Wrenched from his meditation, Wulfstan grasped his chest. A violent yanking felt as if it was intending to rend his heart from his torso. So insistent, he only realised he'd responded to it when he was on his hands and knees, scrambling up that sloping cavern exit and the first beams of light he'd seen in who knows how many years blinded his eyes.
Halfway up that narrow passageway, Wulfstan froze. He was nearly out of the cavern now so it seemed ridiculous to go back in but, considering how forceful the tugging in his chest was this time, he had no idea if he could ignore it at all if he did leave.
His thought had barely finished forming and he was already standing in the green light of the deep forest, hearing sounds he'd not heard for two centuries, smelling the vitality of life and feeling soft dirt and shrubbery beneath his bare feet. In place, Wulfstan looked around as if he was expecting to see some great change.
There was none. It looked exactly the same as it had when he'd last seen the outside world. Maybe slightly more overgrown. Just as abundant and green as always.
No sign of people.
Wulfstan felt dizzy, all of the sensations he'd deprived himself of overwhelming his sensitive senses. He'd once found it hard being around people even when he'd grown used to it – being in a chamber with nothing but rock and himself for company had done him no favours. Every sound was like an explosion, drilling into his eardrums. Every scent was sickeningly strong, invading his sinuses. Light, dimmed by the canopy, was still so bright that Wulfstan felt as if his eyes were inches from a bonfire. All he could do was focus on the pleasant, soft feeling of the loose earth and plant roots below him.
Slowly, he acclimated back into the real world.
God, how he'd missed it.
Tentatively, he took his first steps and almost collapsed to the ground from the insanity of it. All of his senses were devastated, his mind unable to keep up with all of the excitement thrust upon him that he had avoided for such an impossible time.
The response his body had belied that his heart had been reborn for the second time since Leofric had slipped out of Wulfstan's grasp. He had forgotten how disturbing it was to feel something so intense when he otherwise felt nothing. Like his empty body had been filled with rocks, his limbs were being wrenched from his torso.
So little had changed to the landscape of the woods, untouched by everything but animals. It seemed that it was still untraveled by people.
Good, it gave him time to gather up the nerve to bring about his death. While he knew what he wanted in his mind, his instincts still desired a life with his soul's other half. That thread between them contradicted Wulfstan's real desires and he despised how fate denied him what he wanted. Perhaps an untimely death before reaching that 'perfect existence' he'd read about in those ancient writings would destroy the cycle that his soul and the other were trapped in. Seeing as a belated death just caused the cycle to restart, the opposite may happen if it's early.
They could both be at peace.
Wulfstan liked that thought, that he wasn't just being
cowardly and selfish. Logically, he made himself think, it was a kindness to release the soul that was tied to him from its eternal rebirth – it deserved to go to wherever human souls went in death. Damnation or salvation, either one was better than endless centuries of short-lived torture over and over again, with no reprieve to be found in the arms of Wulfstan, the monster that soul was forcibly bound to. It brought him some relief to consider that possibility.
Shaking out the stiffness within his body from the centuries of inactivity, Wulfstan continued on, going towards the clearing that had started all of what he had experienced. The insistent tugging around his heart was ever-present and, as there was no complaint or discomfort as Wulfstan walked, he knew that if he kept going he could see his soulmate. Despite how it felt to ignore the call, he would still do it again if he got too close because he knew that he wouldn't be able to control himself if he did see that who he was bound to. Heaven knows, if it exists, how he'd been unable to keep his feelings to himself in the days he spent with Leofric.
The clearing was just the starting point. He would head away from the direction his body wanted to lead him and find the nearest civilisation wherein he would finally die. It couldn't be too hard to ignore the call; he'd done it before and would do it again.
-
Grasping onto the bark of the nearest tree, Wulfstan pulled himself forward step by step, unrelenting. Lightheaded and torn, he refused to listen to the insistent yanking in his ribcage. Every shaky footstep he forced himself to take felt as if his skin was tearing apart and his heart being pulled free, just like how it had felt when he'd first come to the cavern when Leofric had been alive.
A while had passed since he'd gotten to the clearing and promptly turned in the direction opposite to the now familiar tugging. Alas, after only a few minutes of journeying, it'd become crippling.
While it wasn't painful, it genuinely felt as if someone was holding him in place, not allowing him to move even an inch. Nothing this unrelenting had happened to him before, as if his soul tie was sick of his denial of the call.
It was giving him no leeway in the slightest.
As he clung to the old, wizened oak tree, the world darkened around him as midnight swamped the world, Wulfstan could no longer pull himself further through the woods. Every time he lifted his foot to move, it swerved in the direction that his heart was screaming at him to go. If he so much as loosened his grip on the tree, his body began to move of its own accord.
Digging his nails into the hardened bark, scratching long, deep gouges into the tree, Wulfstan pressed his forehead to the trunk and clenched his jaw. His joints creaked with exertion, putting every bit of his strength into keep himself in place, the cracking of the oak tree under his hand becoming louder, like he was going to split the tree in half. The first real emotion he'd felt in centuries surged through him.
Rage.
"Son of a bitch! Can't You just let me make my own fucking decisions?!" Wulfstan yelled into the empty air of the woods, scaring off the nearby wildlife, a flurry of noise for a brief moment before it was all silent again. He didn't really know who or what he was yelling at – he'd long since decided that God couldn't exist. Perhaps he just wanted someone to blame for things out of his control. Maybe he was just angry at himself, angry at this accursed soul bond, angry at whoever his soulmate was for existing in the first place. It was so utterly unfair. "Goddamn it. Why did You have to make me so weak…"
Wulfstan didn't really know how long he stood in place, his nails imbedded in the tree trunk, forehead pressed to the bark. Once he finally lifted his head back up, sunlight was winking through the leaves of the forest canopy as if urging him to make a decision, to break away from this paralysis.
Voice quiet, defeated, Wulfstan tilted his head back and said to the sky, whether there was a creator or a god or something up there to hear him or not, "Fine. I'll play Your cruel game again. You won't win this time. I refuse."
Steadfast in this final choice, Wulfstan decided he would make this life one he would not regret. He would not cave to his cowardice. He would not allow his heart to suffer.
Good came to those who wait; he'd waited long enough.