Story:The End of Eternity/E7

 VII 

“This battle will likely be the last they will subject us to,” Arend stated simply. These were the first words he had spoken in hours, for the entirety of his mind had been subjected to serious thinking and constant analysis of every possible outcome in front of him. He stood, in his eternal vigil, with his hands in his pockets and with his back to the wind. Klaytaza stood beside him. They were both standing on the roof of a skyscraper that was not very far from Arend’s house. The skyscraper, which used to be an office building turned factory, was now one of many abandoned structures in the city. There were no resources available to remove these extraneous structures and no parties willing to use it for the moment, so it simply continued to stand among the cityscape. There were as many dead, empty buildings as there were ones lit up by efficiency and lights, and they all stretched past the horizon in every direction.

Both the Key and her Master were in their school uniforms, as usual, even though they had been at their perch for hours after school for the day had commenced. Now that the climate was beginning to change, Arend began to wear his jacket instead of giving it to his companion, for he could feel the cold and Klaytaza did not.

“That would be the most logical action for them to take, and they most likely will come in a group in order to distract us quicker,” Arend continued. His theory was becoming more and more clear to him as the temperature continued to drop over the past two weeks since he destroyed the man that was once his teacher.

The Collapse had scarred the world and had come close to outright ending it. What persisted and now continued to live was a fragment of its former glory; held back from what it could be and lost from what it once was. No aspect of it had changed in those years since it had occurred – the temperature rarely changed; diseases and ailments ceased to adapt and spread through the populace; mutations and aesthetic variations in humans slowly but surely phased out; all was becoming one weak contingency. Change had ceased to exist.

That was why this sudden and noticeable change in climate had been so stressful to Arend. He had never experienced anything like it before – while he had anticipated some part of his normal life and visible environment to change as a sign of the world beginning to be destroyed and reborn, he definitely did not expect it to come in the form of climate change, or at least not for this change to be one of the first visible signs. How was he supposed to combat that? Where was the contingency plan, how could that be manipulated by time control? Klaytaza was so powerful and her boundless power was all his to command, but there were limits even to his intelligence, and this was just something he could not wrap his head around.

But even though he did not know how it was occurring, or how yet to stop it, Arend was completely sure that the Thousand Eternal ritual was indeed beginning. He knew that without a doubt in his mind or a waiver in his heart.

Even though he expected it to begin soon, and he had known the scope of its purpose, seeing it in action was beginning to shake him. It was just so mind-boggling; the whole thing threatened everything he knew about logic and understanding of the physical world. To change the climate of the entire world would involve affecting the rays of light and radiation coming from the sun itself; this could either be accomplished by erecting an additional atmosphere layer around the entire earth or weakening the power of the sun as it burned ever bright in space. Both options were equally terrifying.

Would he really be able to fight something like this, and win? What was worse – it was entirely possible that the temperature drop was just the result of one Key’s powers. That would mean there were still 996 Keys he would eventually have to destroy, all with their own unique powers that could rival Klaytaza’s own. The odds were definitely against him.

But that was simply something he would have to endure if he wanted to prove to the world that what he pioneered was indeed the truth. The true fate of humanity – the fate that it deserves without a doubt – would be decided in the Thousand Eternal ritual. That was what Klaytaza said; that was what all the Keys knew. That was what the Creator had told them.

And so it would be.

“Well?” Arend looked to Klaytaza, who was staring off into the tumultuous skies with a blank expression. He had suddenly remembered what he was talking about and wondered what her opinion on it would be. “Do you have any idea who will come after us next, or how many?”

“There are two moons,” she stated simply.

“…What?” Arend looked at her for a second, confused, before gazing up to the sky himself. His blood ran cold and his jaw fell slightly open. What Klaytaza said was correct – there was indeed a second moon, looming in the sky with silent, menacing intent.

The sky was the same as it was before; dark, full of slowly unmoving fog, and slightly misty around the crescent moon. But opposite the normal moon, almost on the other side of the sky, was another moon. This one was unlike the innocent white of the natural phenomenon; it was made of and radiated a hue of dark red, so pure in hue that it looked as if it had to have been a natural creation. The way it shimmered and lit up the night sky, it was hard for Arend to believe that he had never seen it in the sky before, but it was this very quality of ethereal, unusual beauty that made him completely sure that the moon should not have existed like it did.

