Disclaimer.
I don't own High School DxD, or any of the other copy right stuff that may be included in this story.
I don't make any money off of it and only write this for my own enjoyment.
If criticism of religion bothers you, please don't read this story. Also, why are you reading DxD, a story which makes heroes out of devils, if criticism of religion bothers you?
Being engulfed by light was a terrifying experience for any devil to endure since light is a devil's inherent natural weakness. It was only the feeling of Ambrose's hand that helped keep Sona's fear in check as she was being magically transported… somewhere. Sona had been magically transported many times before, but this was an entirely new sensation.
She was more used to the cool and comforting blue glow of the Sitri clan family magic which normally transported her, and those associated with her clan, to wherever it was they needed to go. The act of transporting with the Sitri family magic would gently phase the world around her and she would instantly move from one place to another. This felt like a roaring rapid which surged loudly around her; the world seemed to have been violently torn away and she was left in the vacuum of its explosive passing. She was blind to everything around her, the sound was deafening and it culminated to a final point where it suddenly ended and Sona felt herself unceremoniously dumped on her rear end.
She kept her eyes tightly closed as she instinctively rubbed her sore bottom until that damned bright light finally shut off and she could once again think and see clearly. Sona looked up, blinking away the bright spots as her vision slowly returned to her, only to see Ambrose standing in front of her. His hand was outstretched in an offer to help her up, and behind him was that infernal magical transport. She was annoyed to see that he was remarkably unaffected by their frightening trip.
"Takes a bit to get used to." Ambrose remarked, still holding his hand out to help her up, "How do you feel?"
"A bit sick, to be honest" She replied, still annoyed that he seemed to be unaffected by the journey. "This better not have been a prank." She warned as she reached out and accepted his helping hand.
"I never joke about my work." Ambrose replied as he gazed out over her shoulder, "Look, there."
She turned around and first thing Sona noticed about her surroundings was that the sun was high in the sky. It was particularly jarring considering it was late in the evening just a moment ago. "Just where have you taken me?" She wondered aloud, curious as to how far they traveled.
Her eyes then widened at where she now found herself. Sona realized that they both stood on the flat roof of a large building. She then noticed the building they stood on was on the outskirts of a small country town that sprawled out before her. The town, itself, was small, sparsely populated, and gave off the impression that it was struggling, or perhaps it never fully took off. It was nestled on the side of a mountain and was built around a large man made pond, or possibly a small lake. The buildings were quite rustic, old, and at various stages of disrepair as if they had been made and patched up over many years. There were no cars, or vehicles of any kind as far as she could tell. The streets were made of dirt and gravel; she also noticed they were lined with electric street lamps that appeared to be fashioned from materials from a junk yard. The entire town was very rural, and clearly focused on agriculture judging by the large farms which lay further away from the mountain and lake center of the town.
"Ambrose, where are we?" She insistingly questioned again.
"We are in the town of Oasis." He replied, "However a more appropriate question is 'When are we?'."
She was almost afraid to ask for clarification. "When?"
"It is noon on June 21st, the Summer Solstice, and we are currently 500 years into the future."
"What?", Sona asked in disbelief.
"Congratulations Sona, you're now a time traveler." Ambrose said with far more enthusiasm than Sona felt was appropriate.
"This is no time for jokes." Sona insisted, not believing what he was saying could be true.
"I'm not joking." He seriously replied. "Look out to the horizon, beyond the town. Tell me what you see."
Sona was getting sick of his game; never the less she peered out, gazing past the buildings and farms and saw nothing. The trees and green grass seemed to form a distinctive barrier around the town and beyond it was nothing but desert and a mirage of water that reached out towards the visible horizon. "A desert." She observed.
"The wasteland," Ambrose corrected, "You could walk out and not come across a single settlement or person until you crossed the entire globe and reentered this town from the other side. This is the only town on the entire planet. It's people are the only ones on the entire Earth."
"This can't be true. Why? Why did you bring me here?" She asked, panic rising in her tone of voice.
"It is true, and I brought you here to help me. I need your help to change the future. To prevent this catastrophe from ever happening in the first place." Ambrose explained in a tone that would be more appropriate if he had asked her help in some mundane task.
"Changing the future?" Sona thought to herself, "He sounds as if he were a classmate asking me to help him with his homework!"
"Change the future? How, how can I possibly help with this?" She exclaimed, gesturing out to the new world that lay before her.
"Please, allow me explain from the beginning." Ambrose said, inviting her inside the building on which they now stood.
Sona sat at a dining room table inside the building they were previously standing on. Ambrose has said this was his home and laboratory for when he was here in the future and that it was hidden by wards so the townsfolk couldn't actually see it.
The home was built higher up the mountain than the town was, and was designed and decorated in an ultra-modern fashion; as if it were made by someone who envisioned what a technological future home was suppose to look like. It was a strange combination of glass, concrete, and at the same time it seemed to have small indoor arboretums at various points in which plants and trees freely grew from one floor to the next. There was even a small stream that ran under the clear glass floor which covered part of the ground floor as well as two indoor man made ponds with fish in it. Its beauty, however, was lost on Sona as she stared morosely into her cup of tea. She sat, looking into her cup, not moving an inch, not drinking from it. Yet she held on to it as if it could some how provide her comfort.
She felt as if her entire world had come crashing down around her.
Ambrose sat opposite of her, holding his own cup of tea. "Where to begin is difficult when you're dealing with traveling in time. I'm not sure where the beginning is or when, so I'm just going to start talking and if you have questions, please feel free to ask them."
