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Time was slipping more and more, his mind quickly losing the ability to register the flow of it, especially when he was between moments of mania and full lucidity. Before much longer he feared he’d be gone entirely, which was exactly why he’d had to leave Marceline. It was only a matter of time before he would have stopped recognizing her and have done something stupid, something stupid like he’d done to that poor group of humans he’d run into on his way up North.
He’d been shocked to see them, not having seen a single “normal” soul since that infernal bomb had dropped — just Marceline and himself — and even more shocking was that they hadn’t been afraid of him, at least, not at first, not until they’d noticed the blue skin and unnaturally sharp teeth and nails that had only gotten worse with time, and before he’d known it the less sane side of his brain took over and made a sadistic game of chasing the poor animal skin cloaked humans through the trees, taunting them manically as he hunted them like wild game.
One tried to stop him with a crossbow.
Frozen.
Another tried to use the end of a fiery torch to ward him off.
Frozen.
A third gave up on running and tried to shield his family with his own body to spare them from the brunt of the spell.
Frozen
It had been weeks after he’d left and continued to his current location before he’d snapped back into reality and realized the horror of what he’d done. Part of him wanted to try and go back and find them so that he could unfreeze them and apologize, but another part of him knew that he’d once again be long gone before he got there and that if any of their own hadn’t escaped him and managed to unthaw their companions that they were all long dead.
Dead by his own hands.
The thought should have disturbed him more than it did, but it didn’t.
What he was becoming was no longer anything like the human he’d once been. He’d become broken and twisted to the point that his own name didn’t even sound right on his tongue any more.
Simon Petrikov was gone, and all that remained of the once brilliant man was a demented king of ice.