His soles were run through; his feet tore on the jagged rocks of this plane of rocks. June had walked hundreds of kilometers hoping to find civilization. Their healer was dead.

Julian sufficed; he was able to take care of Shade. He only lost an arm. A healer could fix that. June might be able to fix it himself. But Julian seemed to fear what June has become to pull this ragged wreck. He was a beast of burden of mind and spirit. His body carried steel without rest. He ate little; his body feasted on itself. But he willed it to heal. The APC was full of food. The boss had a flaw. June considered gaining one too. A flaw makes a dreamer more powerful; it nearly brings them to the next level.

It worked as a floodgate, but saying that was putting it simply. Having a flaw would make a person stronger a dozen times over. But you cannot escape from it. The leader of the cohort, the boss, had a flaw that forced him to eat the meals of ten men, and in exchange, he had enough strength to lift ten. He would not be eating anytime soon. The boss had a garden in his room; there were no windows, but his power also wreathed him in a light, and that nourished the plants plenty. He ran out to help the others.

His head popped when he saw it, and the rest of his cadaver became a flower of flesh in seconds. The cougar, Erica, she was a nice lady; she stood atop the APC's roof to shoot at the beast with her bone bow. She stood near the cockpit of the vehicle.

'She once told me that it was given to her by her husband.' She also told June that her husband died a long time ago, the same day she received the scar on her cheek. The tinkerer saw the boss die; he saw the beast. He slowed down when the boss jumped out to help the others. Teeth, Cloud, Teeth, Clouds The front of the APC was as flat as a pancake, a blood splat was on the roof, and the bone bow was indented on the cockpit. It survived, but it was stuck. June kept pulling the APC wreck.

He wished he had died with the others; he wished that someone lived in his place. He wished his room that he called his survived, and the people who made him feel at home lived in his stead. It was his fault. The thought kept spiraling.

'My fault, my fault, my fault, my fault.' He probably would have instantly died if he were where the crew was kept. He was lucky to be in the APC's rear, practicing with Shade and Julian. The cohort set him a little spare room near the front of the vehicle since the transport wasn't going to stop for a few days. He tried sleeping after the beast killed everyone, but he couldn't go back to the waking world for some reason. He felt the beast had something to do with it. He still couldn't sleep now.

It was still chasing. June kept looking at the sky, waiting for the clouds to become teeth. He was waiting for his release. He wanted the hurt to stop. But he kept pulling.