Before I could even respond, the old man slipped from my grip, and gave himself away. The golden tentacle pierced him instead of me. His body immediately lit up, and his screams filled the skies.
Pain exploded within my heart, but I did not let the emotion mess with my mind. The moment my feet hit the floor I surged back up into the air, heading right for the flickering portal, even before the Time Lord could react.
Darkness surrounded me the moment I pushed into the image. I blinked for a second. This isn’t Ikarius.
A spirit of white appeared before me, and my heart clenched at the sight.
“Raffyr,” I whispered, recognizing the form. “You…died.”
“Do not feel guilty, Eternal.” The old man smiled. “I have achieved everything I wished to and more. This sacrifice was something I chose to do on my own.”
“You’re an idiot.” I watched as the spirit slowly faded away. I could restrict it, I could anchor it to myself with my Spirit King special ability, but…
“That is not what I wish for myself,” Raffyr said, as though he’d read my mind.
“I know.” My voice was a whisper.
“We must make amends where they are due, Eternal." The spirit looked up. “For everything that I did to you, I hope as I leave now, I leave as your friend.”
I looked at him, unable to bear with what I was hearing, and yet I coughed up the words, biting through my sorrow. “I am glad to have called you a friend, old man.”
“That is all I wished to hear,” he said. His form slowly rose into the air, floating up into the world of black. I gazed at him, unwilling to pull away from the sight.
“Thank you for everything, Diablo,” Raffyr said. “Take care of little Viola for me.”
I nodded. “I will.”
And with that the old man faded away from existence, leaving but a sole word echoing through the unending darkness.
“Farewell.”
***
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
“Is she better?” Freya asked.
I shook my head as I walked up to the table she sat at. I took a seat across from her, and sighed as I reclined back.
“Still quiet?” the elf asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “Didn’t speak a word to me.”
“It’s only been two weeks. Give her time.”
“I know. It’s just…”
“It’s not your fault, Zoran.”
My lips parted, but I said nothing.
Of all the wounds that exist in the world, grief is by far the deadliest. Grief in the face of a loved one lost is the worst kind of wound to possess.
And thus, here we were, two weeks later, unable to get a word out of Viola’s blank face. The young woman now stayed at Ikarius, occupying the nearest house from mine. I visited her more than once every day, but every single time, she just stared blankly out the window, in silence. This was better than last week though. She’d spent days locking herself up in a room on the upper floors, not eating, not talking. Nothing.
After such a thing, even this seemed like a great turn of events.
And it wasn’t that I didn’t understand how she felt.
Raffyr had taken care of her since she was a little girl. The old man was like a father to her, and now she’d lost the only family she had. That was always devastating.
What bothered me was that she’d specifically avoided the funeral we held for Raffyr. That told me a lot about where her state of mind was in the five stages of grief.
Denial.
“What about everyone else?” Freya asked.
“Ijyela and Krof are still contacting people,” I said.
“No word on the Time Lord?”
I shook my head. “None of them seem to have heard of him.”
From what we knew, it appeared our stint in the past had not changed the future in any drastic way at all. Other than that, however, we’d asked Ijyela and Krof to look into this Time Lord, but so far, the results were concerning.
“Give it time,” the elf sighed
I heard a knock on the door and a black-skinned elf walked in, accompanied by an old man dressed in robes of midnight-blue.
“We were just talking about you two,” I smiled.
“Good that you’re here,” Ijyela said. “I wanted to take a look at the Eternal.”
I nodded, and got up from the table. Freya sat where she was, and looked away. Talking about Irmeia was still a touchy subject for us. And I didn’t blame her. She thought it was completely unnecessary for me to save a woman who had betrayed us like that.
Honestly, even I questioned why I had done it. I knew Irmeia had betrayed us. I felt that pain. And yet, I’d tried to save her. A part of me even wondered if saving Irmeia was what had caused Raffyr to die.
“We’ve had this conversation multiple times,” Nyx sighed. “I knew you were an idiot, but this is like idiot 2.0.”
“Grief takes time to process, spirit,” Acnologia spoke. “Diablo, try not to think about this for a few more days, at least until things calm down.”
Meanwhile, Krof had pressed his hand into the wall, and had opened the secret trap door in the floor. “Shall we?” Ijyela asked and led me down the staircase.
The healing chambers were as they were before, three beds, and one injured Eternal on the one in the middle. Her eyes were closed, and her hair was dry and fuzzy. She no longer wore a white robe, and had been changed into some plain gray ones Ijyela had procured for her.
Irmeia lay still inside a crystal casing, and I could feel the chill inside the structure, even though I was this far away.
“The cryo-stasis looks good,” Ijyela said.
Krof nodded. “She’s still stable.”
When we’d gotten back, Irmeia had turned completely unresponsive. She’d basically gone into a coma once again. Only this time, her body was dying. And fast.
Though Freya said we didn’t have to work extensively to keep her alive, Ijyela and I thought there’d be some use in saving another Eternal, especially one called the Queen of Dragons. And so right now Irmeia’s body was in a frozen environment, slowing down her biological processes enough so we can give her ‘Eternal’ healing properties time to do their thing.
