After a long night of trying to find a hotel, Aaron awoke within Pam's Budget Motel at 7:30 in the morning.
Still too early to meet at the hospital, he made his way to a local diner where he ordered a nice breakfast native to the Sea of Mystery.
Stewed pumpkin with lavender oil for smell and terror venom for the rich, poisonous taste that made tourists froth at the mouth.
Along with the soup, he ordered an Esmertini, a pungent non-alcoholic beverage that was made with a mix of tangerine juice and vinegar.
This tastes like piss…
Spitting the liquid out of his mouth and then checking to see if anyone had seen him do so, he relaxed in his chair, the morning sun covering his face.
"Ugh… What am I supposed to do for another hour!"
Muttering the words under his breath, he nearly jumped with shock when someone pressed their finger into his shoulder.
"You could always talk with me~"
He looked up in surprise, the face of his mentor and the Marshal of Ancients, Camilla Buckley, staring down at him.
"C-Cam?"
It had been over a week since he had last seen her, a happy smile quickly coming over his expression as he gestured for her to sit.
At the same time, out of the corner of his eye, he noticed the waiter frown, looking between the newspaper in his hands and the table.
"The Two Champions of the Tournament Unveiled! Camilla Buckley and Aaron Grimstall! Master and Student!"
Coming to the realization that two of the strongest people on the island were sitting at his table, he decided that he had far more pressing matters to attend to, vanishing back inside the cafe.
Aaron chuckled, returning his focus to the brown-haired woman who scanned the small sack of cloth sitting beside him.
"What's that?"
She pointed at the bag, and the boy suddenly remembered that, like him, she could be unaware of things as well.
"Well… It's my egg…"
Picking it up with his one remaining hand, he unwrapped the cloth, allowing the woman to examine its orange exterior.
"You're a chicken now?"
There was a brief silence after the woman's joke, a frown coming across her face as her student didn't laugh.
"Y-you get it right…?"
She asked hesitantly, and he nodded, which only made her blush red with embarrassment before regaining focus on what she was curious about.
"What kind of creature is it? It is obviously far stronger than anything I've hunted before, and I'd even compare it to the level of Kings, even in its current state."
Aaron sighed at her question, once again repeating the same answer he seemed to give to all queries as of late.
"I'm not sure. All I know is that it's likely some relative of the Naelith because when I selected it from the Vault of Nautilus, it leaped its consciousness over into that damned egg."
The woman tilted her head to the side, not quite understanding what he meant but going along with it.
"So it's at least of the Apex variety I see… I wonder if it'll think of you as its father, or rather its mother, when it hatches."
Unlike before, the blond boy laughed at her joke, gently shaking his head.
"I doubt I'll be around for it anyway. The amount of mana this thing requires to hatch is at a level where I don't even know if that Magician from yore could power it!"
Still with a smile on his face, he noticed his teacher's expression darken, her brow turning down.
"What do you mean, 'I doubt I'll be around?'"
The child's breath hitched as he realized his slip-up.
S-she didn't know.
Gently, he wrapped the egg in the cloth, placing it back on the ground where he rested it against his chair.
Then, he steadied his expression, removing any unseriousness from his normally jovial way of speaking.
"Both the Naelith and now this egg have been slowly eating away at my lifespan, using it as fuel for only crab knows…"
He paused, taking a deep breath.
"It's likely I'll be dead by the end of January."
Pursing his lips, he looked up at the woman who sat frozen, her expression glazed over and her body still.
She remained like that for several minutes, quietly processing what she had heard her apprentice say, his own death suddenly much closer than it should have been.
Not wishing to remain in the deadlock of silence, he opened his mouth again, returning to the main point of what he had wished to say.
"For that reason, I'll be heading south with Lord Kurogane after healing Eleanor. I'll need to build as much strength as possible in a short amount of time if I wish to end that wretched creature's existence before my own time expires."
He sighed, feeling the warmth of the sun on his face once again.
"I see…"
The words came out of her mouth in a murmur, her mind still obviously in shock from what she had learned.
"You lost your hand and said nothing of it…"
She trailed on, not giving the boy a second to think.
"But… For your life to be on the brink and for you to say nothing for so long…"
There was a long silence as her brown eyes fell on the table, unmoving, while her hands trembled ever-so-slightly.
Before the boy could say another word, she pushed her chair away from the table, springing up to her feet.
Then, she strode off, disappearing into the cityscape faster than Aaron could track, leaving him alone in the cafe.
