TAIHEN Only If We Could Go Back

Processing timeline…

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Entering timeline…

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Location – [Memphis, Egypt].

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Setting spawn – – –

”IS IT HUMID?! ” Taihen loudly asks as the bright light continues to blind him.

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Switching spawn – – –

Locating a place [>=20C].

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Landing now.

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The bright, blinding light starts dimming down. He finally gets to land on his feet once again, rubbing his eyes off of the frightening experience that he had been used to.

When the light goes out, everything goes dark. He stops moving for a while because of this surprise. He tries to see through the darkness with his ability to see through the dark, but the blinding light from before put too many photons up his retinas.

He brushes and pats off the dust from his overwhelmingly big coat covering his whole body and breathes heavily. It becomes apparent to him to open up his lighter, but when he tried to light it, it was already out of oil. Because of this, he immediately grabs sticks from his bag to create fire.

He places the stick resting on the smooth, rocky floor and places another one vertically on top of it. To produce fire, he has to rub the end of the stick by the opposition rhythm of his hands. After a quite long attempt, the stick finally heats up because of friction, and successfully produce flames.

His hands were a bit hot because of the friction so, for some reason, he places both palms on his cheeks. After this, he immediately takes a seat beside the flame to warm himself up.

Taihen grabs a white controller that looks like a tablet with a dusty screen. ”Hello…? Chro…nos? Are you s-still…? ” he asks the controller.

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Troubleshooting…

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Troubleshoot process done.

Updating – – –

Failed to update.

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Battery low

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Charge now — Portable charger at the back

Charge now — If none, use the solar panel

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”What!? ” he asks surprisingly, tapping the controller thinking that it might do something. ”How am I… uh… come on… ”

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— Shutting down

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He closes his eyes and sighs. There is nothing he could do. Though, he looks at his pocket to check how many time gems he has left.

He opens the pocket and sees that there is only one gem left. He had an oppotunity to take some on his last adventure, but he didn have his extraction gear. ”Oh no… I need to get… m-more… ”

After a couple of hours sitting in a cold, dark, empty cave doing absolutely nothing other than taking heat, his stomach growls. He grabs a tuna pie from his backpack and eats it to satisfy his hunger.

Boredom overcomes his thought on the process. The emptiness and loneliness of the place starts to get on his head so rapidly that he didn even mind who hes talking to anymore.

At this moment, he stares at the fire unanimous to the situation and slowly notices that the place is getting brighter and brighter.

He tilts his head and looks around the place and realizes one thing. His ability to see clearly in the dark is coming back. Thanks to the blinding light from earlier, he was forced to keep that ability locked away from his usage.

Now that he could see a lot clearer, he stands back up and tries to observe the state of his current surroundings. The cave hes in is quite smooth and sturdy, as he expected.

The walls and the floor are pretty smooth for a cave, especially since most caves give off rocky, spiky imagery to most of their visitors. He looks left and right and sees two paths to go to. It currently made him pretty indecisive since hes still focusing on finishing his snack.

Then out of nowhere, a black, winged animal flies through him and forcefully snatches the tuna pie from his hand, going directly to the ceiling to chomp on the food. ”Agh! ” He moans out of fright as he notices that his snack isn on his hand anymore.

”What -!? ” he shouts.

He tilts his head up to take a better look at what just happened and sees a bat, aggressively chomping on the tuna pie. He takes a good stare for a moment and decides to leave the bat alone.

”Aw… you c-can have it then… ”

As he says that to the bat, he suddenly feels a droplet of water flowing through his hand. At first, he wanted to ignore this, but given that hes in a cave and that his species don sweat, he decides to take a look.

And as he does, he sees his blood flowing down from his fingers. He thought it was strange that he never felt anything beforehand, but it mustve been some kind of papercut.

He uses his ability to zoom in and closely observes its claws, and it was what he expected. Its claws were so small and sharp that Taihen barely felt a thing when the bat flew by.

As swiftly as he could do, he takes out some bandage from his bag and uses it to cover the wound from any further infection until it fully heals.

