[Dante Alan Skyisle]

The Destruction spell flew towards my forehead. With every microsecond its motion slowed as time itself ground to a halt. It stopped in mid air, right in front of my skin, a moment before it struck me. For a single instance the house became perfectly still and silent, completely suspended, put on pause. Then, every room ignited with a brilliant ripple of mana as the cascade of [Rewind] runes Delta and I placed into the walls, aligned as one, forming a single, enormous [Temporal Rewind] hexagram.

Kliss Eliza Cessna - Equality Acolyte and the Overseer of Skyisle, as the Infoscope labelled her, stood still, suspended in paused time akin to a fly trapped in ember, her green eyes turned away from my face. Her steel-covered arm held a shiny, bracelet-like gun that was pointed at my head, the hexagram for Destruction shimmering from the front. The Infoscope had labelled her weapon as the [Armacus LV 88].

The only thing that wasn’t affected by the Rewind, was my Mindspace in which Delta and I stared at the screens in worry.

“It worked,” I exhaled.

“We’ve tested it before,” Delta replied. “Why wouldn't it work? We spent four months modifying the house wards for this exact scenario!”

“The bloody Hexagram took five minutes to align!” I growled.

“We weren’t exactly 100% ready,” Delta sighed. “We’ve only tested the setup twice by rewinding the house one and then ten seconds into the past.”

“It’s not everyday that you get to watch your parents die,” I declared looking at the screen dejectedly.

“Their souls aren't gone. Even though their hearts stopped beating, their souls are still intact, still in their dying bodies- that's what's important."

"But... her head is off!" I waved at the screen.

"The stronger a soul is, the longer it can cling to flesh. Our mom and dad are strong. Their souls have safeguard skills, soul-shields and anchors. They will truly be gone, dragged into the Astral only once the mana in their souls runs out. Stay focused! We have to stop this bitch,” she said coldly, glaring at the Overseer of Equality.

“She got them before we could even do anything!” I gritted my teeth. “How the hell did she get into the house so quickly? How did she open the door?! How did we not notice her until she killed both of our parents?!”

“She’s wearing a [Ward Master-Key] amulet beneath the armor. It’s tied into our ward on the deepest level - it gave her access into the house! The ward alarms even didn't go off.” Delta’s eyes flashed with silver flares. “Her armor is practically covered in powerful no-spy runes. The Infoscope didn't even notice her until she started firing the Destruction spells! Also, she has some kind of a soul-protecting skill. Biting her soul barely did anything.”

“Biting her soul was a stupid thing to do anyway. What did you expect to happen…” I began speaking.

“Make sure everything is ready! We don't have enough ward-battery mana for another full reset! Eleven seconds before the house rewinds!" She ordered, interrupting me.

“Nine.”

“Eight.”

I scrambled to activate [Modify-Ward] as Delta counted the seconds down.

“...Two. One. Zero!”

One hundred thousand mana drained in an instant from one of the battery runestones.

The parapsychological shimmer that suspended everything inside the house intensified in brightness. The enormous, house-sized hexagram grabbed on and pulled at everything inside our home. It wasn't actual time travel - it didn't affect or pause the universe. Rewind was a healing skill, it didn't send the house walls backwards in time like in the Soviet science fiction film "Ivan Vasilievich Changes Profession".

What Rewind was actually doing was taking everything inside the house apart and putting it back together, minute by minute. How did it know what to do? The house ward looked at the information in the Astral, moment by moment. Information didn't just fade away in Novazem, everything magically imprinted was captured by the Astral, slowly fading or becoming corrupt.

To reduce corruption, Delta and I had figured out how to "save" something in the Astral longer. Every minute a strong pulse of magic from the second ward battery shot through the entire house like a heartbeat. In doing so, it imprinted the house in the Astral, left a "photograph" of it there. These "photographs" were then used by the Ward we designed to "rebuild" the house backwards. It worked as long as we had sufficient energy for it.

The view on screen flashed every minute, looking like a very glitchy video player that was running a tape in reverse. Rewind worked like a billion very precise craftsmen, taking everything apart and rebuilding it exactly. It was akin to many rooms in St. Petersburg Winter Palace being rebuilt from photographs after Germans had bombed it.

