In that single beat, Aki didn't know what happened but his body was engulfed by something. It brought him to his limits and crushed them, shattering whatever he knew he could do.
His legs sprung from the floor, muscles coiling like compressed springs, the tendons in his calves burning as they expanded and released in quick succession. The wooden floorboards beneath him splintered, leaving deep grooves where his feet had been just milliseconds before.
His body flung through a window, the glass exploding outward. He moved much too fast to even be grazed by them, the shards seeming to hang suspended in the air as he passed through. His eyes flared open in sudden realization. He forgot he had been in the fourth floor.
The world tilted. His stomach lurched into his throat as gravity seized hold of his small body, pulling him toward the unforgiving concrete below. Four stories. Forty feet. Aki should have been worried, should have been terrified, but he wasn't.
The sole thing on his mind was reaching his mother.
That feeling, that horrible, gut-wrenching certainty that something was wrong consumed everything else. His hair ran wild, whipping around his face, the wind crashing against his face.
Time seemed to stretch. He could see people on the sidewalk below, their faces turning upward in slow motion, mouths opening in shock. A woman dropped her shopping bag. A man pulled a child back. But Aki barely registered them.
He simply couldn't. Wouldn't. The only thing that mattered was his mother.
He crashed onto the floor, his legs somehow absorbing the impact as the pavement cracked and buckled beneath him, spider-webbing outward in a twenty-foot radius. The sound was like thunder.
Windows rattled. Car alarms began to wail. Then his heart burst again, that same overwhelming surge of power flooding through his veins.
He was propelled forward, a sonic boom erupting in his wake that knocked over trash cans and sent papers swirling into the air. His feet barely touched the ground as he dashed across the sidewalk, his body moving on pure... instinct.
Dodging pedestrians who seemed frozen in place, leaping over entire cars.
The city blurred around him.
But cutting through it all was that voice, that desperate, screaming need that echoed in his mind, over and over and over again. It started as low, then grew in a crescendo until it was like another person screaming into his skull and rattling his brain.
GET TO HER NOW!!!
He didn't register the voice as his own.
He thought back frantically to the time Bubbles drove him to the orphanage, trying to map the route in reverse. Every twist and turn played out in his mind like a video on fast-forward.
Even though he had spent most of that car ride looking down at the book she'd given him, trying not to cry about leaving his mother, his body remembered.
His superior instincts, traced the path, almost like following an invisible thread.
He burst again, that power exploding from his core.
Streets flew by. Three blocks. Five blocks. Ten. His lungs should have been burning, his muscles should have been screaming in protest, but they weren't.
When the instant was done, when the world finally stopped spinning and his feet finally stopped moving, he stood in front of it, their building.
It was a modest apartment complex, five stories of faded beige concrete. His eyes locked onto the first floor, where their tiny apartment laid. Second window from the left.
He didn't even think about it, his legs coiling underneath. The concrete beneath his feet cracked again as he gathered power.
Then he jumped. He soared through the air in a perfect arc, his hand shooting out at exactly the right moment to grab the railing of their floor's exterior hallway. Metal groaned under his grip as he hurled himself over, landing with a heavy thud.
His momentum, however, didn't waver. He moved toward their door.
His breath came in ragged gasps, though whether from being tired or being worried or being anxious, he couldn't tell. His heart hammered against his ribs so hard he thought they might crack.
Aki didn't know. He would never know. No matter how many times he relived this moment in the years to come. No matter how many times he would wake up drenched in sweat, wondering if he could have been faster.
But for now, that didn't matter. What mattered was his small hand wrapping around the door handle, it was cold.
He pulled... hard. Too hard.
The door didn't open, it cracked like kindling, the wood splintering around the lock as it flew off its hinges. The door hung suspended for a moment on the boy's fingers before he let go, letting it fall to the wayside with a crash that should have brought neighbors running. But Aki was already inside.
His instincts screamed at him, every nerve ending suddenly on fire as his nostrils flared, taking in that smell, he expected the smell of home but he was wrong. What he smelt was...
Copper. Metallic. Wrong.
It was thick in the air, making his stomach turn. Aki didn't know why, but his movements slowed, almost faltered. His legs felt like they were moving through water. Some part of his brain was screaming at him to stop, to turn around, to run away.
Maybe he should have listened to that voice, but he didn't. He couldn't. He wouldn't.
One foot in front of the other, he slowly approached where the smell was coming from. Past the small kitchen where his mother had her first episode. Past the living room where he had slept alone for the first time. Past their bedroom where he'd try to console his mother as she wailed and spasmed.
Finally he stopped.
The bathroom. The smell came from inside.
The white door hung slightly open, just a crack, but enough for that terrible smell to seep through. Aki placed his trembling hand on the door, feeling the cheap painted wood beneath his fingers.
He pushed slowly, the hinges creaking in protest, the sound filling his ears like a scream as the smell, that horrible copper smell, filled his nose completely.
Then his eyes took in the rest.
His heart came to a stop.
Blood.
So much blood.
It spilled from the tub slowly, pooling on the cracked tiled floor. The white tiles were painted red, the grout between them dark as ink. In that very tub, surrounded by that lake of red, in a pool of her own blood, was his mother.
"AAAGGGHHHHHH!!!!!"
A scream tore through Aki's throat, raw beyond anything, anyone had ever screamed, a sound he didn't know his body could make.
It rattled the lone mirror on the wall, creating spider-web cracks across its surface.