Sona didn't reply, but did start to take a few sips of her tea.
"Like most alchemists, I wanted to create a hidden laboratory.", Ambrose began. "Some place I could work completely undisturbed. I couldn't seem to get any peace after I created the cure for lycanthropy. Most people correctly assumed I would start creating my own philosopher's stone and they began to ceaselessly hound me. Some begging me not to attempt it, fearful that I would crash the economy. Others because they thought I would not only attempt it, but be successful in creating it. They harassed me constantly, eager to ingratiate themselves to me with flattery, empty promises, even marriage proposals."
Sona choked a bit on her tea at that remark.
Ambrose didn't seem to notice, or perhaps he didn't feel the need to comment on her reaction as he continued. "It was quite maddening. I struggled and searched for an ideal place where I would be left alone to work in peace."
"Then one day, in a moment of inspiration, I came up with an idea; the perfect place to build my laboratory. Some where hidden so that people not only would not find it, but could not find it. I decided to build and hide my lab 'in time'. Specifically, in the future. And so I decided to do just that and build my time machine."
"Just like that?" Sona asked, as she looked at him in disbelief. "You just decided to build a time machine and did so just like that?"
"Just like that." Ambrose confirmed with a nod. "It wasn't as hard as it seems. I created the laboratory in the past, our present I mean. I hid it, so it would spring forth after a certain time had past. The hard part was to create a bridge from our present to the future."
"And just how did you do that? How did you create this time bridge?" Sona asked him incredulously.
"Well, I began with the delicate task of tracking retro-causality particles that move backwards in time and then used their trajectory to formulate their possible origin, thus finding a pathway to the future." Ambrose began to explain with remarkable ease, as if he were explaining how to build kite.
"Tracking these particles with magic as they move into the past is the standard way most magically inclined individuals use to create devices that travel to the past. Though that method only allows for one to travel back in time a few hours and forces the individual to move forward in time 'The old fashioned way'."
"I, however, also used their trajectory to track where they came from, not just where they were going to, and thus I could get an idea on where the future was headed. I then created two devices. The gate we left from, which tracks where these particles originate from in order to travel forward in time; and the gate we just arrived at, which measures where these particles are headed to, in order to travel back in time. I then sealed them up in an underground bunker, on a small, magically hidden plot of land. After 500 years the gate which travels back to the past activated and sent its linked counterpart gate, which travels to the future, 500 years into the past. Thus effectively creating a bridge from one point of time to another."
Sona blink at his explanation and tried to digest every bit of what he just said. Magically traveling a few hours into the past was rare, but wasn't unheard of. The devices used to do so were in scarce supply and their use was strictly controlled, regulated, and in most magical societies 'forbidden' so as not to cause a paradox. She prided herself on her intelligence but this was something else entirely. It wasn't as if she couldn't understand the concept of what he just said but to come up with such an incredible method to travel in time was on a completely different level than she was used to. Not to mention traveling in the future was unheard of and rumored to be impossible. Quite honestly sounded so incredible that it just might work.
"When I first traveled into the future I was horrified to discover the state that world was in. This town didn't exist then, nothing did. There were no buildings, no vegetation, no people at all. Only the wasteland and the creatures that now rule the world." Ambrose continued.
"Creatures?" Sona questioned.
"Mindless beasts that roam the wasteland. Monsters, evil-dragons, and things that are far more terrifying. They feed and scavenge off each other in a gruesome carnivorous perversion of the circle of life." Ambrose explained. "At first I refused to believe it, I thought I had fell into another world, perhaps even Hell itself. However, the hope that this wasn't Earth was soon extinguished as I astronomically verified the position of the stars and planets to confirm that this was indeed Earth and I had, in fact, traveled 500 years into the future."
"What happened? How did this happen?" Sona begged for more answers.
"That was the problem. I didn't know, not at first." Ambrose answered and continued his tale, "Seeing how I couldn't ignore state of the world I set out into the wasteland, searching for answers. I searched for years, decades, perhaps even a century or two. Not only to look for clues but to train my body in order to learn how to fight these fiends. I thought that if I could become stronger than all the creatures in this time period that I could go back to our time period and some how stop them as they appeared. However, I soon realized that this approach would be like bringing a sludge hammer to a surgical operation; I needed to act with precision. It would do no good to anyone if I had the power to defeat these things as they appeared if I couldn't figure out when they would appeared."
Ambrose paused for a bit and took a sip of his tea. "You must understand that this is a puzzle, or like a game of chess. Only in this game 'when' you move your piece is far more important than 'where' you move your piece. I remained in this terrible future, searching the wasteland in order to find the source of the catastrophe. I used my experience in archaeology to search for ancient signs of conflict or battles which had long since passed, but even then I could only learn so much. Carbon dating isn't an exact science, it couldn't provide me with the exact date of when the world died and was taken over by monsters."
"You used your alchemical life fruit recipe, Ambrosia, in order to stay young, didn't you? It's why you're still a teenager." Sona reasoned. "Didn't you say you also created a stone of your own? Why have both?"
Ambrose sighed and took a sip of his tea. "It is true, I have attempted to create my own philosopher's stone, and in that attempt I was partially successful. I did create a stone, and it does transmute metal to gold. In fact it transmutes anything into gold. A fact in which makes it extremely dangerous as it can kill its user and turn them into a solid gold statue. However, it doesn't create an elixir of life, instead its secondary ability is far more... strange. Instead of creating an elixir of life it summons the souls of the dead."
