We return to our favorite Dark Sage to see just what self-destructive behavior he is engaging in now.
Chapter 49: Work and Restlessness
Gol worked through the night, assembling the other half of the bomb's frame, the shape of the thing coming together with each new sheet of metal he added on, forming as the hours dragged on into a misshapen shell of mismatched scraps that would eventually be added to its already finished counterpart. It would be a very ugly thing, but it would do. And the Sage did little else but work, only pausing in it to instruct his servants when they wandered by to bring him the occasional meal, that would only be forgotten by the time it finally arrived, or water that he hardly took notice of except when his throat became so much like sandpaper that it temporarily distracted him from his task. And sometimes he would fall asleep, finding himself sprawled out next to the bomb's frame or even laying atop it an unknown amount of time later, and then he would continue from where he had left off, as if no break had ever been taken.
And while he worked, thoughts would sometimes try to worm their way into his mind, reminders of what he was doing and what the completion of what he was doing would cause, and he tried to push these thoughts away, as they would only distract him from what needed to be done and which would, possibly, put doubts in his mind that would only make his task harder. Forcing himself to get back to work had been difficult enough, and the last thing he needed were any more doubts to complicate matters. He had had quite enough of doubting himself. That's what had made him take so long to return to his work in the first place. He was going to build the bomb and destroy Spargus and the boy and his flea-bitten ferret. That was all. There was no need to ponder over the matter further. This is what he needed to do, and he was going to do it, and that was the end of the matter.
So when images popped into his mind, of that girl and her smile, he would try to brush them away as quickly as they came to his attention, lest they become lodged in his thoughts and impossible to remove, as they very well could if left alone for too long. Ignore that obnoxious girl. She and that horrible smile were only haunting his thoughts because of how bothersome they were. He thought of them only because he wanted them gone, like when one obsesses over painful memories or their own embarrassing actions, not because they enjoy them, but because they are so disturbing, they are impossible to forget. Yes, he could do without that woman, and when the figurines sprung to mind next, he would imagine himself burning them, burning them from his thoughts, his welding torch taking on the dual responsibility of soldering metal and torching wood.
But, the pearl, oh, it was a different matter. For whatever reason, it was. While it appeared in his mind as nothing more than a simple golden ball, just hanging there, seemingly oh, so innocent, in his thoughts, neither torch nor hammer could make it go away. It was impervious to his efforts to remove it from his thoughts, even if it was, just that, merely an image in his mind of a real object, but no matter what, there it was, there, in his mind's eye, and it only caused him to work with an even greater fever, to try to focus on work and work only, to set his sights on what the future would bring and not on what the past held. The world would be his. It would be, but only if he kept working, and so work he must, and nothing else could be allowed to share his thoughts, lest his efforts collapse, undermined by a focus that was given over to less important matters. No, he wouldn't allow it. The world would be his. It had to be his soon, or else…or else… What was he wasting his time for? Why was he wasting his time?
And so the Dark Sage worked in this manner, unaware of time or even the basic needs of a living being, if he even remembered that's what he still was, and over this span of unmarked time, the bomb came together, both sides finally complete, and he worked to set one hemisphere atop the other with the help of his servants, an effort characterized by utmost frustration, as they were all sorely uncoordinated, whether because they were mere beasts or because they were reduced to nearly as mindless of a state by lack of sleep, but eventually, the pieces were aligned, and he ordered them to bring him the same hose he had used to fill his robot with Dark Eco, as he got to work welding the two pieces together, hovering around the bomb's perimeter as he worked, while bobbing with a sleep that he could barely keep at bay.
And then events became a blur, and he woke up on the floor with the end of the hose lying nearby and one of the creatures sniffing at him, and he rose one arm to whack it on the head, even if it was the only one that had bothered to stick around while he slept, before telling it to go turn the hose on, while he struggled back to his feet. He grabbed the end of the hose, floating upwards to stick it in the slot he had made in the top of the bomb's frame for this very purpose, grateful he had not forgotten that most important of details in his exhaustion. And then he sat beside it, atop the bomb, realizing now that he had a long wait ahead of him, for the hose had to bring Dark Eco all the way from the pipeline, not to mention the fact that his servant had to actually reach it first. It was more than possible he could have planned this out better, but what did it matter when the work still got done.
