8 - Atma

As it turns out, experimenting with a person's ability to lie is very difficult when there is no one to lie to. Sure, the little fox was good company on the journey, but it wasn't exactly sapient. It couldn't communicate with him in any meaningful way.

Although Will did manage to figure something out. He was able to say incorrect things, as long as he didn't know they were wrong. For example.

If someone asked him something he thought he knew, perhaps the time of day. He could answer them incorrectly as long as he truly believed what he was saying was true.

This meant that his inability to lie only extended so far as what he thought was true. It didn't work in absolutes and rather from his perspective.

Other than that, he made very little progress and decided to shelve the experimentation until he came across a suitable partner. Preferably someone who could talk.

As he was pondering the ramifications of this fact, he stumbled on the road, his foot hitting a plank of wood that was wedged between two rocks on the overgrown road.

Catching himself, Will found his balance and glared at the plank that tripped him. His glare quickly morphed into shock when he noticed that it was a hand-cut wooden plank, something that could only have been man-made.

Looking further down the road, he searched for where this plank could have come from. He had a pretty good idea of planks source since there shouldn't be any houses this far from any villages.

Sure enough, further down the road, he came across a ruined wagon, overturned and wedged into a ditch, it was missing half of its base and one whole side, presumably shredded by the raging winds that had torn through this area.

Jumping down into the ditch, the little fox yelped in complaint, nearly falling off its perch on his shoulder due to the sudden movement. However, Will was too distracted by what he saw inside the overturned wagon to care about the little creature's complaints.

His stomach dropped when he saw the twisted body beneath the carriage, most of its skeleton picked clean by scavenging animals, he could tell the person had died from a broken neck. The shattered neck of the skeleton was sticking back at a gruesome angle, looking back at Will from behind its own back.

The skeletal grin followed him as he backed away, trying his best not to throw up. Seeing a dead person like this was completely different to knowing his mother was dead.

The latter was soul-crushing and left an empty spot in his soul, a gaping void that threatened to swallow him into its pit of despair. The former was abrupt and blunt, there was no shying away from the gory death the person driving the wagon had suffered. They died in pain and helplessness.

Thinking like this, he was reminded of the fragility of humans. 'How can we possibly fight gods?' he wondered helplessly. From the way he saw it, simply escaping divine wrath would be a success, never mind fighting back.

'Perhaps controlling Atma is the only solution. Although I don't fully understand the changes it might bring to my body, if I stay as weak as I am now, all it would take is a stray gust of wind to kill me,' Will thought sombrely, he didn't want to end up like the wagon's driver.

Refusing to stay near the wagon for any longer than necessary, he clambered up out of the ditch, not even bothering to search for whatever cargo it had been carrying. Every time he looked at the wagon, he pictured the withered corpse within and its sickening grin following him as he left.

Shuddering, Will sped up, leaving the wagon behind him as soon as possible. Even the fox yipping in delight from his increased speed didn't manage to cheer him up.

His mind was a mess of helplessness and self-doubt. He could feel that his desire to indulge in the simple pleasures of life would be incredibly difficult if he didn't grasp some kind of strength.

What dream could he even pursue when he was utterly weak?

The day was drawing to a close and Will's feet were crying out in pain, blisters having formed all along his soles. Will had walked for close to an hour after leaving the wagon and finally decided to stop when he came across a large hole in the side of a hill.

It was far too big to belong to a fox, and judging from his little companion's reluctance to enter, whatever had once lived here was a predator at the top of the food chain.

He could taste the hole somewhat; it was musty and reeked of iron and blood. Many, many things had been killed and eaten in here.

Staring intently into the hungry mouth of the little cave, Will turned on his 'Life-Vision' and searched for any signs of life. No matter how he saw it, nothing was living in this cave. Simply a deep blue abyss.

Steeling himself, Will prayed that this cave's previous resident had fallen victim to the first impact and hurried into the shelter as night closed in.

The cave went deep into the cliff, rocks jutting out of its earthen walls at odd angles. Unlike the fox's den, Will could stand up and walk through this cave with relative ease, barely needing to duck under a few rocks that poked out through the cave's ceiling.

He noticed a few of the bigger rocks on the wall had deep scores cut into them. And trying his best not to imagine what could cut through rock like that, Will hurried deeper into the darkness of the cave.

He sighed in relief when the cave finally stopped at a wide alcove easily big enough to stand up and jump around in. There was nothing inside the cave and he hadn't been eaten. A great success as far as Will was concerned.

In the centre of the alcove, a pile of twigs and dried leaves was arranged in a huge bed and this time, Will made sure to check there were no little critters hiding amidst the nested bedding.

When he set the little fox down on the bedding, it whimpered and nuzzled at his leg desperately, trying to get away from the bed as though it were on fire.

