Chapter 29: The End of Options
Flare stood in the early morning sun, alone save for the damaged Gate and his guilt. He wished that he hadn't left Gina alone, after finally getting her back he didn't want to leave her side again. Ever. Unfortunately, his range of options were very limited. If he had told Gina, or Tai, or anyone for that matter, they would have tried to stop him, but this had to be done.
And it could only be done alone.
As the body that he had believed to be Xavius crumbled to ash, Flare had seen Xavius go through this Gate. He had looked slightly different true, the sorcerer's hair had been as white as bleached bone, but it had been him. Flare was certain of it. Xavius had opened this Gate and then gone through it. Thinking back it seemed like there had been a slight ripple in the air as the sorcerer entered. It was probably the spell that had caused the damage to the Gates.
It would take at least three days before the Gate was fully functional, and that was three days too many. Xavius wasn't a god of time yet, and with any luck Flare might not be too late to stop him. Enough time had passed that one person should be able to go through the Gate now, as long as that person had strong enough magic to shield them. This meant that Flare was the obvious choice. He had left a note next to Gina when he left. It was short. He had explained the situation, asked her to forgive him, and told her how much he had loved her.
Flare looked over his shoulder, half hoping and half fearing to see his friends rushing toward him. No one was there. He was still alone. There wasn't any more time to waste. Flare thrust the blue time stone at the Gate and held his breath. A high pitched whistling filled the air for a moment, and then the Gate exploded into existence. It wasn't perfectly circular like the others he'd seen. It was more oblong and angled to one side. Red sparks of electricity crackled around the swirling vortex as it keened angrily in the early morning air. The noise hurt Flare's ears and he took a reflexive step away from the frightening thing.
Taking a deep breath to settle his nerves Flare dropped the time stone to the ground. He would leave it behind so the others could follow once the Gate became fully functional. Hopefully he'd be on the other side to greet them, get slapped by Gina and punched by Tai, scolded by whoever felt the need to scold him, and then go home.
Drawing Crimson Eon, Flare focused his thoughts around his body. Fiery tendrils of heat curled around his arms and spread to his torso, eventually covering his entire form in radiant red flame. Hoping the shield would hold and that he could handle what was on the other side, Flare jumped in.
Xavius sat propped up against a slab of broken concrete that jutted vertically out of the broken earth. His breathing was ragged and his once shimmering black hair was now a bleached white, as though the magic had been bled out of him, and in a way it had. Around him were the skeletons of large buildings not unlike those he had seen in the far future where he had acquired the girl who possessed the Key of Fire. Most of the buildings were wrecked and crumbling, great bars of steel protruding from ruined stone husks. Some of them were nothing more than piles of rubble, indistinguishable as the great buildings they had once been. This was a place of war. The earth and the buildings of man torn apart by man's own violence.
War never changed. Never ended. People fighting amongst themselves in numbers great or small. Whatever the weapons they used, stone, steel, magic, or weapons forged with future technology, the end result was always death and devastation. Though Xavius did have to admit that the sheer amount of destruction that had been wrought upon this place was impressive. He did not hate war, nor did he love it. It just was, and it would always be. Soon he could stop it. If he wished. Maybe he would for a time, or maybe he would create wars larger and more horrible than anyone could imagine. The power to do as he wished would soon be his.
Soon, but not yet. For the moment he sat unmoving in the expanse of ruined buildings. Twenty feet in front of him the small closed Gate hovered silently. It did not move. It had not moved in all the hours since he had emerged from it. He seriously doubted it would open, ever. With the last bits of his magical energy he had damaged it as he made his retreat. He wouldn't have even had enough power for that feat if his mind had not been enhanced by the Chrono Key. Its knowledge of the workings of time had allowed him to do maximum damage with minimum power.