And so he waited, wobbling a bit as he slouched there, his arms limp in his lap, and he looked up when the hose finally began to slither about with the movement of the Dark Eco within, its previously flat form growing fat with the liquid inside, and then he grabbed the end of the hose to keep it from slipping loose as the Dark Eco began to flow inside the bomb, filling the object with the substance that would soon cover all of Spargus. The substance that would soon make Spargus his, just as Haven was. The substance that would do more than he intended, but he couldn't think about that right now. It was something he really shouldn't think about again. It couldn't be helped. It couldn't, and that's why it was futile to think about it.
It could be helped, and that's why he couldn't afford to think about it.
It took some time, but what was time lately anyway, and eventually the bomb was filled with all the Dark Eco it could possibly contain, and it was now that Gol realized he had not thought of a good way to turn the hose off once this limit was reached, as the Dark Eco began to overflow, bubbling out and attempting to eat at his coat before he could respond and get away, the liquid proceeding to flow out and down the sides of the bomb, giving it convex stripes of purple and black. Having no other choice but to teleport to where the hose originated from and turn it off himself, he did so before any more Dark Eco could be wasted. Once this task was done, he returned to find the bomb nearly covered in an oozing, bubbling coat of Dark Eco that continued to slip down the sides before glopping off and creating a ring on the floor around the massive object. He heaved a sigh as he stared at the mess. It would have to do. All his efforts in life would just have to do.
And now, with this complete, it was only a matter of adding the finishing touches. The explosives he obtained from the stash he had collected for use in the robot, originally found left in a most unsafe fashion at an abandoned mining site in some mountainside nearby, found only when a few of his servants had managed to blow themselves up (serves them right, the stupid things). He also returned to his old lab, which he had to restock with various supplies that had been destroyed in his fit the other day, week ago, month, who knew, in order to go about creating the Dark Eco gas that would complete the bomb's more sinister additions. Fortunately, his notes to create such a thing were still intact, and it wasn't long before he had managed to create a good batch of the stuff, to be stored in holding tanks situated around the bomb's frame. It was at this time that he found that, whatever day it was, it was currently mid-afternoon outside his lab window (and likely elsewhere, though, a particularly sleep-deprived section of his brain mused over whether or not it would be a different time of day if he, perhaps, checked a different window, and surely it would be, if he took long enough to reach it…)
And then he returned to the basement, for time to surely become lost and uncertain to him again, if it simply didn't decide to flow backwards, for all he knew. He added the tanks of Dark Eco gas, before leaving to find the supplies needed for the boosters and to retrieve the device for controling the thing remotely, as he had with the robot. Not that he was particularly concerned about staying too close and blowing himself up right now, but the remaining sound part of his mind advised against it, and he supposed he should listen to it.
Not long later, Gol found himself out in a Haven City blanketed by the darkness of night, in search of a few relatively intact boosters that may have survived the robot's destruction, to save on some work he really wasn't feeling up to right now and because he had sworn he had seen one some time ago. He drifted over the flooded city streets, searching for the parts he was looking for, as unlikely as it was that he'd managed to find them in the dark, though he currently didn't possess the patience necessary right now to allow him to wait until morning, even if it was the wiser thing to do. And as he searched, he thought to himself how this place was so different from, and yet so similar to, the place where he had grown up, with its lifeless streets and empty windows. Perhaps the physical appearance was entirely different, but the feel was much the same, only lacking in the nostalgia his old home had given him.
Flooded as it was, this city would even be difficult for him to live in now, as even he couldn't withstand direct contact with Dark Eco for long, but it had to be done. He had to empty this place out, a hornet's nest emptied of insects, so that its former occupants could no longer cause any trouble for him. He could afford for this city to be sacrificed if it meant that he could have the whole world for himself. It was worth it, he supposed. And if one sacrifice was worth it, perhaps others would be, as well. Yes, perhaps.
