‘Still life’ magic had become a bit of a trump card of mine. Born from a jumbled mess of epistemology, metaphysics, and history, there was no other spell quite like it in my arsenal. To be sure, I had played around with motion magic based off of classical or Newtonian physics, later on, but somehow, those spells never seemed as useful as ‘still life’ and I found myself turning to ‘still life’ in my toughest moments.

It was a massive drain on my energy. If I cast it for too long, I would pass out and become vulnerable from using it. It also did not really work if I was alone. It was quite strange if you thought about it. Most of my other spells were designed to work for one person. I didn’t come up with support magic like medical magic until I was settling down with the humans. I frequently rushed ahead of everyone else. I even fought against an entire army almost entirely on my own. And yet, my last resort, my proverbial nuclear option, was a spell that relied on somebody else to finish the job.

I held Noel down, staring right into her eyes with a smile on my face. I could see the panic in her gaze. She knew I’d won. This was it. I would hold her here until reinforcements came, then we would knock her unconscious and drag her all the way back to the Izlandi Kingdom. There would be no more chances.

We were frozen in an awkward tangle. One of Noel’s hands clawed at my back, while the other pointed right at my head. She had been preparing a magic bubble. If she’d pulled it off, perhaps I would have awoken in that same awkward pose several days from now, with Noel having completed her mission and rendered the Immortal of Desire’s actions pointless. I was glad I was able to meet the Immortal’s expectations, honestly. I knew the birds would face some consequences for intervening like this, so at least I would be able to stop Noel now.

I couldn’t tell how long we were frozen in that position. Thankfully, ‘still life’ wouldn’t let me get cramped or uncomfortable. In fact, I could barely feel anything, and I couldn’t do anything but think either. I was sure it was the same for Noel. Especially since neither of us had any choice. We were stuck staring right at each other, our heads not more than a foot apart. Despite her rigid expression, I felt like I could see the thoughts bubbling behind her eyes.

Was she imagining what she could have done differently? Wondering if she should have stayed with us, with me, instead of heading off on her own? Or was she cursing me for being ignorant? It wasn’t my fault she didn’t tell me the importance of her mission, or give a better explanation for why she was helping the Immortal of Madness. If anything, she should blame herself for not trying to get me on her side instead of making a run for whatever she was trying to do in the city!

Yes, I could hear the approaching army. Kelser would be in the vanguard. He should be here soon. All he had to do was run up to us, see that we were frozen, realize that I had used ‘still life,’ and then he had to knock Noel out once more. Truly, the perfect plan.

I could feel the energy draining out of my body. If I could grit my teeth, I would have. What was taking them so long? Alek had already been neutralized. There shouldn’t be any more distractions. They needed to get here before I ran out of energy and was forced to let Noel go! That was the biggest danger with ‘still life’ magic, if I ran with it till the end, I would lose all of my energy and become utterly useless. I wouldn’t even be able to lift a finger as Noel completed her mission. Heck, she could burn the whole city to the ground and I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference!

My heart stopped.

Burn the city to the ground.

All of the cities that we had come across had been burnt to the ground. Every single one of them. Every house, every public building, everything had been reduced to ashes. There had been no signs of any struggle or fighting. It never even looked like anybody had tried to fight the flames, or even tried to run from them. We had concluded that somebody had used magic to eliminate the fairies and spirits, and then burned the cities down afterwards. And now Noel had confirmed that she had made all those fairies and spirits disappear, although she said that nobody had been killed. She said they only been sent into the future and that they would reappear where she had left them.

But then, why the arson? If she truly did not want to hurt anybody, why burn their houses? Surely, sending them into the future would get them out of her way and let her complete her mission out here in the capital. No. Wait. There was a bigger question. If her mission was here at the capital, why did she even have to go to any of the other cities or villages in the first place? It would have been one thing if those places had all been on the path here, but quite a few of them had been discovered by our wide ranging scouting parties, since we had been looking for supplies because none of the burned down villages or towns had had any. I even suspected the reason we’d gotten here before the invaders was because they had gone out of their way to eliminate a few more villages and towns on either side.

Did that mean Noel had lied? Did the bubbles actually kill people after all? It made total sense why she would do that. I’d had her at my mercy, and only let my guard down after hearing her denying murder and giving me some of the answers I had been looking for. Wait, had she given me the answers after all? For the most part, she’d simply shared information. Lots of interesting, fascinating information, but was any of that really all that relevant? No, it hadn’t been.

I had been so mesmerized by the knowledge she had been sharing, so disarmed by the return of my oldest friend in this world, that I had subconsciously accepted her explanation and almost absolved her of guilt in my mind. I could only imagine the way the others had been looking at me throughout it all. Why hadn’t Kelser, or maybe somebody older like Elder Kezler or Bain Rusta come over and knocked some sense into my head?

But no. I still didn’t want to believe. I mean, I wouldn’t to believe her. I wanted to believe that Noel hadn’t killed an entire country’s worth of people after all. It was a crime so unimaginable I couldn’t wrap my head around it. Could you imagine? Killing every man, woman, and child, in every village, town, and city in an entire country. To do so systematically and mercilessly. What kind of monster could do such a thing? No matter how much Noel had changed, I did not want to believe that she had become an irredeemable monster like that. I wanted to believe that the bubbles did not kill people. That, like Noel said, they only sent people into the future.

But then why the arson? I kept going back to this as my energy drained from my body and the sound of footsteps finally began approaching our position. I had a feeling this conundrum would be haunting me in my dreams. I would soon let go of my conscious and drift away, but before I did that, I entertained another thought.

What if Noel hadn’t been the one burning the cities? What if there was somebody else involved, somebody whose goals were aligned with Noel’s, but who was operating without Noel’s knowledge? But no, there had been no sign of anybody. Noel had hidden her tracks somehow, but would whoever had been following her really not show up during our dangerous clash from before I was sent back in time?

Perhaps, Noel’s mission included burning the Lux Republic to the ground. If that was true, then she would set the capital aflame too, after completing whatever the rest of her mission entailed. Honestly, by this point I felt like my brain was just rattling through possibilities because of the stress of the situation. I knew that things could go all over the place once I lost consciousness. That I could wake up to a city turned to ash and my friends all gone. All because of one mistake, one tiny possibility that I did not account for. A failure of the mind, the kind of mistake that I dreaded most of all.

Footsteps behind me. Running forward. Long strides, soft landings, it had to be Kelser. I would’ve smiled if my face wasn’t frozen. I felt a warmth rising in my chest.

Which was promptly replaced with a painful chill.

Noel was smiling. Her fingers twitched. A silver bubble appeared in front of my face, reflecting my smug, self-assured expression, with a little bit of Noel’s smile peering through the reflection.