The Gate would recover, but it might take days. By that time he would be gone. They could, of course, try to force it open earlier than that, but the result would likely be their death. He would never know if they tried, his side of the Gate would remain closed until the other sided was healed enough to let someone through. Still there remained a chance of them coming through. They had surprised him in the past, and he had suffered for it. Xavius cursed the young red haired man. Flare was his name. Flare would suffer for an eternity for the pain and insult he had brought upon him. All of those fools, everyone who had stood against him, would suffer. By killing his Vindoppliqous Vessel they had left him beyond weak.
The Vindoppliqous Spell was one of the forbidden magics. Not because of the risk the user faced when employing it, but because the spell required a human soul to use. Xavius did not remember the name of the man he had sacrificed in order to use the spell. It had been some commoner far too arrogant than his powers could afford him to be. The man had likely offended Xavius in some way, though how did not really matter. If it had not been him used as the sacrifice, it would have had to be someone else. That man's soul had spent years inside of Xavius's own, only to be used as the device needed to link Xavius's mind and body with that of the Vindoppliqous Vessel. When he had sensed the presence of Flare and the others he activated the prearranged spell and created a clone of sorts. A body like his in everyway and connected to his by the sacrifice's soul. This was a contingency for the unlikely event that he would be killed in battle. This way he could still fight using the full force of his magic through the Vessel, but if he 'died' his physical body could make a safe retreat.
Now Xavius was glad he had taken the weeks it had cost him to prepare the spell. It turned out that he had needed that contingency after all. The time spent fighting Flare as the Vessel was also spent preparing the final Gate. The Gate he had retreated through and now sat guarding. This Gate had brought him to the time and place where he could enter The Realm Beyond Time. He had not known where or when this place was before attaining the Chrono Key, for there had been no way of calculating its whereabouts. Even now it seemed as though the place and time were completely arbitrary. Still, this was the window in time where the Key could be used.
First he needed to recover. The consequences of a Vindoppliqous Vessel being destroyed were severe, if not permanent or fatal. Normally when one stopped using a Vessel it simply disappeared, and the remaining magic inside of it was returned to the user's body. The result was pain, the less magic that remained to return the greater the pain. When a Vessell was destroyed though, and no magic remained to return, the consequences were more than mere pain. Oh, there had been pain. Xavius had felt pain so terrible and great that it had almost broken his mind. It was all that he could do to finish the Gate and make his retreat. When the pain had passed, he was left without an ounce of magic remaining inside of him.
It was as though the part of his soul that could replenish magic had been closed off. This left him in a very delicate position. The worst part was that physical movement made the situation exponentially worse. His magic would recover, it just needed far more time to do so. If he moved or had run from this place where the Gate was, the place his enemies could find him if they came through, then it would take him weeks or even months to recover his magic, but if he didn't move much, just stayed next to this Gate and sat there meditating from the first instant the pain had receded, then his magic would come back in full in only a couple of days. Some of it had come back within hours. He was still weak, far to weak to cast more than one or two spells before the progress he had already made was reversed.
The Gate flickered, and Xavius's breath froze in his throat. No! This couldn't be! He felt like screaming in rage and frustration. It had been only a single day! One day and no more. It was impossible for the Gate to be opened so fast. Except if...Xavius's mind reeled, trying desperately to comprehend how they could all come through so soon. Then it struck him. They couldn't. The Gate could not support a full three travelers for at least two more days, but it might be stable enough to hold one, and if that one had strong enough magic to protect him he might even survive the journey. Xavius knew at once it was Flare. He was the only one strong enough to travel through the Gate in its current condition. If three of them had gone through, or one of the weaker ones had, then they would have died mid journey and this side would not be opening. It was opening though. Flare was coming. Xavius knew what he had to do and hoped his magic was not so weak that the attempt killed him, but he had no choice.
If he did not want to lose everything he had worked to achieve he had but one option.
Flare could tell something was very different from the moment he stepped into the Gate. The now familiar spinning sensation he had grown to expect was instead replaced with a violent vibration that shook his body to the core. As he focused on increasing the strength of his magical shield the vibration increased until his body grew numb with the sensation. The world pressed in around him, as though the entire universe had compressed into a single point with Flare in the very center.
