Right now is right; right now is good. Nothing is really important. After the tide comes the flood; at the beach of life. Without reason, without common sense, nothing is in vain. I build my dreams on the sand

And it is, it's okay. Everything is running its course. And it's time for sun; unencumbered and free

Human is called human; because he forgets, because he suppresses. And because he daydreams and nurses. Because he warms you, when he tells you stories. And cause he laughs, cause he lives... You're missing.

The firmament has opened; cloud-free and ocean-blue. Telephone, gas, electric; unpaid for, and yes that's an option too. Share with me your peace; if only borrowed. I don't want your love; I just want your word:

...That it is, it's okay. Everything is running its course. That it's time for sun; unbothered and light

Human is called human; because he strays and fights. Because he hopes and loves. Because he sympathizes and forgives. And cause he laughs, cause he lives... You're missing.

- "Mensch" (transl./German), Herbert Grönemeyer (2002)

Diamond Irie sat curled up in her office chair, in the pitch black darkness of her study, inside her dead quiet house. Her feet were tucked in underneath her, and her gaze was directed at a lit candle in front of her.

Several hours earlier, she had taken all diligent steps of voiding her Roarhaven townhouse of any and all sensory input. The first step was to grab bags of ice, which she stored in her freezer for such occasions, and to transfer them to the fridge.

Next, she had moved on to her security system. Some of its magical runes inherently blocked sound from traveling out of and - most importantly, in this particular case - into the house.

Other runes activated an elaborate security system, which covered the windows, as well as the exterior doors and walls, with a layer of protective coating. Those magical shutters could be made to become transparent and offer a view onto the street and into the house. Alternatively, they could be made to be jet-black on either or both sides, in order to block out any inkling of sunlight or peep of noise.

She had remembered to take her clocks off the walls, and to remove their batteries. Afterwards, she'd sought out the electric breaker, and had simply flicked the master switch. The buzz and vague shine of appliances had wound down, and the house had plunged into darkness and silence.

With the help of her phone's flashlight, Diamond had found her way to her study. She'd settled into her spot by the desk, and now did her best to blend into the serene quiet. All that was left to disturb it, at this point, was the sound of her breathing. As well as the occasional shift of her clothes' fabric whenever she adjusted her posture.

The only light around came from the flame of a candle, directly in front of her. Diamond was holding her hand out above it; palm flat and facing downwards. She wasn't trying to burn herself, she merely held her hand as close as possible until she could clearly feel the heat the flame emitted.

Right beforehand, Diamond had made sure to get rid of the final potential source of disruption. Before she had pocketed her phone, she had switched it to do-not-disturb mode. The very same she had done with Skulduggery's phone, after sneakily nicking it from his suit pocket.

Skulduggery, himself, was sitting on his meditation-chair. She had gotten it for him several months ago. It was a sleek tan-brown leathern arm chair with an extended leg piece and an adjustable backrest. It had caught her eye in a vintage shop, and she had taken it to be cleaned and polished up to look as good as new.

Skulduggery's arms laid slack over their supports, one of his legs was propped up, and his skull hung low to rest.

Diamond could only be sure of this, because she had sat him down there before taking all of the precautions. Judging by her sense of hearing alone, he hadn't moved an inch since then.

Logically, she could have removed herself and the candle, as the only remaining sources of sound and light. However, over the course of this past year, Diamond had learned that his rest was deeper when she stayed close to him.

After several hours of absolute silence, Skulduggery suddenly raised his head, with what sounded like a nasal inhale. Although he hadn't truly been asleep, he seemed to be startling awake from a deep slumber.

Then, he grew still with a silent but clear sense of confusion and anticipation, as his mind tried to catch up with the concept of time and space.

"Welcome back, love," Diamond softly greeted him.

She could see the silhouette of his skull abruptly turn towards the sound of her voice. Although the darkness made it hard to properly distinguish any details, Diamond did her best to keep her gaze directed at where she judged Skulduggery's eye sockets to be.

She smiled, knowing that he could see her perfectly well. "Hey. How are you feeling?"

"Hey...?" Skulduggery echoed; the surprise apparent in his voice, "yes? I mean... I'm fine?"

Movement followed, as he glanced around in her study. Then he grew still again, as though he was listening for something. Diamond waited for him to recollect his bearings.

