"Shijian, we've been on this planet for a month, don't you think we must return now from our home era?"
Lazzi tilted his head slightly like a confused pup. "A month? Our planet's time or this Earth's?"
"This Earth of course. How can you not know? You're the Obelisk of Time!"
"Oh Vide," Lazzi scoffed "every time period in this universe from the very beginning to infinity is embedded on every cell of my body. Do you think that this Earth's mere month would be memorable to me?" Lazzi snapped.
"Then why don't we just go home?"
"You know we can't. Veross' ordered us to be here and find his Inheritor. And we cannot leave Ortus here. She doesn't age, she is perfectly capable of changing history. Just imagine the anarchy it would create in our present time."
"Let's just come back, okay? Maybe we can find help from—"
"Help? And then what? Accept the shame we'll bring back home? The two most powerful beings can't find a single person? We already failed them Vide! We already failed when we weren't able to save those people she killed. We're the biggest failure in the entire human history!"
"We're not soldiers, we weren't prepared."
"Maybe you're not, your highness! But I am. I was prepared all my life for anything like that and what did I do? I let them die on my own planet! I'm a disgrace! We cannot go back until I show them Ortus' dead body."
"I knew it. This is about you, isn't it? You can't swallow your pride."
"Easy for you to say. Your pride is a birthright. Mine is something that I have to earn."
Ophelia bit the insides of her cheeks. She wanted to say something, defend herself, but decided to keep it to herself. Inside the abandoned building they were staying, no sound but their own echoing voice could be heard but the lack of it was still deafening. Lazzi noticed that he might have hit a nerve with Ophelia.
"Hey I'm sorry." Lazzi whispered in his velvety voice and patted Ophelia's back. "We'll find Veross' Inheritor soon. If only we have his Obelisk."
"Well, we got the second-best thing. Our minds."
"What's the next area we're going to check?"
***
It was a bit dark and gloomy outside although it was early in the morning. Lazzi and Ophelia, despite their control over time and space couldn't do anything to find Veross' Inheritor but to simply ask around people if they observed something peculiar for the last few weeks. Most of the people they asked said no. While others don't even entertain them.
"Vide, um, are you a bit hungry?" Lazzi asked after they asked yet another snobbish person.
"Hungry again?" Fortunately, after a few weeks of practice, the two became more well-versed to their abilities. Often, during scouting, when the two find themselves hungry, they steal food using Ophelia's warping ability.
"You know my metabolism is faster than normal. I think it's an effect of being the Obelisk of Time."
Ophelia scoffed. "Liar. I haven't read that effect in any books I've read."
"Well, I think I am more credible than any of your sources. I'm literally the one they're talking about."
Ophelia just sighed and scratched the back of her ear where her insignia lies—a folded fabric of space, that looked like an inverted omega sign from afar. "I'll be back in a few seconds."
"Okay, I'll count how many seconds you'll—" Lazzi paused. He looked up in the sky and it hit him again. A spray of water fell on his face and slowly became a downpour of rain accompanied by a cold gust of wind. The two for the first time smelled the sweet scent of petrichor on Earth. It was slightly different from theirs.
"Oh no! I don't want to be wet." Ophelia frantically drew a circle above her head which made every raindrop about to touch her hair translocated somewhere else.
Lazzi's mouth went agape. "Really? Your Obelisk could move entire planets but you here are using it as an umbrella?"
"You're just jealous. In literature they called that a displacement ring."
Lazzi was about to clap back when he heard screaming coming to their way. It was an old woman running frantically. From the looks of it she looked homeless and distraught.
"It's raining! She's coming back!"
Lazzi jogged towards the old woman who was completely having a mental breakdown. "Ma'am, what's wrong?"
"She's coming! She's going to get me!"
"Who's coming to get you? We're here to help."
"Shijian, she's clearly confused. I don't think—"
"Wait, I think I remember something." Lazzi said to Ophelia. Lazzi placed his thumbs on the old woman's temple. Lazzi focused and his eyes now began to illuminate a yellow light. Like a personal memory coming back to him, he saw what the old lady had seen a month ago. "She saw them. Veross and Ortus."
"What? How do you know?" Ophelia asked.
"Retrovision, I think. I can see the memories of other people."
"What? You could do that? All this time you could do that?"
Lazzi scratched the back of his head. "Get off my back. I forgot that Shijian could do that."
"What's going on between you two?" the old lady asked.
"Carry along grandma, Vide and I are gonna protect you from that monster."
The old lady, still confused, just nodded and ran off.
Ophelia rolled her eyes. "A month of asking people..."
"Well, our search might be done soon. I know where Veross passed on his Obelisk. Let's go there now." Lazzi stared intently at Ophelia.
"What? We can't just warp there. I must have visited the place first."
"You haven't visited it?" Lazzi said mockingly. "You're the Obelisk of Space! Why haven't you visited it yet?"
"Ha-ha, you're a funny man Shijian. If you don't know, my mind archives every spatial point in any dimension of the entire expanding universe."
Lazzi scoffed. "Copycat. Let's just go and walk, it's just a few meters away from here anyway."
Ophelia sighed and followed Lazzi.
"It's in this alley." Lazzi said. He crouched and brushed his fingers against a scorch mark in the wet ground.
"Okay, we're here but we still don't know where Veross' Inheritor is."
"Not yet. But if you Bridge me your Obelisk we will." Lazzi stood and held out his hand. Ophelia nodded and combed her hair away, revealing her insignia. Lazzi breathed in, his one hand on Ophelia's neck. He twisted his other hand as if he was turning a dial. At first nothing happened but then the rain swiftly started to move upwards back in the sky. After a while, the two Obelisks saw faint ghostly visuals of people walking backwards around the alley.
"You're rewinding time?"
"No, not exactly. It's just after images of the things that happened here in this area. Basically, I'm rewinding light."
"Oh right," Ophelia blushed. She remembered reading that in one of her textbooks about the effects of Bridging. It was a technique used to solve mysterious crimes in the future.
"Alright, let's move backwards up to a month ago." Lazzi twisted his hands further, making the rewind process faster.
"There they are!" Ophelia said. Lazzi snapped his fingers and the vision paused. Static jolts of lightning were scattered everywhere like dangerous strings. Ortus was in midair, thrown away by the huge sparks of electricity frying her body. Lazzi looked at the center where the main bolt of electricity hit.
"Oh no..." Lazzi held on to the hem of his shirt. There in the middle of the chaos he saw a boy coiled with a lightning bolt and in front of him was a burnt body. Ophelia placed a comforting hand on Lazzi's back.
"He sacrificed himself to protect the Obelisk up to the very end. I hope he's in peace now."
Lazzi nodded and reached out for the boy's face but his fingers simply passed through.
"That's him, isn't he?" Ophelia whispered.
"Right. Veross' inheritor." Lazzi snapped his finger once again and the vision played forward. After some time, people had discovered Veross' Inheritor and took him in an ambulance.
"We must follow his after images."
"Where's Ortus?" Ophelia asked. The two looked back and noticed Ortus was now missing.
"Let's think of that later, for now let's follow where the ambulance is taking him. Vide, please expand and move the area of vision wherever this ambulance takes him."
Ophelia nodded. "We finally found him, huh?"
"Yeah, we found our Obelisk of Odds."