My head rested on the pillow as I gazed around the room. She wasn't here yet, thankfully. I wish I could just send her away. These last few days had been the most grueling affair that I had to put up with. It was like learning my entire body again.

Why had she allowed Samael to leave? This feeling kept crossing my mind, even though I try to rid it that she may be looking to betray me. Rainbow said I was the one to get the vices, and she allowed him to go. Despite us having to work together. Shouldn't it be in his, hers, and my best interest that we did it together? She didn't make sense in the slightest and I was at a serious disadvantage. That is probably why she was talking down to me more.

I had been crawling every single day too and fro, up and down this apartment room. Then I tried to stand, my hands were still wobbling about now, and then at first I thought it was a matter of everything being new but I came to the realization. I didn't know to use them because they were different. Seeing me hold on to the walls and walk around didn't seem to give her the look of progress that I had expected she would have.

Instead, she thrust on me far higher expectations, asking me to use abilities that I did not know how to. How often had we done this? Every single day and night after all those crawling sessions.

Use the plants, flood the room with it? What did she think I was, a freak show? I was still getting accustomed to the idea that my hands were both claws and I couldn't grip anything in it. The last time I had returned to a sense of normalcy was by Rainbow, and it wasn't like I could go back.

She spent the nights explaining to me the changes in my body. Some words hit me like gibberish, and others seemed to resonate with me.

Had I not ever been fighting to my fullest potential?

Her words to me: "As long as you hold on to your humanity, you will struggle to control yourself. You will never release your true powers."

Enêpsigos had not made a single day been easy for me. I had to send my minions away. It pained me for them to see me this weak. It pained to feel that pity again. I never want to feel that pity by no one.

They brought me food, but I was unable to feed myself as it stood before me right now, almost taunting me at my own inability. I heard the door opened and in popped Enêpsigos.

"You haven't been able to feed yourself, perhaps. I should call Zikshita to help."

"No," I croaked, "I will figure it out myself." I placed my claw out to take the bowl, causing it to collapse onto the ground.

"Well, you surely did a good job."

"I am hungry."

"Should, I call Zikshita?"

"No, bring another bowl."

"I will bring four."

The same result happened again and again until finally on the last one I managed to get the food in my mouth and gripped the bowel. It was a very awkward hold, but I was not being picky when my ravenous hunger was upon me.

"That wasn't too hard," she said as she took a seat next to me. "You have to hurry it up, we don't have all day!"

I nodded my head in response as I licked the bowl clean.

When I was done, she took the bowl from between my hands and placed it on the bed rest.

"Well then," she said as she flickered my arm. "We are going to try to get you to use the plants again. Close your eyes and focus."

I closed my eyes.

"The mayor used this power because he had given into sloth. You might be soon there too with the progress that you're making. Despite that, the rule doesn't apply to you because your'e different, everything for you is linked to your pride. All you have to do is think about it, command it to your will, it is beneath you and let it form. Let it take shape as you see it in your mind."

A flower came to my mind as the thought started to form, I pictured the petals, the white colour and the yellow inside of it. I pictured a field of them and that I was sitting within it.

I heard noises take the room as it sounded like something was moving. Shuffling around like furniture from the very floor to the roof.

"Don't open your eyes!" she shouted at me.

Causing me to squeeze them tighter.

"Keep that picture in your mind."

The image of me sitting in flowers was deep in my mind.

"Now then think about the creatures that are around you. What do they look like?"

The thought of a dog, that my mother had gotten me a long time ago when I was a boy. Max, he was a good dog. Butterflies littered around me as I sat in the flowers. Max shouldn't be alone, I imagined other dogs that looked as majestic as he did. Everything in this setting seemed beautiful as I looked at it. Amazingly, I saw it so clearly it was almost as if it was all real.

I heard a bark? Was that a dog, was I really bringing stuff to life? Was I able to bring back the dead?

"Good, well done. Open your eyes," she said to me.

Slowly I opened my eyes to find that I was surrounded by plants, but they were nothing like what I had imagined. They were hung over some dead and feeble looking, others looked like they would devour the first thing that came near.

The barking that I heard, the dogs, my eyes scanned the room looking for them but instead of the beautiful dogs. The ones that looked at me carried eyes of blood, a vicious looking face and bestial aggression was marked primarily over their faces. Everything in the room seemed to acknowledge me somehow. Was I incapable of making anything of beauty even now, was I still being mocked? This feeling that they gave me was unlike the connection I felt to all the other monsters. It was different, but I couldn't place a finger on it.

"Now then," she said as she glanced around the area, "delete everything in the room."

"What?"

"You heard what I said, close your eyes and delete everything, erase every memory that you had."

Closing my eyes again.

I thought about everything that I had before each very one was going. First were the dogs that faded away, I heard howls in response. Then the plants, they completely withered away, and the peacefulness left and was replaced with nothing. I was here all alone.

"Great, well done."

I open my eyes to see that everything was gone.

"What happened?"

"You're getting the basic understanding of your powers finally. All we have to do now is get you into the habit of practicing the same moves over an over again. Until it sticks and you no longer have to worry about going through this long process."

"So are we done?"

"Done? We are now beginning. I hope that you have prepared yourself with the little break time that I gave you. It's going to be a very long night."

I grunted in response as her words weighed on my mind.

"Start walking."

I got out of bed, holding onto the side as I did normal the routine of walking while holding onto the wall in the most awkward position with my claws.

"You have to learn to retract it on your own and be able to spring it at will."

"Why did you let Samael leave?" I asked as I struggled towards the door.

"What do you think? That I am working against you?" she laughed, "Yet here I am training you and taking care off you. Everything happens as it must. Focus on the task in front of you. That is all that is important, nothing else. If you do this, I guarantee you that you will see Alice again, but you have to be far stronger than what you are now."

Struggling, I reached across the room, walking from wall to table to anything I could get my hand on and in the motion I fell to the ground.

"You're pitiful at this moment, not able to control yourself. Filled with doubts and worries."

There was nothing left for me to hold on to as I dragged myself to the door. Each time trying to stand, but each time failing again.

"If you don't master this, then you will die, but Domenic I prefer that you succeed, that is all."

Almost there, almost by the door. I tried again to stand up on my own and failed miserably again.

"The whole world depends on the choices that you make."

My hand reached out towards the light.