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In the swarm of crimson, Wilbur is a single point of calm.
He wavers, on occasion. Greed is a surging, insatiable thing—Gluttony’s closest sibling, he thinks, and the thousands of voices drown him in laughter—but whenever its will tries to rip him apart, he just goes pliant and agreeing, and Greed leaves his mind intact.
The only downside is that everything he knows is shared, now, and Greed takes great joy in pawing through his memories and dragging them to the forefront of his mind until he’s just reliving it all over again.
Suddenly, he isn’t the host of an ages-old soul fueled to pseudo-immortality by the suffering of thousands. No, he’s just a kid, hands white-knuckled around the neck of a guitar with its strings cut, sniffling, as the shadows around him laugh and jeer.
“Some son of a prodigy you are!” comes too-loud and ringing, and Wilbur presses his hands over his ears to no avail. “Can’t transmute!”
“Live up to the legacy a little, won’t you?” someone calls, and still they laugh.
“Can’t you transmute even a little?”
“Isn’t your father the greatest alchemist?”
“Sent away? He must be so ashamed of you!”
“Did you hear?” someone says, fake-hushed, and Wilbur mouths along to the words as they come. “That Blood Alchemist, he’s something else! Like a true successor to Heartcore! He should be the son instead—”
Wilbur stays steady but it’s a fight for it, an ongoing bout, and he does the only thing he knows to do: he destroys, and he reaches further, tearing past those moments to something newer, fresher, brighter.
Wilbur, grinning, arms wide, as the crimson ruby droplet of a Philosopher’s Stone siphons into his veins and dissolves him from the inside out.
Greed manifests, abruptly, from the storm. Who did this to you? it wonders, fascinated, finding something new and tantalizing about this misery of Wilbur’s. What was it that broke?
Can’t break what’s already broken, Wilbur tells it cheerfully, and stalwartly refuses to let his mind be drawn to any other thought. Don’t you have a world to take over?