Scott attempted to curl his hands into fists but could not. He tried to call form his dark judgment. He could not. He even tried to shift into his shadow form, still he could not. There was nothing that Harry might have done that could prevent his transformation abilities or judgment, which left only one factor. There was something wrong with him.

In that moment between moments, the world nearly frozen solid, Scott searched his mind for answers. There was something there, some indefinable thing that he needed.

The awakening percentage ticked upward. He realized as he searched that what he needed was not a thing, but an answer. It was as though his heart were frozen. Stuck in this moment, unable to do anything just like when he was a child, his power refused to work.

Harry was a god. A legitimate one. He was not gifted some glitched out destiny by some convoluted system concocted by his brethren.

“Fake. I’m a fake…” whispered Scott. His eyes began to gloss over as he came face to face with the realization of his current hypocrisy.

He had come to accept that dragons might see him as some sort of mythical dark messiah figure, and even understood that in the terms of the dream he was some sort of divine nobility. Yet, that meant nothing in the face of current reality. He was a god in name only. In the depths of his heart, he knew that.

“I’m not…” whispered Scott hoarsely.

Harry was moving now, but with incredible slowness. Like a slow-motion camera, he moved with the intensive slowness of a bullet traveling slower than several hundred thousand frames per second. Even so, Scott did not notice the movement at all.

All his doubts. His fears. These things came up all at once. Forced to deal with the truth of his own inadequacy, Scott panted for air even as the world grew darker around him. Some might call the effect, tunnel vision. Nothing else that was going on mattered. In that nigh-eternal moment, he was trapped in a prison of his own self-ascribed mediocrity.

The awakening percentage stalled out at a little over ninety-nine percent. None of it mattered. Nothing mattered. His little sister was dead for the stupidest reason imaginable, and he could not even fight back against the one who killed her.

Thoughts of his sister’s ravaged corpse plagued his mind once more. The bat cracking down on Harry’s skull repeatedly, but it never did more than splatter blood all around the room. That sickening laugh of his as he taunted him. Scott remembered it all in that moment.

It was almost exactly like before, except this time Harry could fight back. There was no fight at all. He could not beat him. Even if his level was higher, his skills greater, he could never beat someone who had control over the game itself.

What player could beat a game administrator who wanted to win a fight? The answer to that question was the cold hard truth that he was faced with in that elongated moment.

His thoughts continued to recycle the same fears and doubts in an endless loop. A broken puppet whose strings had been cut, he could think of nothing else but his own failure.

Strangely, it was his own preoccupation with his destined failure that led him toward the whisper of a thought that would irrevocably change his outlook on the world. He failed everyone, not just his sister’s memory.

Most people could do nothing about the situation. At the moment, it seemed that he could not do anything either. Yet, there was something at the edge of his awareness. There was something that he knew but could not recall.

All the world was in trouble. Innocent people were being toyed with by uncaring gods who acted like bratty children. In his strange state of mind, he imagined that he could hear them. They lived. They died. They cried out due to the unfairness of it all.

The imagined voices grew louder, more desperate. Soon, he realized that it was not merely his imagination. He did hear a multitude of voices, and in a way similar to how he heard the dragons.

Frightened. Alone. Destined to nothing but an inescapable fate that would hold them in bondage.

The voices came from everywhere, and nowhere. They suffused his mind and spirit. Dragons. Humans. Even monsters and animals. The grass. The trees. They too cried out. There was a wrongness in the world. Everything that lived, or had lived, knew it intimately. Though, the living seemed the most confused of all.

“Why…” he whispered in that near-timeless space. “Why do so many call out to me? What do they think I can do?”

No voice had to intercede. The awakening level percentage began to move once more as he chose his own path. “Remember…” whispered Scott.

The moment he spoke those words, a sudden flash of light blinded his eyes but freed his ears. He heard a voice, not something merely in his head but a clear and resonant one akin to a true memory.

“Of course, you would be the first Noct-El. You always were… but you do realize what this means?” asked the weary, grandfatherly voice.

A voice strangely similar to Scott’s own spoke up. “I will lose these dove-like wings that you gave me.”

“You will regain a semblance of what you once were, of what the chaotic sea between existences made of you as you passed through realms unknown even to yourself,” said the voice. “Are you certain that you wish to revisit that loneliness?”

“You aren’t like the other children.,” said the grandfatherly voice. “You will be subjected to the memories of your passage through the chaotic sea, and with that will come a burdensome duty that no one else, even I, could possibly take up in your place.”

“Yes, father. I will guard the cradle as the children sleep. Those that howl at the walls of reality will not disturb their slumber,” said Noct-El. “Even had you not taken in my broken and discarded soul. Made me whole. Named me as your son. I would still wish to help them.”

“They are all far too young to understand what is happening,” continued Noct-El.

“I do not speak only of that, but of your true nature,” said the warm masculine voice. “Dreaming as they will, until the time comes, it is inevitable that they shall fall into despair due to the nightmares that seep into their thoughts.”

“You speak of the abyss, father?” asked Scott.

“I can form it, but I will not have the strength to command it. None of your brothers or sisters could hope to do so,” said the voice. “They lack your intricate spiritual matrix and innate connection with the primordial chaos…”

“And I…” The grandfatherly voice released a weary sigh, but then spoke in a strong tone. “I will soon be a mere shell of my former self, a husk, nothing more than a remnant.”

“I will take responsibility for the abyss as well,” agreed Scott. “Though, I do hope that it is never needed.”

“So be it,” spoke the grandfatherly voice. “By my true name, and in the unspoken name of the departed mother. I Logos do once more grant to you the title that you once wore long ago. You who chose first to cast off your dove white wings to take unto yourself that scales and claws of a seraphim. You will once again be known as the first of scale and claw, and as the true Master of the Abyss.”

A chorus of high-pitched cheers erupted from nearby. Scott could not see anything, but he had the feeling that they were familiar to him, though they were not the children mentioned previously.

It was difficult to keep that conversation in mind as the blinding light died away. Scott awakened to knew knowledge about himself, but he could scarcely comprehend it. Even most of the conversation began to elude him after a time. Only the important bits remained.

“I came from outside…” he whispered. He was not certain what those words meant, but the sentiment of what he had heard remained. “I’m older than Logos.”

“Older than Logos… Older than…” Scott’s eyes happened to fall upon his sister’s tombstone. In his heightened state of awareness, a single memory erupted from the depths of his thoughts. Claws tore through stone even as it was spoken of as an immortal object.

Eyes that were crimson beyond the brightest of twilight stars widened, even as Scott’s pupils narrowed to serpentine slits.

[Awakening – 100%]