'That was unexpected' Sona thought in surprise. "You can summon the souls of the dead?"
"Yes," Ambrose admitted, "But there are limitations to the stone's abilities. For instance, I can't just summon any old soul, or any historical figure I'd like to have a chat with. I can only summon someone I actually know, someone whom I've met before; I need to know their name. Even then the ghost can exist on this plane for only 3 hours. Also, souls who've remained dead too long seem to start to lose a bit of themselves."
"What do you mean?" Sona asked, seeking further clarification.
"Well, ghost tend to forget things the more time they're dead." Ambrose began to explain as if he were a teacher educating a student. "Also, it seems after too long the stone is unable to summon them. I believe it has to do with some sort of tenuous ethereal grasp between ghosts and the land of the living. There's no set time period between when a person dies and when the stone is unable to summon them. But souls who have a reason to stay, or have people who remember them here on earth, are are abled to be summoned rather than souls who have nothing on Earth to return to."
"That does make a certain amount of sense." Sona said while thinking things through. "A lot of cultures place an importance on remembering their loved ones that have passed on. Perhaps that kind of emotional bond is more of an actual connection that allows the dead to be able to be summoned in the first place."
"That's exactly what I thought." Ambrose said, pleased they both followed the same line of reasoning. "What's most interesting is that when I feed Ambrosia to a summoned ghost, that individual comes back to life."
"You're Raising The Dead?!" Sona loudly exclaimed. "I know devils can do it, but it's forbidden magic for sorcerers."
"I don't make a habit of it, and during my study of magic through the centuries I've discovered many different ways to bring people back to life. Humans are the easiest, as it only takes a few light based spells. Devils are particularly tricky since I can't use the same method as I would a human, but with both my stone and Ambrosia it's quite possible to restore and bring back to life just about being, so long as I'm able to summon their soul. Ambrosia is by far my favorite method to not only sustain life, but return it to someone. Who knew that Life Fruit held such properties? Well, a combination Life Fruit and Death Fish" Ambrose confessed.
"Death Fish?" Sona asked.
"A particularly poisonous fish that magically appears in cursed graveyards after midnight", Ambrose replied. "Some of the most powerful magic known is the combination of both light and dark forces."
"And you eat this food made with a poisonous fish called Death Fish?", Sona incredulously asked.
"It's no different than blow fish, I believe the Japanese consider such a poisonous fish a delicacy, and it's perfectly safe so long as the chef knows what he's doing." Ambrose reasoned. "I've made this dish a thousand times, so believe me when I say I know how to prepare it correctly. It's actually quite delicious and leaves you feeling quite confident in yourself for about a week after you eat it, as you'll soon find out."
"You expect me to eat this poisonous fish dish?" Sona asked with a sense of surprise and horror at the implication that she wouldn't be returning home soon.
"You'll have to, if you're going to stay here for any extended amount of time." Ambrose said, as if they were taking a vacation.
"I can't stay here!" Sona loudly argued, "I have to go back. My peerage will surely report that I'm missing."
"When we return back through the gate, only seconds will have passed from when we left. We could stay here for years, or even centuries and still return as if only seconds have passed. But right now it's 500 years in the future and your peerage isn't looking for you. They're all dead. All Devils, Angels, and Fallen Angels are extinct. The only form of sentient life that remains on either world are the humans who live in this town." said Ambrose.
"I don't need this or your damned magical food!" Sona cried out, refusing to believe that everyone she knew and loved were gone, "Devils are strong, we live extraordinarily long lives. Thousands; tens of thousands of years! They're all still alive, waiting for me in the Underworld." Sona yelled as she stood up. 'This is all just too much' She thought to herself. 'It can't be true.'
"The Underworld is in far worse shape than this one." Ambrose remarked. "Many, if not all of the creatures that live in this world are ones that have 'spilled over' from the Underworld. As frightening as this world is, the state of the Underworld is much worse. The creatures that now rule the Underworld are far more dangerous and terrible than any creature you'll find here on Earth in this time period. However, I need you to calm down. I wouldn't have brought you here if I didn't have some sort of plan to change the future."
Ambrose was really starting to piss her off. Sona's entire world, everything she knew had been turned upside down by the person in front of her and his casual declaration of the end of life as she knew it was almost too much for her to handle. Sona took a deep breath and sat back down; she was still unable to fully calm herself.
"How do you plan to change the future?" Sona demanded in a tone which expressed her disbelieve that the very idea, let alone act of accomplishing such a thing was impossible.
"Well..." Ambrose began as he took a moment to gather his thoughts. "After many years I came up with a rather ingenious idea to try to discover not only what happened, but when and how it happened. Instead of a laboratory that would appear in time, I decided to ward off a much larger area that would appear in under the correct circumstances. Specifically when I estimated when this catastrophe would begin. It took many years to transmute all the materials that I would need in order to accomplish this feat, but once it was done I went back to the past, our present. I spent nearly all the money I had ever made to purchase a very large area of land that could provide clean water, raw materials, and most importantly the safety humans would need in order to survive. I then went about creating markers that would appear at the time I estimated this calamity would begin. The markers would provide instructions and direction to this hidden sanctuary I had created in order to safely house the survivors. I even disguised my work as if I were a future telling soothsayer who saw a vision of the future and made preparations." Ambrose chuckled to himself, "It seemed better than claiming I was a time traveler."
