The revenant seems to have been genuinely hurt by Daren’s words. The expressionless look in her eyes has completely changed, and now it looks as if she wants to ask him a question, but she is hesitant to speak.
“Did… Suzie and Kevin really cry when they found out that—” the revenant starts to say, in a somewhat shaky voice, but Daren does not let her finish her sentence.
“Don’t call them by their names!” he shouts, furiously. “You are not Rose! Don’t pretend to be her! If you really cared about Rose and her siblings, then you would leave her body, so we could give her a proper burial, and that way, Suzie and Kevin would at least get to say their goodbyes.”
“That is not something I can do,” the revenant says, as she regains the previous expressionless look on her face. “I live to serve the God of Death. Only he may choose to end my life. Nobody else.”
“Then you are our enemy,” Daren says, with a dark look in his eyes. “We’ve already seen what the God of Death’s followers are capable of. There’s no reason for us to think that your god would treat us any differently than the God of Time. There’s no way we could ever trust you!”
“The God of Death has no quarrels with your group,” the revenant says.
“But what if he did?” Daren asks. “What if he’d order you to kill us all, one by one. Would you do it?”
“If the God of Death would ask me to kill you, then I would do so without hesitation,” the revenant says, without changing her expression at all, while she is talking. “It is not my place to question my master’s orders, whatever they may be…”
“Then you are too dangerous to be left alive,” Daren says, as he begins to approach the revenant. “I will end your life here, before you have the chance to betray us.”
“Daren, wait!” Kate says. “You can’t kill her. There is still a part of Rose that lives within her. You saw how she reacted earlier when you told her about Rose’s siblings. Maybe there is still a way to turn her to our side. Maybe we can—”
“Rose is gone, Kate,” Daren says, with a serious tone in his voice. “You can’t keep living in the past forever. You need to let her go. It’s what Rose would have wanted, if she were still alive.”
“Rose would never have wanted you to kill this… person!” Kate says. “She would have wanted us to work together. You know this!”
“Sorry, Kate,” Hadrik says, “but I’m going to have to agree with Daren on this one. We don’t know what the God of Death is planning. For all we know, he may well be in cahoots with the God of Time, and they’re still messing with our heads, as part of the ritual. We can’t trust anything she says. We need to get rid of her, before she kills us first.”
As soon as Hadrik stops talking, Daren resumes his walk towards the revenant, with the sword in his hand, but before he gets to reach her, I place myself between the two of them, facing Daren.
“Barry, what do you think you’re doing?” Daren asks, as he stops in front of me.
“What does it look like I’m doing?” I tell Daren, as I pull out my dagger.
“We’re not seriously going to do this again, are we?” Daren says. “This isn’t like that time with Illuna. The revenant literally said that she’ll kill us with the first opportunity she has, if her god tells her to do it. She’s a danger to us all. Why are you defending her?”
“She’ll only be a danger to us if her god turns out to be our enemy,” I say. “As it stands, we could really use her time powers right about now. Especially if the next stage of the ritual requires us to work as a group.”
“If we’ll need to work as a group, then there’s all the more reason to deal with her now!” Daren says. “What is to say that she won’t backstab us in the middle of the trial? We don’t know her true intentions. And even if we knew for sure that she won’t betray us this time, this may be the only opportunity we have to face her alone. What if the next time when she comes, she will have an entire team of mages, given to her by the God of Death to hunt us down?”
“But what if you fail to kill her?” I say. “What then? Do you realize that attacking her unprovoked would be akin to declaring war on the God of Death himself? Do you want us to have two gods as our enemies at the same time?”
“We won’t fail, if we all work together,” Daren says.
“Daren is right,” Hadrik says, as he comes closer to us. “Even those time spells of hers must have their limitations. If we all work together, we should be able to figure out what they are.”
All of a sudden, a large ice wall forms itself in front of me, separating the revenant and me from Daren and Hadrik.
“How about we all calm down and take a break, before we do something really stupid?” Kate says, with an ice cold tone in her voice.
“I appreciate what you two are trying to do,” the revenant says, as she steps away from me and goes to walk around the wall of ice, “but I assure you that it’s not necessary. In fact, I think that Daren and Hadrik both need to experience the futility of their actions, before they’ll be ready to work with me as a team. Please do not provide any help. I will fight them both myself.”
“Those are some brave words,” Hadrik says, with a grin. “Let’s see if you’ve got what it takes to back them up.”
He then immediately rushes towards the revenant, at great speed, and tries to punch her, but she just disappears, right before he lands his strike, and she reappears much further away from him, while looking at him with her usual lack of human emotion in her eyes. Hadrik doesn’t let himself get intimidated, and he tries to dash for her yet again, even though this yields him the same results. The third time, it is Daren who tries to slash at her with his sword, but she effortlessly evades his attack as well, by disappearing and reappearing, like the last two times.
“What the hell?…” Hadrik says. “How do you keep doing that? I thought that the time was already frozen!”
