The golden man raises his right hand and catches the crescent shaped wave with it, instantly dissipating the wave. He then lowers his right hand and raises his left, pointing his finger at Lord Death’s head and space seems to crack at the location, shattering and breaking Death’s head into many pieces, spilling black blood.
As I watch this scene in terror, the golden man looks straight at me and my soul feels wrenching agony as I get pulled back into my physical body. My eyes open, still having the horror of what I just witnessed imbued within them.
I push myself off the ground and stand to my feet, and my heart aches at recalling the scene where Lord Death’s head exploded. I recall his fatherly smile when he said farewell after giving the ‘mark’,
The heart-broken expression as I teased him, the care he gave to me. All like a true father.
No matter who my real father is, I will not accept anyone except Betty as a true parent. My only family linked by ‘soul’, my Grandfather.
Tears slowly slide down my cheeks and I quickly rub them off, not shedding any more after a few seconds. I steel my resolve and my facial features darken as I gather all my elementless ‘aura’ and release it out around me in a shockwave. My sadness turns into hate and anger towards that golden being, and unbeknownst to me at the time, it tapped into almost all the ‘aura’ in my left hands mark.
My left hand glows with vibrant purple light but quickly dies down when all the energy is released in one go. The grass in at least a 100 metre radius wilts at fast speeds, turning grey and disintegrating and crumbling into small pieces to be carried away with the wind. The trees, although not impacted by the killing effect of ‘Death Aura’ had been hit by the sheer force of the dense ‘aura’ and dropped some leaves after shaking a bit.
A split second after the ‘Death Aura’ from my mark hit the area, the elementless wave swiftly followed, but something far stranger than the instantaneous death of the grass happened.
Similar to reversed movie footage, all the dissipated grass particles moved back to their original positions at high speeds, joining with other particles of the same kind in the air before lowering to the ground and sprouting root again. The leaves that were floating down from the shaken trees suddenly stopped moving and were also rewinded, floating up and defying physics, before joining a newly shaking tree that calmed down quickly.
Time? Reversing time? What element magic is that?
As I thought this, a shaking sound occurred beneath me and a crack in the earth leading to what appeared to be a bottomless ravine appeared below me. Hearty laughter resounded through the gap in the earth right before I heard a voice from the bottomless hole.
“Kid, you have potential unseen before in normal people. Time doesn’t flow and influence you, but rather the opposite. I would give quite a bit to take and bless you if you weren’t Hades’ property.”
Another laughter resounded through the ground, with the vibrations giving me goosebumps.
“I have decided kid, you are coming with me, we can’t waste such talent now can we? Hahahahaha”
*Clap*
*Rumble*
After the voice’s body seems to clap, the ravine extends towards the place where I am standing, and although I have a strengthened body and a decent ‘aura’ capacity, I was unable to use ‘aura’ because I used it all in my previous feat of strength.
My body however, felt like it was being held down by shackles, where I couldn’t move at all although my minds command to move was heard clear as day and also felt like it began. I couldn’t even speak or do anything akin to movement.
Because of this, I could only watch silently as my pupils slowly dilated as the fissure extended to reach and pull me in.
The ‘shackles’ on me were released as I fell. Fell so far and for what seemed to be a stupidly long amount of time. I seemed to fluctuate in speed with me falling sometimes fast and sometimes slow. This could all be false however, as I could only feel that from the wind as I couldn’t see at all in this pitch black hole.
Because of how boring it was falling for so long, I decided to practice magic on the move a little, by releasing my slowly recovering ‘aura’ outside my body and into the dark space around me. However, even my sole form of ‘entertainment’ in such a state was denied.
When it exited my body, it vanished to Death knows where, as I suddenly lost all control of my exterior ‘aura’ and it seemed to have been consumed by ‘something’. I had already realised that the goal of the person who spoke wasn’t to kill me, otherwise that would’ve been a simple matter to do with such power, but rather something else.
I knew that I would likely be here for a while, so I decided to do something that was entertaining in my first few years of life.
Time to play some chess against myself. I am not looking forward to this.
