...

After calming my perturbed heart for a short while, I sit back down onto the flat plains, close my eyes and try to sense the feeling similar to the last one. I wait. And I wait, and wait...

Time goes on, as the sun, unmoving in the blue sky of this realm sits there immobile. As the constant clock of time turned, I didn’t know that I had actually spent an entire 3 days sitting still on the ground half-conscious. My mind attuned itself with the surroundings, as I felt a feeling akin to a tingling all across my body, getting hotter and hotter, as my soul and body begin to shake quickly.

After a few minutes of shaking, countless small beads of perspiration on my forehead, and an increasing heat, my body couldn’t take anymore and my legs unfolded as I fell onto my back in pain. As my posture changed and synchronisation with nature stopped, the shaking slowed down until I couldn’t feel it anymore, but with its leave, another feeling took its place.

I could feel something other than my heart throbbing in my body. As I looked down at my sweaty chest, I could see something in the centre of my chest glowing brightly before the light died down, and then yet again glowed. This cycle kept repeating, coinciding with the weird throbbing feeling that didn’t originate from my heart.

My soul.

That was the conclusion that I came to as to what made these glowing pulsations. I had a sudden instinctive urge to sit back down in a meditative, cross-legged posture and decided to abide by that urge.

As I got into position and attuned myself, I could hear an extremely quiet, but definitely existent thump coming from my very existence. It coincided with the throb and most likely the light as well, although I couldn’t see it with my closed eyes. The thumping and throbbing of my soul had a soothing effect, and made me feel at ease, forgetting all worries.

Concentrating on the sounds and throb, my consciousness slowly faded away from the reality I was displayed with and shut out everything else, my mind throwing it away as irrelevant. It was as though a cold wave washed over me, putting out any emotion and thought.

After a long time that felt miniscule in the eyes of my soul, I opened my eyes and stood up slowly. I stretched my hand out and a silver pocket watch identical to the one that Chronos owned appeared with a flurry of threads of ‘aura’ in my hand. The only difference between the watch that I now possessed and the watch that Chronos had was the colour of the ‘aura’ threads. Mine appeared from a flurry of pitch black threads as opposed to Chronos’s silver.

I look up and notice Chronos wearing a grim, serious expression, which made his childish body seem to exude aged wisdom and sadness.

---Chronos Point of View---

That was entertaining, my acting was perfect as well. I now understand why Death loves to tease him, even though it is usually unsuccessful. Luckily he isn’t like before.

I fly away at incredible speeds into the forest, whilst thinking this and having fake tears in my eyes. Then my expression turns grim as my thoughts turn towards a perilous direction with the last sentence.

I fly away before reaching an incredibly large oak tree, that would take 80 fully grown men holding hands to completely encircle the tree. Flying high above the ground, into the cloudless sky and sit myself atop one of the large branches of the tree to begin to meditate whilst amidst my thoughts. I then discard my thoughts of the past and start focusing on the current timeline.

I wonder how long it will take him to learn ‘time’ magic. Personally, it would be incredible if he can even learn it in 100 years, however I think he might be able to do it if he gets sudden enlightenment. The hardest part is to begin to enter a blank mind, zen-like state, 10 years of struggle should be enough to enter it, taking into account the limited distractions here.

10 years swiftly pass, and I decide to go check on him, not visiting him earlier as to not aggravate him, as you need the calmest mind possible to enter the perfect meditative state. I stand up from my cross-legged stance and bend my legs while my body is parallel to the ground, and then push off. I break through mach 30 whilst holding back and as I arrive near Sephtis, I slow myself down with some usage of ‘time magic’ to give me the time to stop myself with ‘aura’.

All of this happens in less than a second, with myself expending very insignificant amounts of energy. When I stop after arriving at where Sephtis sits, my facial expression turns incredibly grim because of what I saw. Sephtis sat there, with black ‘aura’ spinning around him wildly, and like a bunch of whips, hitting the ground and demolishing it. He sat in a hole created with himself as the centre, and the whips of ‘aura’ hitting every possible location.

After a few more hours of me watching Sephtis and his ‘aura’, it started to flicker, with long intervals between each flicker at first, but then with shorter and shorter intervals until the ‘aura’ eventually just vanished. It left no traces behind other than the large hole and the indentations on the ground.

