The pattering of the rain had slowed down considerably by the time the door of the warehouse designated with the abbreviation 'DCK 01' pushed open, bringing out Elmer Hills from the murky feel of its interior, and allowing him the opportunity to once again grace his nostrils with the earthy and fresh scent of rainy air.
He had an exhausted vacant stare, the orphan boy from Meadbray, one which had come about due to the mixture of the edges of his brows being turned up slightly—weakly, in truth—and his narrow brown eyes visibly blackened beneath their lids.
The tears that had once blurred his sight while he had been in the warehouse had all been wept out bitterly and completely, and in that regard, there was not a single shimmer left in his eyes.
He was also now of the feeling that he could no longer expend any sort of moisture from them, and that caused a sinking sensation of hollowness to usurp the kingdom that was his chest, casting away whatever other humane feelings had once been present there.
His mind was split in half, both sides in a war against the other as they each tried to enlighten him of the consequences of whatever action he would end up taking.
It was chaotic and unpleasant, and furthermore, it filled him with more and more fatigue, inciting him to take notice of the lack of strength in his knees. It had even begun to feel as though they would give out any moment and he would go crumbling to the floor.
In fact, at this point in time, he wanted to go crumbling to the floor.
He wanted to sleep. He wanted to hug Mabel, brush her bangs as he had always used to do, and forget about all that was happening.
In that instance he suddenly recalled the taste of the coffee Polly had served him earlier during the day—café au lait, if he remembered correctly—and as well the promise he had made her.
Elmer shook his head at once, although feebly, as it dawned on him the impossibility of that promise being kept now.
He recognized the fact that once all he'd set his mind to do was done, he would be unable to buy any meal, not to even think of settling down comfortably with a lady to fill his belly with it.
Still… For once, he'd love to have a fine meal…
But what good would all he'd thought about bring him if his sister was not awake to laugh with him, play with him, eat with him? Everything would be pointless. Everything…
Each step he was taking and would take was for Mabel, and if he pulled that out of the picture, even for a second, then he would have no purpose for living. She was his purpose.
His 'twin' was right. There was nothing to think about.
Ms. Edna was just a woman he had met in this city—just a clerk of the bureau that had been giving him his job. He was not attached to her in any way—he shouldn't even be—and he had to stop trying to restrict himself from achieving his goals because of some useless emotional fluctuation his heart was having.
He had no other choice—no other plausible one.
This was his world now, and in truth he should have already killed off his childish self and have taken it as it was ever since the events of that night five years ago.
Elmer closed his eyes tightly and bit his lower lip with a grimace filled with anguish. He strengthened his right grip on his revolver's handle, and his left on The Warlock's Torch he was holding up straight, making sure the paper of money he had secretly placed within its sconce did not fall off.
After a few seconds of silence, bar the sounds of the drops of the lessened rain falling in intervals, he opened his eyes, and using the lights of the lampposts erected to the sides of the countless warehouses surrounding the dock, he traced his line of sight back to where Ms. Edna and Eddie had taken for their base. 'DCK 05'.
He saw them straightaway, even though not too vividly, considering the distance separating him from them.
Eddie was leaning backward onto the wall of the warehouse they were before with his arms folded as though he was not on a mission but rather on the front porch of his house, while Ms. Edna was on her knees in something akin to a seated position, only just slightly.
Elmer inhaled sharply at the sight, somewhat shocked.
Did she use any of her abilities…?! He shook his head soon after those thoughts. Eddie would never allow that… She's just probably resting…
Suddenly, his mind reminded him of the utter insignificance of his thoughts.
Why had he still thought about her safety despite what he had already prepared himself to do for the sake of his goals?
This was not it. This was not it at all. He had to stop the unnecessary conflicts within himself at once.
At once!
Elmer's head dropped visibly as he recalled the smoky being's last words before it had faded away. His muscles instantly tensed then, and in return he voiced to himself…
Ms. Edna does not matter to you, Elmer… Her physical state does not matter to you… Her emotional state does not matter to you… Nothing about her matters to you… She's nobody to you…
After successfully reciting those words over and over again, Elmer released a deep breath of exhale before going ahead to steady his heart rate using the previous unperilous method he had come up with in the carriage. The latter action he had taken as a result of his brain reminding him of his need to bypass Eddie's heightened sense of smell if his already made plan was to work.
He then moved forward, a single step bringing him out of the cloaking darkness of the warehouse he had been standing before, and began his approach toward those who he would have called his companions a few hours ago.
Ms. Edna was the first of her and Eddie to have a reaction as soon as Elmer appeared before their view out of the blackness of night like a pale ghost.
Her lashes had swept up in an instant, and following that action were a couple of blinks and even an attempt to stand up to her feet, but the latter was to no avail.
She was utterly weakened.
It was then that her mouth opened up noticeably like that of a mother's who had suddenly come across her long lost child, seemingly about to say something, though only an inaudible gasp escaped her lips as her gaze found Elmer's glum demeanor.
She slowly narrowed her brows to crinkled slits at that, while she perused the pale face that he had come to have.
After a few seconds of silence, she finally let her thin lips give way to the voice which had been caught in her gullet, but for some reason Elmer knew that the words had changed from the first ones she had wanted to put out.
"Mr. Elmer," she had called in a tone that was tinged with both worry and dwindled sullen excitement. "What happened?"
