Do these stories matter Pine had once asked He wanted her to say yes dreaded she would say no The people you talk about they are not like me
His mother had taken PineÆs face in her hands She touched so delicately always nudging and adjusting Never like father who sought to carve his truth into every surface he touched Of course they matter Pine You are not the child we expected yes But you are the next link in the chain of our family That bond will never be broken
At long last fatherÆs experiments bore fruit the processing produced a successful globule of energy When Pine ate that energy it tasted like sour regurgitation It did a small amount sate his hunger but really only had the effect of whetting his appetite Yet he was alive He had a father and mother although were forced to hide Pine because of others seeking to control him Because he was special had provided the energy to create the Nexus
They celebrated that night Pine and mother whooping and cheering while Father stood arms akimbo and laughed luxuriating in his success
Pine remembered thinking I wonder if all broken things are special for so long as delay their collapse
Pine had tried to remain positive over the next few months even as the small consumptions made him sick and queasy Even as he continually felt a deeper part of himself giving out vast amounts of power fueling the rapid expansion of the Nexus Perhaps his parents understood how insufficient their methods had become His fatherÆs good mood evaporated leaving him surly and irritable given to spending long hours sitting in front of the refinement Engraving and brooding
In the end it was actually his mother who struck the real blow she suggested they would only be able to try and fix this if they adventured out through the Nexus
Let me come with you Pine had pleaded
His mother had sighed His father had shaken his head You are irreplaceable You are proof that our family is meant for better things IÆve waited weÆve all Heh You cannot be risked Pine And thatÆs that Remain here we will soon return
For the first time Pine became alone Alone with his hunger The warm cabin warped into something else empty of other inhabitants who had acted as pillars of safety He shivered in a dark hidden chamber Shadows slumped against the walls and observed his every move Yet those isolating moments did have a single benefit Pine discovered in the absence of other stimuli that he remained connected to all that energy he spread out into the Nexus
Allowing his gaze to unfocus he could sometimes see the whole of the universe he could create in small snippets from the tumultuous places
He observed the rest of the Nexus Seeing fights or dramatic professions of love or harrowing chases did a lot to distract him Pine tried to remain positive even as the shadows in his cabin grew more numerous Honestly the hunger wasnÆt so bad Pine could steadily get used to it as the growing poison in the recycled energy became untenable
So he sat very still and observed Occasionally mother and father would come back but just as quickly they would need to leave Father to follow some new lead and mother well Pine understood that mother had begun to avoid father He could feel her guilt Just by chance one of the scenes he observed was his mother alone and weeping
The tears glittering on her cheeks for a few minutes dried The salt they deposited on her skin was invisible Pine had remained frozen until the moment that the focus began to shift He reached out and attempted to grasp onto that vision Rather than being able to reach his hurt mother he simply forced the moment away He lost the connection
For a long time Pine trembled A new change developed slowly in his heart after his actions produced the opposite effect
It was the very opposite of Pine who needed to constantly give of himself and released pure waves of energy to sustain the Nexus Still observing Fiero eventually helped Pine understand that they definitely were connected at least by the way everything Fiero touched began to wither and fade
Whether it was giving or taking a flawed being would corrupt everything around it There were no exceptions
Pine likely would have taken some more desperate actions then expanding his mastery of Engraving and Nether Rituals to try and purge more of his own flaws He was in a dark place with his own self hatred as the only emotion strong enough to overcome the hunger and exhaustion But right about that time a very clever and hungry monster named Fatia Cerulean sniffed out a method to trace back the donated energy that Pine released
The heart of the universe didnÆt have any idea what was coming The raptor bit into Pine without warning as soon as the connection became solid Its jaws tore away vital energy and it happily devoured it for its own
PineÆs first instinct was to scream But he remembered the previous time he had ruined everything forced his Father to constantly fight against invaders because he had thoughtlessly screamed and let them into the Nexus So Pine remained silent He would not be a burden any longer He would solve this problem on his own
Pine’s experience watching Fiero had taught him something very valuable the poison was him too although he hadnÆt wanted to admit it at first So as Fatia taught his bloodsoaked method to more and more subordinates Pine accepted the poison into his body He decisively abandoned the periphery of his existence and instead created a thick barrier of that darkness around his core consciousness
He could still feel every bite every tear as they devoured him for dribbles of power Yet Pine safely protected himself and waited hoping Elhume would sense something was amiss Time passed and the agony was his only constant companion His father did not seem to notice his situation When he next visited he hardly even seemed to want to be there He gave Pine orders to open the Nexus once more and then left
This is what I am and we both now know it Pine trembled I am a poison I am broken So this is fine As long as I can help father and mother
Time passed The layer of poison grew and grew and grew Sometimes it would shrink becoming more dense but that just trapped Pine behind one more layer of darkness and death He was alone with his hunger and exhaustion listening as the dead whispered to him about their lives about their regrets He could barely feel the Nexus feeding off of him any longer
What surprised Pine was that his damned body was much more stubborn about the survival thing than he was He had assumed after he had cut off nine tenths of his body and surrendered it to the Nexus that the universe would eventually collapse upon itself Yet that last shred of him the pure core continued to radiate out enough energy
His hunger became a constant deafening demand Yet the Nexus survived even when it shouldnÆt kept afloat by the worst sort of poison He hated it But he also felt a kinship with the Nexus too
The only logical explanation for its continued survival was that it was broken as well So in a way Pine wasnÆt alone
Pine had isolated himself and had most of his outer connections devoured by the denizens of the Nexus His fatherÆs visits ceased Without those events to delineate the passage of time everything became fluid He rode endless waves of suffering He hated himself He couldnÆt look away from the small ripples he could still observe from the outside world
He couldnÆt remember the last time he had heard from his mother PineÆs expression had crumpled when he made that realization She must have realized what I was She must have run away to save herself
A thousand years felt like so much longer His traitorous body continued to wring itself dry producing more energy
LaplaceÆs invasion had been a relief to Pine a sharp certainty that had cut through his blurry awareness Once again his instincts betrayed him The last shrivel of himself he divided again so his consciousness could flee the calcified remained of his energy core He found a grand chamber that his father had constructed and hid out there
Until Devick had showed up Until she had bothered Pine into helping her until she stood against impossible odds Pine felt something other than poison festering in his heart as he watched her fight