He stared at the second moon in awe for a complete minute before he blinked in confusion. Could it be - ? He squinted, hands switching between closed fists and open palms writhing for truth. Yes, he realized; his eyes weren’t deceiving him. This was the truth. What he was seeing couldn’t have been an illusion: it was too real, too natural, so convincing that he could have sworn by pain of death that what he witnessed was something completely normal.

The moon became slightly larger. It was moving closer to the earth.

“This is bad,” Arend muttered to himself as he stepped backwards. The more he nervously attempted to edge away from what he saw, the larger the artificial moon seemed to loom in the horizon. “This is very, very bad.”

There was only one explanation for this phenomenon, and it was an obvious one. Not only was the moon coming towards the earth, but it was caused by – and likely controlled by – the powers of a Key to Eternity. Either that was the case, or the giant constellation was some sort of indicator for the Thousand Eternal ritual. Regardless of which outcome was the truth, Arend was taken completely off guard.

Strategizing and carefully planning plans of action was no longer as sensible as before. Not with such a drastic time limit being enforced. The message was clear; this moon was going to usher in the end of the world, and if Arend and Klaytaza didn’t aggressively stop it, all life would be reborn.

Arend, his hair and clothes slowly moving along with the cold wind, continued to stare at the moon. Its movements were so slow that they were almost imperceptible, but they were still there. He didn’t know the math required to estimate such a value, but at the rate it was going, he was sure the moon would collide into the planet in a month or less. And when that happened, almost all – if not the entirety – of the human race would be completely eradicated.

He had two options he could take here; seek the downfall of society and man before destroying all the Keys in the aftermath, or finding some way to postpone the Thousand Eternal ritual. Moving it to a later date was all he could, Arend knew. Once a battle started, it would be hard to escape and rethink one’s allegiances.

“Klaytaza,” Arend stammered. “Whose power is this? What can we do about that?”

“They loom,” she said darkly. Unlike him, she was not looking at the moon, but rather the entrance to the platform they stood on. She wasn’t talking of the false constellation, either.

“Wha… What?” The boy’s mind whirled to connect with what his companion was saying. “The enemies? Now? No, this wasn’t what I planned for… Damn it!” He whirled, one hand going through his messy nest of hair and the other grabbing Klaytaza by the hand. “Prepare for battle!” She nodded slightly. “And don’t stop time for it, either,” he added immediately afterwards. She looked at him with those bright eyes of hers and nodded before beginning to transform.

The boy reached into his pocket, removing the golden pen and tossing it high into the air. As he did so, Klaytaza began to shine with odd waves of light – rather, with columns of pure darkness that shone just as bright as the sunlight.

The Key reached one of her hands into the air towards where Arend tossed the pen, arching her back as she did so, and in an instant her shoulder-length silver hair had grown out to its long, original length. Her school uniform evaporated into nothingness, and her skin shone with the same darkness for a moment before the absence of light became corporeal and formed her black bodysuit. From this came her shoulder, chest, hip, and wrist armors, as well as her pointed crown, which were all of a hard material and manifested without a catalyst. Whilst her transformation was occurring for all of two seconds, a golden aura of ancient symbols wrapped around her body and Arend’s hand, and it faded away once her metamorphosis was complete. In the end, she landed back on her feet from the temporary levitation and her outstretched hand opened. The pen landed harmlessly in her hand, and after another bright shine of the pitch black light, the now battle-ready Klaytaza held her double-sided longsword in her hand.

She stood, twirling her weapon to her side, and Arend stepped to her side. Taken as ever in her beauty, especially in her coveted default form, he was powerless to his body’s urges, and wrapped a hand around her waist. With the pull of his grip, she gravitated close to his body, and the two’s faces were mere inches away. Klaytaza looked at him with her deeply shaded eyes, bright and completely dim at the same time, and they took his breath away as strongly now as they did when they first met.

“We can do this,” he breathed. “I can’t afford to lose you. The world can’t afford to lose us.” Arend gulped and searched her face again for any trace of emotion or inflection, but found none – as expected. “You believe in me, don’t you?”

“Yes, Master. Of course. I trust in your existence. I trust in your touch. I trust your meanings. Even though there is no meaning to be found in humanity whatsoever.”

“Then… Let us give the world meaning. Let us give humanity its meaning.” Arend’s eyes flickered and his lips twitched as he let go of the embrace and backed away. As the two of them averted their eyes and looked to the gate at the same time, they saw that they were no longer alone.