“It is frozen for the rest of the world, but not for you,” the revenant says. “All I need is to freeze you in time along with the rest of the world, and then I’ll have plenty of time to move out of your way before you get to land your blow. But these powers are not good only for defense. They are also very useful for offense. Like so.”
She then disappears again, but this time, she reappears right behind Daren, holding a knife at his throat.
“Do you surrender, healer, or do we need to continue?” the revenant says.
“That’s a pretty good bluff you have going there, revenant,” Daren says, as he puts his sword in its scabbard, and then grabs the revenant’s arm with both his hands, pressing her knife closer to his throat. “Unfortunately, as you can see, your knife is nowhere near sharp enough to be able to break even through my meager magical protection against physical attacks.”
The revenant starts trying to pull her hand away from Daren, but he keeps a firm hold on it, with both his hands, as he continues his monologue.
“On the other hand,” Daren says, “since you haven’t disappeared from this spot already, it means that my instincts were correct, and you cannot escape someone’s grasp, with the use of a time-freezing spell. You also don’t seem to have the ability to reverse time at will, because if you did, you would have done so, already. In other words—”
Daren now pulls on the revenant’s hand, lifting her on his back, and then he throws her to the ground, in front of him, while making sure that he still holds onto her, as firmly as possible.
“—you are now more vulnerable than ever,” Daren continues his phrase from before, as he pulls out his sword from its scabbard, while still holding onto the revenant with his other hand.
He then slashes at her throat with one quick strike of his blade, and he severs her head from her shoulders, in a single movement.
“Daren…” Kate says, as she’s almost about to cry. “What have you done?…”
“I only did what I had to—” I hear Daren saying, but all of a sudden, everything in my mind becomes a complete blur, and then I get the ve
ry weird feeling that I’ve only just woken up from a dream.
Instead of seeing the revenant dead in front of my eyes, I get to witness the scene where she puts a dagger to Daren’s throat for a second time, except now she does not wait for him to grab her, and she immediately jumps back, making sure that she is no longer anywhere near his range of attack.
What is happening, here? Did I seriously fall asleep in the middle of the battle and had a dream where Daren killed the revenant? Could I have gotten hit by a mind-affecting spell without noticing? I can clearly tell that this is the reality, and that what I saw earlier was only in my imagination, but why would I have had such a vision in a tense moment like this?
“No…” Daren says, seemingly in a state of shock, as he points towards the revenant. “That’s not possible. You were dead! I made sure of it. Even a revenant will die, if their head is cut clean off their shoulders. And yet, I saw with my own eyes how everything got reversed, just like that time when Arraka got out of the amulet! Who was it that reversed the time, if not you?”
A time-reversal spell?… Of course! Now I understand why I felt like I woke up from a dream. The time was only reversed for Daren and the revenant, so they were the only ones who got to see all of the spell’s effects. For the rest of us, who were not caught in the spell’s area of effect, it was as if these events never even happened…
“The time did not get reversed as a result of a spell that I cast,” the revenant says. “It got reversed thanks to a trait that all time weavers possess, which protects them from getting killed before they finish delivering their prophecy. No matter how many times I get killed, the time will always reverse itself up to a point where I am safe enough to escape from peril. This is why I said that your actions were futile. Even if I were to die, you still wouldn’t get to kill me for good.”
“You’re lying!” Daren says. “If what you said were true, then how did Rose die? Why didn’t the time reverse itself to save her, like it saved you?”
“The only reason why the time didn’t get reversed for Rose was because of the revenant spell cast on her before she died,” the revenant says. “The Magium does not care who gets to inhabit a time weaver’s body, as long as it can still fulfill its purpose of delivering the prophecy. Given that I was already scheduled to take Rose’s body after her death, there was no need for the time reversal spell to activate, so I became the time weaver, in her place.”
“So… Rose would have still been alive, if it wasn’t for you?…” Daren asks.
“Daren…” Kate says, as she approaches him and the revenant. “It wasn’t her fault. The God of Death’s follower called Zack was the one who cast the spell. She wasn’t the one who asked to be put in this body, nor was she the one who asked to serve the God of Death. We can’t really blame her for any of this.”
She then goes over to the revenant, and she grabs both her hands, gently, as she looks into her eyes.
“Listen,” Kate says. “I’m not sure what to call you. ‘Revenant’ sounds too cold, but I am also aware that you are not the Rose I know. However, if there’s anything of Rose left within you, like you said, then please, come travel with us. Forget about the God of Death. You don’t need to let him control you any longer. We can try to hide from him together, or we could fight him, or… something. You don’t have to go through all of this alone.”
The revenant pulls her hands away from Kate, and she takes one step back, as her expressionless gaze momentarily turns into one of sadness and regret.