"You silenced the house, did you...?" Skulduggery then realized, and a sense of contentment mixed in with the stun in his voice.

"I did," Diamond confirmed.

"I don't remember requesting that...?"

"You didn't." She returned her sights to the candle. "I took the liberty of that call."

Skulduggery continued sounding puzzled, "so... For how long have we been sitting here, exactly?"

"Three hours?" she estimated, "four, maybe?"

He abstrusely snorted. "You're kidding me."

Diamond curiously glanced in his general direction. "You don't remember coming here?"

"Of course I remember coming here!" he immediately objected, and then pensively backtracked. "You had dinner, and the tv was running... We decided to play Scrabble, but we first moved to the kitchen so that you could do the dishes. The radio was on, we were talking, and..." Skulduggery faltered. Now he sounded virtually unsettled as he ran into an uncharacteristically blank memory. "And then, I, uhhh..."

"We weren't talking," Diamond simpered at her candle, "I was talking. You were staring into space, pretending to be listening."

"Not pretending well enough, apparently," Skulduggery grimly murmured.

She mustered him as well as possible in the persistent darkness. "Long week?"

"Long decade is more like it," he partly confirmed. "Want to know something odd?"

"Always," she smiled.

"Alright so, for the entire duration of my existence so far, time has mostly been speeding up for me, year by year, century by century... At the same time, it seems, humanity just keeps evolving faster and faster. And it was getting to the point where it became hard to keep up, with the sheer volume of information that flies by me every single day."

"Yeah, I still don't know how you manage it, to be honest," Diamond empathetically agreed.

Encouraged by this, Skulduggery's speech took on even more dramatic tones, until Diamond was waiting to see if he was about to break out into song. "However, as of late...? Time feels as though it's no longer moving, but instead... dragging itself forward, thick like tar creeping across a rocky shore. I wade through it, each step a pointless struggle - one foot lifting only for the other to sink in deeper. I am a blind beast that is trapped in quicksand, flailing in ignorance, each movement tightening the grip that ensnares it, pointlessly thrashing until its neck is already swallowed by the insatiable moor."

Diamond impressively pouted at her candle, "look at you! Having time to ponder over things makes you poetic, I see?"

"Ah, no," he philandered with a teasing smirk in his voice, "that's merely a happy side-effect of my complete and utter infatuation with you."

Diamond surprisedly spluttered a laugh, "oh wow, thanks love!"

"So... what gave me away?" Skulduggery uncomfortably addressed. "I hope I didn't say or do anything bad to you?"

She snorted at the mere suggestion, "no, love, you were sweet. You didn't say or do anything, I could just tell that you're exhausted. When was the last time you've tried to meditate without having me around?"

"A couple of months ago," he blankly replied, "it didn't exactly end well."

"That's what I gathered. Therefore, I decided, this date would be most enjoyable for the both of us, if we moved it up here..." She shot a meaningful smile in his direction, "to your meditating-chair."

"Right. I do not, in fact, remember that part..." Skulduggery admitted with a frustrated grumble. "And you're unfortunately correct, I don't remember coming up here, either."

"Yeah, you were pretty out of it... On autopilot, so to speak."

"My apologies," he murmured.

She looked up, though she still couldn't see much more of him than a vague outline. "Apologies? Whatever for?"

"For not listening to you?" Skulduggery bitterly suggested, "for showing up here like a mindless fleshless zombie? For spending board game night on a fun round of 'Sitting Around in the Dark', Trademark Pleasant?!"

Diamond slimly smiled. "Are you done?"

"For-wasting-your-time," Skulduggery rapidly sputtered, "okay. Now I'm done."

"You didn't waste my time." She demonstrably wiggled her fingers above the candle flame. "You gave me time to practice."

Skulduggery sounded curious now. "What are you working on?"

Diamond helplessly shrugged. "I'm trying to shapeshift the flame."

"Any success yet?"

She sighed with an air of frustration, "nope, none. I've been trying to shift non-physical matter for ages now. Gases, open water, loose molecules in the air, flames... Well I guess, all that stuff you do with your elemental magic. But it never works out for me."

