Chapter 311: Running out of time [4]

Time was inevitable, cruel, merciless, and ever-flowing; even the warden who wields such power wasn’t an exception. She, too, felt its effect, for she who had so little time she tried over and over again in an endless cycle of failure, regression, and so on. Now she’s greeted by the very wielder of such authority, at her lowest point, and the anger she held couldn’t be snuffed

“Why did you call right when I was certain about the perfect pla-”

“Perfect my ass. I don’t think you’d be this desperate. What’s wrong? They’re nothing but mere pawns destined to be sacrificed-”

Rachel cuts him off and replies. “Shut up! That’s for me to decide. Their death is useless. So why shouldn’t I save them,”

“Is it now? Then may I ask… are they valuable? Yes, their death is a pity,” Chronos walked over to Rachel’s group and glanced back at her. “But what difference does it make to save them? Their nothing more than a liability,”

“They’re not!” She walks closer to him and tries to shield her group if he ever once laid a finger in their frozen state

“If I wanted to kill them, then we wouldn’t have this talk now would we?” Their surroundings had begun to shift from a motionless world to a blank space, nothing but a hue of white. “You’ve gotten soft. I thought after countless deaths, you’d be numb. But now I realize it only meant to be your most cherished,”

The blank space grew dark, and she suddenly found herself flashed with all of her sealed memories. Memories she had forgotten, information she had no use for, and moments that would affect the outcome of her mission. All of it sealed in that fleeting diary, all her memories, both good and bad, locked away, leaving a husk and a goal

“This book of yours… its effects has lost all of its meaning. Even if you don’t know. Your intuition knows no bounds,”

Her gut feeling, even without any recollection, no history, all she needed was that feeling. Even without said moments, she felt it all again: her joy, her sadness, pleasure, pain, anger, and remorse. As her body was repeatedly reborn anew, her spirit was untouched and therefore evolved to the point where she recalls her feelings without said memories

“To drown your sorrow; you eloped with Daniel, and in his death came to meet Hugh, and in his passing so comes Sandra-”

“Enough!!!” Rachel stumbled to the ground embraced as her legs weakened, and she wept upon realizing her sad existence. “You have no right to judge me… because you can’t. Throughout our journey, you never once interacted with people,”

“What a load of bull. Have you gone mad, Ainsley? How would you ever come to understand me-”

“I won’t. Never, because I had something you never did. That kept me from being humane and prevented me from going numb,” Rachel points to her team, which for her were family, support, and more or less her beacon of hope. “You’re a god. A primordial one at that. You weren’t human, nor did you interact with one. All you did was rule over time,”

Time was cruel; it was an unstoppable force, a resource more valuable than the world’s entire fortune and the span of all life. Some live for decades, others a day, and even rarer those who weren’t given a chance to even breathe, and Chronos felt nothing. As every soul mourns, others beg, and some even try to defy, yet everyone falls to his power and meets their end as he wills

“I know what you’re trying to do. You want me to become like you. That’s the only reason why you chose me,” Although Rechel’s declaration sounded crazy, the frozen mug of Chronos twitched in response to her claim. “This mission is impossible. Because no matter what I do, failure always comes to bite my ass. As if the world is fated end,”

“You’re right. Everything, even the gods, shall perish. Some shall survive so that a natural law won’t be forgotten,” Chronos hardly cares about the lives in the process of the end; rather, he has an irritable regret, his selfish desire he’s yet to acquire. “I crave a companion. One which could understand me. Be with me at the end of time, forevermore. But you’ve mistaken me so,”

“The hell are you talking about? Your whole scheme was revealed. What more could you possibly have left to say-” Rachel couldn’t utter a single word, as if she became frozen, more or less was the doing of Chronos which paused her time

“Time teaches the living. Time is also a source of pain. As Time and Pain correlate with one another, they become one,” Images suddenly pop out around the two and show Rachel’s gruesome experience and how she overcame them in her loss. “You weren’t scared of losing your group. You were scared to be all alone. Because you put an irreversible scar on the man you love,”

Chronos relinquished the power he snared on his Avatar, and as she finally came to possess her time, she broke loose. Her tears dripped madly like a broken faucet and she wails like never before upon the realization of her choices. The choice of breaking his heart, leaving him with nothing but hate, and her becoming the bane of his existence

“Mother fucker!!! Why…? Can’t you for once be fucking upright. Stop speaking in riddles and tell me what you want!!?” Over time she became a sobbing mess and pleaded with him to answer truthfully for once like she was on her last life

“Rachel, are you retarded or something?”