Sona digested this bit of information. "That's how this town was built." She realized. "You created a safe environment for people to live in as well as instructions on how to get here so when you came back to the future there would be survivors."
"Exactly!" Ambrose excitedly said, pleased that she was starting to understand how temporal causality worked. "I returned to the future to find a quaint little village, bustling with only a handful of survivors. The village was something straight out of the dark ages. The people lived incredibly simplistic lives, they had no electricity, no running water or indoor plumbing; they couldn't even read or write. Never the less, I had successfully changed the future to save a handful of people and found myself in the presence of their descendants. Unfortunately humans are, and have remained, superstitious and mostly ignorant to that which is supernatural. They didn't really know what had happened or how it happened, only that something terrible had happened long ago. They were safely hidden within the town and quite content to remain in it as the wards protected them from the creatures outside. I continued to travel back and forth in time, making small changes here and there. Changes like making the markers and sanctuary appear sooner in time in order to allow more survivors a chance to arrive. I also created more markers, putting them as close as I could to what I believe to be possible 'ground zero' locations to the event which caused all of this. This was my attempt to fine tune the whole thing in order to save as many people as I could in hopes to get a clearer picture of what happened. Each time I made a changes and came back to the future I began to notice small changes that happened in the timeline and the town itself."
"Small changes, like what?" Sona questioned.
Ambrose continued his story, his tea forgotten as he was caught up in his tale. "Well every time I gave survivors more time to arrive in the past the population of the future would increase slightly. Eventually that evened out to a point where it didn't matter how soon I caused this sanctuary to appear, the population of the town wouldn't increase any further."
"I also began to noticed that each time I came back to the future meant that different people survived the catastrophe; different genes are then passed on to different people in different variations, creating different decedents. Someone you meet in the future now isn't necessarily someone who's going to exist when you next travel to the future."
"Back and forth I traveled; however, I couldn't find a definitive answer as to what caused all of this nor when it actually began. My closest estimates of when it happened was based on when I allowed the sanctuary and markers to appear, using the population of the town as a measuring tool of success. However that could only tell me when things got really bad and began to affect the non-supernatural world. It couldn't tell me the starting point for all of it, the source of it all."
"The biggest clue I ever got was when I created an archive of knowledge for the survivors and their decedents to use and learn from. The town has never had any technology since the first instance of its creation. It seemed such a shame that the sum of human knowledge would be lost to time, so I collected an archive of books in the past so that people of the future would have something to read and something they could learn from. I also created a special magical ward stone to provide a power source that could be used as a source of electricity. When I arrived back in the future I discovered that they used this knowledge." Ambrose excitedly said, as if he were a parent proud of his children's accomplishments. "There's rudimentary electricity in their houses, indoor plumbing, and even a library which they used to archive their own experiences. Not a very high level technology, closer to the early stages of the 1900's. They'll also need crude oil to make plastics in order to build computers and such, something which isn't available within this geographical region. They do have a mine within the mountain that they use for raw ore and coal. Still, the library they had was very useful and the personal accounts of the survivors written down began to shed a little light on what happened."
"Go on" Sona encouraged, fascinated by his tale. She felt she was finally beginning to follow along and grasp the basic concepts of manipulating time.
Ambrose continued his story, "I was in the library, searching for records and recounts of how survivors found this town and their experiences of life outside of it. The local librarian took an interest in my research and asked if I needed help. I explained to her that I was writing a culmination of what had transpired and what life was like before everything changed. I was looking for more details from survivors and wanted to know more about how the world came to the point it was now in. It was then she said the most incredible thing. She told me I should ask the witch of the wasteland."
"Witch of the wasteland?" Sona asked, as if such a concept was ridiculous.
"The librarian said that the witch of the wasteland was a first hand survivor of the devastation of the old world. She said the witch came to Oasis, guiding the very last group of survivors that would ever arrive from the wasteland. However, the witch was horribly wounded, the survivors she brought with her had to practically carry her here. Still, she was lucid enough to help them find the markers which allowed them to find their way here to Oasis. When they arrived, the other survivors nursed her and all of the other wounded back to health, or as much as they could given their own limited supplies and abilities. However, as time passed, people began to grow suspicious of her. They began noticing that they aged while she did not. They had children who were born, grew old, and died; yet she did not. The town suspected that she had become infected by something in the wasteland, something unnatural. They never forgot how she lead some of their ancestors to the safety of Oasis, but she was obviously not one of them."
Sona knew that humans could be like that and that they often shunned those who were different. They could unconsciously sense the supernatural power that resided in individuals, sometimes when the individuals themselves weren't aware of their own power. [Sacred Gear] wielders, like Saji, were born with a hidden power and often didn't form close attachments to others when they're young. They didn't know why they were different, or that they were different at all; they only knew that they were alone. She believed it was why Saji was so eager to please since he joined the Student Council; he finally felt like he had a place to belong.
Ambrose paused to take a sip of his tea, frowning that it had gone cold. Dissatisfied with it, he set it aside and continued his tale. "They didn't banish her, not completely. They simply cast her out to the borders of the town and the edge of the wasteland where she continued to live alone for centuries. By the time I had arrived she was merely a folk tale, a legend. Something parents used to scare their children into behaving, living in a house that teenagers dared one another to disturb as a test of their courage."
"To me, she was already a miracle." Ambrose said with a fond smile. "I immediately rushed over to meet this person. I was so excited could barely contain myself. Finally, a survivor. Someone who might have a first hand account of what happened, and a possibly fellow magical too! I set out to find her house, and once I did I marched straight up to her door and knocked on it. I received no reply."
