Chase stumbled into his room, grabbing onto the wall of the first bunk bed on the right.
Groaning and aching, he ripped at his molten helmet. Trying anything he could to get the skull off of his face, as it continued to fuse together with his own skin.
He staggered forward, falling onto his knees as his chest began to ache, hearing the sounds of chains and armor rattling.
Instantly, Chase tried to grab the corner of his black tunic, but couldn't wrap his steel fingertip around the small latch.
Struggling on the ground, he immediately froze, looking around at one of the small rooms the guild hall had given them.
Chase outstretched his arms, with his body flat on the wooden floor. As his limbs relaxed- he felt the rustling of papers beneath him.
Lifting his sore and exhausted upper body, he looked behind him at the mess of papers scattered across the room.
Looking down, and picking one up gently, Chase studied its contents, only to remember that he had been the one who had written all of these.
They were all scattered and deranged notes, systems of power, the level of power that a god would possess, what the "elder gods" are, and several other things along those lines.
Half of it wasn't even spelled right, as it had been written in some sort of craze for knowledge that Chase obtained.
Slowly, Chase stood up looking in the tall mirror leaning against one of the wooden pillars of the room, as he lifted his damaged arm from behind, unstrapping tunic as the metal quickly slammed against the ground.
Looking in the mirror, Chase was greeted with the familiar cursed reflection of himself, making him quite nauseous. He slowly glanced down at his left wrist, where a silver chain-link bracelet was tied, as well as strapped along his wrist.
"You asked for this..."
He muttered, remembering how Luna had asked him to seal her, after the revelation behind Onyx's disappearance.
The bracelet had been a last minute item forged by himself and Gemini, since Chase had actually had some sort of talent for sealing magic, it had been a lot easier than the two of them had prepared for.
Looking back up at his distorted reflection, he squinted his eyes as just his chest came into view.
"Damn..."
Although one would assume that he was talking about how much his physique had evolved over the last few years, he was not-although it indeed has.
Behind the decent set of abs that Chase had acquired with his extremely lean yet durable physique: lie a terribly faint violet glow.
Like an infection running throughout his body, it continued to spread, as the cuts and gashes left behind by Rider also never ceased to rot.
Terrible lines of infected scars ran along his chest, some the size of swords, others the taking up entire parts of his body.
Half of his hands had been replaced by black alloys, only for the parts of his fingers that had been entirely removed-other parts such as the burns along his right hand, and the chunks of bones missing from his wrist did not get any sort of treatment.
Yet that was still not the worst part, as mentioned before. The purple glow that ran through the scars and into his very blood, was indeed the curse of corruption, the same rot that had given the power of god slaying to a monster like Rider, while also ripping him from any intelligence he ever had.
Chase quite frankly put: Did not want to become a mindless beast, as he had scene that once before.
However, one would be a fool to ignore the vast amount of power that the corruption would give them.
Yet he persisted, doing everything in his power to find some sort of cure for the rot within his body.
Beginning to mutter too himself once more, he picked up the jagged remains of a wooden pencil. Scribbling into the paper, random feelings that the violet infection has given him, and the areas of pain that were the worst-
He was cut off, as a knock resounded from the door.
"Yo C, you good?"
Reinhart knocked and waited patiently at the for a few moments, as Chase lazily threw a ragged black cloak over his shoulder and opened the door.
"What?"
He asked with a deadpanned expression that was obviously hidden behind the obsidean skull, and the molten flesh beneath it.
"I was just wondering if you were good, we all were. It's been about a week since we got here, and Michael, Equan, and Gabriel have all been saying you never leave your room..."
Chase shrugged, feeling the responsibilities of a leader crush down on him.
"Nah, I'm good. Trust me, if I was like secretly dying, because some infection had gotten hold of me and entered my blood stream: you guys would be the first to know."
Chase chuckled, but was not met with laughter at all, and just a single cocked eyebrow from the ginger clad in heavy steal armor.
"Anyway, Actor and Bandit scouted Northwest, and it turns out were really close to the remains of some ancient city. Bandit said there might be some loot there we can sell off for good prices."
Reinhart nodded slowly, in his own flow of thoughts.
"What is the grand purpose of all of this, we all had nowhere really to go after the war, in fact, people like me were going to just return to their small groups and continue stealing and pillaging or something along those lines; however, you my friend, are a king..."
Chase knew where Reinhart was going with this, as he-himself had lost his own privilege at being king over something completely out of his control.
He was the heir of the greatest of the three clans, the last son of Orion...
"I get it..."
Chase said, glancing at the hallway behind Reinhart.
"I could have been a king, yes; however, I would have been king of a dying nation, I would have failed to find wealth and we would have been ruined by the family of Aries... Leaving Zephyr in charge of Solis was the best thing I could have done, that way we can go out and find some way to make enough money, and we need to be in hiding right now anyway. We seen what happened with Gemini, Star of House Aries will find anyway to get too me."
He finished with a pained groan from all of the speaking, as he finally grew drowsy for the day.
"We leave tomorrow..."
Chase eventually muttered, before the closing the door and leaning against the wall.