She heard him sit up and push off his chair. Soon after, Skulduggery joined her by the desk and rested his hands on the edge of the tabletop, so that each of his arms were propped up by each of Diamond's sides. Then he watched overtop of her head for a moment, as she allowed for the heat of the flame to softly lick against her skin.

"But you can shapeshift necromancy," Skulduggery eventually noted.

Diamond felt a little secretive smirk overcome her, "yes, so?"

"That is technically non-physical matter."

"Magic is different," Diamond replied. "I've been able to shapeshift magic all my life. The first time Dexter and I shook hands, my magic tried to latch itself onto his...? But his system rejected me so hard, we both got whiplash!"

"That sounds like a skill you aren't using nearly often enough," Skulduggery commented.

Diamond pulled her hand back from the fire, in order to rest it on the desk. Meanwhile, her gaze remained attached to the candle.

"It isn't as much a skill, as it is an ability, and not even a very helpful one at that. I can't manipulate or control the magic that I shapeshift. It just crystalizes and becomes useless."

"And you need to be in physical contact with it?" Skulduggery followed along.

She nodded. "That means I have to shift the part of my body that it's touching. Which means that, if I do it for too long, that part of my body will go gangrenous and eventually die off."

"Right..." he acknowledged with an air of unease. "So, when you said, you could technically keep Lord Vile trapped in your crystals forever... You were bluffing."

"Yeah..." she contritely admitted. "The longest I can go, without causing serious injury to myself, is about ten minutes."

"Ah, I see..." Skulduggery said and sounded like he fretted ever asking the question.

"Also, I can't even really control the process of shapeshifting magic. It just... happens. Automatically."

"For example, when you shapeshifted... me?" Skulduggery cheekily suggested, "the day we met?"

Diamond humorously sniffed at the memory. "Yes, all I did was to transform your hand, as you grabbed mine. Followed by everything that's connected to that hand."

"And then?" he amusedly pressed.

She snickered and twisted her neck, in order to cheekily look up at him. "And then, you took me on the ride of a lifetime!"

Skulduggery chuckled, but he apparently wasn't done with poking holes in her logic. "And yet, you seemed to be well in control when you shifted my necromancy," he raised, "when you and I actually fought, at McDermott's Castle?"

Her amusement faded somewhat. Not at the reminder of that fateful night, but rather at the information she was about to recall.

Diamond rightened her neck and returned her gaze to the candle. "That's because I have years of practice with shapeshifting necromancy, specifically."

She felt his gaze heavily on the profile of her face. "Are you ever going to tell me about that part of your life?" Skulduggery asked, "or should I just stop asking already?"

She heavily sighed. "Yes, to both."

"Hmm," he quietly murmured, "I see."

Diamond didn't like the tense silence that followed. She sighed again, and decided to finally face him directly, by spinning around her desk chair.

Their faces were now only centimeters away from each other. The glow of the candle softly illuminated his skull from below with warm flickering lights. When Diamond exasperatedly looked up at him, Skulduggery expectantly tilted his chin down at her.

"I've mentioned that I used to have another partner, before Nuke?" Diamond decided to say.

"The one that you avoid talking about, like they're the plague?" he bemusedly insinuated, "yes, once or twice. All you've told me, is that it didn't work out between you."

"It didn't," she decisively confirmed. "But in any case...? He was a Necromancer."

Skulduggery paused, and then slowly nodded. "Ah, well, that... makes an awful lot of sense."

"We worked together for about fifteen years," Diamond openly told him. "His approach to necromancy is... much different than yours. Even still, he taught me everything I know about shadow magic."

"Huh," Skulduggery interestingly said. "Is he still alive and kicking?"

She nodded, "yes, he is."

"And does 'he' have a name?"

Diamond felt one corner of her lips twitch cheekily. "Yes, he does."

Skulduggery nodded. "I see," he said again, but teasingly so.

The next silence that followed was less tense and more amicable. Diamond decided to accept this as the conclusion to an otherwise risky conversation, and to leave it at that.

"In that case, why don't you tell me why you're working on shapeshifting fire?" Skulduggery decided to ask. "Might that be at all related to... true name training with Nuke?"

Diamond sighed in dismay at the reminder. "Yup. I've successfully talked him into stopping with the name-calling sessions... So, now it's time for me to step up my own game."