After the bat finishes its food, it immediately flies to his face for some reason. Thanks to his reflexes, hes able to block his face off from the bats way using his arms, causing the bat to cling to his arm.

The bats sharp claw starts to puncture his skin deep into his muscles. The pain was too unbearable for him to try to experience.

It also starts clawing on the silver ring hes wearing as well. It was quite delicate and important since the person that gave it to him passed away. ”STOP! Y-youll scratch it! ”

He doesn want to hurt the bat as much as he did to the scorpion, so he tries to keep his reflexes from acting so it wouldn cause the bat pain, costing him more.

”Get off-, get off me-! GET OFF ME! ”

Even after shouting at the bat plenty of times to screw off, the bat clings tighter, piercing its claws deeper. Then, it starts flapping its wings as if its trying to fly while grabbing him. The pierce and the force combined was too tremendous for him to even experience anymore.

He tries holding back his temper and reflexes even more as everything happens all at once. He frowns and tries waving his right arm around to annoy the bat, but it never flew off. Instead, it punctures him deeper and deeper.

He grips his right wrist and bites his tongue to try and resist the pain, but it doesn help. He gets taken aback and accidentally steps on the flaming sticks. It almost causes him to trip, but luckily, he manages to maintain balance right before all goes downhill.

The sticks though break and scatter around, reducing the flame until it goes out. The bat finally comes to its senses and goes back to the ceiling and minds its own business again. Because the flame has gone out, the chilly air comes back to his senses. He begins slightly shivering in the cold despite having a huge coat on.

”So… cold… ”

Out of the blue, he suddenly hears a strange echoing sound coming from far away. ”Saedani! ” Having an ability to have amplified hearing has its ultimate benefits, and one of these is this.

”Hm? Wh-what? ” he murmurs as he turns his head towards the strange, subtle noise. It sounds similar to a child shouting at the top of their lungs.

As he turns back his head to figure out what that was, loud rumbling sounds suddenly become present. He turns his eye to the direction of the rumbling sounds and realizes that it comes from the same direction as the screaming kid.

The bat from earlier begins to panic, flying around aggressively back and forth and decides to cling behind him. Without hesitation, he runs towards the rumbling impact sounds. The air in the cave is cold enough to make you feel chill, but running through it almost froze him.

Eventually, he makes his way to the origin of the sound and arrives at a tall, steep cliff. Roughly fifteen meters tall. He takes steps towards the edge and looks down to have a good eyeful of whats underneath.

At that moment, he sees a young boy covered with rocks with only his head and left arm visible. Seeing this made him become worried about the boy since they are in the middle of life and death.

Not thinking twice, he walks away from the edge and grabs the necessary tools to go down. Well, if he jumps that high, hell probably die, and being prepared is better than jumping all in without any knowledge of what you
e doing.

Taihen, a recent traveler on Earth is somewhat prepared for these conditions, and so pulls out a tool standard for such situations, a rope. A rope made of a tree vine, to be exact. Which extends to about twenty meters.

He doesn know if thatll be sturdy enough to carry him all the way down but decides to trust his gut.

He ties the end of the rope to a stalagmite nearest to the cliff and throws the other end down the cliff. He readies himself and takes ahold of the rope, preparing himself to go down.

He breathes in and out. ”Here w-we go. ” he says as he holds onto the rope tighter and hops down to the cliff.

The rope resists him from falling down, so he faces the cliffs wall and pushes his feet on it to keep himself staying in one position. To keep on going, he releases his grip a little bit to fall down, but enough tightness to still feel his downward movement.

He does this a couple of meters down, gripping and releasing his hold on the rope to avoid falling down too fast to the ground, which may result in permanent death.

He looks down from his back to see his progress. ”Thats s-still pretty…far down… ” as he releases his grip a little to continue on.

The bat had enough of these uncanny and annoying movements. It flies away from his back and goes straight to his lone face to claw him again and again. Taihen wasn a danger to it, but it just seemed to see him as an enemy. Something to fear. Someone to be aggressive to.

”KKkkkagh! ” he shouts from pain. ”Not a-again! ”

The bat continues clawing on his face again and again. He wanted to make the bat go away but he needs both of his hands to grip on the rope.

