"Alright, so how do we do this then?" Seth muttered to himself, even though he already had a basic idea. Now that he knew the true purpose of his ability, even a moron would be able to figure it out.
Using the feeling that was both new and weird yet instinctual and familiar, he once again extended the threads out from the fingers of his left hand. He had tried to do it with his right, since that was his dominant hand and he did everything with it, but for some reason it just didn't want to work.
Seth gave mental commands to the threads, conducting them through the air as if he had done it a million times before, and sending them towards the corpse of the once indomitable titan. When they drew close, he did the first thing that came to mind when he thought of the word 'Puppet'. He started to spread the threads out, each one heading in a different direction.
One thread went to each limb, while the remaining fifth thread lingered around the chest. It coiled above the crack in his chest, right above the heart that still had the scissors sticking out of it. It was like a python ready to strike, only waiting for the rest of its pack to get in position before it did.
The pair going towards the legs wrapped around the ankles of the rock man, not perturbed by the ground that he was laying on as they simply drifted straight through it. The pair attacking the arms did the same for the wrists of the rock man. Then, all at once, he stabbed them into his cragged flesh and burrowed them deep.
Seth watched as the cragged corpse convulsed a few times, like it was being electrocuted, before it went back to being deathly still. As soon as it stopped moving, he felt a pulse of energy come from the corpse and was directed straight into his fingers, making them tingle for a few seconds.
"Hehehe, let's do this. Rise, my minion!" Seth said, already feeling like some maniacal necromancer overlord. He raised his hand in a dramatic fashion, and at the same time the corpse began to rise off the floor. It was raised by its chest first, like it was being physically pulled up by the ethereal thread that had burrowed its way into him. Floating in the air for a few seconds before tilting forward and being dropped onto its feet. The newly formed puppet slouched forward, like it was about to fall over, before quickly jerking up and standing at attention as if it was awaiting orders.
Seth had to hold in his laugh as he examined his new minion, walking around it and looking it up and down, before stopping in front of it. He made a slight face at the scissors still sticking out of the puppets chest.
"Hmm, hopefully that won't be a problem. In fact, just take it out, will you?" Seth said to the rock man, officially giving his first order to his new minion. But, alas, it seemed like things wouldn't be that easy.
He stood there for a few seconds, waiting for it to obey as it continued to stand there motionless and at attention.
"What the hell? Alright… Let's try this then. Minion, Punch." He commanded once more, standing to the side so he wouldn't get hit. Yet this was naught but a wasted effort. He frowned in a mixture of confusion and annoyance, starting to give it an array of orders to see if it would listen to anything.
"Jump. Kick. Do a backflip. Pick your nose. Stand on one leg." He ordered, growing more and more frustrated as his minion, his own puppet, refused to obey its master. He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose and internally muling over his grievances with the hand life has dealt him.
He turned away from the useless, disobedient puppet as he looked down at his hand, the ethereal threads still emanating from his fingers. These threads danced in the air like seaweed in the ocean, while a single rope of five twisted strands emerged from the palm of his hand and moved behind him towards the useless thing. He literally had it in the palm of his hand, yet it didn't listen to a single thing he said.
"Maybe I'm doing something wrong. But what?" Seth muttered to himself, turning back to the rock man only to raise his eyebrows in surprise.
"What the.."
When he looked back, he found the puppet not standing at attention like he had left it, but instead it was scratching the back of its head with its right hand. Seth frowned, thoroughly confused by this outcome. Although he had given a slew of different orders, none of them came close to this.
It was only when he was about to step forward and issue another order, that he finally understood what was going on. He understood, because the hand he was about to gesture with, his right hand, was currently scratching the back of his head, an action he had done completely subconsciously.
Seth narrowed his eyes, taking a closer look at the movements of his minion. Now that he had stopped his subconscious action, so had the rockman. It still had its hand behind its head, just as he did, but it had stopped moving once he became aware of what he was doing and took back control of his hand.
But that didn't mean that it was completely still, as now Seth finally saw the small, and seemingly pointless, rising and falling of its chest as if it was breathing.
'More subconscious actions. I mean, I wasn't thinking about breathing yet I was still doing it. And so was he. But what's the difference between that and what I was telling him to do? Unless…' Seth thought to himself, narrowing his eyes once again.
This time, instead of issuing another order towards his minion, he stood still and concentrated. He thought about lifting his arm, but not just about the fact of lifting it. He thought about the position it would be in, the height he'd lift it to, the direction his hand was facing. He thought of every detail of doing the action as if he was actually doing it, but he didn't move.
Yet… the minion did. It lifted its arm exactly how he imagined, curled its fingers how he wanted. He made it clench its fist before throwing out a punch. Not the type of powerful haymakers that it was once throwing, but the weak, ineffective punch of someone who hadn't thrown one in years. The exact type of punch he would throw.
'It's not a minion. It's not a summon. It's a puppet. And puppets don't take orders, they need to be controlled, to be puppeteered. I should have realised sooner.'
Seth mentally facepalmed at his idiocy, the answer was staring him right in the face. Afterall, it was literally the name of his ability. He had to directly control the puppet to make it do anything, the only time he didn't was when an action was completely subconscious, when he knew exactly what he was doing without even thinking about it.
He didn't know how to do a backflip, so the puppet definitely couldn't. He didn't know how high he wanted it to jump, he didn't know what kind of kick to do. Hell.. even the very first order, he was waiting for it to move to see if it would use one hand or two to remove the blade.
Seth quickly corrected his mistake, using the puppets hand to pull out the scissors exactly how he envisioned it to. He couldn't give vague instructions and hope it would follow somehow. If he wanted it to fight, then he'd have to learn how.
There was, however, an upside to his peculiar ability. At first there was nothing, but the longer he messed around with his ability and got used to it, the stronger the connection between the two of them got. Seth's senses started to double up.
At first it was disorientating, seeing the same room from two different perspectives at the same time, with one being clear and the other being very fuzzy like he was looking at a TV with poor reception. But the longer the connection between the two lasted, the clearer that reception got, until he had two sets of crystal clear vision.
One set, his own as he looked upon the craggy puppet. The other set, belonging to the aforementioned puppet as he looked at his master, as Seth looked at himself through its eyes.
"It's like my own human sized drone. I.. I can work with this." Seth said, smirking devilishly to himself. Although, only now could he truly see how unnerving that smirk was. It's no wonder people always kept their distance from him.
But that didn't matter anymore. Now, it was time to get out of here. And Seth knew just the meat shield to guide him.