“What… What am I looking at?” Sofia mumbled, “This Dragon is why the admin went missing?”
The dragon in question was truly enormous, larger even than Erredis was, just looking up to catch a glimpse of the dragon’s limp head gave Sofia vertigo. His silvery gray scales reflected the black city like a million mirrors. The spire impaled said dragon from its hind to his neck, it looked less like it had been the killing blow and more like the corpse had been put there as a war trophy. Each of his four limbs were also skewered onto shorter black spires surrounding the main one, while his tail loosely hung and laid on crushed buildings.
Different parts of the corpse seemed to be at different levels of decomposition, some parts looking almost like he was still alive, while others were losing their scales, exposing the darkened flesh beneath. Some of the dropped scales were littering the ground, while some other were still flying, stuck midair through their fall, as if frozen in time.
“What is an apt choice of word, this, my guests, is Time,” Orator grandly announced with a smile.
“Time?” Sofia and Bookie repeated in unison.
“Like… A god, ‘Time’?” Sofia asked.
“A god?” Orator parroted before breaking into a sinister laugh. “No, mortal. Not a mere concept; Time itself. A Lord.”
Sofia thought that she had seen enough things by now that nothing could surprise her, after all, she was even starting to get used to Orator’s presence, and yet, this revelation still left her mind scrambling for any semblance of a coherent thought for long seconds.
“A… A Lord,” she finally managed to say after a while. Bookie was still silently staring, his lower jaw resting on the floor at his feet.
“Rightly so. A fifth Lord. Time,” Orator stated matter of factly. “Edrazeketh killed it.”
“He killed time.”
“Killing time. An innocuous saying, one would admit,” Orator said as he turned around to observe the corpse too, “But if one were to take it a bit too seriously, it would promptly emerge as a rather pressing issue, wouldn’t you say?” Orator asked with glee in his voice, his figure seemingly growing taller.
“That is putting it lightly. The implications of this…” Sofia mumbled, her thoughts wandering to a thousand possible scenarios.
“You can rest these thoughts,” Yvraveteth interrupted her, “Time has been dead for an eternity and a half. As you can see, the universe is well and good as ever.”
“How… How can everything be fine if Time itself is dead? Shouldn’t time be… How?” Sofia said, flabbergasted.
“Shouldn’t time be frozen? Everything be stagnant? Reality itself brought to an abrupt end?” Yvraveteth spoke her worries aloud. “Not a wrong assumption, at first glance, but of course, that does not hold to scrutiny. Time goes on as we speak, does it not?”
“Then what… Does killing Time not have any consequences?!”
“It would,” Yvraveteth started, turning back around to face Sofia, “But does the universe care about such puny logic? It does not. And thus, two more Lords were born, given the reigns of time in a different form. But that is a story for another day. As the facts stand, even Time could be bested, is that not inspiring? This shall allow you to view your quest in a renewed light. Do not waste my goodwill.”
“Wait wait wait! I have so many questions…”
“Certainly you do, find the answers by yourself, will you? There is a limit to one’s generosity.”
“I… Thank you for the history lesson, then, Yvraveteth. I will definitely kill Scripture, I did not need any convincing.”
Yvraveteth snorted. “May this memory be useful to you in the future, then. It is about time you left, this place will soon become too dangerous for you.”
“That’s… Alright, sure. How do I leave?”
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“WAIT!” Bookie interrupted, holding his lower jaw to his skull.
“What is it, little one?”
“Can I…” Bookie started shyly, “Can I eat it?”
Yvraveteth smiled and shook his head, his long white hair flowing behind him. “Break all of this reality’s rules and become more powerful than I, then maybe.”
“So I can’t…” the small skeleton dejectedly realized.
“Perhaps, if you reach the strength required to complete the quest, you might just be able to harvest a scale. Assuming the Annihilator lets you. Now, this has gone longer than expected already, should you want to find this place again in the future, the hint is the light. Farewell.”
