Dave knew his time line was doomed even before his saw her, after that troll girl almost killed him John had gone back to Typhus with some foolish plan to beat him, that had been a month ago. Rose had gone to look for him three days after, and then Dave went looking after that.
He knew his Rose was gone, from the look she had in her eyes from where she glared at him over John's body, tendrils swept and lashed in the air, encasing her and Egberts' body in living darkness. She ran at him, he drew his sword.
He'd barely gotten back to Jade, he limped through the door of her greenhouse half conscious and dizzy. She found him and rushed them both to his quest bed, when he woke there was a ticking in his head
one, two, one, two, one.
In a circle every second clicked in High definition, he was aware of each slow passing moment. Jade sat by him and through a lump in his throat he caught her up on what happened. Only she cried though.
He kept it together for awhile, consoling Jade and dealing with immortality after the reckoning, they had tried hopelessly on their own to beat the black king and queen but they stood no chance without their Heir. He died a few times, and she did too both from intent and accidents. Each time they came back a little less human. Jade got paler, and she hunched, Dave could have sworn her buck teeth were a little sharper.
His eyesight started to fade, and he got more flexible, like his bones could bend, he didn't really notice. One day Jade went to Derse, she said she'd been having dreams about walking in the dark, following a song and a white dog. She said she woke up every time she reached the dark moon. She didn't come back, and after a few days Dave started to forget.
He forgot what the game was, he forgot Jade and his friends, his brother. He forgot. He started having dreams, dreams of crows in darkness, they flew toward whispers and a song. He followed in his dreams and eventually, went to Derse.
It was dead, it had been Six thousand seven hundred and sixty two years four months and thirteen days since the reckoning, the number pounded in his head, time branded in his mind and ticking, always ticking.
Numbers, numbers, numbers always in his mind. He didn't know what that one meant, it felt like he did though, brought wrenching pain and anger with it across his mind. But that was nothing new, he was getting more unstable each day, so it could be anything. Just gotta be cool, like a Strider should be.
A what?
As he wonder the empty kingdom, he could have thought he heard whispers, but then again the silence made it hard to hear.
Come knight of ages
What?
Come and enjoy darkness
He didn't like darkness, darkness made him forget, then again what was there to remember?
Time exists still here knight. Break free from your turning shackles
Time? He wanted to be free from time. The ticking, the scratches.
Come.
Dave found himself at the chain of the Derse moon. All he had to do was fall. Something blue and laughing crossed his mind. He fled.
Sixteen years three days and five more deaths later, Dave found something. They were old and cracked and dusty, and it took a moment to figure out what they were. A pair of sunglasses, almost welded to the black slab he found them on, the heat of LOHAC never died. They were deformed and melted, but they meant something to him. If he still knew how to speak he would probably say the pointed things looked dumb.
Then he remembered.
He remembered everything, and he broke. Bro. Bro was dead. And John. And Rose. Oh god he killed Rose. Jade…What happened to Jade? Years, centuries, of life came rushing back. Dimly, he realized he was screaming.
It would be John's Birthday today. He laughed, some what hysterically, at the irony of it. Irony. At one time he thought that was important. He laid there for three days on LOHAC, until the heat killed him and he came back again.
Smiling he took his old, very old, time turners from his forgotten sylladex.
He was going back, he was going back and he was going to kill all of them so this wouldn't happen.
He would kill them all.