Plus, this way, she wouldn’t really wake up even if she was completely healed, meaning there wouldn’t be any accidental, unplanned rampages raging across the town.
“Alright,” Ijyela said. “Everything seems good.”
“Did you guys find anything on the Time Lord?” I asked, as the three of us headed back up the stairs.
“Nothing,” Krof said. “It’s almost like uhh…”
“Like what?” I headed up, and noticed that Freya had taken her leave.
“Like he doesn’t exist,” Ijyela finished. “One of the people we know even questioned us quite a bit because he thought we were just pulling his leg.”
“Why is there no documentation on this guy?” I mumbled.
“Not a single ancient scroll has anything about him, or anyone like him either. Not a single mention of anyone with the power to manipulate time.”
“It’s perplexing,” Krof added.
“Let’s just keep searching,” I said.
The two of them nodded. “We’ll head out then,” the elf said. “I’ll keep you updated.”
“Thank you for helping me with this.”
They both smiled. “Mysteries intrigue us.” She smiled and walked out, with Krof right beside her.
I glanced out the window nearest to me and saw Oris walk by the street, decked out in his new black armor. The young Knight had decided to join the Knights already working here at Ikarius village. Of course, he’d needed some initial motivation to make the decision.
“Zoran, you threatened him,” Nyx said.
Well, different people call it different things okay? I grinned.
I walked out of my place a minute after, but I wasn’t planning on going anywhere. I simply jumped up, landed on the roof three stories up, and lay back on the tiled surf
ace.
The cold wind of the night blew past me, tickling my skin, and howling in my ears. I looked up, glancing at the ever-glowing stars, and my eyes traced a path up to the brightest one in the sky.
“Polaris,” Acnologia’s voice resonated in my mind. The Dragon emerged before me, and flapped his wings as it hovered in the air. “Are you thinking about the Time Lord, Diablo?”
“His race tag bothers you, doesn’t it?” Nyx asked.
Yeah, I said. A race that can’t be displayed is more than perplexing. It’s unsettling.
“Well, we’ll probably figure it out later,” the spirit said. “That’s how it usually works, you know. Just have some big battle, defeat the bad guy, question the bad guy, and then get answers.”
“No more bad guys,” I chuckled. “I’m done with fighting people for now. I need a nice long break from all of this.”
“What are you talking about?” Nyx laughed. “Zoran, you’re the Phantom Lord. You never get breaks.”
I sighed. I know.
My eyes stared at the darkness between the stars, as the voices of a spirit and a dragon occasionally speaking into my mind.
In the past year, I’d battled the Dark Lord, a Dragonborn and now a Time Lord. And each time, the next battle had come quicker than the last. I knew the next oh-god-we-need-to-save-them scenario was probably right around the corner, and yet I wasn’t really bothered by it for some reason. Darkness and danger had become regular occurrences around me.
And so, I laid back, giving my full existence to the sight before me, and gazing upon the jewels of the night sky. Just then, a streak of bright light painted the darkness — a shooting star sailing across the ocean of black.
“Quick, Diablo!” Nyx said. “Make a wish.”
I gazed at the light, watching as it descended beyond the horizon.
“If only it could come true.”
IF YOU ENJOYED THIS BOOK…
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OTHER BOOKS BY DHAYAA
THE WORLD OF GA’EM
Book 1: The Eternal: Awakening
Book 2: The Eternal: Dragonborn
THE QUEST SAGA
Book 1: ConQuest
Book 2: ZeQuest
Book 3: AcQuest
Book 4: EcQuest
Book 5: BeQuest
Boxed Set 1: The Quest Saga Collection: Books 1 - 3
Boxed Set 2: The Quest Saga Collection: Books 1 - 5
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
A sincere ‘Thank you’ to all my beta readers — Ezben Gerardo, Ian Mitchell, and Florian Avril — for reading the novel and taking time out of their day to talk to me and provide helpful feedback!
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dhayaa Anbajagane is a bestselling Sci-Fi author whose new LitRPG series, ‘The World of Ga’em’ sold over 1000 copies in the first month of release and ranked #1 on all Cyberpunk books for nearly 2 weeks. His first Sci-Fi series, the ‘Quest Saga' has over 20,000 readers and has won many fans all around the world. He currently has a passion for telling stories in the LitRPG Genre and hopes to make a good home within it.
He writes in his free time (which for some reason always overlaps his sleep time) and secretly believes he is from an ancient human race that lives nocturnally and needs coffee to survive.
Dhayaa loves to hear from his readers. Feel free to send him an email, or catch him on Facebook.
Email: [email protected]
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Website: www.dhayaaanbajagane.com
COPYRIGHT
A Dhayaa Anbajagane Ebook
First published in U.S.A in 2017
Ebook first published in 2017
This ebook published in 2017
Copyright © Dhayaa Anbajagane
The moral right of Dhayaa Anbajagane to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
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ASTERION’S AMBITION
OTHER BOOKS BY DHAYAA
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COPYRIGHT
The Eternal: Transcend - A LitRPG Saga (World of Ga'em Book 3) Page 25