By this point Sona had forgotten about her tea, she had forgotten about her earlier bout of anger and frustration. She was completely engrossed in this tale.
"I knocked again, calling out to her. 'Madam', I said, 'My name is Ambrose and I have come a long way to speak with you. Please open the door.' I implored."
"'Go away, and never return', replied a raspy voice from within the old house."
"I could not accept such a reply. 'I will not', I shouted back at her. 'It is extremely important that we speak at once.'"
"'Go Away And Never Return!', the voice inside yelled back with an obvious amplified magical voice."
"I was so excited" Ambrose told Sona with an amused laugh. "Not only was she a survivor, but she did indeed possessed magic. I magically amplified my own voice in return and released my magical aura to show her I was not someone that would be so easily dismissed. 'Madam', I shouted back, 'You'll have to do better than that if you wish to persuade me to leave.'"
"I was met with silence, and for a moment nothing happened." Ambrose recounted. "And just before I was about to speak again the door slowly opened and I saw her for the first time. She was indeed horribly disfigured with scars that obviously covered most of her body. Her left eye was missing, as well as her left hand. Her left arm was also mangled and curled in on itself; she walked with a limp and with great difficulty."
"'Who are you?', she asked me."
"I told her my name, and said that I was a sorcerer, an alchemist, and a time traveler. That I was the one who warded this land and created the markers which lead the people here. She didn't believe me."
"'Nonsense', she said and with a yell of 'Get Lost' she sent a magical blast at me that would have sent me straight back into town and into the lake had I not put up a magical shield to protect myself. She was astonished that I had countered her attack and that I did not retaliate. And for awhile, we both stood there staring at one another saying absolutely nothing; her inside of her house and me standing at the threshold."
"She then invited me in for tea." Ambrose said, with an amused smile.
Sona chuckled at that, the story was becoming more and more interesting as it went on. "What then?" She asked, eager to hear more.
"She wanted to know what I wanted and why I was bothering her in the first place. I explained the situation as best I could as we sat across one another drinking our tea. It took a long time, many hours in fact. She asked many questions, testing my knowledge of a time period that had long since passed from her point of view. By the time I finished my tale and told her what I needed our tea had grown quite cold."
"'You must be pretty smart', she told me. 'Let's make a deal. If you can beat me in a game of chess I'll tell you everything you want to know. If not, then I'll know you're lying and you'll leave with out complaint."
Sona's eyes widened, her face grew pale and her mouth opened in astonishment as pieces suddenly fell into place. "It couldn't be", she thought.
"By the end of the game, I had beaten her", Ambrose said, ignoring her discomfort. "And when I did she told me the most incredible thing. She said that she wasn't a witch at all. That she was, in fact, a devil. And that her name was Sona Sitri."
"Me?" Sona asked in disbelief, "You met me, here in the future?"
"A future version of you, yes" Ambrose clarified.
"Am I here now?" Sona asked and looked around as if she expected her counterpart to suddenly walk down the hall. "Is she here now?"
"No, you can't be in two places at once." Ambrose said and began to explain. "The version of you that I had met on that day lived through the entire disaster. By absconding with you in the past I've effectively altered the future. This is the future where you met a young alchemist, went over to his house and then disappeared, never to be seen again… at least until 500 years later."
"Why me? If you got your answers then why bring me here at all?" Sona asked, frustrated that the only answers she seemed to get raised more questions.
"Because the events which cause all of this are centered around you and around Kuoh Academy." Ambrose explained. "From our point in time, in less than two months the war between Angels, Devils, and Fallen Angels will begin anew and the very first battle that reignites the war happens at your school."
Sona felt as if the ground from under her had collapsed. "It's can't be true."
"You don't have to take my word for it." Ambrose remarked, "We made recordings of your first hand experience of what will happen in the future."
"What?" Sona asked in surprise.
"This house is not only warded to ensure that the locals don't see it, but also to ensure that changes in the timeline don't affect it. In essence, changes to this house do not affect the timeline, nor do changes in the timeline affect this house." Ambrose explained.
"And how exactly did you accomplish that?" She questioned. "This is all too much, it's impossible, it has to be."
"To put it simply, those retro-causality particles I mention that travel backwards through time also travel physically through everything. By studying the motions of these particles and how they interact with solid objects I was able to design wards which allows the particles to flow around the property, rather than through it. Sort of like how an airplane wing channels air in the study of aerodynamics." Ambrose explained to her.
Sona had to give him credit. While he said the most insane and impossible things, he also had an uncanny ability to take the most complex ideas and put them into terms that were easy to understand. Through this entire explanation of his, he answered every one of her questions with out being too overly complex. As someone who loved learning and constantly sought to learn new things she could appreciate his ability to break things down into smaller understandable concepts. It was a trait many of her best teachers and private tutors had shared.
"The recordings are archived here so that you and I can review them at our leisure in order to better prepare ourselves for what's to come." Ambrose said, sitting back in his chair and looking more unburdened now that the bulk of his tale had finished. "Also you, that is your counterpart, made a recording just for you. A letter to her past self, as it were."
Sona's mind reeled at the thought. 'My future self recorded a message to me?'
The idea was far fetched, yet for some reason she could barely wait to see it. It was from her to her. As absurd as that sounded, part of her held hope that it would show her something familiar to anchor herself to since her entire world had been turned upside down since she arrived in the future.
