Time Holders: The World of Balance

"Alright, then. I’ll put you down now," Aldrus said, glaring at the man.

The jailer didn’t answer, but his eyes said everything Aldrus needed to know. A heavy silence hung over them both. Somehow, they knew this was the end.

...Here it comes.

The first strike came from the cloaked man—a ridiculously fast blow aimed straight at Aldrus’s head. In a fraction of a second, the black-haired boy jerked aside, letting the man’s fist whistle past his shoulder.

The man did not waste any time; he closed the distance and shifted his momentum, wrapping his arm around Aldrus’s neck in a reverse grip. However, before the chokehold could fully lock in, Aldrus instantly braced himself, dropping into a crouch and slipping out of the grapple in one swift motion.

"[Visione] again, huh," the jailer muttered. "That didn’t help you last time."

The boy brushed the comment off with an immediate uppercut, which was swiftly blocked by the man’s heavy jaw.

Grrrrrgh! Shit!

Aldrus’s fist twitched with a spasm of pain. He had hit his target, but it hadn’t shown a single sign of effectiveness.

Hahhh... I knew it.

He wouldn’t win a battle of attrition like this. He knew that much; after all, he had already seen himself try and fail. Still, the strategy he had come up with to defeat the monster was incredibly risky. No matter how confident he had tried to look for Aiden’s sake, a plan was still just a plan. It could easily fail, and that would be the end of it.

But he had to try, or else they were all done for.

The cloaked man threw a brutal side kick, and Aldrus quickly leaped over it, twisting his body in mid-air and launching a counter-kick of his own. Once again, the man didn’t even flinch. He absorbed the blow to his neck with the eerie serenity of a sleeping giant.

Ahgghhh! Feeling a piercing ache ripple through his leg, Aldrus grimaced, quickly backing up a couple of steps. His strategy relied entirely on a signal. He needed to be absolutely certain of one thing before he made his real move.

The moment his feet touched the floorboards, the cloaked man jumped at him in a single bound, throwing another punch at his face. For now, all Aldrus could do was dodge, wait, and observe.

He rode the momentum of the blow, rolling with the punch just as Cedric had done during their fight in the woods. The cloaked man’s arm passed cleanly beside his body, leaving him open for a fraction of a second.

This time, Aldrus noticed the man’s expression stiffen just before the attack. A sudden jolt of hope throbbed in his chest.

Please...!

The milky-eyed boy dropped his center of gravity and swung a powerful kick aimed directly at the jailer’s liver. And unlike before, the man quickly brought his forearm down between his flank and the boy’s leg, blocking the strike without much trouble.

Still, that was enough for Aldrus.

Alright, one more time! he thought, as his body dropped instinctively toward the floor. He then tore a shattered floorboard from the ground, using the momentum of the movement to roll back onto his feet.

From behind, the jailer was already closing in to crush his skull. Aldrus braced himself once more, spinning toward the threat and closing his eyes.

As the world seemed to grind to a halt, the black-haired boy gripped the broken piece of wood tighter and focused.

The weapon of a street fight. The weapon of the unarmed.

This object of mine, bound to me, bound with me.

It is my possession, and it will help me ease this heart of mine.

This weapon of a street fight. This weapon of the unarmed.

It’s mine. It has been mine. It will be mine.

It. Is. Mine.

He snapped his eyes open, his sweaty bangs whipping across his vision.

He immediately glanced up just in time to hear the wind howl as the cloaked man’s arm came crashing down like a meteorite, threatening to end the fight.

As if.

Aldrus released the coiled tension in his legs, springing upward with everything he had. At the exact same time, his right arm shot forward, driving the wood directly into the path of the cloaked man’s incoming limb.

Upon impact, the rotten piece of wood exploded within his grip in a rain of a thousand splinters, each shard shooting erratically in every direction. And before any of them could pierce his own face, Aldrus planted his feet squarely against the man’s shins and launched himself backward like a released spring.

The jailer stopped dead in his tracks, caught off guard by the boy’s strange behavior as the tiny fragments of wood rained down around him. Before the monster could say a word, Aldrus bolted even further back, making a desperate run for it.

Naturally, the man didn’t believe the boy was actually fleeing, but he couldn’t risk letting him assist his comrades—otherwise, the fight would drag on indefinitely. So, shifting into a sprinter’s stance, the jailer exploded forward with the terrifying speed of a lion.

What he didn’t know, however, was that his sudden charge would soon be cut short.

The moment he took his first stride, a freezing chill shot straight up his spine. He obeyed his raw survival instinct, and whipped his head back in a flash... but it was already too late.