Minus one minute.

Flash!

The deadly spell withdrew away from my forehead.

Minus two minutes.

Flash!

The Overseer moved in reverse down the stairwell.

Minus five minutes.

Flash!

Blood retreated back into our parents bodies. Dad’s spine was fused back together.

Minus seven minutes.

Flash!

Mom’s head was whole again.

Minus nine minutes.

Flash!

The executioner was aiming her gun at our mom.

Delta’s human avatar was present in my Mindspace, but her Infoscope body was ready to streak across the living room to our parents feet.

Wood is a complex, heterogeneous substance, consisting mainly of cellulose fibers stuck together with lignin. It was impossible to modify it quickly, but Delta and I had made many contingency plans, made dad disassemble the crawlspace, adding new runes on the floor. We had covered the floor of the house with rune arrays that could quickly unfold parts of the woodwork. Activating the runes with [Modify] wasted very little mana from our side.

Minus ten minutes.

Flash!

In just a few seconds the Overseer would take a step forward and turn to aim her artifact at our mom.

Time resumed its flow.

The house groaned, shaking a little. The last Astral capture was the most corrupt, least perfect.

Minute cracks spread across the ceiling. My parents eyes became blood-shot. Tiny scratches appeared on everything. The Overseer gasped. Her armor darkened just a smudge, rusted ever so slightly.

[-10 in Soul] [Affliction: cellular damage.] The System commented. Horrid pain shot through my body. Rewinding time this far back came with a price.

Delta streaked through the house. She flew through the floor under mom and then beneath dad. I pushed mana through her body via the Tether, modifying the panel-unfolding runes embedded in the floor. At the same time, I screamed as loudly as I could.

The Overseer got distracted, momentarily looked up at the stairwell, instead of at my mom.

The woodwork beneath my parents unfolded and they fell into the basement with yelps, landing on the bed sheets that hung below. As soon as their bodies vanished beneath the floor, the wood folded back up.

“Cassandra Alana Skyisle,” The redcape knight declared, turning her helmet-covered head back towards the place where my mom stood only a second prior. “I find you guilty of…”

The knight blinked in confusion. Her target vanished.

“What the...? Where did she go?!” She muttered.

Mom and dad tried to untangle themselves from the bedsheets and ropes in the basement. Dad was swearing profusely about his soul damage. Sorry, not sorry. Delta flew out of the basement, towards the stairwell.

“I could have sworn she was standing right there…” The red-caped knight muttered. “Damnation… they must have teleported out!”

I wailed once again. The Equality Acolyte perked up.

“The aberration,” she exhaled. “It’s here still!”

She rushed towards the stairs, quickly running up just as she had priorly upon hearing my cries. The wood creaked beneath her armored feet. Delta was already there. When Kliss stepped on a specific step, I modified a ward-rune and the step broke apart under the Acolyte's feet, causing her to stumble.

She yelped and flailed her arms, trying to regain balance but it was not to be. Another rune modified. Another step folded apart under her other heel, sending her careening. The heavy, armored knight fell backwards down the stairwell, slamming into the steps.

Bang, bang, bang, bang.

She landed on her back and her helmet flew off her face, revealing curly, red hair, freckle-spotted face and green eyes.

“Owwwrrghh,” she groaned. The girl looked young underneath her helmet, probably around nineteen, maybe twenty. We had seen her face earlier when she took off her helmet to throw up and to apologize for killing my parents.

The way she behaved showed us that she wasn’t an experienced killer. She couldn't even look at me when she pulled the trigger.

When Kliss fell she managed not to break anything, but the fall had definitely hurt her.

“Blasted rotten village with its decrepit stairs!” She gritted her teeth.

Delta shot under the floor where the knight had landed. An old, iron beam was there, laid two hundred years ago into the foundation of the house during its renovation by Miller Alan Skyisle.

Delta had activated a rune in the basement. Mana poured from the mana battery number 2 beneath the house, turning into electricity when it reached a copper wire coil wound around the beam. An electrical current hummed to life, instantly spiraling around the iron beam.