Sighing, Will sat down and placed the little creature on his lap, stroking its wiry fur absentmindedly as he tried to figure out a method to manipulate Atma.

He supposed that since animals were mutating due to its effects, you didn't necessarily need to be supremely intelligent to use Atma, on a basic level at least.

Even though he had noticed a few changes to his new body, the problem was, had these changes occurred due to his new bloodline or because of Atma? It was hard to distinguish which was the culprit and perhaps it was a mix of both.

The biggest change he had noticed was his vastly improved stamina. He had bounced back from his fight with the fox surprisingly quickly, his various scratches and bruises already beginning to heal after he cleaned them.

He also felt marginally stronger, although that could simply be a trick of the mind. Finding what you are looking for as they say.

Frowning, he tried to understand how he could have absorbed Atma if he hadn't meant to. 'Maybe it's a passive thing. Something like breathing that all living creatures do subconsciously. Only with Atma, if I manage to control it consciously, I will have a big boost in strength,' Will surmised.

Closing his eyes, Will focused his attention on his body, trying his best to notice any minute changes that Atma might cause as it entered him.

His heart beat slow and steady, his lungs pumped air like bellows and his skin itched slightly from the scratching leaves and twigs he was sitting on.

Peering deeper, he focused entirely on his heartbeat. Pumping blood around his body each time it beat, his heart thrummed with energy and life, 'What if Atma works the same way as blood, needing some kind of system to carry it around my body?' Will wondered.

'Maybe that is what the snake meant by natural talent, some people's bodies would have a great affinity to Atma and easily be able to transport it throughout them and others would have none. If that is true, my new bloodline should also have the ability to circulate Atma like blood, I just need to find it.' Will figured.

For roughly an hour, Will focused intently inwards, examining every little movement of his body and searching for the one clue he needed. And finally, as his head was beginning to throb from the extended period o concentration, he found it.

Masked by his heartbeat, something In his sternum was pulsing gently, spreading warm energy throughout his body in a cobweb-like nexus of energy that circulated in odd patterns that Will didn't fully understand.

He noticed that a majority of this network was unused, the meagre amount of Atma he contained circulating mainly around his chest.

When he finally located the centre of this network, the pulsing thing in his chest, his consciousness was sucked out of his mind and projected into his chest, observing a glowing web with a glowing green sphere at its centre.

The sphere remained motionless, occasionally letting out weak pulses that pushed glowing green energy throughout his body.

Focusing on the sphere, Will felt the connection between him and it solidify, forming a tangible bond like that of a limb. With a thought, he could control the sphere, although it felt clumsy and unwieldy,

Within the glowing green orb, he felt a sense of fullness, it was bursting at the seams with energy that it was simply unable to release.

All it would take was a command from Will and… Will watched in horror as the orb began to spin. He had only thought about releasing the energy and it had begun to act.

Picking up speed, the orb throbbed with light, releasing warm waves of energy that washed over his body and blue through the glowing web that surrounded the orb, lighting up even more 'Veins' as he had decided to call them.

With each throb, more energy was released, and more energy veins were connected to the growing network, shuttling the warm energy throughout his body in complicated patterns.

Finally, there was no more energy veins to connect, and the energy circled his body in one complete cycle surging back towards the spinning orb, causing the orb to spin faster.

The orb stopped throbbing completely, spinning faster and faster until it became a green blur. And then it began to shrink, compressing itself and glowing brighter and brighter as it did.

When the orb completely ran out of energy, Will gasped as his consciousness was flung from his chest, snapping back into his head.

He awoke with a gasp and vomited and a clump of sticky black tar that clung to the dried leaves that it touched.

Feeling a strange feeling building up in his body, he took off his cloak and threw it away, not wanting to get any of the tar on it.

Sure enough, he felt that the orb had begun spinning and was dragging whatever this black substance was in towards it and subsequently, the tarry black glue was placed into his stomach.

He retched, black glue that reeked of sulphur dribbling out of his mouth. He felt a large clump building up in his stomach and began to panic. If something that big came up he wasn't sure if he'd survive.

Desperately, he stuck a finger into the back of his throat and gagged, throwing up clumps of the black tar.

In the meantime, the little fox had backed away, the horrific smell driving it out of the cave.

After a few minutes of clearing the black substance from his body, Will lay exhausted, his ragged clothes drenched with sweat.

Just as he was about to drift off into sleep, he heard a desperate yelp come from the cave entrance. Lifting his head groggily, he watched the little fox run in while whimpering and crying.

Ignoring the wretched smell, it ran over to him and nudged at his face desperately. His mind still not quite recovered from the shock, Will was slow to react to the little creature's warnings.

But the low rumbling growl that reverberated around the cave did it. Snapping him out of his stupor, he leapt to his feet and watched the entrance to the alcove like a hawk.

Another smell had begun to spread through the sulphurous miasma of the black tar. Will could taste blood in the air.