The next second I knew I was a quarter way to my town. I had used my ability for too long of a distance, I was exhausted. With no other option left I started to run and run and run. The noon turned into dusk and I had run into the sunset. Never tired.
Humans are strange. Sometimes our feelings can trick our bodies. The butterflies that flutter in my stomach during my happiest moments always come back in my most vulnerable. My mind played through every possible reality I could come up with and tried to react. But it couldn't.
I didn't know what I would do.
I wanted to run forever and never reach my destination. Reaching meant that I would be forced to deal with the reality of the situation.
But even without the ability to stop time, I was fast.
I reached the site of my horror within hours. Unlike my expectations the town wasn't desolate. It was filled with corpses and people carrying them. There were tears and people from outside the town coming to pick up the remains of their deceased relatives.
There were many as far as the eye can see. The snow glowed a deep magenta under the setting sun. The buildings were stained. The white town that belonged to Leia had been turned into a red town belonging to the dead.
It goes without saying that there were an equal amount of corpses that had been let go of without anyone left to claim them.
I walked slowly towards the temple. Not for a moment could I stop before getting to the town grasping at the sliver of hope that the ambassador at Oisha was lying and I just couldn't tell. But now that I was here every single step felt unnecessarily heavy.
I thought that by now I would have gotten used to this sight. Honestly I had. But in all of those instances, I didn't know the people affected personally. I did in this instance.
The guild to my side had been completely decimated with the Guild Master's head put on display outside.
"I'm sorry." I bowed to him and continued walking.
The shrine wasn't far away. Despite coming all the way here, I didn't want to go there anymore. 'I don't wanna go. Don't wanna go. Don't wanna go.'
But I did regardless. If not me then who. The people at the shrine had no families. They were orphans and widows.
I got to the temple and felt overwhelmed. This was the place that took my one family away from me. But it also gave me so much back in return. It game me an education. It gave me a goal. It gave me a life. And it gave me another found family. People who would root for me and believed in me.
The place had grown and seen a lot of new faces over the past few years when I wasn't present.
There were so many people I didn't recognize. All with twisted faces. Their demise was so brutal.
The first face I recognised was Gwan and her daughter. Gwan had wrapped herself around her daughter to protect her. Both facing the wall with a sword running through their back.
What would a widow have done to require this sort of reaction from the King? Nothing.
The further I went the more people I recognised. Kids who were around my age when I had gotten in had already left this shrine. The girl who took the previous Apostle's place in management. My first friend. It was getting increasingly more difficult to breath.
They shouldn't have reached such an end.
I picked her lifeless body up and place it in front of the main statue. And then picked another body up to do the same. The kids that came in after me that I had seen grow up, fed. Reaching fates like these. Ruth, a boy who like making clothes. The day I turned into an apostle he gave me a handkerchief. I placed it on top of his face. Lily, the only person I met who could make better meals than my father. Will, the idiot who never failed to make the others laugh. Yelen, who had the most beautiful voice. All dead.
The last person I met had his body separated from his head. The priest. The man who offered me his hand that day. The man who was the happiest the day I turned into the apostle.
I tore a piece of my cloth and tied his head back so that it didn't appear hurt and carried him back.
"Why would you let your people suffer like this?" I asked the divinity. "You-you were so nice that day. You were so nice. Loving and caring. Why not save these people who depended on you?" That day I cried the inside of my sockets out. The sun had set and the night was shrouded in a veil of red.
"I will have Lithia cremate all of them tomorrow." I had one more thing to do.
I left the shrine where I found swarm of people waiting for me.
A boy around half of my age ran up to me.
"The As-Ascendant is powerful right? Can you-you ask them to bring these people back?" Even in this darkness I could see the tears well up in his eyes.
"I can't."
"Then can you send the ones who did this to them?"
"Pause."
That day time stopped for a second time. I was outside the royal palace. My vision had noticeably gotten worse. But I couldn't care less about that for a moment.
"What are you doing here?" A guard put his spear up against me.
'I wonder how people recognize me as the Apostle. Is it because of the Helmet? Clearly that's the only thing that has changed since last time I came here.'
"HEY!" He shouted again. Poking my armour this time. I pulled the spear and decked him in the face before he had a chance to react.
Getting in was not difficult.
Every guard in the hall fell in one swoop, while to ones in the corridors got fed into the walls. I wasn't sure if these people deserved death so I chose not to give it to them. As a child I was taught that no human has the right to pass death on another. So until this moment I had never killed a human. I was lucky in that I never had to either.
"Where is the Emperor?" I grabbed one of the guards by the neck. He simply nodded his head but his eyes told another story. And so did the sound of humming coming from the bath. I threw the man on the floor and kicked the bathhouses door open.
That piece of shit emperor was humming in his comfortable bath after having an entire town slaughtered. Shamelessly. There were women washing every inch of his pig body. I had never felt this rage.
"Leave."