To Rewrite A War

Chapter 2: Ward Against The Ever-Seeing

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Nova wished time would stop. That was pretty funny, considering who he was. What he was.

'The Keeper of Time' they would call him. On occasions, they'd call him 'The Keeper' for short, or on more extreme ones, 'The Keeper of The Universe'. All of which he would internally deny. Whatever the hell they were thinking, Ash had wanted nothing to do with the job scope of the so called Keeper of Time, not that he even knew what it was, because no one told him anything other than that he was mentioned in some prophecy that was as old as the universe itself, and that he had to save them. From what exactly, that remained to be debated. Heavily associated with the workings of the past, present and future, Ash was pressured into things he would rather not do, know things he'd rather not know and be someone he'd rather not be.

In this case, it was someone who knew too much about the future, both from experience and part of his abilities as the Keeper of Time.

Dawn was approaching, slower than it had any right to be. Ten to sixteen hours of staying indoors should be able to ensure that the angels will not find him. That was, if they were even trying to find him. God knows the reason for their visit, he wasn't able to find out the reason the first time because of the accident, namely him being stumbled upon by one of them on his way back from the convenience store. Suffice to say, the angel had one look at him and deemed it was necessary to turn the whole visit to be about him, their original goal long forgotten and was never mentioned again past that point.

Distantly, Ash wished it was only to warn the human leaders, who would no doubt be in the area, about the upcoming threat, which would hopefully never reach the Metal Nations if he was never found by the group.

Worst case scenario though, the angels did come looking for him, as a hidden intention for coming here, with the whole envoy gossip only serving to be a disguise.

If so, then Ash would make sure that even if they were trying to find him, they wouldn't be able to.

Being the only human on The Other Side made him desperate and by proxy, creative. Unless they brough with them the Heir, the angels could only dream on catching him in his own house! Hah!

Inhaling deep, Ash tried to reach for his core, only to curse when he felt nothing. No use then, humans naturally have very low sensitivity towards the workings of 'magic' despite having a core themselves, like any other living organisms do. Meira, as what was the official term to describe the otherworldly energy coursing through one's body, was still debated about among the humans. Some had proclaimed to be able to reach out to their core, while others just believe it to be something nonexistent. With intense practice with the correct methods though, one would be able to squeeze out a handful of it out of themselves to do the bare minimum. This body Ash had regressed back into was without such practice, so he couldn't feel his core at the moment. Which was dangerous.

Some angel out there may easily detect his core using some weird mechanism of angel meira that he never bothered to understand, and locate him even in the comforts of his home.

Sighing, Nova found himself a box of chalk he had used to tutor the neighborhood's children with, and drew a sigil on the door.

Ten years of living as the only human living in a world full of magical people that could kill you with a twist of a finger had taught Ash how to protect himself without having to use what little meira he could conjure, and one of the simplest ways to that was sigils. Well, about as simple as sigils could be.

Humans are considered the most primitive among the Five Arcana, a status that was quite lower than the insidians, who were technically the monsters of the Earth, what with all their figures and addiction towards violence. Ash wasn't stubborn enough to deny that fact too. Sure, humans were considerably much weaker than the other four creatures, but once they are desperate enough, they either become a total fool or a total genius. The latter is much more uncommon and yet much more dangerous.