He sounded a bit worried now. "Which means...?"

"Which means... I've been practicing to transform and halt his explosions, the same as I did to your magic. But Nuke's magic is much quicker than mine. It's the same as the beam of an Energy Thrower; by the time the energy hits me it's already too late, and my skin is about to be deep-fried. All I can ever manage is to protect my body beforehand and let it pass me by, the old-fashioned way."

Skulduggery sounded vaguely amused now. "Are you telling me you've been training by... Allowing Nuke to blow you up, over and over again?"

She couldn't help but join in with a little smirk, "yeah, that's basically how that goes..."

He chuckled, "I cannot lie, I would love to witness one of those practice runs one day."

Diamond's smirk grew more taunting. "Never, not in a million years!"

He chuckled again, and then nodded to the candle. "Well, then. May I, at least, suggest a solution to your current predicament?"

Her eyes twinkled at this offer. "Yes, please do."

Skulduggery spun her chair back around to its original position. He returned to his own original position as well; hunched over above her head, one arm on each of her sides. Yet he freed up his right hand from the desk and took a hold of hers.

Holding it out flat, he placed her hand above the candle, with her palm facing downwards. This time however, her hand wasn't quite as close to the tip of the flame. She could barely even feel the heat emitted by the tiny fire.

"As much as I admire your commitment to pushing your boundaries..." Skulduggery told her, "you might need to accept that, as you aren't an Elemental, being able to shapeshift fire might be too tall of an ask for you."

Diamond sighed. "I thought you said, you had a solution?"

"Patience, my dear," Skulduggery amusedly taunted. "If you accept that you cannot transform the flame itself, you'll allow yourself to look further; to think outside of the box."

Diamond could follow this logic, so she quietly nodded with comprehension, as she kept her eyes focused on their hands, hovering above the flame.

"When I threw that shadow knife at your chest, and you transformed it. I could see you fight the urge to shift, until it had touched you. Do I remember that correctly?"

She nodded on.

"If you try to do that with Nuke's magic, you're correct, it's already too late. The emitted heat of his fire alone will torch your skin, even before the magic itself has reached you. Hence, you'll want to focus on a different sensation. One that comes earlier on."

"Which one," she muttered.

Skulduggery moved his hand which held hers, and minimally nudged it up and down in the air. Diamond closed her eyes and continued focusing on the sensation, tried to find the slight differences in temperature, as he manipulated the distance between her hand and the flame.

"When it comes to heat, there is a field of pressure that precedes it," Skulduggery continued explaining close to her ear. "It's just a tiny one, in this case. If you hold your hand directly into the heat, you won't be able to find it, as the pressure develops in the area where the hot air of the fire meets the cold air of its environment."

Diamond silently agreed. She knew the science, and she could feel what he was talking about, as he gently and repeatedly sunk the palm of her hand through that very area. Eventually, she tensed up her arm, in order to stop her hand on the right spot. Yes, right there, she could vaguely sense the pressure difference in the air.

"I think I've got it..." she murmured in focus.

"Excellent," he praised, but continued making her hand bob up, and then down against the pressure field. "Now, imagine it to be a threat. Don't think about the fire. Think of the sheer amount of destruction that a shock wave, alone, can cause. Some might even argue, it's the most dangerous part of any detonation."

Diamond intently followed his instructions. She thought of the day that she had stood in the British Sanctuary, as Nuke had blown it up. She invisioned the manner in which the shock wave itself had thundered, had shaken the earth, had burst apart any type of rock and concrete in its path. Had popped human bodies right in front of her eyes, before desintegrating everything to ashes inside a roaring sea of flames.

This process of imagining that horrifying moment was apparently visible on her face, as Skulduggery let go of her hand and let her continue on her own. She made sure to keep it moving downwards, softly nudged it against the affirmentioned pressure point. It moved position just slightly every time, as the flame gently flickered at even the faintest of drafts.

"Your magic is defensive by nature," Skulduggery softly continued talking into her ear, "it's therefore no surprise that your natural instinct is to freeze in place or to move backwards..."

Diamond nodded in understanding, as well as with a faint sense of awe at his various insights. She made an attempt at concluding his point; "but right now I'm moving my hand forward; towards it?"

