The world remained covered in the tainted stain of mist. However, where it had once been all mist, white enough to put the bridal gown of any virgin woman of the old world to shame, it was now no more than a simple sheen, a hue on the world around them.
Behind it they saw the trees they'd known to be there. They were as black as he remembered with the mildest stains of green from the moss that grew on their rough barks with bountiful black leaves that only sprouted as high as they were tall, blanketing the world from any possibility of sunlight. If one did not look up, the trees would've seemed old and decrepit. Lifeless and without leaves.
Seth led the rest of himself through what seemed a strange amalgamation of woods and forest with little puddles of swamp water that they mostly avoided. It gave an odd touch of black to the night with smatterings of green that did not quite stand out, lurking like the shadows of dead things in the wake of the living. Each one stood, almost equidistant from themselves, fading judges in a test of fear.
Seth and the others had been walking for two days now, interchanging leadership. Their new guide each time was chosen simply by how quickly he walked. Where one's speed would wane, another's would pick up. It happened always, as though one substituted strength for the other.
In two days they had garnered three leaders. It was a worry to behold. Considering they had once walked longer without rest at the leadership of Jabari, they felt no logical reason why any of them should tire. Still, they moved on.
Seth had never believed the forest around the school would be so vast, so encompassing. They had been forced to climb and crawl, to step easily as well as hurriedly, yet there remained too much of the forest they knew they had not seen. Through the haze of the test he had come to realize the rest of him—the multiple Seths bickering and leading—were no more than hallucinations of some sort. He blamed them on the mist. Whatever else it was, he was certain it held hallucinogenic properties. Once he was out of the mist, his mind would clear.
For now, he could do naught but move.
"This is taking too long," Seth grumbled, his voice carrying all the way from the back of the group. "Can't we go any faster."
Seth frowned, willed himself to say nothing though much rested on the tip of his tongue. If he wanted to go faster than they already were, all he had to do was quicken the pace. He looked back, spared himself a simple look and knew his intentions were conveyed clearly.
Seth's grumble was silenced effectively.
Returning his attention to the path before him, he trudged on.
Where they were headed was questionable. None of them knew, yet all of them knew. They were headed in a direction guided by a knowledge they did not have, and yet they all possessed. The thought of it was annoying, made worse by the fact that they had no other guide by which to navigate themselves.
After a few more steps, Seth made a sound, calling to himself, and he turned back, steps slowing but not halting.
"Have you ever considered," he said, "that perhaps this is not the real world?"
Seth gave it a moment's thought before discarding the notion. "No." This world was real. What wasn't real were the three men standing behind him when he was barely even fifteen.
"Well I believe we should give it a thought," he argued. "What if… and hear me out here. What if this is all in our head?"
"As intelligent as that might sound, it has no logical basis."
Seth chuckled. "In case you haven't noticed, there's four of us."
"Three of you having plagued me for over a year."
Seth's pace seemed to quicken to Seth's discomfort and he was forced to hasten his own, unprepared to surrender leadership. Especially not when the attempted usurper was beginning to succumb to the concept that the world was not real. Who knew where he would lead them in that line of madness.
"Just think about it," Seth pressed. "We know where everything is even when we are not supposed to."
Seth shrugged.
"Alright," the attempted usurper slowed his pace and turned slowly to address the others, slowing everyone's advancement. "We are in a forest…"
"With luscious green," Seth mocked.
"Then how do we know that there's a mountain up ahead," he continued, ignoring himself. "And how do we know that the thing in that mountain is what we are looking for and is strong enough to kill us all with a single thought?"
Seth paused.
Behind him everyone came to an equal halt.
We should not have said that, he thought, attention narrowing on Seth.
"Well, there are a lot we should never have said. Yet here we are, making our way to our own doom."
Seth was instigating and he knew it. If he didn't, then he was more retarded than he thought.
Tired of it all, Seth rounded on himself so that he was forced to take a step back. "Do you think this a game?!" he hissed. "Some blatant charade for which to find jest and confusion. Not that long ago we were threatened with disjointing... disjointing! For no better crime than tardiness. Even the seminary wouldn't dare it, and they are nothing but a group of old men who have no right being alive for as long as they have been."
Seth stared back defiantly in the wake of his own anger. He always knew one of them would have to break first. It seemed he was the one to go. "I merely—"
"You have merely done nothing!" he cut himself off. "Do you think sowing any form of discord now of all times is the best strategy. Did you think you would offer a counter position and we would all fall in line? Look around you. Do you think your choice of words acceptable?"
They were. He knew this as he knew the sky was black and light had not touched it in over three days. He knew it as he knew they would die should they reach the mountain. He knew it as he knew—
Gently, as if forced by the same knowledge that guided them, his attention shifted so that he attended the world around him while his gaze remained defiantly on himself.