The conversion of mana into electricity with a hexagram rune was one of the first experiments Delta and I ran four months ago. It took us a month just to get it to work. An electromagnet is a type of magnet in which the magnetic field is produced by an electric current. The copper wire wound around the beam set up by Delta with the aid of our dad instantly turned the old beam into a very powerful electromagnet.

Just as the knight attempted to stand back up, she slammed into the floor, the metal in her armor attracted to the magnetized beam. The magnet was a bit of a gamble, but Delta and I tested it on dad’s armor, sword and tools and it worked perfectly, so it was reasonable to assume that it would work on a local home-invader.

“What the shit?!” Kliss cried, unable to stand up as her armor clung to the floor. One of her arms could still move, but the rest of her body and legs were completely paralyzed. For a minute she struggled on the floor, hissing and swearing. Then she aimed her armacus at herself. It seemed there was an option in the artifact to target her own armor, probably in case it was somehow compromised. Kliss pressed the trigger with a growl and the metal rivets composing her armor shattered all at once.

The metal armor came apart into a multitude of segments, sliding to the floor. The knight pulled parts of it off herself with groans, nearly crushing her fingers in the process. In a way, her struggle was a tad comical.

“What kind of unholy magic is this?” She cried as she finished freeing herself.

She was now wearing leather under-armor. She shot an [Identify] spell at her floor-bound armor, trying to figure out what was holding it down.

“Nothing?! What?!” She blinked, leaning in closer. She shot another Identify spell at the armor.

Her magic-seeking artifact clearly wasn’t designed to identify the magnetic field. It told her absolutely nothing.

Her eyebrows went up in confusion. “I don’t understand. There’s no spell, nothing at all magical acting on my armor. How is it being pulled to the floor?!”

Her armacus slammed into the floor when she tried to bring it closer to the armor. It was also made of magnetic metals. It wasn’t as magnetic as the armor, but nevertheless it was enough to pull the ring to the ground. She hissed and strained trying to pull it off the floor. She pulled with all of her strength and her armacus ring slammed her in the face as it suddenly disconnected from the floor.

“Ochieees! Frigg!” She cried, rubbing a large bruise on her forehead.

A tall figure wearing a large, long coat was slowly descending down the stairwell. Reflective goggles glinted. Kliss heard the buzzing of bees. Her eyes shot up to the stairwell as did her armacus.

“Stop right there!” She yelled. “In the name of the law!”

Delta stopped.

“Identify yourself, citizen!” Kliss barked. Sweat dripped down her face. Freeing herself from the armor wasn’t an easy task.

Delta didn’t say anything. The bees buzzed.

“What’s that buzzing?” The Equality knight yelled. “Who are you?!”

Delta simply stood there, waiting for the knight’s reaction.

Kliss got tired of waiting and shot a lethargy spell at Delta. The spell struck the coat. It was designed for taking down people, not bees. Delta shook her head.

The buzzing of the bees warped into an approximation of the words “naughty-naughty”.

The knight gritted her teeth, firing a destruction spell at Delta. The front of the coat exploded and thousands upon thousands of bees poured from its innards, descending down upon Kliss.

“WHAT?! BEEES?!!” She screamed, retreating backwards. She tried to fire Destruction at the swarm, but the bees simply parted apart letting the relatively slow-flying spell pass right through.

Kliss scrambled to get away. Her armacus got stuck to the floor as she passed over the iron beam.

“No, no, no no, NOT THE BEES!!!” She screamed as the bees reached her. Her cape bound to the floor by bits of armor ignited first, sending thick plumes of smoke into her face, making her choke. The floor itself did not ignite as it was covered in fire-resistant runes. The knight’s hair and leather under-armor caught fire next as Delta commanded the bees to directly attack our enemy with their [Ignite] skills.

Kliss screamed, flailing. Unable to tear her armacus off the floor, beset by thousands of bees burning her body, she flicked the ring to the disconnection rune. The bracelet opened up and she leapt away, forsaking her weapon and tearing the burning leather under-armor off herself. She rushed towards the exit.