As the ‘aura’ vanished, a dark silver coloured ‘aura’ seemed to appear from him, predominantly from his left arm, as though to replace the previously black ‘aura’. This silver ‘aura’ seemed far calmer than the previous destructive black ‘aura’ and just slowly rotated around him like a galaxy.

A few minutes after the silver, ‘Time Aura’ begun to rotate around him, he opened his eyes and his iris, previously green had turned a gold colour.

Shit.

---Sephtis’s POV (Point of View)---

I finally notice my surroundings and see that I am only inside a hole riddled with imprints of lashes along the sides of the hole.

I then notice silver-coloured ‘aura’ rotates horizontally around me and I order it to condense to see if it is mine, although its positioning around my body already gives that away. I force it into a little ball with a 4cm diameter and have it float a few centimetres above my opened left palm.

The ‘aura’ that was compressed into that ball was so large that I wasn’t even sure how I was not completely disintegrated because of me staying close to it. I guessed it was because it was mine, but then again I wasn’t sure as my power was nowhere near this large. Pushing those thoughts away I ask the question that was on my mind, one that can give me all the answers.

“What is this?”

After hearing my question, Chronos came out of his daze and looked at me before waving his hand and letting me feel a tremendous amount of ‘aura’ for a split second before collapsing.

I awoke atop what seemed to be a large, ancient oak tree that would easily tower over the clouds, if there were any. After the first few initial seconds of my mind being completely isolated from the world due to inevitable drowsiness existent upon awakening, I composed myself and stood up from my lying down position. Luckily, the branches of this tree were incredibly thick and allowed a person to easily stand upon them without having to balance.

However, even though they had no need to balance because of the size of the branches, the wind was incredibly strong high up above the ground, but it seemed to completely stop upon entering a few centimetres of the space around me.

Due to the strong wind, there were no leaves here as they would just blow away if they ever did grow. It was only then that I noticed the changes to my body. My hair had grown to incredible lengths, and a long unkempt beard had appeared in a blackish purple colour, matching my hair. Needless to say, with my body’s growth, the shirt I was wearing was torn and looked like a pile of rags.

This is gonna be painful to explain to Grandma.

“You awake?”

I heard a deep voice from behind me whilst I was fiddling with my new appearance, twisting hair left and right. I turned to look at the owner of the voice: Chronos. He looked to have aged into a look of a 40 year old human, still keeping his key features of eye colour and hair colour.

“89 years, 7 months and 24 days. That is how long it took you to awaken after losing consciousness. Not bad, I was honestly expecting a longer amount of time.”

“Hmm… Right... How and why was I asleep for so long?”

In response he sighed and answered with a cold voice.

“You overextended your own ‘aura’ capacity. Usually when a person goes beyond their ‘aura’ capacity, they lose consciousness or die, but you are an exception. Your soul is ‘special’ due to various factors, especially with Death playing around with it, and it is because of that that you can actually overdraw your ‘aura’ capacity.

However, I recommend you never do that again.”

“I understand that I lost consciousness, but is that really that much of a problem? Even if 89 years, the overdraw let me have such immense power that it would be so incredibly powerful during fights, perhaps threatening even Gods. If I decrease my draw as well, wouldn’t the rebound decrease in power as well?”

Shaking his head, Chronos retorted to my ignorance and arrogance in my statement.

“Don’t be so arrogant. Firstly, it would never have the capability to kill a God unless the God didn’t use his ‘aura’ to consciously block it and was on the lowest rung of the power ladder. Even so, I doubt that you can set up a scenario of such a phenomenal overdraw ever again.

You had to meditate for 10 years to even get in a position to attempt such a thing. You also said that you simply lose consciousness, but that isn’t true.

My ignorant little boy, you were so incredibly lucky for waking up so early, but it was also due to the fact that you hadn’t actually converted your ‘time aura’ into any magic to use. Had you done so, the rebound of using such a skill would’ve definitely destroyed your body and even your soul. Do you understand how dangerous your actions were now?”

That body actually suits him for using that apprehending and superior tone. If he was in his child form it would just be awkward.

“... Sorry.”

“ *Sigh*, I also apologize for shouting at you. You only have 2 months until time for you to return comes. I will go try and restore enough ‘aura’ for that occasion.”