Despite the horse's speed, Armad spent eleven days before he saw the wall. The whole thing was even more magnificent from a distance, towering and intimidating, without a single creature near it. When Armad saw it, he stopped and opened the ring dimension. He wanted to see his mother one last time before diving into the wall.
According to Babara, she would need two drops of the salicy potion every few days to prevent the disease from progressing. It was the same potion Babara had been giving her when Armad was away and the same potion that maintained her in a stable state. According to the old man, she might need up to ten thousand years to recover. That much longevity would be hard to come by even for the jinzidal Kings. So Armad decided to do two things at the same time: to look for Nostalgia and ask her if it was possible to get the longevity from them and to search for his soul fragment using the locator Bend he'd received from Babara.
It wasn't just two things actually, he'd made a promise to end the slave trade and he would start looking for ways to do that simultaneously.
Armad went into the ring and wrote the fourteenth of Baranda, 1854 A.A on the door. It would be the day he began his plan to dismantle the jinzidal.
After watching what he'd written for a while, he turned to his mother. She laid there on a makeshift bed, her eyes closed as if she were asleep. The woman was so charismatic that not everyone could withstand staring at her even if she was unconscious. Armad always found it amazing how she was able to exact so much influence on people by just being near them. Her hair was pitch black, and as the disease progressed, the only sign of it was the lack of consciousness. Other than that, there was no fever or weight loss, or any sign of an illness.
He sat next to her with tears in his eyes, remembering how they used to play hide and seek in their old home when he was a child and the last time he saw her healthy. His heart was broken already but he wouldn't give up as long as there was a chance to save her.
It was a long time before he could open her mouth and put a drop of the potion in it. He got up and wiped the tears from his face. There were a lot of things he wanted to ask her when she woke up. And nothing would ever stop him from finding a cure for her.
As he stood in front of the exit, he promised himself never to return from this mission until his mother was cured. Until she got the longevity she needed.
He wanted to eat but he didn't have the appetite so he just returned Ubbaru to the ring and walked to the wall on foot.
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Standing in front of the gigantic thing, he repeated what Babara did when they came - jumped over the rift between the ground and the water, and then tried to open a way through the water by punching it - but he was struck down by a powerful force field that threw him several meters back. He collapsed on the ground and his body began to melt, his skin cracking. He quickly turned his body to lightning, which stopped the pain and the melting, returning him to his form again.
He removed the ring from his finger and put it in his mouth. He would try something a bit more daring.
The Bend could be used to travel to any place he could see. The only problem was the resulting core collapse. Armad had long thought of using it to get out of the prison and the only reason he hadn't try it until now was the training, and he didn't want to leave Babara behind.
Activating the Bend, he disappeared from his position. But instead of finding himself behind the wall, he appeared in the middle of it surrounded by a thick layer of water. He saw two rounded, black objects in front of him. One of them looked like the thirteenth-night moon and the other looked like the sun. The two objects looked into his eyes like hungry hyenas out for food. Armad felt a primal fear that told him to run and never come back. But then he realized his whole body had already melted away under the pressure of the two black holes, and the only thing left was his head. If he hadn't already turned his body to lightning, he would have found himself in hell by now.
Some things occurred to him in that dire moment. First, the two objects that looked like the sun and the moon were Ururu. He didn't know how he knew it; he just did. Second, the photon jump was working and he wasn't standing in one place. No, he was moving very fast within the wall and if he just withstood the attack of the black eyes for another minute, he might be able to escape the prison forever.
But Armad realized even if he'd come with Babara he wouldn't be able to get past the wall like that. If it wasn't for his lightning body, he would have already died a hundred times by now. It was wise putting the ring in his mouth. For it would have melted right away if it was on his hands.
As if hearing his thoughts, the two black eyes glowed even brighter. Armad felt as if he was being shot with a thousand arrows in the head. He was suddenly drawn into a battlefield. He saw himself standing in the middle of rotten corpses, surrounded by ten giant and heavily armored men. Each had the same ominous black eyes and a black sword. They walked through time and stabbed him in the chest. The pain was real. Armad felt dead. But the black 'kings' watched him for the greater part of eternity to make sure he didn't wake up.
***
Meanwhile, somewhere in the first world, the ten great kings of the Ururu known as Ashura were listening to a flute. Anyone who heard it would only think of the wonderful and pleasant music but not them. They heard a message about a man trying to get out of the wall prison. But according to the message, the eyes of the Lord King, King Ururu Kuyurussa'ayi, the same eyes that defeated the second King of Men, King Eyrion Wilberforce, had destroyed the man and dragged him to his death.