The hours passed quickly as we continued our journey towards the Clan.
Whilst I wanted nothing more than to lay down and sleep, the forest—and in some ways, Aletheia too—made my desires remain as nothing more than a distant dream.
I may have agreed to a partnership with her, but I still didn't trust her to not slit my throat in the dead of night. Evidently, neither did she. Not once, during our journey, had she mentioned wanting to come to a stop.
If anything, my presence only seemed to invigorate her.
Whilst her injuries weren't truly fatal, they were still terribly painful to bear and would have put anybody else out of commission for at least a few weeks. Aletheia, as it turned out, wasn't one to be stopped by pain.
It would have been impressive if, her every step wasn't accompanied by either trembling limbs, or muttered curses.
I wasn't sure if it was defiance, stubbornness, the forest or simply the fact that she didn't trust me that kept her moving. Either way, by the time the sun rose, and light began to invade the forest, she looked terrible.
Aletheia was certainly a beauty, but right now, she looked like a corpse. Her face was deathly pale; her entire body trembled and shook. Her movements had slowed, falling into step with mine, and I noticed how she favoured her right side more and more.
It wasn't just her physical appearance that had changed either.
As the night had gone on, her words had begun to slur and stutter, being occasionally broken by a yawn that seemed to last longer than the previous one.
She was falling apart, both from her injuries and exhaustion, yet not once did she stop.
Finally, when she tripped over a stray root and I had to catch her, I decided that enough was enough.
"How far away are we from the Clan?" I asked, slowly pushing her body to stand again. I could feel her hands trembling as she held onto me with an iron grip. I don't think she even noticed that she was clinging on to me in her exhausted state.
"Another few hours." She whispered, noticeably putting as much weight as she could onto her right foot.
"Then we're taking a break." I decided, already moving her towards a tree. She tried to protest but it was a weak effort. "You need rest. You look like your about to kneel over and die."
"Thanks, just what any girl wants to hear from a guy." She snarked at me, though it was missing any bite. I rolled my eyes at her sarcasm and helped her down to sit against the base of a tree.
"It's just the truth, don't be such a baby." I told her, allowing some heat to gather and gently leave my body. The cold of the early morning was likely not helping her in the slightest.
"The truth hurts, brat." She huffed, yawning not a moment later.
"We're the same age, idiot." I reminded her, helping her get more comfortable against the twisting roots of the tree.
"Idiot? I'm smarter than you." She weakly growled back, her eyes already beginning to close.
I snorted at the remark. "Just because you know more than someone who's uneducated, doesn't mean that you're smarter. It just means that you're a nerd."
She scowled at me, though with her already being half asleep, it didn't look nearly as threatening as she probably would have liked it to be.
"I'll remember this." She stopped to yawn. "When I wake up, I'll show you how much of a nerd I am."
I quirked an amused brow up. "Is that supposed to be threatening?"
"It will be when I shove a book up your ass." There was a small grin on her lips, one that grew a little more when she heard my next words.
"You're disgusting."
"I'm a woman of my word."
"Okay, now I do feel threatened."
She softly snorted at my words. "Threatened enough to kill me in my sleep?"
"No." I told her, having already expected the question. "You're safe, I won't be killing you."
She hummed quietly, a silent thank you from what I could interpret. A minute at most passed, before her breathing evened and she was asleep.
'That was quick. She must have been feeling more tired than I initially realized.' I thought, stepping away and sitting down against another tree. A yawn of my own, broke through my lips then. 'I think I'm more tired than I initially thought too.'
Unfortunately, my own rest would have to wait.
This was the perfect opportunity, after all, to interrogate the System and finally get some answers from it.
'So…do you want to do this the easy way, or the hard way?' I asked, knowing that it was listening to my thoughts. For a moment, nothing happened, and I thought it would choose to ignore me, then, a small screen appeared before my eyes.
[-][===][-]
|| [I am unsure what you may be referring to, user] ||
[-][===][-]
'I guess the hard way it is then.' I rolled my eyes at its attempt to play ignorant.
Aletheia and I had spent hours walking through the dark forest, and with the time granted to us, we didn't spend it in silence. A large majority of our time was spent on her educating me and expanding on the things she had mentioned before.
One of these things, was of course, what an Omphalos is.
To put it simply, it was the mindscape of a Risen's soul, where their Axion Cores and Sacral Essence resided within. It was also the place a Mercury was sent into when undergoing the Purging Ceremony.
It was all quite a fascinating—if not a little disturbing—process. They'd have a minute at most to connect the foreign Sacral Essence flowing through them, into their dormant Axion Core.
If they didn't do it in the allocated time, they'd die entirely, and if they did, then they'd quite literally rise from their own death.
Which, in hindsight, makes whoever came up with the idea of calling them Risen, the laziest person in the world, but that was an issue for another time. Right now, my attention was squarely focused not on the process of making a Risen.
To be exact, my focus was placed entirely on death.
As it turns out, it controlled the world more in this changed world, than it ever did in the past. It also, held the answers to not only my own reincarnation, but to what exactly the System was.
Really, my plan for making the System talk was quite simple. I was going to lay out all the facts until it could do nothing but agree with me.
'Honestly, I'm quite the genius when I want to be.'