TRA: A God's Sorrow

Chapter 4: Time moves on

Grall

Grall stumbled out of the portal, Tyril leaning heavily on his shoulders. The group, who had just passed through seconds before, stared at Grall in confusion.

"How did you find Tyril?" Imp asked, he stared at Grall suspiciously, as if he didn't trust his actions.

"I didn't find him," Grall said as he lay the unconscious man down, "he found me."

"Explain." Grodak said in an angry voice.

Grall sighed as he sat down, he could feel the shadow world reconnecting with him now that he was out of hell. "There's not really much to say." Grall said not wanting to talk, but when the expectant eyes lingered on him still he let out another sigh and continued. "After all of you passed through the portal, I struggled to get free of the demon. Everytime I managed to push it back, it would manage to come closer. This went on for a few minutes until finally Tyril showed up and killed it."

"Why is he not conscious then?" Imp asked, he readied a spell and tried to hide it from Gralls eyes, but failed. Grall could see the spell as clear as day and even knew what he was planning to cast.

"I don't know." Grall said, to which most of the party wasn't satisfied with. "Look, all I know is that he passed out as soon as the demon was slain."

"Exhaustion?" Grodak asked as he looked to Imp for answers. Grall hid his smile from the party, knowing full will that they would believe him.

"It appears so." Imp said as he looked Tyril over.

Tyrils body was covered in bruises and cuts, most done by Malik when Tyril refused to follow him, but only Grall knew about that. Grall stood up and looked to the group, half expecting them to just ignore him and half expecting their eyes to be on him. Thankfully it was the former as the group talked amongst theirselves and eyed Tyril. Grall smiled and let the shadow world pull him in.

As Grall entered the familiar plane, he noticed something had changed. This was peculiar because a change in the shadow world takes years to happen and would never happen over the course of a few days. As Grall tried to pinpoint the cause of the change Wreag appeared before him.

"So," Wreag said, a smile lingered on the edge of his lips, "you have finally returned."

"How much time has passed since I was last here?" Grall asked as he started to walk through the dark space.

"If by time," Wreag said, "you mean the mortal realm, then I'd say six years or so."

Imp

Imp stood over Tyrils unconscious body using a potion he had concocted on the spot to heal him. He knew Grall was lying, he didn't know how far Gralls lie went, but he knew these wounds weren't the same wounds as what Cassandra had. Imp had decided to keep his thoughts to himself as he stood up and looked around. Grall was gone and the rest of the party was mulling about around Tyril and Cassandra.

"I'm going to return to my tower," Imp said to Grodak, "there is something I need to do."

"Alright," Grodak said as he lifted Tyril up in his arms, "but before you do, can you drop us off at Whitewater?"

"Of course." Imp said and no sooner then he spoke, Grodak and the rest of the group found theirselves in Whitewater and Imp in his tower.

As Imp took a step, his mechanical companion, Dorothy, appeared. "Master." She shouted, her mechanical arms wrapping around Imp. "You finally returned. I was so worried when you didn't return after a year of absence. I thought you had abandoned me like my former masters."

"Of course not, now why-" Imp paused for a moment then looked to Dorothy, then around the room he was in. "A year?" Imp asked, Tyril did say that there was no telling how much time would pass in the material plane, but a year!