”No- GET OFF! GO AWAY! ” he shouts even further.

He takes his right hand, which is still bleeding, of the grip to cover his face up. His left hand could barely lift him though, but he didn care. The bat continues clawing like an annoying brat and gradually claws on the arms part that is wounded.

The pain though… ”AAAghck! Ow! No… NO! NO! ”

The blood splatters to his face, making him completely and utterly surprised. It was too much for him.

But then…for the cause if his non-stop shouting, the young boy wakes up. ”A-ah… ” the boy yawns.

The young boy observes his surroundings and sees lots of rocks messed around him. He notices that something heavy is covering him up, pinning him to the ground.

”S-saed-dani! ” the young boy calls out, desperately catching his breath. ”M-m-min fadlik… ”

Taihen immediately hears his calls and looks down to see the current situation of the boy. He was in the middle of the young boys life and death situation, and if he continues on being slowed down, the young boy will die.

The bat never stops clawing, and Taihen becomes sick of it. His face is full of splattered blood coming from wounds in his face and his right arm.

”I SAID GET OFF! ” he shouts as he swings his hand and hits the bat, causing the bat to get the impact of the hit and be thrown at a reasonable distance.

But as he does, he accidentally pushes himself backward and release the grip of his left hand. He is falling. The rope is out of reach.

He closes his eyes, thinks quickly, and turns around so that the impact lands on his bag…

…and so he does.

The young boy hears that certain loud impact and faces it. He tries to call out to him as loud as he could. ”Saedani! ”

Taihen hears this and opens his eyes, breathing heavily because of what just happened. ”Damn rascal… ” he says as he rolls around and takes off his backpack.

”La… aistutie… altanafus… ” the young boy says, stretching his left arm out, slowly loosing his conscience.

There he realizes something important. He couldn understand what the young boy was saying. He needed to do something about this so he could communicate to him properly.

He grabs a certain device called a translator, that he conveniently has waiting inside his pocket. This device is handy whenever you
e talking to other sentient beings with different languages. It would always seem like they
e talking your language, vice versa.

He puts it in his left ear to act as an earpiece and taps it twice to turn it on.

– translator battery at 3% –

”Wh-what?! It d-didn charge?! ” he talks to himself.

He stands up and immediately runs toward the young boy. ”Alright, alright, s-stay with me and… y-youll be just fine. ”

The rocks resting above his back are quite big and heavy, but it didn make him lose hope to help the child. He pulls and smashes each rock he manages to take out one by one as swiftly as possible, giving room for the young boy to breathe more thoroughly.

”HAAAaah…HAAAaaah… ” the young boy breathes in.

”Thats it. ” Taihen says to the young boy as he continues to remove the rocks above him. ”Y-you can do it. ”

The young boy pulls his right arm from the pile of rocks and manages to remove it without getting too hurt. The arm was asleep though.

Then, he stretches both of his arms out, grips both of his hands to the ground, and slowly tries to forcefully pull himself out from the debris. Taihen stops removing rocks and walks in front of the young boy where he could see him.

”Here. ” he says as he lends out both of his hands for the young boy to reach. The young boy doesn hesitate a scratch and holds both of Taihens hands.

Taihen carefully pulls the young boy out of the piled rocks. The young boy groans as he feels the weight of the rocks scratch his skin as hes being pulled.

”Ggggghghrkkck ” the young boy groans loudly. ”I can – ow-OW! ”

Taihen halts for a second, ”W-wait!- you can do this. ok? Im almost- ” and then pulls more bluntly to make things quicker.

”No- WAIT! ” the young boy shouts. ”My leg- AGH! ”

”Just…a little -AH! ” The loud roaring of the descending rocks notifies Taihen that his effort comes to success. The force he exerted to pull him throws him back after letting his grip go. ”WOAH-! ”

The young boy cough for a short second and hurdles around in a back-lying position, breathing heavily from the tire, dread, pain, and exhaust. He stares at the ceiling, noticing that he could barely see anything because of the dark.

And then, out of nowhere, he starts to feel immense pain on his left foot, as if it is being prickled intensely. The pain then slowly spreads through his leg, making him groan in impulse.