"Why don't we take a break?" Ambrose offered. They had been sitting there for several hours already. "I can show you to your room and you can view your 'message in a bottle' while I prepare dinner."
Sona nodded in reply and followed Ambrose to what was to be her room for the foreseeable future.
"Future", she thought sardonically, "I've just about had enough of that."
Sona paid no attention to her surroundings as she accompanied Ambrose up the stairs, her mind was too focused on the problems had been laid before her over the past few hours. The thought of food did sound appealing, it had been awhile since she ate, 'It's been 500 years since I ate'.
This whole time travel business was starting to get to her and she felt like needed something familiar in order to ground herself so that she could get her bearings. Unfortunately, the room she now found herself in offered nothing of the sort. She had hoped to find something familiar in the room of her former self, 'Future self? My counterpart?' She thought. "Maō, this time travel business can sure mess with your head."
As far as rooms went, it was a nice clean room. It held a large king sized bed, a dresser she assumed had clothes in it, as well as her own private full bathroom attached to a small indoor bamboo garden. It held the same ultra-modern theme going through the rest of the house and was tastefully decorated with many plants, which made her feel that the outdoors had been brought inside.
Sona sat on the bed and looked outside as the setting sun illuminated the entire room in an orange glow. The entire bedroom wall that faced outside was one large window. The house, itself was elevated on the mountain, so she could see the entire quaint rural town begin to settle down for the night. The street lamps began to flicker on, though they didn't shine as bright as the LED lamps that lit the streets of Kuoh. There were no cars, but she did see a few bicycles and some even held small carts on the back to move around a modest amount of supplies. It also appeared there was a small steam locomotive and rail road tracks to move crops and people around the town.
She began to marvel at the town and how it was created. "A town created by the manipulation of time.", she mused privately to herself.
She continued to puzzle over all the information given to her, wondering if there was something she could actually contribute to the enormous task that was presented to her. As frustrating as all of this was, she wouldn't… couldn't just ignore it. Had she remained ignorant, her entire life would have been capsized in a few months and her future would have brought her to this ignoble end. Her dreams of creating a school would remain unfulfilled and she would have to endure centuries of loneliness on the outskirts of this town. "At least until Ambrose knocked on my door.", she startlingly thought as she remembered her counterpart and the note left for her.
She began look around for the letter from her future self, until she saw the glare of light reflected off of a DVD that was propped up against one of her pillows. There was a sticky note attached to it with the words "Play Me" written in her own handwriting.
Sona then grabbed the disc, and went to the flat screen which was mounted on the wall over the dresser. On the dresser she found the remote and DVD player. She turned the power on, inserted the disc and pressed play.
Her own face appeared on the screen before her. She wasn't scarred nor was she missing an eye or a limb. Instead, her face was still young, but had matured slightly with age. Sona couldn't help but smile as she saw that her future self's breasts were slightly bigger than her own. No where near the behemoths of Rias and Akeno, but a respectful size she felt she could be happy with.
"Hello Sona", her counterpart smiled from the screen. "If you're seeing this than Ambrose has delivered once again on one of his fantastic and seemingly impossible promises. When I first met him I was highly skeptical of his fanciful tales of time traveling; however, I've come to learn to expect the impossible from him during the many years we've spent together."
"I must admit, I'm a little envious of you and the journey you're about to take. For a very long time I lived with out hope." She said, her tone turning somber for a moment. "I lived with out a lot of things till Am-chan came along."
"Am-chan?", Sona thought, her eyes widening in surprise.
"By now he's probably told you of what's to come. How the three factions are about to go to war in a few months time and things get really bad. To be honest, they get even worse. After the three factions almost annihilate each other a fourth faction, the Khaos Brigade then steps in and well... I won't get into too many details over this recording, as I've already told and recorded that story. You probably haven't gotten around to it yet, but my accounts of what happened are the whole reason you're here."
"However, this recording isn't about all that. I made this message for you, for me, for us." future Sona clarified on the screen, "Maō, this time travel business can sure mess with your head."
Sona couldn't help but laugh a little bit at her counter part, she had just thought the same thing only moments ago.
"As I was saying," Future Sona continued, "I'm a little envious of you, but also hopeful. I hope the two of you are going to change the future, so you can live out the dreams I never saw realized. You're going to save the world, Sona. Both you and Ambrose. And while the two of you are off changing the future I couldn't help but think 'Why should they have all the fun?'. So with that in mind, I decided to do a little changing of the future on my own."
Sona's eyes widened again in surprise, wondering what she, Future-Sona, had planned.
"He's pretty good at chess, don't you think?" her counterpart remarked casually from the television screen. "When we first played against one another I thought I was a bit rusty. I didn't get many challengers when I was the 'Witch of the Wasteland'. But no, I hadn't lost my touch, and he's a truly excellent player. It took me a few years, but I've managed to beat him a number of times in return." Future Sona smiled, as if remembering a fond memory. "We play each other often for favors or when we need to settle a disagreement. The winner gets a favor from the loser. He wins more often than not, but I've come to enjoy losing to him and giving my favors in return." Future Sona winked at her.
"Oh. My. Maō." Sona thought as the implications of what her future self said registered.
"But he doesn't know." Her counterpart said as if revealing a big secret. "When he and I play one another, it's for favors. That's why he played and beat you when you first met him, so that he could get you alone and convince you to come here. I told him to. I told him that it was the fasted way to get you to trust him. He thought he was winning a favor from you. He doesn't know what it means to beat you. But we both know, don't we Sona?"
