Two seconds. That's how long I was unconscious after receiving an ice-spike in my abdomen. It punctured my skin, the muscles underneath, passed through my abdominal wall, and was wedged between the curves of my small intestines, its sharp end poking out through my back. I grunted with amusement as I noted that it passed through me without hitting any vital organs or veins. I don't know why I found that amusing. It wasn't. It hurt like hell.

I put my irrational thoughts aside and looked around. Time was once again running in slow motion. How peculiar, I thought. I could see the princess roaring at my side as she faced off against Snowy. I could see the young Abyssal girl stare at me with wide-open eyes, the corners of her mouth slowly trembling. I saw my dear assistant's wild eyes as she looked at the spear of ice sticking out of my side with abject horror. I saw all of them. They felt so close yet so far away. I feared that if I reached out and touched them, they would dissolve like mirages in the summer air.

I distantly noted how my thought patterns felt weird. Weirder than usual, at any rate. Was that because I was dying? Was I dying? I didn't know. It didn't feel like I was about to die, but then again, I had a large piece of glassy ice stuck in my stomach, as thick as my index and middle fingers put together. People tended to die from things like that.

I could feel my mouth twist in a sardonic smile. I figured this was the moment when I had to reflect on my past. Was I supposed to do that? It felt natural, so I thought I might as well give it a shot.

So, where to begin? Mistakes were made. I do not mean this whole ‘being skewered' business. That was a good thing. Well, for a certain measure of ‘good'. If I didn't get in its way, it would have hit Judy in the chest instead, and if I dragged her out of the way, it would have hit Josh on the ground behind us. I didn't know how I actually knew this, but I sounded convincing, so I decided to believe my words.

So yeah, getting impaled was the good choice I made. Everything else though? Just one giant, unmitigated chain of disasters barely avoided by the skin of my teeth. Why is it that hindsight always made me feel so dumb?

I glanced around again to take my mind off the steadily intensifying self-loathing when I noticed something peculiar. Snowy's choker, the one I made note of a couple of times in the past, was shining. That light was strangely familiar, like I have seen it just recently. I sifted through my memories and made the connection: it was the same kind of light I saw just before the attack that had me in my currently punctured state. It was easy to recognize. It wasn't the color per se, it was more like a... texture, for the lack of better words. I had actually seen it once before, when Snowy first tried to attack me. What was the common thing about those two situations?

She was ordered to do so by her brother; I concluded. I squinted to take a better look, and my vision blurred for a second, then it came back into focus. It was only for a moment, but I felt like I glimpsed the true form of the light surrounding Snowy's neck. It was... a spell? Magic? I didn't know the right word for it. I decided to call it ‘enchantment' for the time being. The glimpse that I saw told me a lot of things about the enchantment. It felt like I was looking at programming code, but at the same time not. It was more... organic. It wasn't binary or based on mathematics, more like... I don't know. I had nothing else to compare it to but itself.

What was it then? I followed its trigger, which was represented by a thin, almost invisible string attached to the angrily shouting black-haired young man on the side. I stared at him, and the longer I did so, the more I could feel anger building up inside my chest. It was a black, sticky kind of anger, pure unadulterated loathing so strong it made me feel physically ill. Right, I thought. I cannot die yet. Someone has to take care of this mess and get rid of this guy.

Thinking so, I took a deep breath, my chest no longer restrained by the lazy ebb of time, gritted my teeth, and focused all my will into a single exhalation.