[I saw it.]
Silver needles and cotton thread darted through flesh, chasing something.
Kraft felt that he had indeed "seen" it—not only with his eyes, but with the touch at his fingertips, the smells in his nostrils, and a little imagination and memory.
At times, it was a split-open wound; at times, a twitching bundle of muscle. Occasionally, it flowed and crawled across the skin's surface along with vivid red blood.
None of those were it. It was what remained after all material things had been stripped away until nothing more could be stripped away: something pure and abstract, not matter, yet unable to exist wholly apart from matter.
A concept. A fragment of living knowledge.
Weapons had merely destroyed its material manifestation for the time being. Memory had only preserved a partial image of it.
But concepts had boundaries in the end, and knowledge could be understood in the end.
And it would eventually encounter a consciousness—one close enough to it, a consciousness that never forgot.
It was a marvelous sensation, akin to palpating a mass through layers of thick skin and muscle: from shallow to deep, from light to heavy, gradually closing in on its edges and tracing its outline with clarity.
At first, it felt like a cluster of ripples. Then, a chain wrapped in silk. After that, its edges sharpened, and the scale-like rises and hollows emerged within his consciousness.
Every clash at the wound gave his consciousness a little more understanding of it. To it, understanding was also the most direct form of contact—a binding gaze.
[I caught it.]
Kraft felt its texture. He felt it struggle.
The sensation was contradictory. Perhaps it was better described as being peeled and extracted from its host, restored to its essence; or perhaps as being taken into his