Delta was already at the door and I modified another rune through her Infoscope. The heavy, wooden door carved by our dad slammed shut in front of the knight’s face before she could escape our house. Kliss’ body collided with the door.

“No!” Her fists pounded against the door. “Let me out!”

Segments of the leather and cloth fell to the floor, exposing her body to the further attacks of the bees. These little, dangerous bugs were unlike those from my earth - their stingers simply continuously ignited whatever they touched. They would give a normal human first and second degree burns, but Kiss was level 24 and must have put a lot of her points into Strength and Vitality.

The bees stung her exposed skin with their fiery stingers. She screamed, trying to swat them away, but there were far too many all around her. It was an odd sight. Her hair continuously burned and grew back. Her skin turned blistering red and then pink again. Her body was rapidly healing from her high Vitality, but it was also being continuously ignited by the bees. The bees tried to get into her nose and mouth and she covered them with her hand, kept her eyes closed, flailing blindly, smashing into the heavy, wooden furniture.

I knew that she couldn't outlast the bees, couldn't breathe if she kept her mouth and nose closed. The healing was draining her mana and her supply of it wasn’t endless. She fought valiantly against the swarm, rolled on the floor and cried out in pain, crushing hundreds of insects, but it was hopeless as thousands more buzzed in the living room, depriving her of ability to take a single breath.

In about ten minutes of endless attack her mana had dropped to zero. The bees stopped stinging her. Her entire body was red, as if she had endured a severe suntan. Segments of blackened armor and shreds of scorched clothing remained on her. Thousands of bees were still all over her. She panted loudly, breathing in precious air.

“Stop!” She wept. “I surrender! Please, no more! I can’t take it anymore! Stop! You win!”

“M U R D E R E R” The swarm suddenly buzzed. A month ago Delta and I had figured out how to modulate the buzzing of the bees into a semblance of human speech in Ishikarian language.

“W-what?” Kliss looked up, blinking tears from her eyes.

Hundreds of bees landed on a wall in front of her, forming a single world “murderer”.

“I… I didn’t kill anyone!” Kliss wept.

A bee lightly stung her in the side and she yelped.

“I’m sorry! Call off your bees, wizard! I didn’t kill anyone here!” She cried at the swarm. “I surrender!”

“NO,” the swarm buzzed.

“...w-what do you want?” Kliss shuddered as thousands of bees crawled over her body.

“You do not remember it, but you killed Cassandra and Georgi,” the swarm buzzed, subtitled by the bees spelling the spoken words out on the wall.

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” Kliss cried, bowing to the floor. “Forgive me! I am just an Acolyte! I didn’t want to take this job, I swear! I’ve made a mistake!”

“Dante Alan Skyisle is a hero,” Delta buzzed.

“He’s an abb… Eeeeeek!” The disarmed acolyte yelped as a bee stung her in the thigh.

“He is a hero,” the swarm insisted.

“You’re wrong to protect a cursed child, Beemancer! Do you not understand that the child’s original soul is gone, devoured?” Kliss appealed to Delta. “If his System is unlocked that means that a clever, long dead ghost found a fracture in his body and soul and taken residence within!”

“You are wrong,” I said, the buzzing swarm copying my words. “His soul is intact. He is not an aberration of the deep!”

“But,” Kliss tried to say.

“Dante is not a monster, you will leave him alone or I will turn you into ashes!” The words made of bees spelled.

“But the law of Equality…” the Acolyte of Equality whispered.

“Will no longer apply in Skyisle!” Delta buzzed. “From now on, you will be an overseer in name only or die in agony as your skin peels off and your blood boils and your organs burst one by one!”

“I… I…” The Redcape gulped.

“I can stretch out your death, torture you for weeks,” Delta added. “Keep you here. Burn you, let you heal, burn you further. The pain will be endless. You will beg me for the end and I will grant it only when I am satisfied.”

“I submit! I submit! I will leave the Alan child alone, I swear!” Kiss yelled, eyes as round as two plates. “I will not look into this matter further, I swear! I will correct the second journal that exposed him!”

“Good.” Delta buzzed.

“W-who are you?” Kliss uttered, horror painted on her face.