There was only one person standing near the entrance, Arend realized after a second. He had blinked, and suddenly there was a man near the gate who had not been there before. The man was dressed completely in black, and was staring at the moon much as Arend had been doing mere moments ago. He did not know if this sudden vision was a Key or a host, but he knew they would spell trouble.

Arend blinked again, and the figure disappeared once more. His breath hitched in his throat, panic slowly rising in his heart, as his mind raced and fumbled to understand what he was facing.

Klaytaza yelped and decisively pushed Arend, sending him to the side of her. As he looked at her in surprise, the figure in black appeared where she had once stood, and slashed a gigantic blade at the two of them. With Arend out of the way, Klaytaza had room to swing her longsword in response and block the attack. The motion happened within seconds, and let loose a resounding clang that would have indicated the destruction of a normal, delicate weapon – but what these two were battling with were no orthodox, mortal weapons.

Arend, in the brief instant it took for him to regain his footing, looked over the enemy that had attacked them. He had correctly assessed the figure to be a man, dressed in all black, but now he could see that the man was indeed a Key to Eternity, like Klaytaza. He had a short crop of pitch black hair, and his bodysuit was accentuated by hard, glistening cosmic armor, in a deep emerald green shade rather than Klaytaza’s vibrant vermillion. His eyes were green as well, and although his body wasn’t very large or particularly muscular, he swung his weapon – a very long sword that resembled a scimitar in that it curved and widened – with clear strength and exemplary speed. He was a match for Klaytaza when it came to swordsmanship and brute force, which meant the battle would be settled by their respective powers – or the intellect of their hosts.

Arend backed away from the fight by a few steps. He didn’t want to use Klaytaza’s temporal manipulation unless it was absolutely necessary, for once it ran out, he had no greater aces to use. The fact that the Key was alone, at least visibly, meant that the Master was somewhere, hiding, waiting, and strategizing. In the brief seconds that passed while Klaytaza and the male battled, Arend’s mind ran on overtime, struggling to come up with a projection of what would happen next, and how he would face it.

He had not had the time to ask Klaytaza for specifics regarding the oncoming presences, Arend realized bitterly. It was with a frustrated heart that he began to realize what was going on around him. The enemies- probably more than one Key and Master pair, as he had predicted - had attacked them head-on, likely using their strongest physical Key in order to bank on Klaytaza’s instincts to preserve Arend’s life, and would no doubt use the moments in which Klaytaza was occupied to set up and attack and mercilessly slaughter Arend. He had little defense against such a strategy; when he had imagined all possible ways the enemies would attack him next, this was one of the most daunting ones, the very scenario he had wanted to face least.

Klaytaza’s fight ended at this very moment, mere instants after it had begun. The emerald Key finally succeeded in drawing her blade away thanks to both the awkward length of Klaytaza’s weapon in close range and the curvature of his weapon, and whipped the discarded blade into the air. It was then that Arend confirmed that the emerald Key was not worried about fighting Klaytaza, for his piercing green eyes immediately looked to Arend, and the man disappeared.

Arend could consciously feel time moving, did not experience any of the oddness that occurred when Klaytaza froze time, and did not notice any change in his consciousness – this meant that the enemy’s power and disappearance was not one that involved time manipulation. The only other explanation, he realized in a microsecond, was space manipulation.

He instinctively ducked into a roll forward, and in doing so, looked behind him and saw the wide arc of a blade sweeping through where his body once stood. As he regained his footing, backing away from the scene with bated breath, Arend knew that he had only narrowly escaped death – through luck.

Klaytaza retrieved her sword and rushed through the air towards the enemy that had eluded her. As she did so, her gaze met Arend’s, and he caught the hidden meaning in the silent motion – his Key was watching and waiting, gauging his reactions and his movements. She wouldn’t activate her time manipulation state without his command; this was something Arend had reinforced to her not long after learning of her ability. No, she wouldn’t stop time unless told to, not even if he was killed… but Arend did not want things to get that bleak.

‘Just a little bit longer,’ Arend thought, before the male Key disappeared again as Klaytaza swung at him. The boy bit his lip and lowered his center of gravity slightly. Dodging the next attack, relying solely on his own reflexes, would be difficult, but it was the only option he had.