Sofia had not noticed, but the Midenicite ring had appeared on her finger and, as if it had always been there, a ritual circle made of concentric rings was clearly carved under the group’s feet. With a flash of light, Sofia found herself in a familiar place.
In the entryway of the Zangdar castle, silently floating in the dark of the Margin, Sofia’s legs gave out.
They fucking killed time.
It took a while for Sofia and Bookie to process their thoughts, both sitting on the cold Midenicite floor of the castle. In the meantime, Pareth was completely unbothered, and, after making sure that Sofia was unharmed, he transformed his weapon of light into a broom and started cleaning.
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And leaving the deep was as simple as teleporting to the margin… Who would believe that? But the storage items worked, and the graveyard worked, so it would make sense…
Although… That means we’re stuck here.
“Are you doing alright, Bookie?” Sofia asked as she stood up, holding out a hand for the short skeleton.
“Eat time…” he mumbled as he grabbed her hand, “I am fine, I think. But… I’m unsatisfied, somehow.”
“Ahahah. I understand the feeling. You will get used to it. How about we take a look at our home to change our mind? Pareth has even cleaned it all up for us.”
“Let’s look! It’s my first time here!”
“Right! It is. I have been thinking about it often but you never had a chance to see it. Well, it’s a bit barren, Alith and I took a lot of the furniture when we left last time, but we can make new things with bones. Let’s quickly check the basement machinery first, though, the mana is very sparse and if it runs out this whole place might disappear,” Sofia explained.
“We have plenty of mana now!” Bookie answered, expelling some of his fog into the air.
“Hey, hey, don’t waste it, we’ll use my mana to fill the air, I have another job for you.”
“Really?!”
Sofia poked Bookie’s forehead, “Really really. Now that I have all this mana and you have all this fog, don’t you want to try to summon a chimera?”
“The chimera!” Bookie repeated like it was the best thing he ever heard, now that the trial was over, he could summon it and also the fairy, and he was very impatient to try both.
“But first, the machinery.”
As it turned out, this visit to the castle was really timely, as the machine keeping the entire place afloat in the dark void was on its last leg, actually leaving the upper levels of the castle completely exposed to the void already. Sofia dumped all her mana in the air in the basement, and that quickly kickstarted the machine back, expanding the livable zone back to where it was originally, covering not only the castle but a large expanse of nothingness around it where the city used to be.
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Sofia, Bookie and Pareth sat together on the edge of the void looking at the great nothing surrounding them in all directions. After the stressful voyage in the Deep, this was oddly relaxing.
“Now we just need to wait for Alith to rescue us,” Sofia said while munching on a small cake from her storage, amused by the fact that her stomach was now just a small pocket inside her chest from which all food and liquids instantly disappeared no matter what she ate.
“What if she never comes?” Bookie asked, worried, but Sofia waved his concerns off.
“Come on now, you know Alith. She almost disqualified herself by coming here when I was sent to Peace’s domain, do you think she wouldn’t come now? I bet she’ll be here soon, just to make sure we’re not here.”
“B- But what if she already came and we weren’t there?!” Bookie panicked.
Pareth gave Bookie a pat on the shoulder, and Sofia continued, “Then she’ll come again, besides, she’s got a mana heart with Orator’s essence now. Do you think he would strand us here if we had no chance to leave?”
“That’s true, Uncle wouldn’t do that… “
“Not only that, but I’m sure Saria will search for me, and it’s likely that Ihuarah, Erredis and Richard will also try to find us. Maybe even Sun, too.”
“That’s also true…”
“And if we can’t wait anymore, we can still try our luck reactivating the ring.” Even if that leads us right back to the corpse of time…
Bookie silently nodded, his gaze lost in the distance. He seemed to have calmed down a fair bit. He summoned Crowie and hugged the small bird.
“Alith will definitely come. How about we have a look at my new keywords to kill time?” Sofia told her skeletons with her best smile.
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