Elmer noticed that Eddie looked exactly the same way as he had been when they'd met earlier on the porch of Ms. Edna's home. The man was not visibly exhausted or anything of the sort.
Had he not gone ahead to use False Cognition after all, or did using his powers not affect him in any way? That was obviously impossible.
Elmer tried to confirm the former of his thoughts by forcing his eyes to take note of if the drops of rain falling from the sky some distance away were slowing down, since that was what False Cognition had been explained to him to do. But it was to no avail.
After all, it wouldn't have been anything short of magical if he could see raindrops fifty meters far from him clearly.
He gave up soon after with an indistinct sigh and smiled softly, a one dull and without warmth that would no doubt crack under close scrutiny from the gaze of anyone who might try to pry into his current state of being.
"I killed him," Elmer answered with the indisputable words he had tried to come to terms with. "I killed the corrupted one. I killed a person."
His tone was without anger or sadness—it was completely without life—while his voice had a bit of retained raspiness from the bitter display of crying he had had secretly in the warehouse. But currently, he had little care in the world for such things.
Ms. Edna took a second or two to peer into his distant eyes before closing hers and exhaling despondently.
"Suspected as much," Eddie said, his face without its usual expression of playfulness as he took it upon himself to slice through the flimsy silence that had been overstaying its welcome. "The gunshot gave us an idea."
And for that reason had Elmer not muffled his second shot.
It was so that Ms. Edna and Eddie would already have had their minds stuffed with a vague idea of what had happened before he'd come to them, and, in order not to touch on the pain that came with ending the life of a human, choose not to question him so deeply on what had ensued.
But in the case that the gunshot plan had not come to work, he had also readied an explanation for it all, for why he had muffled his first shot and not the second, and for what had caused it to come to that extent.
Although, with the way things were seemingly moving now, Elmer had quite the surety that the latter would not come into play.
"…Still you chose to keep to the plan either way?" Elmer subconsciously mumbled a part of his thoughts.
He had come to a conclusion before that they had kept to the plan because of their professionalism, but he knew they would surely have thought about the possibility of things going awry. What he wanted to know with that question was how they had prepared for if the plan had gone sideways.
"Yes. We did," Eddie said, beginning to reply to Elmer's question. "You did not blow the whistle and so we kept to the plan you gave us. But… We only stayed back because it was one gunshot. If there had been another, we would have had no choice but to proceed without your whistle call."
Elmer remained silent after Eddie's answer, his plaintive expression still well evident on his face. Then it was good he had proceeded the way he had done, if not he might have not been in the Pathway of Time now.
"You do not have to feel down about it," Ms. Edna immediately chimed in. "You had no choice."
Elmer closed his eyes with a soft inhale and nodded, his fake appearance of him still being their companion without any sign of faltering.
That's right… I had no choice… Same as now…
Apparently because of those thoughts, Elmer finally went forward and leaned over to hand Ms. Edna The Warlock's Torch in his left hand.
"Could you please have it from me?" he pleaded. "I… I don't think I want to hold on to it any longer."
Ms. Edna did not resist and immediately took the sombre archaic artifact from him, her mind probably telling her that she was relieving the burden of a young Ascender who had had no choice but to personally curb the horrors of the supernatural himself.
If only that was really the case. If only that was the reason he had handed her the artifact.
"So this is The Warlock's Torch? A mystic artifact? Looks fairly ancient," Eddie spoke to Elmer as he straightened himself. "Funny that neither me nor Edna have ever heard about artifacts of this type. I wonder where your employer got it from?"
Elmer nodded with an oblivious look tacked onto his desolate appearance, using that to avoid the question so he would not find himself revealing details on the artifact or what it did. He then asked, "You do not seem as though you used your unique ability, Eddie. Did you think against it?"
The man in his late twenties took his studying almond blue eyes away from the artifact, which was completely mysterious to him, and put them on Elmer.
"I did," Eddie shrugged as he answered. And even though Elmer was genuinely surprised, because it did not appear to be like False Cognition being in use had really been the case, he could not even get himself to show it anymore; therefore, he just acted.
"You look completely fine. I thought using the unique abilities came with some sort of negative effects?" Elmer queried, and Eddie smiled softly.
Elmer could not look in a mirror presently, but from the few fake smiles he had been given off for a while now, he could at once see that Eddie's was a real smile.
Would he be able to smile like that ever again?
"The effects of False Cognition come after I've put a stop to it," Eddie answered. "You see, mine's different from Edna's. I am not directly courting time so I can use it for however long I wish. But that just means double the repercussions for its use once I'm done."
"What is this after effect, if you do not mind me asking?"
All of a sudden, as Elmer watched Eddie look up to the sky with a slight squirm and downturned lips, he noticed a subtle grogginess in the man's demeanor, as well as the sluggish way his head had turned up.
"Nothing much," Eddie spoke. "I just lose my sense of time for a while."
Elmer's brows narrowed as he blinked owlishly, not having a single understanding on how bad that could be. Or maybe it was just that his brain couldn't be as critical as they had usually been.
He had been drained to the core of his being after all, both emotionally and physically, and soon enough it was going to get a lot worse.
Therefore, in the light of that regard, the only thing he could do to get the answer he needed for the confounding question in his head was to ask.