The scream repeated over and over in his head even after his voice gave out, echoing in the small space. He scrambled towards her, his shoes slipping in the blood, leaving small footprints in the crimson pool. His knees hit the floor hard as he fell beside the tub, the warm wetness soaking through his pants immediately.
His hands reached out desperately, shaking so badly he could barely control them, to cradle his mother's neck. Her skin was still warm, God, she was still warm.
His mother's brown locks, interlaced through his fingers. Some strands were matted with blood, others floated in the red water like seaweed in a crimson sea. He remembered how soft it had been, how he'd caress it when she was having one of her episodes to give her some semblance of peace, he could never give her.
Now it seemed she had finally found that peace.
And he cried because of it.
He cried and cried and cried.
Tears fell from his eyes, mixing with the blood on his hands, on her face, dripping into the tub to join the red lake that had stolen her from him. Each sob racked his small body, making his chest ache, his throat burn, his eyes blur until he could barely see.
She was still warm.
That thought kept repeating in his mind. Still warm meant not long ago. Still warm meant if he'd been faster. Still warm meant he'd failed.
His heart felt like it was about to burst from his chest, each beat sending sharp pains through his entire body.
He struggled to breathe, each inhalation a desperate gasp that never seemed to bring enough air.
But he couldn't stop looking at her face, her beautiful, kind face, a small smile spread through it.
His hands shook uncontrollably as he tried to smooth her hair back from her face, leaving red streaks across her pale cheek.
His eyes, against his will, locked onto the blood-filled tub, the water of red that now swam in his vision, filling his mind, burning itself into his memory forever. On the ceramic bottom, distorted by the red water but still visible, the weapon that had done this laid perfectly still.
A simple razor.
The injury of incision at its side. A cut at her thigh, deep. The femoral artery, though Aki didn't know that term at the time. No all he knew is that, that was where her blood had spilled from.
"Mom, mom, mom, mom, mom."
He repeated it over and over, like a prayer, like a spell that might bring her back. His fingers pulled up his mother's face to meet his gaze, hoping against hope to see recognition, to see her eyes focus on him, to see her smile one more time.
But her eyes were blank, staring at nothing. He felt like he was drowning in those empty eyes, sinking into the very tub she laid in.
And then his heart burst, again, and without his own input something happened.
Mana, flowed from his heart into his bloodstream, reaching his fingers, and flowing outward from them in invisible streams of energy. The mana traveled into the woman's corpse, spreading through her like roots through soil.
"You have to be okay, you have to, you have to."
His voice was desperate, broken, barely human. The mana traveled through her body, stimulating her still heart, trying to move her motionless blood. Aki could hear it, or thought he could. He had to hear it. He needed to hear it.
The mana traveled through her body finally reaching the cut where all the blood had spilled from. It filtered through to the rest of the blood in the bath.
Aki brought his mother as close to himself as he possibly could, his small arms barely able to lift her upper body from the tub, and cried and cried and cried. He buried his face in her neck, in her hair, breathing in the last traces of her scent beneath the copper smell of blood.
Tears flowed relentlessly like water from a broken dam. Then he felt it. On his face.
Something warm.
Something gentle.
Something wiping away his tears.
Aki's eyes flew open at the touch, hope exploding in his chest like his heart did. His mouth opened in a smile so wide it hurt. His mom was-
He looked into her eyes desperately, but they were still as dead as before, still staring at nothing.
His gaze, confused and desperate, fell onto the previously still water. Something was moving in it. Reaching out from it, from that very same blood that had stolen her life.
A hand, formed entirely of blood yet somehow solid, grazed his face with a familiar gentleness, wiping away his tears.
Aki fell back in shock and terror, his hands slipping in the blood on the floor, staining themselves further with the crimson.
His eyes widened at the bloody hand. He wished to speak, to scream, to ask what was happening, but his voice had abandoned him entirely.
The hand's palm opened fully as more and more blood began to draw from the tub, crawling up the appendage, like crimson...
Like crimson...
Like crimson.... he couldn't even describe it.
The blood crawled onto the palm, forming something new, solidifying into another shape entirely. First a cylinder. Then a rectangle. Finally a triangular tip. More blood encased it, layer after layer, like a chrysalis of crimson, hiding what was being born within.
The hand reached out from the tub, extending toward him with an offering.
It was then that Aki realized what it looked like. A sword in a scabbard. Beautiful in ways no one could describe.
Aki didn't know what took him, but his body moved anyway. His small, blood-stained hand found purchase on the scabbard's tip, fingers wrapping around it, for the first time.
The red that was encasing it began to fall away like ash, disintegrating into nothing, revealing what lay beneath. White, pure as fresh snow. Blue, deep as the ocean. Gold, bright as the sun.
A voice boomed in his head. A voice he recognized.
"My knight. You who deserve everything but will be cursed with providing it. You who have been born for it. You who have the qualities. You who have been graced. You who will be helped. You who will be accompanied by the absolute defense, the Everdistant Utopia, Avalon and the absolute offense, the Sword of Promised Victory, Excalibur. Go my knight. Go my king. Go my son."
A/N: FINALLY!!!!! It's all done. Well at least Arthur's past. I hope you all enjoyed this. Also yeah his own mother is the lady of the lake, I bet you didn't see that coming now did ya. Although more than a lake, she should be called the lady of the tub lol.
I love having this free time, and I'm sure you people love it too since you get to read more of this don't ya. Now give me those stones, I need my dopamine.
Thx for reading.
Author out.