“I am Delta, the wizard of Oz, and I am your worst nightmare.”

Silence fell.

“C-can I leave?” The girl on the floor trembled.

“No,” I replied through the swarm. “Take off that Ward-key amulet first.”

Kliss angrily glared up at the words on the wall and then looked down. She realized that she was still wearing the [Skyisle-Ward Master-Key] amulet on her neck. She removed the silver necklace that bore the ward-unlocking, shimmering-blue gemstone with shaking hands and put it on the floor. “T-take it.”

“I cannot trust you to keep your word,” I replied. I knew that we couldn't just kill her or the Empire would know. “You will swear a divine-bound oath to your god.”

“A soul-bound oath?” Kliss understood what I wanted.

“Yes,” I replied. “You must swear to protect the Alan family and to be their… friend.”

“B-but…” The girl trembled. “M-my position as Overseer ends in four years.”

“You will find a way to extend it or you will burn.” Delta’s added sternly, her words leaving the Overseer of Equality no room for compromise.

“You have sealed your fate the moment you walked into this house with the intent to murder the Alans," I announced. "Skyisle is your home now whether you like it or not.”

Kliss looked like she realized the full wretchedness of her situation. She would remain a prisoner of a monstrous Beemancer, a Skyisle Overseer forevermore in name only. She knew that she could not endure being burned alive again and again. She started to cry. The swarm of bees spiraled around her, like a dark storm, rays of light from the windows flashing through the gaps and lighting up wafts of smoke like strobes.

“Choose your future, Kliss Eliza Cessna,” Delta spoke, bringing a part of the swarm to form a menacing, approximately-human figure made of bees. “Say the oath or perish.”

Kliss trembled when she realized that the Wizard of Oz knew her name. She looked up at the gaunt, terrifying figure made of bees. The last of her mental fortitude snapped like a twig. She broke, I could see it in her face.

“I… I will say the oath,” she wept. “I w-will stay in Skyisle! I w-will p-protect the Alans! P-please don’t kill me!”

“Do not attempt to trick me,” Delta added. “I will see if the Vow doesn’t take hold. You worship Equality, yes?"

“Y-yes. G-goddess Equality,” The petrified Imperial Acolyte nodded.

“Repeat after me. I, Kliss Eliza Cessna, wish to swear an unbreakable oath upon goddess Equality to protect the Alan family, to be their best friend and protector for as long as I live,” Delta said. “I swear to serve and protect Dante Alan Skyisle! Let my own mana rip my soul asunder if I fail. Let Equality claim my strongest skill to reinforce the Vow.”

“I, Kliss Eliza Cessna, wish to swear an unbreakable oath upon goddess Equality to protect the Alan family, to be their best friend and protector for as long as I live,” Kliss spoke. She paused before the final part and Delta ignited a few bees on her body to force her to finish the oath.

“I swear to serve and protect Dante Alan Skyisle! Let my own mana rip my soul asunder if I fail!” The acolyte yelped. "Let Equality claim my strongest skill to reinforce the Vow!"

“Yes! I swear!” She yelled into the air, replying to the System prompt that she likely saw in front of her eyes.

As soon as she uttered the words that bound the Vow to her soul, the spiraling swarm started to disperse, heading upstairs.

“Return to this house at noon tomorrow,” the bees on the wall spelled.

The Imperial Acolyte shook her head in acknowledgement.

The last bee left her body and Kliss held herself, whimpering softly.

The front door swung open. The Overseer of Skyisle picked up the remnants of her shredded, red cape from the floor to cover herself and rushed out the open door.

“It is done,” Delta exhaled, her avatar falling back onto the couch in my Mindspace. “I saw the Vow-fractal forming above her wretched soul. We are safe.”

“We did it,” I nodded. “We won.”

The Infoscope hung in the middle of the smoke-filled living room, blade-tentacle-treads spread out and pointing at the door, twitching ever so slightly for a few minutes. When the Overseer's red hair vanished at the curve of the forest-surrounded path, Delta flew to the door leading downstairs.

My soul-sister hugged me.

The door to the basement swung open, revealing the pale, worried faces of our parents.