Chapter XLV: The Thirteenth Watcher
Laura glanced slowly back at her hair as it trailed in slow motion, a few strands flapping as she fell towards the lava at a crawl so slow that she thought she might die from old age before she hit the burning lava below. The heat had died down to barely a warm glow that covered her body and she could feel the air crawling across her skin like melancholy spiders. She brought her head around with a slight struggle and stared down at Adelia whose eyes were shut, her lips moving at a pace far faster than even normal time, though no words seemed to escape. At the same time, however, she could hear the faint whispers of a foreign tongue floating just outside her reach. What was all this?
She didn’t get the time to think before the world snapped back to normal speed with a jolt that shook her entire body and almost jarred her mind from her. She sailed free, one hand clinging tightly to Adelia’s tunic-top as the two streaked towards the lava, only to be pulled suddenly back into slow motion. Laura felt the slow down, her insides being juggled around and her mind stirred by it, though she remained as if she was streaking down at rocket speed. Below, the lava was brimming closer, only a few feet from Adelia’s body.
“Come on, Adelia! Get a hold of yourself! Get control back….”
Laura could feel a sudden slight ability to move, her body being ever so slightly drawn back towards Adelia. And then she noted that they were slowly reversing in time, while far above she could hear the faint echoes of the present continuing. So they were reversing their own past without reversing the rest of the world’s? Then this was but a little of what Adelia could….she had less control over herself then Laura had hoped she had. Her gamble had almost not paid off. She glanced back down at Adelia, her only ability left to her was to speak, and so she called out again.
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“ADELIA!”
The voice echoed throughout the empty abyss that was Adelia’s current state. She knelt amidst the darkness, eyes down cast as the shadows drew closer and closer. Once more Laura’s voice echoed through the chamber, shaking the shadows and making them draw back for a moment from the figure who seemed in some angry mind set. Finally, after a third boom of Laura’s voice pleading to the unconscious Seph who knelt amid the swirling masses of evil, Adelia’s head shot up to stare into the darkness. “SHUT UP!”
Adelia rose to her feet, “Leave me alone, all right! I can’t do this! I CAN’T HELP YOU ANYMORE!” Her voice died away, “I won’t….”
So then you give up?
This voice was different than all those before, a voice that seemed different, a voice that she recognized all too well, that had been in her head for as long as she existed, and yet far different than any she had heard. But it didn’t matter, “Whoever you are, leave me alone! I just want to stay here in the shadow and let everything go the way it will. If I die, I die.”
Have you abandoned all hope?
Adelia stared around the darkness, “I SAID LEAVE ME ALONE! YES! I have lost all hope! I’ve given up on all humanity, on God, on the Watchers. They’re all out just to torture me! This isn’t what I wanted….my purpose…..MY purpose was never MINE! It was there purpose for me! And I don’t want it. It’s not right….it’s not fair.”
Such is the way of things. We cannot ask for what we are given. We must accept this….we must accept our fate.
“Can you see what they expect of me!? CAN YOU!?”
Yes…
“Then how can you say such a thing!? HOW CAN YOU POSSIBLY THINK THAT YOU CAN COMPARE!?”
“Because…..”
Adelia turned to watch the shadows slowly begin to part, to peel away to reveal a small opening within them. It began to grow as the shadows peeled away in fear and pain as a deep blue light rolled through them, outlining the figure that marched through the shadows, slowly entering the view. It was a young man of similar height to her own, with flowing blonde hair that fell down to mid-back, his eyes a glistening hazel with flecks of brown in them. His face was chiselled and his body well formed, a beautiful specimen that she had never seen before, but there was an aura of familiarity about him. He was clad in nothing more than a white robe that wrapped around him though it seemed nothing held it on. It flapped in the breeze he created himself, the blue light piercing it and surrounding it. He smiled softly, then finished his sentence, “Because they expected the same from me.”