Chapter 15: Modify

                                    

                                          
As dawn spreads across Ardonia the following morning, Ingressus finally accepts defeat, if that's what he would be willing to call it. But he could also sit and call it a victory, for the first time since his ten-year ordeal, he felt peace within himself

Perhaps it would stay like that. Perhaps it wouldn't. That was for him to decide

Author's note: everything about this chapter is last minute - the chapter itself, the drawing, the upload. everything is last minute because I cannot even with life being somehow *determined* to stop this fic from being updated on its schedule. I promised y'all that there would be no more interruptions but good lord it's tough to keep that one. I had bought myself three weeks from the last three uploads after hammering them out across two days to buy that time. I had every intention of using that time comfortably. it did not go to plan XD

on that note, I appreciate y'all sticking around and suffering along with me, as well as my beta who never knows when Imma spring a chapter on her in need of beta-ing out of the blue XD

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To remember one's past as something that one cannot keep is to incite the utmost pain in one's head. Of all of the trauma and physical pain that Ingressus had undergone in the ten years that he was captive to the corrupted Tidesinger, none bear any comparison to the pain that he feels on gazing upon the broken staff that he had the lightest of grasps on as the sun rose over the secluded fishing hole in the south of Nestoria. He held it as though he was scared to grip it any tighter, as though in his hands he held the very physical incarnation of his memories with a small, timid Nestoris with whom he shared the fondest of experiences, of whom he had no idea would later become his enemy – and then some. As if china, he held the staff with tender care, fearful that he could shatter it with his monstrous, scarred, and callous hands, like he felt he had done with everything else he ever cherished in life.
Even this late on, this far from everything that he had caused, everything that he had created, he could look back and blame everything on himself. Everything. He had been down this road before – looking at the situation with a fresh pair of eyes (as much as 'a pair' would contribute) and see as if for the first time the mess that laid before him, realising from a new point of view that disaster had struck conjured with his own two hands, warranted by his own mind, determined by his own past. He knew the feeling well. It sat heavy in his stomach, weighted uncomfortably with every step that he took, every move he made. He knew that Achillean had felt exactly the same – even when he was wedged under the diabolical corruption that controlled him for those ten haunting years, he knew that Achillean felt the guilt. He could empathise with the boy.
Watching yourself destroy something using the same hands that created it is more soul destroying than the act itself...
But as he dangled his legs over the cliff edge once more, with the rising sun baking his tender back, casting his ever-looming shadow over the staff of which he held, he had finally come to the realisation that he had been fearing since he had made his decision to venture out to Nestoria.
On that early morning that he had awoken from yet another inescapable night terror, when he had decided to hang around for no longer and at last uncover what had become of the little boy that he had grown up with, he had every intention of finding Achillean. He would never admit it, but deep down, he was sure that he would find him. He would find him, and he would find a way to help him, even if it were something as simple as returning to the way he used to be four years ago – feeding and supplying safety for him; but after revisiting the mine network and finding that he had still not returned, his hope had dwindled.
Now, he knew.
He was never going to find Achillean.
Dead or alive, he would never find him; and knowing that in the very place that they had connected... He couldn't describe the feeling. He wasn't sad. He wasn't joyful. He wasn't heartbroken. He felt at peace with the world. For seven years, he had nothing but inner conflict. For four years, he did nothing but wonder. At long last, he could gaze upon the shoreline that he would once share with another and know that he need not wonder any longer.