He frowned, understanding the woman's emotions completely.
Even he thought that throwing such news at her without a warning, a woman who had nothing left in this world, was far too cruel.
Not only that, but no matter how many times he saw her and felt the crushing aura resembling the Old Man's that radiated from her form, he always forgot who he was really seeing.
Camilla Buckley was only four years older than he was, forced from her homeland after a disaster so vile that it left the Oceanic Association in a crisis.
In comparison to the other Marshals or even the Sea Kings, she was nothing but a mere teenager forced into a global power struggle that would decide the fate of millions.
Through the months that he had known her, she had begun to see him as a pillar of stability, someone that she could rely on even if he was younger and weaker than herself.
He was more than a student to her, for they were friends; today, though, he placed a wedge so deep into their trust that he doubted if it could ever be rebuilt.
Yet it was what he did, and he could not take it back, his fate set in stone and the path ahead to be chartered in blood.
Placing a Silver Draught on the table, he stood up, making sure to grab the egg that was covered with fabric.
Tipping his head towards the waiter who was watching from afar, he left without hurry, taking a slow walk towards the hospital.
…
"Right this way, Lord Thorn."
The nurse guided the two men through the winding hallways of the clean, white building, her sense of direction far greater than their own.
I took them a few minutes before they arrived at a solid wooden door, where she pulled out a key from her pocket, unlocking the magic seal that barred all outsiders from entering.
"I-It was a high-risk patient admitted by Lady Buckley herself, so we took every precaution we could…"
As she pulled the handle, the door opened smoothly, and a room with a single bed came into view, housing a small girl with long blonde hair.
Aaron and Cauron stepped inside and thanked the nurse for her guidance, allowing her to return to her work without much hassle.
The blond boy scanned Eleanor for anything different from the last time he had seen her—she had been changed into a hospital gown and her arms were hooked up to tubes, but otherwise, she looked just the same.
Luckily, she doesn't need the restroom in this state, or I would've been doomed long ago…
Not daring to thank the deity inside his head for that, he allowed the orange-haired Sea King to examine her body.
The King put on his glasses with haste, their frames glowing with a radiant orange hue.
"Dear god…"
Aaron frowned at his sudden remark, but quickly focused on the man's next words as he began explaining.
"Her mana core exploded, but not a single fiber was ejected from her body… Not only that, but the threads that bind the fragments of the core are tangled together into woven tapestries…"
Furrowing his brow, he took a step closer, running his finger along her forehead.
"She's dead… but also not…?"
The blond boy watched in utter confusion as the man darted around, trying to work through the problem as best he could.
After nearly thirty minutes, he sighed, turning to the young Commodore with his conclusions.
"It seems that if we were to repair her core fully, it would restart her consciousness, effectively bringing her soul back to life. Although there is a possibility that she has already reincarnated within the Great Beyond… If that happened, then it would be impossible to revive her in any way."
As the King spoke, Aaron tensed, the diagnosis confirming what he had thought of her condition and what he had been told.
Just like the Old Man said… He could revive her but not fix her…
Feeling the deity that lurked in his head show signs of stirring, he tried to silence it for the first time.
You're the one who did this. Why the hell can't you just fix it?
There was no response, only Penelope's snores to echo through his head.
"There is one more thing…"
The boy snapped back to the present, looking up at the orange-haired man with concern.
"As this treatment far exceeds anything I have ever attempted to accomplish before, it could take weeks before a result is seen."
Aaron froze, painfully aware of the ticking clock that counted down his life second by second.
Sensing his thoughts, Cauron reassured him quickly before the boy could fall into despair.
"Don't worry. The treatment will be complete no later than December. I promise you that."
Reluctantly, the child nodded, his thoughts muddled and noisy as the time it would take echoed in the back of his head.
There's a chance…
As he sat down and gave the okay to the Sea King for the treatment, he sighed hard, feeling the stress of everything he had left to do weighing down on his chest.
I'll have two months then… Two months to kill Azaroth Pane.
And as he watched Cauron's hands glow with soft light and his brow furrow with strain while performing a precise surgery on Eleanor's core, the boy felt time itself quicken.
The minutes became hours, and the hours became days, which he spent focused on solitary training, allowing the scientist ample time to complete the procedure.
Finally, on November 33rd, 3125, the day of Eleanor's seventeenth birthday, as Aaron stepped into the hospital room, he felt a presence he hadn't felt in months, ever since that dreadful day in the city of Sea Fallen.