141 Letting Go (2/2)

That path of success was only showing up after culling ten thousand paths that'd lead to a dead end. It wasn't that he was failing but rather, that he was running out of options.

The further he descended, the more miasma he found himself encountering, to the point that it'd become increasingly difficult to chart a course. And if that wasn't bad enough, the ”smaller Anima storms” had disappeared.

A massive torrent of Anima, a hurricane of unimaginable size had impeded his way. It looked more like the sun though, because of how blindingly bright it was to the eye.

The second Reed laid eyes on it, his vision went dark. Waves of searing pain shot through his eyes as he let out a voiceless scream in the midst of the chaos.

In the middle of a literal hell, he had lost his vision. Still, Reed did not stop descending... because he couldn't. He was moving too fast to stop. The hurricane he was inside of wouldn't let him stop, thrashing him along with its unpredictable currents.

Reed was akin to a leaf caught in a storm, completely at the mercy of the storm.

Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit...! Think, think, think, think, think...!

He could have healed his eyes, but it would have been pointless. The moment Reed opened them, he would have gone blind again, scarred once more by the blinding radiance of the superheated solar-storm of Anima.

I have my mind's eye, but it's too weak to use! I can barely see a hundred meters with it compared to using my eyes and the future-paths!

It was now that Reed fully understood what she meant by faith. She knew this would happen. That he would be thrust down this path.

He would have to rely on his own senses from now and make judgment calls on his own or die.

”Only through Faith will Mulia live to see another day, my Reed.”

Faith. Either he had it, or he didn't. He lived or he died. He succeeded or failed.

In an astonishing act of courage, Reed... actually let go. He no longer struggled against his need to have an answer -- a definite path out of the storm.

Instead, he rode it. Although he knew not was ahead of him, he trusted in her. That she had not lied to him. He would place his life in her hands and let the storm carry him.

What more could he do in this situation? He had reached the end of what was possible for him.

The lone man was at the mercy of Nature or rather, the thread of Fate he had chosen for himself.

Reed opened his mind's eye and surveyed his surroundings without fear as he let things take its natural course. He sometimes whizzed by dangerous currents of Anima and toxic marshes of miasma with only a margin of a hair between them and himself.

For what seemed like an eternity, he flew in an unpredictable fashion in the storm without really knowing where he was at. Sometimes he brushed by death's doorstep and at other times, he was pushed around from one Anima current to another.

But, eventually, it happened. He was finally led out of the storm as he rode a powerful current of Anima out into the wide-open, the eye of the hurricane.

It was peaceful and silent within the eye, where the Anima was at its weakest. He survived.

Reed laughed his heart out in joy as he descended below, having passed through the final barrier with his life intact. He wanted to cry too, but his eyes had been welded shut.

It'd worked. For a good while, he thought that he'd been lost, but he found his way out...

With his faith to guide him. A feat most impressive, that not even he could have pulled off had he been in Reed's shoes.

...That was the biggest difference between them. Reed had faith in her, and he... did not.