"Precisely," Skulduggery contentedly confirmed. "So if you want to shapeshift Nuke's magic, you'll want to anticipate the pressure, not the heat. And as it's about to come in contact with your hands, you move them forward, against, the pressure field. If you shapeshift your hands in that moment, you might be able to... catch it."

Diamond opened her eyes but kept on moving her hand accordingly. Yet despite his unsurprisingly clever thinking, she did have an objection to voice. "But air pressure is also non-physical matter. How do you know it's any different than the fire?"

"Well," Skulduggery replied with a not-so-hidden smirk. "What does a pressure field have in common with my sense of humour?"

Diamond bemusedly snorted, "I don't know, what does?"

"It's something you can just about grasp."

She ironically rolled her eyes, "hilarious!"

"What I'm saying is;" Skulduggery amusedly elaborated, "I don't believe the determining factor to be whether it's physical, or non-physical matter, which you're trying to transform. I think the difference is whether you feel the object on your skin... whether you feel that it's something you could grasp."

"Huh... Makes sense...?"

"Now, one can't exactly touch a shock wave..." he meaningfully concluded, "but, in some way, one also very much can."

Diamond could agree with his sentiment once again, as she felt her hand move against it over and over again. Although this technically wasn't possible, she felt like she could somehow curl her fingers around it, and nestle it in the palm of her hand like a solid sphere.

Eventually, Diamond decided not to overthink it any further, and to simply go with her instincts from here. After all, closing her eyes and relying only on her magic and her gut feeling, was how she had once beaten Lord Vile. Or at least, how she had manipulated him into a ceasefire. In the end, no one could ever truly defeat Lord Vile. And a draw was likely the furthest she would ever come again, when it came to surviving another fight with the Death Bringer himself.

Behind her shut eyelids, Diamond realised that her thoughts had wandered away from the exercise, and to the man standing close behind her. She admitted to herself, she might have been too distracted to continue.

"I'm not sure if this is going to work out," she said to Skulduggery, as he likely was waiting for something to happen.

Skulduggery amusedly sniffed close-by, "whatever do you mean?"

"You're distracting me."

"A-ha?" At this piece of information, his voice now carried an air of cockiness, "is that so..."

Diamond kept her eyes shut and her hand moving ever onward, but she made sure to reply to him. "Yeah, if my nature is to be defensive, then yours is to be distracting."

Skulduggery quietly laughed. Diamond could tell that he had found her jab sincerely funny. Yet, for some reason, he was holding back on the volume of his laughter, like he was being extra careful not to startle her.

"Diamond?" he amusedly said, "would you open your eyes?"

She frowned and opened her eyes. And Diamond found, with absolute astonishment, that she had been successful all along.

Tiny shields of crystal were forming from an extremely thin layer of diamond, which grew down and outwards from the center of her hand. They spread over the rounded shape of each pressure bubble, but only briefly so. The bubbles quickly popped and immediately disappated, whenever the hot air spread against the barrier that was her hand. And yet, every time she moved her hand downwards again, another tiny shield appeared in almost the same spot.

As Diamond realized what she was doing, she gasped in surprise! And purely in order to prove Skulduggery right, it seemed, she defensively ripped her hand away from the candle.

Diamond abruptly turned her chair around, and stared at Skulduggery in awe. "I did it. I actually did it."

"Indeed you did." He moved backwards from her a little, in order to proudly straighten up. This made him look evidently smug.

As the stun and awe was slowly replaced by an inclination to tease him, as well as to flirt with him, Diamond's wonderous expression soon became replaced by a coy smile.

"You know, I've been quite enjoying having a true mad genius as a boyfriend," she equally flirted and teased. "Everyone likes to tell you about the disadvantages of the mad part...? But they usually neglect to mention the advantages of the genius part."

Skulduggery gladly accepted the compliment with a similarly teasing undertone, "I couldn't agree with you more."

Diamond grinned and gave him a peck on the cheekbone.

Skulduggery quietly chuckled to himself, about one thing or another, and then straightened up fully. He reached below his blazer, into the pocket that usually contained his cellphone.

When he discovered that pocket to be empty, he froze. "Where is my phone?"

Diamond pointed her thumb in the direction of his meditation chair, "side table."