Then he noticed the arrow of light cutting through the air, aimed right for his heart. The male materialized a foot or two behind and to the side of him right after Arend noticed the bright light coming towards him, his curved blade moving downwards at an angle that would behead Arend. He could dodge the arrow or the sword, but not both, before he was killed by either one of them. Suddenly he realized how flawed it was for him to restrict Klaytaza’s time manipulation to his command, because in a situation such as this, there would be no way he could speak to her and she could react before the blade dismembered him and the light bullet slayed him.

There were suddenly no options left but for Arend to stop time himself, as impossible as the task seemed. Time slowed down impossibly for his consciousness as he noticed the objects of his death coming closer and closer. His life did not flash before his eyes; he thought only of escaping. All he could imagine was him stopping time, finding some way to get out of his predicament, and finally achieving his end goal of watching humanity cease to exist. He wished for it with all his heart, mentally lashing out at time itself, and in response all the world stopped.

Although he had experienced the time stop numerous times before, including when he and Klaytaza had practiced initiating and acting during the experience for the past few days, Arend was still taken somewhat aback by the sensation of existing outside of time. Any action he took would only occur once time was compressed, but it continued to flow within his own consciousness as well as Klaytaza’s, as if it were a dimension of its own. He knew not whether time could truly be classified as being separate from space, or whether it was theoretically possible to dissect, compress, and analyze it without being insane or hallucinating, but these facts did not matter now. Now that he had used one of his trump cards, there were only two left to use for the next 24 hours, and if they didn’t kill the hosts of the attacking enemy Keys – an unlikely feat, considering they only had five seconds of time before Klaytaza’s power reverted – then the trump card lost much of its initial impact.

But now, considering he had stopped time by his own volition, the sensation and burden upon him was magnified many times. Instantly weary and surprised but realizing he could waste no time in being surprised, Arend silently backed away from the male Key’s strike trajectory and moved away from the incoming arrow of light. Unlike the weapon used by Arend’s very first enemy, this beam of light was thin and clearly shaped like an actual arrow, most likely meaning it was designed for accuracy rather than pure power. The trail of the arrow led Arend’s vision to the edge of the courtyard, where he could see a woman holding a notched wooden bow, aiming right for him; likely the source of the attack. She was dressed in normal attire, and on her shoulder hung a tall and thin man who had one arm extended to grasp the top of the bow. The man had on a black bodysuit as well, accentuated by a pale yellow set of armor, and was clearly the Key powering the woman’s attack. They would be the next ones to take down.

Under the short duress of the time stop and the painful burden imposed on his body – Arend began to feel his heart beat slower and slower, as if some invisible hand were holding it tightly and preventing its full beating – Arend was only able to move a few feet away from where he stood before time stopped, and could take no offensive action. But Klaytaza continued to move about, completely unaffected.

As soon as time stopped, she had turned and thrust her blade behind Arend. The attack effortlessly skewered the emerald Key through his chest, and she finished the blow by raising her weapon upwards and bisecting the Key’s head and extended arms. Following that, she looked to Arend, and he only nodded at the archer and her Key. Klaytaza bounded off to attack, but the distant attackers were meters away, and she would not make it to them before the frozen time regained its strength.

After commanding Klaytaza, Arend turned to look around the platform in order to scan for further enemies – and stopped in his tracks. He had expected to see the false moon moving towards the earth as it was before, and he had resolved not to worry about its implications until after the battle, but what he was witnessing now stunned him beyond belief.

The entrancing crimson moon continued to loom towards the earth, ever so slowly. Despite the slightly perceptible cracks in all of the atmosphere, despite the complete stillness of all living things, and despite the fact that time itself had stopped – the destiny of the human race continued to march towards oblivion and redemption.

In that instant, time continued to flow.

Arend whirled about, suddenly feeling the presence of another and rushing to focus on the task at hand, and noticed a man standing not five paces in front of him. Arend backed away slightly, poised for action as the wind blew past his body and disturbed his hair, but did not feel panic because the man was a human and was unarmed. Still, Arend wanted to end the encounter, so that he wouldn’t be open for another sneak attack.

“So time manipulation is your secret,” spoke the man who had appeared out of nowhere. He was wearing an ill-fitting jumpsuit of faded navy blue, the elbows and knees of the outfit stained a permanent brown from dirt. His hands were crossed across his chest, and his short brown hair was only slightly darker than the complexion of his brown skin. He had a hard, serious face and small eyes – the face of a worker, one used to seeing the underside of society and its industries.

