[[ I Got A Little Carried Away... He Didn't Really Answer The Question Much - Tumblr Posts

For Elias: Describe what you looked like when you were actually still you. What were you like as a person? What did people see when they looked at you?

Elias folds his hands across his desk, remained intact within the Institute as the panopticon stretches to the sky above him. Far above him is the body of Jonah Magnus-- his body. Seated at the top of the world, watching and observing everything. Preserved, still intact, though his consciousness moved through this current vessel. He was an old man, hair completely white though the hairline did not recede, thin, still wearing the loose shirt and pants he had put on that day he attempted the Watcher’s Crown. His eyes were shut, the lids sunken in without the support of the eyeballs themselves.

The current body, one such Elias Bouchard, was not much different, having been changed once Jonah took over. He was still fairly thin, but there was more of a build to this one, more bulk. He filled out the suits he tended to wear to work much better. His hair was much the same as well, slicked back, still perfectly in place, slowly starting to turn white with age and time. These eyes almost seemed to glow, bright hazels that could see for literal miles and beyond. He stared directly into the one standing before him, the one who had appeared to ask him such a question.

“I was a scholar,” Elias answered simply, reaching into his shirt pocket to take out a silver monocle and chain, “Possibly not much to look at, just another student passing through the streets. Unremarkable. But, I had a hunger for knowledge, a desire to see more. Things beyond out comprehension, outside of our understanding. It was what drew me to the powers that be, these entities, and eventually to Beholding itself. It Knows and it understands. I think... to an extent anyone who looked at me could see that. That I was beyond my time, beyond my age. They certainly kept their distance as if they did.”

He smirked, the wide smile spreading further and further across his face in an almost unnatural way as he placed the monocle in front of his left eye, “And they would have been right,” he said, almost gleeful, as he dropped his hand back down to the other, “I have not changed, nor have my goals. I believe one might have described me as ‘arrogant,’” he gave a laugh, “Superiority is earned now, isn’t it? Sitting here high above all the world and the fears that tear apart humanity. I am right where I deserve to be, what I have worked for.”

He leaned back in the chair, letting his hands rest across his lap, “Do enjoy your stay. It was a lot of work to get things to this state.”