"Ah." Skulduggery walked away into the dark part of the room.

A moment later, his phone screen lit up. It brightly illuminated his skull, and cut through the serene darkness in the room. Skulduggery glanced at her. Then, without comment, he turned off the do-not-disturb mode that she had activated, entirely without his say-so or permission.

Next, his gaze got fixed on the screen. The manner in which he proficiently checked the messages that flooded in, told Diamond that his mind was back to racing at the regular manic speed.

It seemed; their moment of peace and quiet was officially over.

Eventually, Skulduggery looked up to find her gaze on him. "Duty calls. Should I switch the power back on?"

She patterned him. Hid the concern that settled in her gut. "Sure, love."

Skulduggery returned his attention to the news on his phone, and safely navigated out of the dark study. The light of the screen moved away and disappeared behind the doorframe.

Diamond deeply sighed, but she made sure to do so quietly. Then she listened to Skulduggery's footsteps, as he walked down the stairs and to the storage room where the breaker was located. Soon after, a loud clack echoed through the house, as he flicked up the main power lever.

The lights turned on in a couple of rooms, including the bright desk lamp in front of Diamond. She narrowed her eyes at it.

The humming of appliances wound up to create their usual background tune. She heard Skulduggery return the bags of ice to the freezer. She reminded herself to crush it up sooner rather than later. An uneasy sensation in her gut told her, it wouldn't be long until she would have to arrange another one of these emergency nap sessions.

Once her eyes had adjusted to the bright light, Diamond blew out her candle. She somberly watched the flame as it distinguished, and the whisps of smoke from the hot wick as they dissolved in the air.

When even the smoke had ceased, she stood up, left the office, and joined Skulduggery downstairs.

"Hmm... That's odd..." he murmured as he paced through the kitchen, still staring at his phone screen.

"What's odd?" Diamond asked. She walked past him to sit down on one of the chairs nearby.

"Valkyrie called me, but now she isn't picking up."

"When was this?"

"This was about..." Skulduggery clicked around on his cell, "fifteen minutes ago."

"Did she leave a..." Diamond was interrupted by the ringing of an incoming call.

The screen showed Valkyrie's name. Skulduggery picked up and immediately pulled the phone away from the side of his skull.

Valkyrie's voice came through as a hectic yell. Even though the speaker wasn't activated, she was speaking loudly enough for Diamond to clearly understand her every word.

"Finally!" Valkyrie yelled over the noise in the background, "where the hell are you?!"

"Why are you yelling at me?" Skulduggery grumbled.

"I'm in a fight! One-handed, I might add!"

"That doesn't mean you need to..."

"Skulduggery, focus!" Valkyrie yelled, "Monster-attack in Roarhaven! I repeat; monster-attack!"

On cue, an inhumane voice screeched on the other end of the line. A series of hard, scratchy beats resounded, as Valkyrie used her phone as a weapon. In response, the creature squealed and hissed much alike a feral cat.

Skulduggery sharply turned and swiftly strode out of the kitchen. Diamond jumped from her chair and rushed after him, to the security panel by the front door. He opened the panel cover and looked away, as Diamond put in the security code, then they quickly worked in tandem to deactivate the various security measures.

"Are those the same monsters our witnesses have been seeing?" Skulduggery meanwhile asked.

"Duh!" Valkyrie impatiently replied, "now get down here dammit!"

"Where is 'here'?" he pressed, "where are you?"

"Just...!" Valkyrie frustratedly paused and momentarily focused on kicking a monster. "Just, open! The damn door!"

Once they had finally managed to deactivate the silencing symbols, Diamond unlocked the front door and ripped it open.

Immediately, sounds of battle washed over from only blocks away! Guns were blasting, people were yelling, monsters were screeching...

They looked at each other.

"I'm on my way," Skulduggery said, hung up the phone, and rushed to put on his shoes.

Diamond observed him with growing unease. She was well aware that her decision to mute his cellphone was the main cause of the current stress levels.

"Should I help?" she carefully asked.

Skulduggery glanced up at her, curtly nodded in confirmation, and went back to tying his shoelaces. Diamond followed his example of hurrying to slip into a pair of shoes. They pulled over their jackets, and he put on his hat. Then, they ran out the door.