Tearha: The Number 139

Chapter Forty-Seven: The Ghost of Years

Time returned exponentially slowly. A single second stretched out into seemingly minutes as every action played frame-by-painful-frame. The Watcher watched as Light's sword clashed with the Neverite covered blades of Nadier's daggers. The world glowed brighter with each passing moment as the physical objects of dust and utensils that had accumulated around the time bubble rubbed against each other in an instantaneous moment, creating friction that would have a heat that matched a star. The sound of the explosion happening around them grew in his ears.

His hand stretched out towards the dark elf. He needed to get to Nadier, move both of them out of the explosion radius as quickly as possible. The circuits in his body attempted to charge, but sputtered and burnt as energy left him. His hand reached Nadier's shoulder, just as another hand touched his own. The explosive sound cuts away. The bright glow was replaced with a copper ceiling.

As if pulled back by a vacuum, time returned. The explosion rocked across the dining hall, flinging the already stumbling Watcher back through the air from the sheer force of a shock wave. Burning heat grazed his skin and debris warmed his face with bloody cuts.

He landed on his back, followed by two resound thuds beside him from Nadier and Adelaide as the last of the blast wave washed over the trio. A breeze of warmth blanketed their bodies followed by an instant back draft of cool.

Silence took the room as dust clouds settled like sand in a crystal lake.

For a long while, they laid on their backs, struggling with aching joints and bruised backs, attempting to shake the ringing out of their ears. Adelaide was the first back on her feet. Though she stumbled slightly from the quick use of her teleportation, she nevertheless managed to notch an arrow into the string of her bow and had the weapon drawn to the front. With a helping hand from Nadier, The Watcher got to his own feet. The dark elf stabled his stance before standing forward with his weapons.

The time traveller signalled his companions to halt their attacks with a hand before the dust even settled. They had landed near the door, almost across the room from where the blast had occurred. Bright light streamed in from opposite them as the wall had been blown opened to the outside world, gleaming through speckled fog.

As the room cleared, the damage revealed itself. The wall opposite had all but crumbled with an evenly shaped hole canvassing the scenic view of steady snowfall outside. Two thirds of a crater originated from where Light and The Watcher had once settled as their battleground, with chairs, tables, utensils, and bits of metal from the portal machine strewn in a haphazard debris field. The portal continued to spin, even without any machinations powering it.

After reaffirming the halt signal to Adelle and Nadier, The Watcher approached ground zero with a tired but confident gait. He staggered down the slope. While the thick ceiling and floor between levels were cracking beneath his feet, they remained otherwise intact.

In the middle of the crater, lying with his clothes tattered, charred and torn, along with patches of seared skin that overlaid cuts and scars, Light twisted his head at the approaching Watcher, his golden hair dusted and blood soaked lumped with each turn.

"Do you remember Captain Lily?" Light choked out. He slumped his head back onto the rough ground as The Watcher sat down beside him. "She was amazing, wasn't she?"

"Yeah," The Watcher replied. "Smart and brave."

"In the twenty-first and second centuries, before things went to shit, I read about great people like Churchill and da Vinci, and I thought that in another time, another place, she could have been a Hullway or Yousafzai."

The Watcher sighed and leaned back into his arms. "We could have been a lot of things if you had not did what you did."

Light gave a blood gargled laugh. "You chased me across time and space. Even now, in another universe, you won't get off my heel?"