He crouches his left leg and holds it tightly in an attempt to ease the pain out. ”FFFFfFfgghhghghgaaaaaaaaagh! MY LEG! ”

Taihen gets up in a hurry and walks toward him to calm him down. ”Alright alright its fine. ”

”NO ITS NOT- AAAAGGGH! ” the young boy screams.

Taihen slowly hovers his hand to his leg until it touches it. This gives the young boy a chance to breathe deeply and calm down.

”You
e gonna be fine. ” He tells the young boy as he smiles. ”You
e a man now, right? Be brave. You can hold it. ”

The young boy slowly sees through the dark clearly enough to see Taihen. He stares at his eyes, shedding a tear, and hesitates to smile because of the pain. He gulped in, releases his grip, and gives all his effort to smile, an attempt to ignore the pain.

Taihen pats the leg gently. ”See? It wasn that hard now was it? ”

The young boy breaks the eye contact and stares at the floor, embarrassed. ”Wh- why are you helping me… who-… who are you? ”

Taihen stays silent for a while and glances away for a second. He thinks for a moment on what to tell him. ”I don know… Im…I am just a guy…stuck in a cave. You? ”

”Krys. ” he stutters.

”Hang on Krys. ” he says to Krys as he wanders off to search for any vital injuries. ”Give me a minute or two- ”

– translator battery at 2% –

”2 percent!? ” he says with utter worry.

Krys attempts to continue the conversation with a remarked notice, despite his irregular breathing due to cluttering pain. ”You
e…Haaah…Taihen… ”

”Yes, indeed I am- wait, who told you? ” Taihen replies, utterly focused on searching only to be distracted by him.

The question ticks Taihens brain and becomes more curious. ”How did you know…? ” he adds.

”K-king… ” Krys desperately tries to splatter words out of his mouth, but he was feeling too weak to even try.

”King? H-hello? ” he asks in confusion. Krys isn supposed to know about him. Actually, nobody in the past should even have the knowledge to identify who or what he is.

”Who- who are they? ” he adds a question to ask him.

”… ”

Silence filled the cave as no response is given. He places both of his hands on both of Krys arms to show comfort and lessen the threat.

”Uh-its fine if you don want to. ” he adds.

Then, in just short notice, Krys begins losing his consciousness, slowly deteriorating his feeling of weakness. His eyes wander off to the left, slowly losing even the lift of his own arms.

Taihen, in deep concern, shows care to the young one. ”Hey hey- whats happening- ” he says as he shoves his hand beneath Krys back to handle him.

”I can - ”

COUGH COUGH

”-Agh. ” he says as he coughs up a vast amount of blood out of his mouth.

Krys mouth was full of coughed-up blood, dripping its remains to the floor forming an eerie puddle. Taihen couldn believe what was happening and got immediately confused.

COUGH COUGH

He coughs up, even more, letting out most of his blood through his mouth. Rather than deciding to help Krys immediately like he did last time, he freezes. Its as if he couldn move, paralyzed even.

His eyes were focused on the dying kid, as he sheds a tear out of his eye. He is reliving a trauma that happened twice. Losing people.

”Am I- ” COUGH COUGH ”-gonna die? ” Krys says as he looks at Taihens empty eyes.

”… ”

There was no response. Taihen continues to stare at the kid, bleeding out, losing his own life. He believed he couldn do anything.

Seeing Taihen shed himself to tears, Krys started to feel despair as well. Losing all hope that hell ever continue on.

”Im…gonna…die? ” Krys adds as his tears slowly go down. ”I don – I don want to d-die… yet… ”

Still, no response from Taihen. Krys continues sobbing himself in the situation, not being able to move.

”I- ” COUGH ”…still want t-to see Ch-chiwa- ” he continues to sob as he couldn gain the energy to cry harder.

– translator at 1% –

– Shutting down early to avoid shock –

”What? ” Taihen says, finally snapping back to reality.

”Tu-tusaeduni-… ” Krys calls out, ”mama… ”

And thus…he takes his last breath, finally biting the dust. Taihen, in shock, goes through denial because of a mistake he has done.