Right before his eyes, a thousand wooden needles erupted in his direction, completely untethered from the laws of terminal velocity. And before he could lift a single finger, the majority of them pierced his flesh, stopping instantly inside as they collided with his mighty [Freeze] domain. Yet, the remaining shards simply tore clean out through his back, seemingly ignoring his defense altogether.

"Ahghhg! Y-You! How?!"

Aldrus, who had skidded to a halt only a few seconds into his sprint, turned back to face him, and simply said, "[Freeze] and [Motion]."

The jailer’s expression turned grim. Then, with a savage snarl, he spat a bloody wooden needle from his mouth and charged once more.

Eight left, huh.

Aldrus had already consumed two seconds of [Motion]. The first had accelerated his thought process; the second had stripped away the limits of speed and gravity from the shattered wood.

At first, he had feared ten seconds would barely be enough to survive. But after confirming a critical detail about the man’s defense, he was certain. Eight seconds; four strikes. That would settle it.

Please work...

Answering the desperate rush of the towering man, the black-haired boy forced his exhausted body to move forward one final time.

In the next moment, the jailer was upon him, his breathing ragged and off-beat. He threw a wild, desperate punch, splitting the air with a violent sound.

Watching the fist hurtle closer, Aldrus considered using [Visione] to dodge or block efficiently, but that hadn’t worked before. The man’s raw power vastly outmatched his own, which meant his usual brute-force strategy would be futile.

Unless...

[Motion], [Freeze], [Visione]... Further.

If knowing it beforehand isn’t enough...

I’ll just glimpse it so far back that missing it becomes impossible.

It was a simple, desperate gamble. He had to exploit his Perspective—that absurd, illogically balanced perk of his. It was the only thing he could rely on.

If throwing himself against a wall would not shatter it, he would simply hit it harder. Hard enough to achieve the impossible. Hard enough to force his way through.

Cancel.

With his eyes wide open, Aldrus clenched his teeth.

[Motion]. [Freeze].

In the blink of an eye, he drove his right fist directly against the man’s incoming blow, mirroring the clash Aiden had with him earlier. This time, however, the aftermath would be very hard to watch.

Before the jailer’s strike could meet any resistance, Aldrus’s fist tore right through it as if it were nothing but wet paper, filling the freezing corridor with a sickening, wet crunch.

"AAAAAAAAAHAGHHhhahhhhhGhhh!"

The cloaked man’s arm rippled unnaturally backward, the kinetic force shattering the bones all the way up to his shoulder.

[Motion]. [Freeze]. [Visione].

Aldrus saw the man stagger back, fight to regain his balance, and desperately throw a headbutt at his nose.

Cancel.

[Motion]. [Freeze].

The boy reinforced his knee, waiting for the man’s head to drop down. He then grabbed the jailer by the scalp, driving his knee upward into his face, shattering his nose and fracturing his teeth.

"Puajj!" The jailer coughed up a spray of blood, drowning in his own tears.

[Motion]. [Freeze]. [Visione].

He saw the towering man attempt an angry low sweep, heavily dragging his leg in his direction.

Cancel.

[Motion]. [Freeze].

[Motion]. [Freeze].

Aldrus exhaled a weary sigh.

This is it. Please... just fall already.

Evading the sweep with a nimble leap, Aldrus contorted his body mid-air and delivered an enhanced kick squarely to the man’s jaw.

The moment it connected, the jailer’s body was violently launched backward with the concussive force of a runaway train. And just as the massive form was about to crash to the floor, the black-haired boy landed gracefully right in front of him.

For some reason, he remembered Miss Leona’s lessons. All the sweat and tears her training had demanded, the endless hours spent biting the dust, the countless times he had been utterly crushed.

Aside from his match against Cedric, Aldrus had never tasted a proper victory against a stronger opponent.

This was his very first one.

With unbreakable determination, the boy clenched his enhanced right fist, closed his eyes, and took a decisive step toward the collapsing man...

And just like that, he buried his fist into the monster’s stomach with every single ounce of strength he had left.

"UUghgghghhhhhh!" A visceral whimper cut through the air the moment it impacted.

The towering cloaked figure, the jailer, the monster. The man who had stolen their freedom was suddenly caught in a localized vacuum of warped air, his body rippling backward like a dark ocean current at night.

Aldrus watched the man fly through the air with a bizarre sense of déjà vu, mirroring the way the blond boy had been thrown just a few days prior, and before long, the unconscious body of their captor finally hit the ground with a resounding crash, lying still. Defeated at last.

"Hahhhhh, hahhhh, ahghh..."

Ha... Haha...

I... I did it.

After everything they’d gone through, amid the silent exhilaration of a victory, Aldrus let out a shaky, breathless laugh.