His declaration finally broke her patience and she gathered her strength and flailed her fist toward her avatar. “You fucking shit! If you want a fight then come at me. I don’t care anymore whether you’re my god, this is the last straw,”

“Forgive me for my poor choice of words. It’ll be easy if I just showed you. Now look at this, examine their deaths!” Rachel was suddenly flashed with countless images of the deaths of Christoper Morris in every timeline she had regressed. “Don’t avert your gaze. Look closer. This one died because he wasn’t fast. The next perished because he didn’t have any armor. And this one had no other weapon,”

Chronos forces her to see their deaths. He refused to let her avert her eyes and view his lover’s countless deaths. Just as her mind went completely blank from her sudden rise of trauma she began to wonder, the purpose for all of this. Was it for his enjoyment, his sadistic pleasure, or seeing her drown deeper into her sorrow, then she looked at the cause of their deaths

“Seeing as your complexion dialed down you finally took notice. The main cause. The cause was you all along,”

Chronos rewinds the recordings to the point when their fate is ultimately sealed, and the first thing she sees was herself. The first one was her intervening with Morris’s training and suggesting he focus more on casting spells. The second was her persuading him to buy supplies rather than focusing on his equipment, and the last one died because Rachel said a spare weapon is costly

“Their lifespan differs not because of their capabilities. Rather it was due to your meddling. You took away his freedom,”

The very thing that a Regressor has no control over is free will. The reason why every timeline is different from the rest was due to this. Some people, yet they choose different paths, and that molds the worlds she regressed. So no matter how knowledgeable she became her reasoning wasn’t always the right choice and in some cases, it led to their demise

“Do you get it now? There is no perfect plan. You can’t manipulate what’s to come. You can only prevent it,”

Rachel fell silent. And not in the way she did before, this was something even darker. The moment she realized all along that she was the problem that took the lives of the people she loved. Upon knowing that she sinks into an ever-falling abyss from which she has no right to escape until Chronos pulls her back

“Wake up!!!” Chronos bitch slaps her so hard that, for a second, she forgets all about her despair and hears the voice of her god. “I didn’t tell you all of that knowing you’d drown in depression. Didn’t I tell you anything? Time teaches us, and apart from Death, Pain is the best teacher,”

“What now old coot? You just told me I was the massive fuck up. Now you’re motivating me, well isn’t this a shit show,” Rachel slowly dissolves her crude and fearless gaze to her plain and dreadful glare hopeless to its core

“Like I said before; you’re fucking retarded. The first you think of is to despair. The very person who told me lives matter?” The recordings suddenly capture the joyous moments she made along the way and Chronos added. “There’s no means of repenting for what you did. But sitting here won’t do you any good. So do something about it,”

“What a bunch of fucking wise… and shitty profound words you got over there. What’s there for me to do? Aren’t I the problem?” At her lowest point, Rachel looks back at her entire existence, from her very first life before regression, and she utters. “Oh shit! I am fucking retarded. All this time I took the reins. I didn’t allow him to decide, and it fucked him over,”

“Oh fuck yes! Finally!! You realize the big picture. Shit!!! Did you know how frustrating it is watching you?” Countless years’ worth of pent-up stress blown away from his avatar’s realization, Chronos couldn’t help but cuss and add. “Do you understand me now? Why do I never intervene? Because messing with free will only leads to even bigger shit!!!”

Chronos wasn’t numb because he wanted to; its because he needed to be; for countless times, he wishes to help mortals. He wanted to warn them of an event in the far-distant future, but he knew what that meant. To defy his purpose meant that he’d die, so he waited and waited; all good and bad things happen for a reason. Chronos wanted to stop such atrocities but he knew he’d die so he stood there watching till a day came when everything was fated to end

“You mustn’t interfere with his choices. You can persuade him, but he must choose for himself. Because you don’t hold his life. It’s him alone that could decide his survival,”

“Then what should I do?” Although Rachel had seen the light once more she trembled when she recalled the deaths she caused. “What if I do it again?”

“This time, you know about your role. You’re not the hero. You’re his shadow. And it’s your responsibility to watch him and assist when it’s needed,” The authority that Chronos had was vanishing, and Rachel could feel that time was moving once again. “Your previous action did so much damage for me to unwind. This will be your last rewind. I’m sure you know what to do. Because you finally understood me,”

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