Claustrophobia began to set in. Flare frantically tried to maintain his shield, but he could no longer tell if he was even using magic. He could no longer tell where his body ended and the rest of existence began. The world was reduced to an inaudible howl that threatened to shatter his skull. Flare fought against the swelling panic, but within the senseless state of chaos he could no longer be sure that he wasn't already dead.
No!
He was still thinking. His mind was still active. That meant he was alive. If he could just keep his mind active and not give in to hopelessness, then there was still a chance he would make it out.
The world vibrated harder. For a single moment Flare felt as though he was growing fuzzy, as though he was about to fade out of existence entirely. Then everything stopped and his stomach lurched. An incredible sensation of freefall overtook him, lasting only seconds before the world began to spin. That once nauseating sensation of time travel now felt completely normal and safe. Relief flooded through him, sanity had returned to the world. With the realization that he was not going to die inside of the Gate came a secondary thought: Xavius was on the other side. Maybe not directly on the other side but somewhere out there. Xavius was out there with the completed Chrono Key. If Flare didn't stop him now, then everything him and his friends had fought for would be for not. The fact that they'd saved Gina wouldn't mean anything if Xavius reached his goal.
Light and noise flooded his senses as Flare exited the Gate, landing on solid ground. Somewhere in the back of his mind it registered that he was in the future, in a place similar to where they had met Paige, only in ruins. This was secondary information. Where he was did not matter. What mattered was the man who stood in front of him. Slightly hunched over as though in pain. His hair was as white as Kyui Wara's, only it shimmered with an unnatural quality as though it was made of glass. His eyes, now a pale silvery color, shone with absolute hatred as he stood there snarling like an enraged beast.
In the moment it took Flare's mind to comprehend this, Xavius was already moving. With a primal growl the sorcerer lunged at Flare, forgoing the use of magic, viciously clawing towards his throat.
Flare's mind didn't have the time to react with magic, but his body had been trained for years to react to a threat. With his sword already drawn Flare lunged forward unleashing his own furious battle cry. Crimson Eon pierced Xavius's abdomen, the sorcerer's own weight impaling him upon the razor sharp blade. Even without time to react, Flare's aim was perfect, his katana cutting through vital organs and delivering a mortal blow.
Xavius's face contorted in agony and Flare saw in his eyes that he knew death had reached him. His forward momentum pushed his body down the length of Flare's katana, his hand groped impotently at Flare's neck, the fingers lacking the strength to do any harm.
Flare's mind swam in adrenaline. Everything had happened so fast that it all seemed anti-climatic. He had expected another duel of magic, one where he'd only have the slightest chance of surviving. Not once did Flare even dare to hope the battle would be this short and simple to win. Xavius powerless, desperate, attacking like a feral beast with a head on assault, a physical assault that couldn't possibly succeed.
Flare had won.
He had beaten Xavius! Everything was over! The man was dying rapidly now, his life bleeding out of his pale eyes as Flare watched. Jubilation exploded through Flare's mind for one beautiful instant.
The instant passed, and the world turned cold.
A chill like nothing Flare had felt in his life enveloped his body. Color fled the world leaving everything a sheet of gray. In stark horror Flare realized that Xavius's hands were still touching him. They lacked the strength to do any physical harm, but where they made contact with his skin, Flare could feel the magic pouring out of them. Flare tried desperately to push the man away, but he could not. Where Flare's hands touched Xavius's body they stuck. Flare stumbled backwards screaming in panic and terror as his mind exploded in pain. The two of them fell backwards into a small crater. Flare landed on his back with Xavius's body on top of his. The world faded into a pain and terror so great that it began ripping his mind apart. The sensation was not simple pain and fear. It was something alien. There was a wrongness to it that was beyond any worldly agony. All that he could do was scream.
Flare screamed until there was no longer any sound to prove that he was screaming. He screamed until there was no longer any pain to scream about.
Flare screamed up until the point that there was no longer a Flare to scream.