”Krys!? ” he asks worriedly, raising his voice slowly as he gets more anxious.

He pats him a couple of times to get him to wake up, but there was no response. He couldn believe it, denying everything.

”No no no NO NO! ” he shouts as he realizes what he had done. ”KRYS! KRYS! ”

Still, no response. Taihen uses his ability to hear Krys heartbeats and…there is no sound. He goes through whats happening and immediately walks back.

He frowns, what is he feeling? Anxiety? Dread? Hopelessness? Sadness? Guilt Or simply, disbelief? In fact, hes experiencing every emotion at once.

He feels guilty for not being able to save him, making him the one whos responsible for his death. What would everyone think? What would happen to him?

Rather than accepting his death, he grabs his hair and starts pulling it. He crouches himself in a specific position and looks down hopelessly.

After a minute of pointless taunting, he eventually calms himself down. ”I hate this… ”

The bat flies down to Taihen and clings on his coat at the back. At this point, he doesn even care about anything.

For no particular reason, he looks through the place and spots his bag with a couple of items scattered around it.

Looking at the mess reminded me of the mission he has to continue. Henceforth he stood up and fixed his stuff back to his bag.

All of the items are now arranged in the bag except for the one hes currently holding. The time-travel device is currently broken.

Figuring that hed be needing it in the future, he grabs the last time gem he has on his belongings to fix this. ”This is a bad idea… ”

He places the device on the floor and held the time gem above it. Then, he starts enchanting it.

”Opravit, Diorthosete, Fixera, Gochida, Zasakh! ”

WHOOOSH!

The time gem, upholding its own power, starts floating upwards away from his fingers. As it hovers over the time-travel device, it glows ever as brightly as it releases a green mist that subtly descends into the devices surface.

As the mist comes in contact with the time-travel device, it rapidly acts as a wire connection that begins the process. The mist seems to be fixing the time-travel device with just a simple command. But really, its currently rewinding the devices current state to the state before the collision.

As it rewinds the device, the time gem is fairly losing its size, getting smaller and smaller as the mist does its job. And as the time comes, the gem vanishes. All the mist gets sucked into the device, which looks brand new.

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Battery low

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Charge now — Portable charger at the back

Charge now — If none, use solar panel

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With the device now fixed, hes supposed to feel relieved. But he doesn . It just makes him feel more hopeless.

The time-travel device is reliant on time-gems to operate its vital purpose. So, even though he already fixed it, it still has no use since hes already out of juice. It does help in identifying locations whenever needed though.

He inserts it back into his bag. ”What now…? ” he asks himself as he stares at his bag.

After murmuring to himself a couple of times, he holds his sanity back and picks up his bag to leave. But before he could even take one step, he looks at Krys lifeless body, feeling immense shame and guilt.

He gets frustrated and starts shouting to himself.

”DAMN IT TAIHEN! ” ”WHY ARE YOU SO STUPID!? ARGH. ” ”DONT LET THE PAST CONTR- AGH SHIT ” ”YOU COULDVE SAVED HIM! ”

In a couple of moments, he manages to calm himself down. He looks up and sighs.

”The least I could do is to bury you when we get outside this cave. ” he tells Krys to an extent.

Bringing Krys to his parents might make Taihen look like a murderer, and would be held responsible. He could try and tell this ”King ” but its too much of a risk.

[art by Russian_Roulette]

He carries him and follows a path opposite from where hes been, which takes him quite the time. He passes through a couple of tight water streams and a few stiff cliffs. Carrying Krys while doing these was the hardest part about this.

After around ten minutes of finding the way out, he sees a bright light. He follows the bright light in hopes of getting to the exit and…

”What the…!? ” Taihen says out of frustration. ”WHAT IS THIS!? ”

…he ends up in a burning hot, humid, and empty desert. He stares at the scene with no hope. And now hes here knowing very well that hell be stuck here because he has no time gems.

”WHY DID YOU TAKE ME HERE!? ” he shouts even more.

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Charging now; 1% remaining

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– charging now –

– translator battery at 1% –