[The worlds tremble under their leashes, mana straining. The Seed's life beats erratic, pained; the sound of it fills Kratos's head, fills his body, until it's all he can feel. It's the only way he can feel anything, these days.
[Spirits turn in their slumber; mana links shift their course to account for the movement between worlds; the burden on the Seed eases and its pulse smooths, releasing Kratos from that dizzying pain. Kratos gasps for breath out of instinct and even that slight movement makes the blade grind past his ribs, after having tensed to bear the pain of the worlds moving. The blade doesn't hurt. It hasn't hurt for a long time. He's had his physical pain turned off for a long time.
[But the movement tears open the half-knitted flesh sealed around the tip of the Eternal Sword. Kratos watches his blood drip, falling dizzyingly long to the Tower's floor and fading into the glowing lines of the seal. Drops of his life feeding Origin's latent power, hungry for freedom; never quite reaching release.
[The Healing Circle carved into the dais activates with a hum, closing the wound, stopping the bleeding -- until the next time. Kratos closes his eyes and exhales slowly, shaky, and doesn't inhale again. Even if he can't feel it, there's no point in feeding the seal. The Sword pulses in his body, humming in counterpoint to the seal below -- vying to meet, never reaching.
[From the outside, it looks like a still scene; the platform thirty feet over the seal, the man chained unmoving, head hanging, from its underside; the Eternal Sword, humming, impaled through them both.
[Kratos is aware of the angels watching, very dimly. He's long since stopped trying to reach out to them. To them, his presence is the living fulcrum set between the two worlds, a knot of pain made hard by pressure -- a traitor to heaven. And the worlds are still turning. He braces himself for the shift in balance between them, as he's done a thousand thousand times for the last ... he doesn't know how long. He just has to hold on.
TITANS; storming the tower
[Spirits turn in their slumber; mana links shift their course to account for the movement between worlds; the burden on the Seed eases and its pulse smooths, releasing Kratos from that dizzying pain. Kratos gasps for breath out of instinct and even that slight movement makes the blade grind past his ribs, after having tensed to bear the pain of the worlds moving. The blade doesn't hurt. It hasn't hurt for a long time. He's had his physical pain turned off for a long time.
[But the movement tears open the half-knitted flesh sealed around the tip of the Eternal Sword. Kratos watches his blood drip, falling dizzyingly long to the Tower's floor and fading into the glowing lines of the seal. Drops of his life feeding Origin's latent power, hungry for freedom; never quite reaching release.
[The Healing Circle carved into the dais activates with a hum, closing the wound, stopping the bleeding -- until the next time. Kratos closes his eyes and exhales slowly, shaky, and doesn't inhale again. Even if he can't feel it, there's no point in feeding the seal. The Sword pulses in his body, humming in counterpoint to the seal below -- vying to meet, never reaching.
[From the outside, it looks like a still scene; the platform thirty feet over the seal, the man chained unmoving, head hanging, from its underside; the Eternal Sword, humming, impaled through them both.
[Kratos is aware of the angels watching, very dimly. He's long since stopped trying to reach out to them. To them, his presence is the living fulcrum set between the two worlds, a knot of pain made hard by pressure -- a traitor to heaven. And the worlds are still turning. He braces himself for the shift in balance between them, as he's done a thousand thousand times for the last ... he doesn't know how long. He just has to hold on.
[It's all he's been able to do.
[Just hold on.]