Mira stiffened in his back and she brought forward the Comm-device she was holding and began fiddling with it,
"Well I was hurrying over to your room to surprise you because I knew the test would have to be postponed due to the damages the presence of the Arch mage brought, but I saw her moving toward the other Arch mages above and nothing else, which was in bad taste if you ask me, I felt she should have gone to you first, her loss if you ask me, which was partly the reason I hurried over, did you not tell me she left you to your irresponsible grandfather when you were seven?"
"Yes she did," Andar replied, "Are you sure you saw her heading directly towards the Arch mages and not anywhere else?"
"Yeah, I'm sure of that, wait, I should have pictures… here, I took them on my way to your room."
Passing her Com-device to Andar after finding what she had been searching for, he scrutinized the clear pictures that Mira had taken of the Arch mage that arrived at the testing ground, Mira's device was capable of taking seven hundred shots a second and it had captured the movements of his mother, and except when the purple sun that signified her authority flashed bright in the air, her movements were easily tracked.
It simply showed her moving towards the top of the Arena, and she had not descended anywhere near Andar.
This more than anything solidified the Time-Stop effect that his intuition had warned him about, somehow his mother had stopped time not just around him, as he had first thought, but on the entire Black Tower, or at least just the surface of the Black Tower.
It was the only method she could use that would have been able to fool the entire audience here, including the Arch mages above, who would have taken a different action if they knew of her manipulations, but he could not help but ask, why would she take the time to chat with him and risk the expose of whatever she was about to accomplish here in the Black Tower?
Andar spoke to Mira in a whisper, "Whatever is happening is bigger than I thought, and I don't understand the reason, but I believe what is happening here is due to the actions of my mother. I cannot be sure, but I think that she stopped Time, not slowed it down, but stopped it entirely."
Mira laughed incredulously, "What! That is impossible,"
"I don't think so," Andar replied, "it was only for a short period, but she did it, also I think the movements of my world closer to the Black Tower and the fact that my mother is here with her real body are all connected."
"I don't think I follow you Andar, you are saying some wild stuff,"
"As wild as the Aethernet going down? You said that was impossible, and it is, I don't believe anything should be able to take down the Aethernet unless the Magus Supreme World had fallen, and I think that is impossible.
"Unless you look at it from the perspective of Time and everything begins to weirdly make sense, it's hard for me to wrap my head around it, but if you try to think beyond the normal flow of time that we are familiar with, you will realize that everything happening now is as a result of Time Manipulation.
"The Aethernet has not stopped working, we are just not receiving its signals because it has been halted. Think of it as a boat moving in the sea and suddenly the entire body of water is frozen instantaneously, waves and all, the water is present but its state has transformed and our receiver cannot push through it. The fact we cannot access Aether in the environment, or your Spatial Storage malfunctioning can be explained using this same principle."
Mira was stunned into silence as she tried to follow Andar's thought, the tunnel they were in seemed to be endless,
"Who… what could be responsible for something like this? There are multiple Arch mages here and this is the Black Tower!"
"I don't know, but I think I have a pretty good idea, same as you I think, but whatever I may think is useless because they have already caught us. We are in danger."
Mira looked around in fear and tried to summon her powers without any success, although she had a Spirit Body and it could store a healthy amount of Aether, any spell she set out to conjure fizzled away the moment that left her body.
Suddenly, Mira felt a sharp pain in her chest as her body was jolted away from Andar, she looked down in shock to see Andar's right arm had been driven deep inside her chest, almost to the elbow.
Her eyes held pain and incredulity as weakness began to flood her body. Coughing blood she looked at Andar whose eyes were filled with pain, and a surprising amount of resolve and she smiled at him.
Bringing one bloody hand to caress his cheek, Mira whispered, "Would killing me help you?"
It did not seem possible, but the pain in Andar's eyes multiplied, but he croaked,
"Yes, it would…"
He brought his other hand and punched her savagely in the head. The blow drove her head to the side and it cracked against the wall, and if not for his other hand that was holding her firmly because it was inside her body she would have been flung away.
Andar turned his body so he could pin her against the wall and he began repeatedly slamming her head against the wall.
Mira moaned in pain as her left eyes were crushed alongside her nose, her beautiful features left in ruin, but her bright blue eyes never left Andar's own, although there was confusion inside them, there was also acceptance.
Hitting her head against the unyielding wall for the fifteenth time cracked her skull open and with a savage yank, Andar removed his left hand from her chest.
Feeling something running down his face he touched it and realized it was tears. He had been screaming and crying all these while he killed Mira and he was unaware of it.
Andar had never imagined that the first life he took was that of his lover.
The broken body of Mira shuddered on the ground as the blood from her body poured down the steps soaked his boots and continued downwards.
Mira was a Rank 2 Mage with a powerful physique, even with all this damage it would take a long time for her to die,
"I… am… glad I could help you Andar… I love…"
Andar suddenly screamed aloud, "No more!"
He brought both his hands forward and he conjured a concentrated ball of flames so hot it was approaching a million degrees. He hurled the bluish-white flame at the body of Mira and she gasped as the flames covered her and then she began to scream. The cries from her were bloodcurdling, far greater than what a mortal could let out because she was suffering a pain greater than what any mortal could ever experience.
Andar staggered backward and fell to his knees in shock, as doubt began to fill his heart, 'Was it possible he was wrong? Did he just kill…'
He covered his face with his bloody hand and began to shake his head side to side in a frantic manner.
'All my calculations are correct! The numbers aligned the way it should be, the words that were spoken have changed and the experience is different…'
His thoughts were moving in a thousand different directions but he refused to summon Grey Will because he knew that he might need it for more pressing dangers ahead. Yet whatever he was thinking could not erase the presence of Mira's scream of pain.
The screams from Mira that were so loud and filled with pain began to transform. It steadily grew weaker as if her energy was about to be spent. Her shiny bones were now visible in the flames and it was almost surprising that her left eye was still visible and she was staring at Andar all these while.
Those eyes slowly fell into her collapsing skull, but at the end, there had been something different about those eyes… something cold.
Andar slowly looked up because the cries from Mira's collapsing body had transformed into laughter.
