Lost Soul

Chapter Fifteen

Something is terribly wrong.

In reality, Soul has quite a few problems at the moment, but one of them is particularly concerning. Soul assumed that the strange weakness and soreness in his body was from jumping between so many people. All the discomfort should have gone away in a half a day or so. It's only getting worse. By the evening of the next day, Soul's entire body feels like a giant bruise. His limbs repeatedly cramp up with painful needles, and every moment aggravates the constant throb everywhere else. Soul can feel his magic pulse in time with his building headache. It's not nearly as painful as to make him faint, but the pain is steadily creeping up to that point.

Soul only has one theory as to what's going on. This is the longest that he's ever been in the same host. Cherry's body and magic are rejecting Soul. It seems like he's finally been identified as something foreign. The more Soul thinks about what is happening, the more scared he becomes. Soul nearly died last time he was left without a host. He remembers feeling himself fade away, disconnected from the borrowed magic that sustains him. Soul's presence puts a slightly higher burden onto his host's soul. More magic must be produced in order for him to function normally. Soul should have expected something like this. It only makes sense that a monster's soul would eventually notice the presence of a leech. Soul's not sure if he'll be spat out of his host to wither away like in Candytale, or if Cherry's magic will simply destroy him like any other bacteria.

It's hard to decide which option would be better.

Only one person has come to his sell today, and that was only to drop off another plate of food. Soul didn't even get two words in before they scurried off as fast as possible. They're afraid of him. Not even Ink has been back to see Soul. There's probably some meeting going on about what they're going to do with him. They can't intend to just leave him in Cherry indefinitely, right? If this goes on for a couple more days, there might not be anything left for them to debate over.

Sitting still for too long is impossible, so Soul has to stop himself from wincing repeatedly as he paces the cell. Staring at the same four walls for days is maddening. Chasing around the morbid thoughts in his head is even worse. Looking for any sort of distraction, Soul has been using his aura to search his surroundings. It's impossible to glean any meaningful information about the AU. His abilities are only suited for locating people.

There was only silence yesterday, but today, Soul can sense a small group of people somewhere nearby. A few of them are familiar. For the last hour, Soul has been contemplating trying to lure someone to his cell. His aura has levels of strength and subtly. If Soul can pull it off, he thinks that he might be able to get someone to walk his way without them realizing why they feel the urge to move. Almost everyone has the instinctual need to help when someone calls. At least that's what Soul hopes for.

Aiming for only one person in the middle of a group is rather difficult. Soul is trying his best not alert the few monsters that feel familiar to him. He almost cheers when he senses a monster take a few steps closer to his location. That excitement quickly deteriorates into disappointment when they step back to join the group. Soul manages to catch someone's attention a few more times only for them to ignore that faint compulsion. This is so frustrating! Clearly, Soul's abilities were never meant to be used for something like this.

Things would be so much easier if he could call Error for help. Soul is afraid that if he tried, Error would ignore him. Soul doesn't know if he could take that kind of rejection. He'd rather leave things broken as they are then to possibly make Error more outright with his hatred. Error surely hates Soul, right?

Soul tries to slightly strengthen his aura to see if it helps holds people's attention. Too late, he realizes that he's been found out. Someone starts to head his way, but it's one of the people that Soul was trying his best to hide from. He suppress his aura back down to undetectable levels. This doesn't stop Dream from rounding the corner of the hallway and hesitantly approaching the cell door. Soul backs away from the door by a few feet. It wasn't so long ago that Soul was possessing Dream. Soul rarely interacts with the people who he steals secrets and personal memories from. He doesn't know what to say.