At least it was quiet here, peaceful now without the bustle of life, lives that would stand against him only because of the simple fact that they didn't understand him and his ways and never could because they were too ignorant to bother. And soon, one more place would share their fate, and then he could rebuild, or do the same to the next place he found. Who cared? He still had so much ahead of him. So much to do, and so little driving him to do it except mere necessity.
After wandering this place for quite some time, finding the city to be not so very different from his citadel, the streets of this place often defying logic, his eyes were met with the object he was looking for, or was it a different one, he wasn't sure, lodged amidst various bits of rubble from the damaged buildings nearby. He drifted over, inspecting the object he sought, just one end of it sticking out of the pile at an angle, scratched and dented, but intact, though he was unsure how to go about prying it loose. He floated closer, analyzing it further as much in an effort to figure out how exactly he was going to get it free as to procrastinate, before he settled with simply grasping it as best he could and tugging, a most ineffective method when the object he needed was buried under at least a ton of rubble. Never mind that.
He rubbed his hands together and drifted backwards, before thrusting out one arm before him. He focused on the space above his palm as a ball of Dark Eco began to grow, nearly losing it several times before it was finally a satisfactory size, and then he sent it at the pile of debris, moving to cover his face with his arm just before he was pelted with dust and smaller bits of concrete a mere second later.
That done, he floated back towards where the pile of debris had once stood, stopping at the outskirts of a clearing cloud of dust to squint through the haze before him as he tried to figure out which of the shapes he saw beyond was the object he desired. Unable to locate it, he flew through the dust, coughing and trying his best to wave it away with both hands, going farther into the alleyway the pile of debris had previously been blocking, before finding the dented robot booster lying beside a dumpster. It was certainly close to being trash, all right, but it was all he was able to find, and so he would have to make do.
Gol landed, the Dark Eco from the robot's explosion largely not making it in here, aside from what had dripped down the walls from the rooftops above, and seeing as the booster was much too heavy for him to lift for any prolonged period of time, especially with an unusually sore back, he simply settled for kneeling down and wrapping his arms around it, bidding it to follow him through the portal he created around himself as he returned to the citadel.
And now, as one booster was surely not enough to keep his newest creation afloat, he left it laying there beside the bomb to go about retrieving materials to create more boosters, using this one as a template. As this was one of the few tasks involved in the bomb that he couldn't afford to be sloppy on, as a misshapen, lumpy bomb was fine, but not improperly functioning boosters, it took what felt like and surely was an exceptionally long time, considering the amount of patience he had left, to create these things, his efforts hindered by random bouts of sleeping and an overwhelming lethargy when he was awake. But, the more he worked, the sooner he'd be done, and he'd have plenty of time to rest afterward, wouldn't he? His sister, a mere ghost now or not, couldn't deny him that. He was doing what she wanted. She wanted Spargus gone. He was doing it. After that, he could do what he pleased, at least for a little while.
The boosters came together, one after the other, until he had the correct number he needed to keep the bomb aloft, based on previous calculations back when he wasn't so sleep-deprived, which was why he trusted them. Next, he welded them all around the object's lower hemisphere with enough precision as to their locations as he cared to expend the effort on. Once this task was complete, he floated backwards to survey his work. There it was, the bomb nearly complete at last. It was almost that time, it very nearly was, the time when… And he stopped himself when he thought too far into the matter, as thinking would only make him second guess what he was doing again, and he couldn't afford such a thing right now.
This is what he had been working for. This is what he was going to do. This is what he had to do, even if he didn't… He was doing this, and that was final. And now that he was so close, he could afford a little rest right now, couldn't he? Just a small nap, and he would continue. Just like you wanted, dear sister, I'm doing what you told me, and you can at least allow me one last rest before it all happens, can't you?
Although he tried, or very nearly did, Gol didn't make it back to his room. Instead his legs weakened, and he slumped to the floor again, the bomb the last thing he saw before sleep overtook him once more, though it was what would come after that met him in his dreams, making it doubly difficult not to think of the things he had been trying to ignore. But, he was doing what his dear sister wanted, and that's all that mattered. Wasn't it?
Gol is quite a busy Sage. Please review.