Quote:
Follows ctb.
Medical was surely sick of seeing him, but it was their duty to treat him. Faustite was seen for his shoulder, which was half-cauterized by the time he reached them; once he was cleared to leave, he made himself at home in the chilled room that Axinite had promised him.
He wouldn't fault Axinite for the outcome. Youmafied officers were poorly understood and even less researched; none, to his knowledge, had looked into how to direct the evolution of a youmafied officer during their promotions, much less how to reverse it. Youma themselves were largely underutilized, too – mainly tools for grunt work, sieges, and personal bidding, the creatures lacked will and were thus given no further consideration. It was only a recent endeavor that they uncovered new ways to fold them into an agent's edge over their enemy.
So Faustite wasn't surprised when Axinite delivered his dismal conclusion: that they didn't know what was now consuming him, but it was suspected that his youma half had something to do with it. Whatever it was, it was unraveling him – deconstructing his body, piece by piece, leaving him more vulnerable to his fires.
Faustite sat idle on the chilled plasticized cushion in Axinite's temperature-controlled room, feeling distant from himself. He looked at his bound hand, at the orange cracks forming in them. Unbuttoning his right sleeve, the burning General rolled it up to find the char that marked his body had expanded halfway up his forearm. He grasped his hand gingerly, turning it this way and that, examining the way the molten marks glowed faintly. As he clenched his fist, he winced at how one of the fissures widened and his wounded shoulder cursed him for the idea.
He understood how Bloodstone drew his conclusion: during the events at the Scar, Faustite had been struck by one of those transformative scales and mutated into a fully youmafied version of himself. He recalled being a torrent of fire held together only by a metal grate, and from his back streamed the skin that once covered him in full. It had been charred and tattered, burnt beyond recognition, but he remembered how it tore off of him shortly before he blazed. To say that he would lose himself to his youma was no daring guess.
But if they could be called two separate entities at any point in their merging…
Faustite swept up from the cushion, nearly flipping it over in his abruptness. He needed someone to confirm his suspicions – a youma, likely, just as Murikabushi had suggested. He had his pick: Revenant and Salthiss, Headache, even Arles if Faustite could find him in the vast, busy Rift. There was the Forgemaster, too. There was Galvorn. He'd broadened his network of youma in the years since his promotion to General; surely there were a number who would humor him with a talk. Because he owed half of himself to them, he could think of no one better to ask.
Rolling down his sleeve, Faustite buttoned it as he exited the icebox of a room and strode down the hall. He coughed into the crook of his arm, ever vigilant for any onlookers. He'd been quiet about his difficulty, as he was quiet about all of his affairs; most of the Negaverse should not have suspected anything amiss with him, and he would have it that way. Better that they did not start considering him a liability, for one step away from that was expendable.