"I have been betrayed", Sona astonishingly thought, "I have betrayed myself."
"It's a bit selfish of me, sure." Future Sona admitted while giving a small shrug on screen. "But I think I'm allowed to be a bit selfish since you're me and I'm going to be living vicariously through you. So please forgive me for this indulgence. I'm only trying to ensure our happiness."
"Betrayal", echoed in Sona's mind as she watched her future self.
"And he will make you happy, Sona. He made me quite happy when I thought I could never be happy again. He found me, picked me up, and put me back together. Quite literally, actually", her future self commented as she flexed her left hand and fingers rather dexterously on the screen.
"He loves you, you know?" Her future self teased. "That is, he and I both fell in love with one another. He won't tell you, at least I don't think he will. He'll want you to choose, to have the right to choose, who you fall in love with. Ambrose feels that if he told you the truth about us you might feel obligated or pressured into feeling something you don't want or aren't ready for. So, if you're going to be mad at someone for setting the two of you up to be engaged, be mad at me."
"Easy for you to say." Sona couldn't help but think at her counterpart's actions.
"You may want to keep it a secret from him though, just for a while." Future Sona suggested. "It'll come in handy for when you find out Ambrose has kept a secret or two from you. It's not that he does it on purpose, it's more of an 'Oh yeah, I can do that impossible thing. What's the big deal?'. It's quite maddening in fact, probably a byproduct of his [Sacred Gear]." Her future self paused in thought.
"Wait, what? [Sacred Gear]?" Sona thought in surprise.
Ambrose never mentioned anything about wielding [Sacred Gear], and to be honest it was a huge and now only check-mark in the list of the 'Not Millicas' column in her mind. In fact, having [Sacred Gear] pretty much killed the argument that he was the son of Maō Lucifer since pure-blood devils couldn't have [Sacred Gear]s. Only humans were born with [Sacred Gear]s; the only way a devil could have them is if a human who wielded one had been turned into a devil. But Millicas Gremory was born a devil, a high class pure-blood devil and the offspring of the current Maō Lucifer and his Queen who were both pure-blood devils. Sure, the Lucifuge clan wasn't one of the original 72 pillars of devil society, but Grayfia Lucifuge, Millicas's mother, was a pure-blooded devil. That was a fact.
Her counterpart, Future-Sona, continued her monologue on the television screen. "Ambrose is honest though, and he'll tell you anything you'll ask of him. He's like that with me, but it sometimes doesn't occur to him to tell me things. He won't hide anything, and if it's something important and relevant he'll share it freely. I once asked him 'How many different ways are there to become immortal?' At first he said three, then he said six. By the end of the day he said twelve, though he wouldn't tell me all of them as he said they were too dark. I honestly think he invented a few of them on the spot."
"He once told me it was because he was raised by a mind reader named Gargamel who first taught him alchemy. Ambrose had to learn how to hide his thoughts from an early age, so he learned how to hide his own secrets from even himself. But enough about Am-chan, I'm sure the two of you will have a lot of time to get to know each other better."
"Because I'm so looking forward to that" Sona sarcastically thought.
It wasn't as if she hated Ambrose, in fact she was enjoying "The Big Date" immensely before the whole time travel bit that sent her entire world spinning. However, during the his whole explanation, she couldn't help but feel like he flirted with her just to get her in his time machine. She felt taken advantage of, and it probably influenced how she just acted around him as he told his story. Now she finds out that her future self set them up to be engaged, and the guy she began to resent for leading her on was actually in love with her. Quite honestly, Sona didn't know what to feel about anything anymore or how she felt about him.
"And now my list of do's and don't s." Future-Sona continued, "Since I pretty much blind-sided both you and Ambrose with this engagement, think of this advice I hope you listen to." Future-Sona said while she actually brought out a list to read from.
Sona couldn't help but smile as she was quite infamous within her peerage for making and handing out lists of things to do.
"First, train your peerage." Future-Sona stated. "I know it sounds obvious at this point, but you really don't have a lot of time. The first battle hits Kuoh soon and hits our peerage hard. Only four of us survived the initial attack and after that everything happened too fast for me to replenish our loss. You're going to have to be ready for what's to come, but until then be sure to ask Am-chan for help if you need it. You might be surprised at the different solutions he presents."
"Second, look after Am-chan. You've probably figured out that he's brilliant, but his intelligence is outmatched by his strength. You wouldn't know it by looking at him, but I've seen him do things only a Maō can do." Her future self said with a chuckle, as if she it was an inside joke.
"His [Sacred Gear] is insanely powerful, and I sometimes have trouble believing some of the things he can accomplish. I think that if he hadn't tossed himself in the future and actually lived through The Final War he could have won for all of us, but by the time the war spilled into Earth things were pretty much spiraling out of control. Please learn to trust and rely on him. Mostly because he already trusts and relies on you. He needs you, more than you both realize. He's going to want to take on this entire burden himself. He's been alone for a very long time; we both have. It's part of why we get along so well now. But I'm worried that he'll isolate himself with out me there. So please, if you can't find it in your heart to love him, then at least try to be his friend."
Sona couldn't help it, but she felt there was more to than than her future self let on.
"Next, don't turn Saji if you haven't already."
Sona blinked astonishingly at the screen. 'What?'