I had already played the game so many times in my first years when I had nothing better to do, similar to this situation as when I awoke and was trying to get myself to fall asleep, this was the only available game to play.
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---Time Skip---
About 1439 games of chess later, I finally saw the light at the end of the tunnel, or in this case, the solid ground at the end of the drop. As I sped towards the floor, a strong updraft caught me and slowed me down significantly enough so that I wouldn’t die from the damage. Honestly, an updraft with enough force to slow me down should also feel similar to crashing into solid ground, but I will likely figure out how that works later.
My fall ceased about 10 centimetres of the ground, with my belly facing downwards. The wind holding me in place was then released and I fell the length with a small *poof*.
I stand up and analyse the situation. The area around my person that was illuminated enought to be visible was about a 4 metre radius, whereas everything else was pitch black and I couldn’t see it.
“Hahaha, welcome to my plane of existence mortal. I understand that the drop was long and boring, but that is for safety measures against many people that may attack my realm.”
The voice from the ravine had spoken again, but what he voiced raised many questions in my head, but starting from the two most obvious ones, I began.
“Who are you? Why am I here?”
“Calm mortal. Calm. Time is ongoing, never stopping, and we have all of it in our hands to speak. First allow me to appear before you.”
A silver light shone straight in front of my eyes, briefly illuminating the area before transforming into a human shape. When the zone was made visible by the light, I was startled by the scene that entered my eyes. The pitch black darkness that I saw in the area was truly darkness, with no end no matter what. Even with light, it wasn’t visible but instead helped me see what I was standing on clearer.
It wasn’t natural ground, but rather just a large flat circular silver plate. I stepped forward in the instant that the light shone and the plate teleported to position itself in the centre of my new location. It moved with me by what appeared to be quick teleportation.
The silver light dimmed and although still shone, it was in a different shape and not as bright. It appeared to be a 2 metre tall silver full suit of plate armor with no decorations drawn on it save for the inscription written at the top of the chest piece, touching the bottom of the neck.
With my natural translation capabilities, I read it out and it said exactly the words that the voice had expressed earlier.
“Time is ongoing, never stopping”
The wrist and metal glove piece of the armor rotated and clenched a fist respectively, while the helmet looked at the movements of the two pieces. Finishing assessing the situation, the helmet piece turned back to face me and started to walk slowly in my direction as a voice came from it.
“This is a form that I use when talking to people as I rarely access my warform if I can avoid it, as it is difficult to control my powers in such a strengthened body.
Anyway, your questions, to answer the first one, one of my names is Chronos, and the one most of the people from your original world used to name me. I am an immortal and also a God, but my position only exists because I was harassed by the other Gods.
I am the God of Time, the one who can slow down the never-ending ticking hand of time. I can reverse and rewind it, accelerate and fluctuate it, but no matter what, I cannot end it.”
As I digest this normally unbelievable information, I realise that this actually explains the speed with the fall, the inability to cast spells or move and also why he was so powerful. I guess I became highly adaptive to the situation due to all the events that have occurred around me in the few years of my new life. I remember Betty but push down the feelings that surge up with it, as this is not the time nor the place to have such reminiscal emotions.
I motion for Chronos to continue speaking as I understood and processed all the information he gave me.
“As for why you are here, the reason is very simple actually, requiring little to no explanation. You have an immense gift and link to the time element due to the occurrences in your past life, giving you talent beyond recognition in one of the extra elements known as the element of ‘Time’.
And what am I going to do with it? I am going to train you.”
He says the last line with the voice of a boy that played a prank on someone.
The tone that he made reminds me of Betty and as the emotions surface and tear start rolling down again, I drop to one knee and place one hand on the ground saying:
“Yes master, make me strong.”
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And that signals the end of the last chapter of Vol 1. I understand that it was a bit rushed and frankly too much stuff happened in just this single chapter, but I didn’t want to keep being so roundabout and slow about this stuff (Will probably still be in the future). I will likely take a few days break as I plan ‘Volume 2. Time’. Hope you guys stick with the plot and enjoy. :D
-Waffle Fluff