“I’m sorry,” the revenant says. “I am not who you think I am. You should avoid trying to get any closer to me, for your own safety. I was not lying when I said that I would kill you in a heartbeat, if my master ordered me to. My loyalty towards the God of Death will always come first, and you need to understand that. If you put too much trust in me, you’re only going to end up getting hurt. It is the Rose part of me that is warning you to stay away from me. Can you understand that?…”
“Yes,” Kate says, with a somewhat disappointed look in her eyes, as she takes a few steps back. “I understand. I won’t try to meddle in your affairs anymore. And thank you for the warning…”
“So, what are we going to do now?” Hadrik says. “Work together, like nothing happened?”
“It doesn’t seem like we have much of a choice,” Daren says, reluctantly, as he sheaths his sword.
“What about the God of Death?” Melindra says, in a serious tone, while she has her arms crossed. “What are you going to tell him when you get back, revenant?”
“If he ever asks, then I will tell him the truth,” the revenant says. “I will tell him that I was the one who started the battle, because I wanted to prove my superiority. That way, there should be no reason for him to bear any resentment towards your group.”
“I see…” Melindra says.
“However,” the revenant says, “I do not think that the God of Death will ask me anything upon my return. From his point of view, nothing will have happened, since time will remain frozen until I come back. He will likely continue to ignore me, just as he’s been doing ever since I first contacted him, and I will be forced to keep waiting in one of his temples, until he sees fit to give me an order.”
“He’s ignoring you?” Kate asks. “But… why?”
“The God of Death does not trust me,” the revenant says. “He thinks that I am an undercover agent, sent by the God of Time to infiltrate his followers, and nothing that I’ve said has been able to change his mind on the matter. He even tried to kill me a few times, but he gave up after he saw that it was impossible to do so. Currently, I am not allowed to leave the temple that I entered when I first contacted him, and he is keeping me in the dark about most of his plans, out of fear that I might leak the information to the God of Time.”
Arraka laughs.
“That does sound just like him!” she says. “Ulruk has always been very paranoid when it came to the God of Time. I can only imagine how shocked he was when he found a time weaver right on his doorstep, revenant or no. You’d better find yourself a hobby, because you’re probably going to be sitting in that temple for a long time.”
“Why is Ulruk so suspicious, when it comes to the God of Time?” I say.
“Oh, those two have never really gotten along,” Arraka says. “And since Selkram is the only god who does not have any followers, Ulruk has always been obsessed with the idea that the God of Time’s plan is to kill him, so he could then take his place, and steal all his followers. Obviously, Selkram is much too proud to ever stoop to such a level, but the God of Death has always been a bit of a nutcase, much like his own followers, so nobody managed to convince him that his fears have no basis in reality.”
“Was it just me, or did I hear the revenant say earlier that she was locked in a temple before coming here?” Hadrik says. “How could she have gotten out, if the doors were closed?”
“She got out because that trance with the glowy eyes that she was in before allows her to pass through any objects, and even through living beings,” Arraka says. “It would have been pretty ridiculous if there was a mechanism in place to revive her from death, but not one to help her escape from a prison, don’t you think? You can’t stop these prophecies from happening. The Magium has made sure of that.”
“We’re wasting time,” Melindra says. “Revenant, you said that you knew a way to sabotage the next stage of the ritual. What were you going to tell us?”
“Well, there is a way to acquire hints about what will happen in the next trial,” the revenant says. “The easiest method to obtain these hints is to make use of Barry’s hearing stat, but unfortunately I was not able to communicate too much information to your group about this subject, out of fear that the God of Death would overhear our discussion, and come to the conclusion that I was conspiring with the enemy. I’m not sure how much of my message got through to you. Barry, did you manage to activate your stat device’s secret code before the time froze?”
�
��Yes, I activated it,” I say. “I also noticed that I still have those temporary points in my hearing stat that were technically only supposed to last for a few seconds. I’m guessing that you knew this would happen, and that’s why you told me to do it?”
“Yes, that was the reason,” the revenant says. “Like I said before, the spell that brought me into this world was designed to implant a lot of the God of Death’s knowledge into my mind, and amongst that knowledge, there was also some information about the stat devices, and how they work. In short, the temporary stat boost that gets activated with your secret code is entirely dependent upon a brief timer which won’t set itself off as long as the world is frozen in time. However, since you managed to activate it right before the time froze, the timer has frozen as well, thus granting you extra hearing capabilities for the whole duration of this time-freezing spell.”
“So, when you called me, the time wasn’t frozen, yet?” I say.
“No,” the revenant says. “But I knew that it would freeze in a matter of seconds, because I had a few time-freezing spells go off without my control, right before I was put in the trance. Something similar to this also happened before the previous time I called you, except back then the time only froze once, without my control, and I was not put in a trance during that time, so I knew that it was only a small test, before the main event. This is why I asked you to keep your communications channel open, so that I could later tell you to activate the code, right before the prophecy started. You would still need to have at least a few points already invested in hearing, for my plan to work, however. What is your level in hearing right now?”
“I have four levels invested in my hearing stat,” I say. “It’s the maximum level currently available on my stat device. Although with the extra three points that I got from that temporary boost, my hearing stat is now being displayed as level seven.”
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