"Ambrose says that when he returns to the past it'll be the beginning of April, which is the same month I turned him. So if it's not too late, then don't bother. It's not that he's a terrible [Pawn], it's just that you can do better; a lot better. He's a bit of a disappointment." Sona's counterpart explained on the screen. "At first I held high hopes for him. He was eager, earnest, held [Sacred Gear], but I think he definitely wasn't worth the four [Pawn]s I used to turn him into a devil."
"What's wrong with Saji?" Sona couldn't help but wonder.
"I used to think of him as a little brother, always trying to please me and follow me around. But as the years went by I began to realized a few things about him. He had a huge inflated ego, often running his mouth when it wasn't appropriate or taking on challenges that was far beyond his capability to handle. He'd always got into trouble when we went on missions and we'd have to go rescue him. It actually became a joke when planning missions for the war. 'Infiltrate behind enemy lines, accomplish objective, save Saji, head for extraction'. His mouth also got us all into more trouble than I'd care to remember; bragging about things he couldn't do or insulting people who could kill him in an instant. I had to beg for his life quite a few times."
"He constantly sucked up and had this creepy obsession with me." her future self went on. "When he found out that I would only marry someone who defeated me in chess he started challenging me weekly. He did improve, but when you defeat someone in only 2 moves on your first game that person's skill level has no where to go but up. Eventually I caught him cheating. I would some times play out of boredom on late nights to pass the time wherever we were stationed. He somehow found an old laptop with a chess game on it and got someone to feed him moves while he played against me. The person on the other end would move the same piece as I did and then relay the computer's moves to Saji on his earpiece. I figured out he was cheating before the game was finished because there was no way he had improved that much. I punished him quite severely for that and never played against him again."
Sona balked at the declaration her counterpart just said. While she didn't feel regretful for turning Saji, she did feel a bit disappointed that Saji would not only turn out the way he did, but that he used such underhanded tactics to try engage himself to her. She vowed to keep a closer eye on him. 'Perhaps I can stamp out his bad habits before they take root', Sona reasoned.
"There was one night, where in a moment of weakness I slept with him." Her counterpart confessed to Sona's horror. "My parents just died, and Onee-sama was away with her duties as she often was towards the end."
"Mother? Father?" Sona thought disbelievingly as the surprises kept coming, "And Onee-sama not there to grieve over our parents deaths?" Tears began to pool in Sona's eyes as she quickly reminded herself that her counterpart was the last devil in existence in that timeline. When faced with the end of all devil-kind, her Onee-sama had no choice but to fulfill her duties.
"The next day I was so ashamed to have done it, but Saji...", her counterpart growled out, "Saji was over the moon, loudly proclaiming to anyone how he impregnated me." Both Sona's were visibly disgusted at the thought, or memory in her counterpart's case.
"When Onee-sama found out", Future-Sona continued, "she almost forced the two of us to marry which set Saji's mood to even greater heights. Even after Onee-sama found out that I wasn't pregnant she still insisted the two of us wed. After a lot of pleading I managed to talk her out of it, but I think Onee-sama just wanted me to be happy in the end."
"Which brings me to my final request." Future-Sona said with a choked voice. "Give Onee-sama a hug. Give her lots of hugs and kisses too. Let her know how much you love her as often as you can. You never know what the future holds, or how long you can hold onto the ones you love."
Both Sonas, past and future were now trying to hold back tears. Sona nearly wept at the thought of losing her beloved Onee-sama, while her counterpart actually began to cry from the remembering the loss.
"The final war hit her pretty hard. Maō, I would have given anything to see her smile. I even dressed up in one of those magical girl outfits she loved so much just to cheer her up, but all I got was a halfhearted smile in return. She was so tired towards the end."
"Before Maō Lucifer died, he told me she was like that during the devil civil war too. It wasn't until then I realized the whole reason she acted the way she did was because she felt like she lost a bit of her innocence during the civil war. Her whole magical girl obsession was a way for her to get it back and to spread some love and cheer to the devil children through her television show. When I put that magical girl outfit on to cheer her up I failed because she knew… she knew that my innocence had already died and it broke her heart."
Tears now spilled down both of their faces as they wept for their beloved sister.
"The last night I saw her, she crawled into my bed as she often used to do whenever I came home from school. She held onto me and wept. She cried all night and I couldn't do or say anything to comfort her. So I held her till we both fell asleep. When I woke up I discovered that Onee-sama had encased me in a block of ice, the entire underworld lay ravaged before me and I knew. I knew I was witnessing the end of days. The end of our people, of life as I knew it, the death of Onee-sama." Future-Sona sniffed a bit and tried to compose herself. She tried and failed; the tears kept coming. "She knew it was the end before I did. She knew she was going to die. She cried because she knew it was all over and she did the only thing she could have done to save me."
"Damn it!" Sona cursed as she took her glasses off to wipe away her tears. She was crying so hard she couldn't even see clearly. "Damn it, damn it, damn it!"
"So please. Sona, I'm begging you please. Please live. Please love. Take this opportunity, this second chance. Hold onto it and fiercely fight for it. Be the best Sona there could ever be in any timeline. Hold onto your dreams and live them for me. Because by the time you're listening to this I'm already gone." Future Sona said, no longer bothering to hold her tears back. "I'm gone, and you're there in my place. But that's okay. Because together we'll get it right this time."
The DVD ended, but Sona didn't care.
Sona wept. She wept for her future, for her loss, for her lost peerage, for never telling her Onee-sama just how much she truly loved her. Sona wept till she cried herself to sleep and had no more tears left.