No. He had been wrong. His words had been logical. They had been correct. But they had also been mistimed.
Around him, Seth, both of them tired and silent, stared at him. In their eyes he saw something akin to fear but was not. It dawned on him then that they had been moving, motivated by nothing, not even the knowledge that guided them. It puzzled him to bafflement. Were they not all one? Had they all not known what he had known?
"Do you really believe that?" Seth stepped closer, crowding him, forcing him back until his back was pressed up against a tree. "Do you really believe that you handle the information we have the same way we do? Do you really think yourself that unique; that special, that you can anticipate us?" He watched Seth's eyes narrow, grey irises turning a darker shade, clouding over so that they were a deeper grey. "Is this hubris what guides you?"
Seth frowned at being talked down to, worse of all, by himself. He would not allow Seth berate him. A mistake had been made but it was no excuse. There were no leaders here, only equals. And that a replica—a fragment of a broken mind—would talk down on him was tantamount to sacrilege in any religion.
So he did what people do when guided by their simmering rage. He stepped forward, the anger of embarrassment fueling his step, and forced Seth to step back. Beside him his hand flexed as his breathing sharpened. He felt his shoulders tense in the way they did whenever he sparred in Reverend Domitia's lessons. Whenever he thought he'd found a chance to end his spar.
"You're giving yourself a terrible advice," Seth said from beside him.
He turned his head to look at himself, his rage never leaving him. He would strike soon. He knew and doubted there was any here who did not. "And why is that?" he asked, keeping the Seth that was the source of his ire in his periphery as he attended the other.
Seth shrugged. "We just don't think it's a good idea to touch each other. Notice how he didn't touch you?"
It took him only a moment to run through his memory and find the truth. Since the beginning of the test, since walking out of the mist and finding himself, he had made no physical contact. There had been observations and unfriendly banter—if he could call it banter—but no physical contact.
The knowledge quelled his anger like a wet blanket over a bright flame. What would have been the consequence? What would have happened if he had struck himself?
He could speculate, but even that would be speculation founded on nothing.
He returned his attention to himself, the one he'd almost struck and the look on his face made him scowl. He had known of this; considered the possibility. The fucking bastard had stimulated it. The discovery came with the daunting realization that they all had been anticipating who would break first. But while the others had been content to watch and wait, they had been working to instigate it in each other. And he'd been playing checkers while his opponent was playing chess. The smirk on his lips was proof enough of it.
"Keep your head about you, Seth," Seth told him, still smirking that God awful smirk. "We don't need you slipping."
With that, he turned away from him and continued on the path they were all following. His leadership restored.
..................
Seth watched this all happen in relative silence. He'd warned Seth for the simple reason of not having liked the game both of them were playing. He did not care who won it, but he found himself caring how they won it. For reasons he did not understand, the how mattered a great deal to him. If any of them were to break, he would rather they break because they were weak and not manipulated.
And what do you care how they break? he thought. There must be only one.
With equal disinterest, he answered himself, Perhaps, then followed along.
He took two steps then paused at the gentle muffle behind him. He turned to afford Seth his mild attention and met himself frowning.
"Why did you save him?" Seth asked.
He studied him, not needing to ponder on the question. Their collectiveness had since begun fading to the mist. Individuality had come to stay. It was odd to know that once upon a time there had been only one Seth who'd borne individuality. Now, it seemed they had been contaminated by it.
We are no longer strong, are we?
The thought rested at the tip of his tongue, but he did not offer it to Seth. He would not. After all, they each had to face the same test. Perhaps it had been different at the beginning, perhaps as a collective they had feared the same thing. What of now? He wondered. What do we fear now that we are apart?
He afforded Seth a gentle smile. His answer would not matter. "None of us would go down so easily," he said.
"But we both know that's a lie," Seth smirked. It held the whisper of foreboding, a wandering omen of tasteless despair.
For a moment he wondered if he'd been worried about the wrong Seths. But only for a moment.
They all—all of them—wondered who the real Seth was. They may play at some form of superiority, but the truth was known to them. They were not—all of them—real. And each one of them wandered in this misty presence wondering who was, seeking who wasn't, and attempting to become.
How quickly they had failed this test. How quickly they had succumbed to their fear.
Seth walked past him as he pondered, and took leadership between the both of them. His smirk slid away as he did and Seth wondered if he had put on a mask now or had merely taken one off. This was the problem with Seth, a problem existent since the very beginning. He rarely ever knew when he was no longer putting on a mask. Then again, with Jabari he had been too scared and confused to pretend.
Seth shook his head. He certainly needed to know if he was the original. It weighed on his mind as he followed behind himself. Just the way the collective had been tainted by the stain of individuality belonging to the original, the original could have been tainted by the stain of the collective.