There was an old saying that had persisted throughout the millennia, one that harked back to the days when humanity was confined to the Milky Way galaxy: "One step forward, two steps back." Fate was currently experiencing the opposite of this. For every two steps he took, his body would force itself back a step, overriding his will.
His heart hammered in his chest so loud and hard he was sure it would fracture his ribs from the vibrations. He could barely breathe; his lungs felt like someone had stuffed a forest fire in them, and he was so dizzy that he couldn't tell left from forward or up from back. He would've closed his eyes to save himself from the nausea if it weren't for his subconscious snapping the open every time he did so.
But he still pushed forward, fighting nausea, dizziness, and the burning of his lungs, proceeding at a snail's pace toward Lord Bosina.
It had already been twenty minutes since they had started this little game. Fate was now five feet away from the leader of the Fractured, having halved the distance since the start. But every step closer felt five times harder than the last.
The closer he got, the greater his fright grew. His thoughts were but a drop in the ocean of distress that called his mind home, so quiet compared to the raging tides that he couldn't even hear them.
Queen Dinan, never one to disappoint, had awoken ten minutes ago and was currently watching Fate's struggle. She was the only one that could claim such a feat; even the Avatars surrounding her were still out cold. She wore no emotions on her face, although her eyes betrayed her worry.
'Having the fate of one's entire country rest on the shoulders of a man who could barely move must suck,' Fate thought, although he could barely make such a thought out. 'Autumn would hate how pathetic I look.
'Autumn… Nikolas… Maya, Cait, Tom…' Fate smiled, showing teeth, glaring at Bosina instead of simply looking at him like a deer caught in the man's headlights. For a brief instant, the fear was drowned out by the memory of his closest friends, his family.
He took five shuffling steps forward before the fear overwhelmed him once more. His terror wouldn't let him look down and see how far he had come, but he didn't need to. He made a rough estimate based on how close Bosina's very aggravating face was.
He had moved forward about a foot, bringing the distance between them to four feet. Unfortunately, the fear worming into Fate's mind was now so strong that it took five minutes just to perform this estimate. It didn't want him to think.
It didn't want him to move toward the one person on this planet that could kill Fate with but a thought. It wanted only for him to give in and run as far away as he could.
But Fate never ran from his fears.
Not only because he refused to lose to such a primitive defense mechanism, but because not once in his life was he ever allowed to run. The Advanced didn't care when he, as only a child, was immobilized by fear when faced with a bear.
Well, they did care. They cared a lot, enough to beat him senseless for two days straight before throwing him back into that room with the bear. If his fear prevented him from acting, the bear would tear him apart until he painted the room, only for the Advanced to patch him back up and beat the shit out of him before tossing him in again.
After experiencing that three or four times, you tend to learn from your mistakes. Fate did, and he found that he was tired of being pushed around. Of course, his TK was quite weak when compared to the raw power of a bear, but his 'oxygen independency training' taught him a thing or two about choking something to death.
So, that's what he did, the bear too confused as to what was going on to realize it was Fate's doing. The poor beast died with an unsettlingly human look of shock on its ursine face. And that was how Fate beat his fear, time and time again. Not by removing it or powering through it, but by knowing that he was fucked either way.
Sometimes it would be a bear, sometimes a fully-trained soldier, and other times one of his friends, but after the incident with the bear, he never let his fear get the best of him again. And that streak wouldn't end now.
The rage of the Advanced's treatment, the love he had for his family, the sorrow of losing his mother, and the absolute disgust he held for his own weakness, all of these feelings joined forces to annihilate the fear that had become the dominant fixture of his thoughts. He took another step forward, advancing an entire foot… and tripped.
It turned out that being unable to look where he was stepping led him right into a rock embedded in the dirt. He landed on his hands and knees, his head now where Lord Bosina had just been standing. The ruler had taken a few steps back to avoid the falling Fate, placing about a foot of distance between the two. Lord Bosina was within range of Fate's reach now.
Fate reached out with his arm, willing his hand to clamp around Bosina's leg despite every fiber of his being yelling at him to run, that touching this man would be a bad idea. And that feeling was right. As soon as he touched Bosina's leg, his fingers curled around the calf in a death grip, he blacked out, his other arm giving way as he fell flat on his face.
As his will gave out and the terror caused his vision to fade, he heard the smug, scornful laughter of the most powerful man on the planet.