“You label us with confidence,” Arend muttered. He backed away again, ever so slightly, and his eyes darted around the area once again. Another arrow of light flew into the scene, but missed awfully and blasted into the ground a few feet away from his feet. The impact point was small and charred.

“I am gifted with space manipulation,” the worker stated, “So I noticed how you and your Key moved without moving.” He tilted his head and disappeared; the next instant, he stood to the side of Arend. “But our powers only move us – we must then move after the effect takes place. When your Key used your powers, it was as if you had teleported and attacked, all within an immensely small time frame. This is impossible without the manipulation of time.”

“You’re quite clever, for a common industry grunt,” replied Arend. He deliberately chose to avoid the discussion of Klaytaza’s powers, and purposely jabbed at the enemy’s profession in the hopes of distracting and angering him, even if for just a second. There was no other way for him to prevail without Klaytaza’s input, and she was still occupied with battling the archer.

The worker chuckled. “Through the contract with Eternity, God gifts us all with divine knowledge – with complete confidence in our fates – and with celestial power. That is why, as you shiver in your icy tundra of rebellious despair, we will never waiver, never fear, and never back down. No matter what we were before the creator’s intervention, and whether or not we live or die, all are destined for the same glorious rebirth.” The worker spread his arms wide, and from behind him, a bright light shone.

“Shit!” Arend muttered as he ducked to his knees again. From behind the figure of the impoverished worker flew pure white tridents, flying through the air and aimed right at Arend’s body. He jumped instinctively, moving to let the weapons pass beneath him, but immediately realized his mistake. From both sides of his vision he could see two large, muscular female Keys, each with an identical white trident in their hands, each with their rippled arms cocked backwards, prepared to throw their weapons at him. And they aimed right for where he was in the air.

They threw the spears and they loosed through the air with incredible speed. It was all Arend could do to force time to stop again in time; without the incomprehensible speed of the mind, and the power that Klaytaza’s influence had gifted him, he would have been too late and the enemies would have skewered him many times over.

Although time had frozen for the second time, Arend’s jump continued as if time and gravity were acting ad nauseam, but the tridents remained suspended in the air. As he landed back on his feet, Arend barely avoided getting grazed by the sharp weapons. He glanced behind his back; Klaytaza had taken this opportunity to finish off the archer and her Key, but wouldn’t make it back to him before time continued. This battle was on him.

The boy’s forehead began to sweat from the incredible weight on all of his body as he grabbed the tridents to the side of him, both aiming for his chest, and aimed them at the tall feminine Keys, both identical in their black bodysuits and dark blue armor. Nothing held any weight in this timeless dimension, but the strain of stopping time twice in such a short time, not to mention acting in these slivers of uninterrupted consciousness, was taking a huge toll on Arend’s body. A gasp of pain escaped his lips as he launched the spears at the twin Keys, each aimed at the exact center of the chest, where Klaytaza had long ago pointed out as the location of the Core was in each shinra being.

Time resumed, and the impaled Keys immediately fell to the ground, temporarily deactivated. The tridents they had thrown missed Arend harmlessly. The worker overlooking the scene lowered his hands in shock and allowed his visage to lose all color.

“You knew of my abilities, did you not,” panted Arend in response to the worker’s dismay. “But don’t worry. This is the fate you were destined for, right? Defeat is just a means to the end, being the creator’s salvation – right?”

“Y-yes… He will lead us to salvation… That can include you, if you cease your resistance and choose to ally with the Thousand Eternal Salvation,” answered the worker.

As he began to catch his breath, Arend bent down and picked up a trident near his foot. It was considerably heavier than it was when time and gravity did not exist. Still panting, Arend began walking towards the worker confidently, and in response the worker teleported again to a location, a few meters in front of the boy. He kept glancing behind Arend and his face continued to fall. Arend knew this meant that Klaytaza was advancing.

“You ask me to surrender, but it is you who has lost. Your Key is destroyed, its Core torn apart by my own strength, your ally has failed to eliminate me from afar, and the clever trident gambit – perpetuated by twin Keys, nonetheless – has failed. Your Key will regenerate, but only in time, as with the twins. Nothing will save you now.” Now Arend shoved his free hand into his pockets and began to confidently smirk at the grunt. “I noticed you teleported a shorter distance away this time. So your powers get weaker the longer your Key is out of commission? Interesting…”

The worker gulped and teleported to the right. He was getting closer to the railing at the edge of the roof, which was all that separated the flat tiles of the roof from the dark and murky street, many floors below. Just as Arend predicted, the worker’s teleport distance was incidentally shorter than it was during his previous attempt.

Klaytaza waltzed up to Arend, a hole just large enough for an arrow visible in her left shoulder and right hip punched right through her slim body. Blood dripped from these wounds, but she showed no sign of pain or handicapped movement. She stood at his side for but a moment, and the two of them made eye contact for even less of a moment, but still Arend relished in the bright ruthlessness of her visage.

The rebellious Key continued to stalk forward, her blade raised into the air, ready to eviscerate the unarmed industry worker. In desperation, when she was mere paces away from him, the worker took a knee, and held his hands in tight fists.

“You won’t get away with this,” the worker stammered, his voice loud but shaking with fear. It was amusing, Arend found, how the enemy had spoken of unshakable confidence and powerful faith, but trembled in the face of certain death. “God’s army is infinite! If we cannot save you, we will not hesitate to destroy you!”

“What,” Arend replied with a dark smile, “and accomplish my goal for me?”

Klaytaza swung her blade downward without a word; the worker disappeared, and instantly was replaced by a boy who looked no older than Arend’s sister. He looked surprised and shocked at his situation, but did not have a chance to do much more than look up in complete disarray before Klaytaza’s blade separated his body into two parts by a clean transversal cut. The segments of his corpse splashed to the ground, followed by a reliable stream of blood ejected by the lifeless body.

Surprise marred Arend’s expression as Klaytaza turned towards him. “So,” he muttered to himself as he looked over the various corpses around him, “the man used his teleportation to switch places with someone else in order to save his own skin. Some fearless warrior of God he was.” The eyes of the twin female Keys noticeably glazed over in the manner of the first Key they had defeated – Arend figured that the boy Klaytaza had killed must have been their host.

She dismissed her sword from existence and began to kneel over the fallen Keys. “I sense no other Keys or Masters in our near vicinity, Master. We have won this battle.”

“So we have,” Arend confirmed. With a pained shiver, he turned, dropping the trident and allowing his hand to return to his comfortable pockets, and looked to the red moon. He had survived his second battle, thanks to the power that he had gained from Klaytaza’s presence, but at a close call and with heavy toll on his body. It would not do to stay unarmed in the future, he noted to himself.

There was much to think about now that the battle was over and anxiety began to replace his adrenaline, however. Natures of the enemies they had faced, how difficult the next battle would be now that the enemies had knowledge of Klaytaza’s abilities, and what he would do in order to protect himself in the future, among others. But no matter what he dwelled on, even after Klaytaza had assimilated the downed Keys and further wounded the one that would soon regenerate, even as the two of them fled the scene of the battle, was the crimson moon, edging closer and closer to the world.

Its meaning was clear, and its implications even more obvious. The Thousand Eternal ritual was coming, and there would be no stopping it – not even by holding time itself hostage.

“Klaytaza,” Arend started as the two of them silently walked down the stairs to the tall building they had battled on, “If you focused on that moon, would you be able to tell me where the source of its power originated from?” He had an idea, assuming that the moon was a byproduct of a shinra being’s abilities, and was beginning to think it would be a better plan of action than waiting out further clashes.

“It is possible,” she stated, “but such a feat would require meditation and focus. I cannot say how long it would take me to discern such information, and it goes without saying that I would not be able to predict the advance of enemies if I focused so strongly on so vague an object.” She did not look at him, and her face was as stoic as ever.

“As expected,” Arend admitted, “and sufficient.” He reached his hand into hers; the embrace served to take the golden pen, which was still in her hand, but once he did so he returned to her grip and held hands with her without any hesitation. “Begin your focus. Once you realize the source of the moon’s energy, tell it to me, and we will move towards it with haste.” Despite how nervous he was – how incredibly terrifying it was to think of defending himself and Klaytaza from any invading shinra beings – and how exhausted his body was, Arend still found the energy to laugh, and to give an emphatic, dark smile at the realization of yet another victory beneath his belt. “We have defeated the forces of rebirth once again, and we shall do so in the future. Do not worry about how long it will take you to find the source of the ritual, my Key. Time is but a dimension we shall transcend.”