Doomsday Clock Inches Toward One

King Araton was walking through the hallway, on the way to his bed, until he saw his adviser talking to the crystal ball. He couldn't hear what the adviser was saying, even though he was only fifteen feet away. Is my hearing getting worse, he thought as he walked towards the room with the crystal ball. "What are you doing here?" The King of Heaven demanded, suspicious of why his adviser was down there.

The usually rude adviser was frantically panicking, and unusually nervous. "You see your Highness, I was..."

"This place is off limits! You, out of all of the people should know that!" The adviser shook as he said those words. "If you were tampering with my crystal ball, I would have to charge you with treason," he stated, and those words shook the adviser even more.

"There's nnnno need fffor that, your Hhhhighness!" The adviser continued to shake greatly as he managed to squeeze out those words. "I was only trying to ccccclean your crystal bbball, your Hhhhighness! Only the bbbbest for our Kkking! Ha..." He laughed uneasily, as all parts of his body continued to shake, in fact, he was shaking faster than before, creating vibrations in the ground around him.

The King thought this was a weird reason, but did not question it. Until he realized the adviser's explanation left out one major detail. "Okay, but then why were you talking to my crystal ball?"

"Uh..." the adviser was thrown into yet another panic from King Araton's question. He frantically searched for a believable excuse, until he found one, which he thought was an unquestionable answer. "You see, I was talking to the crystal ball because I was commenting... on my eyelashes!"

"Eyelashes?" The King questioned at this surprising remark. He thought, does he want to attract a girl with an eyelash fetish or something?

"Yes, that was also the real reason I cleaned your crystal ball, because I wanted to see how beautiful my eyelashes are today!" The adviser was overly eager to say this, beyond embarrassing, fact.

"Oh... Uh.... Okay..." The King said as he discovered that his right-hand man was not only rude, but also a complete weirdo! The King was so surprised by his adviser's strange eyelash obsession and getting sleepier by the minute, that he completely forgot about why he was in this room, instead of his bed. "Huh?.... What was I doing here, adviser?"

The adviser, acting like a fox, said, "Oh, you just checked your crystal ball to see if you've got any calls from anyone, but no one called."

"Is that so?" asked the King of Heaven, half-asleep.

"Yes. Good night, your Highness." said the adviser, unusually polite, considering his usual rudeness.

"Good night, adviser." King Araton walked to his bed, and quickly fell asleep, without having any memory of their conversation that night.

The adviser sneakily checked to see if the King fell asleep. The King of all Guardians snored louder than any other night, and did not have any trouble of going to sleep like usual. The sneaky adviser tip-toed across the hallway, carefully stepping onto certain places to avoid making any sound. As he made his way back to the room with the crystal ball, he looked all around, to see if any of King Araton's many servants were still up, all while continuing to act like a ninja.

When he finally made his way back to the forbidden room, he checked the crystal ball's call log to see if anyone tried to talk to King Araton and found that King Thalvaron attempted to contact him. "I can't have him see this."

The adviser was just about to clear the call log, when suddenly the Demon King called again. "How persistent!" the adviser commented, feeling annoyed as he almost always was. He rejected King Thalvaron's call and cleared the call log.

* * *

"Where am I?"

Selina began to look around and saw herself sleeping on a simple white bed with a matching white blanket. There was nothing to note, except she noticed that all her clothes were completely dry, despite the fact that she was still wearing the same clothes as before.

"Oh you're awake?" The doctor commented plainly.

"Who are you?" she asked, feeling puzzled.

"Hm? What do you mean? I'm just your doctor."

"I've never heard of a creature called 'doctor' before."

"Oh... really?" The doctor wondered, is this girl from some kind of impoverished country or something?

"How did I get here?"

"A nice boy about the same age as you, carried you to the hospital," the doctor answered, but right then, he remembered something very odd.

"Even though he said you jumped off the bridge and fell into the river, when he carried you over to me, your clothes were completely dry. Well, I guess he must have changed your clothes before he brought you here," the doctor said, trying to reason with this peculiar phenomenon.

Changing my clothes... the thought made Selina blush a little bit. However, she remembered about her mission and looked for her materials. "Do you know where my belongings are?

"You mean these?" asked the ordinary doctor, bringing the crystal ball and the now dry magical paper to her. "The boy left these things as he left here."

"Oh, thank you," replied Selina, politely.

The doctor reported to her, "you seem fine. I was concerned by the bruises you have all over your head, especially since you apparently jumped into the water in that state. But luckily, seems like no infections got in." The doctor seemed pleased with this report. "You may leave now."

As she was about to leave with her belongings, the doctor wondered about some things about her and stopped her.

"If you don't mind, would you answer some questions before you go?"

"Okay..." she replied, feeling uneasy about his request and sat down.

"I just wondered, what is that crystal ball for?"

"Contacting people."

"And how would you communicate to people through this crystal ball?" asked the doctor, doubtfully.

"Using magic," answered Selina, as if this was a simple fact everyone knows.

"Right..." the doctor replied to this seemingly absurd answer. "And this 'magic,' you believe it is real?" continued the now concerned doctor.

"Of course it's real, I use it every day."

After her reply, the doctor began to have new thoughts about Selina. This girl is completely lost in her own world! Not only she thinks magic is real, she also is hallucinating that she is able to use it! The doctor mentally piped down. Well, I guess she did fall off a bridge and she has bruises all over her forehead. Her bruises...

"By the way, do you know how you got those bruises?"

"Oh, these?" The unconcerned girl looked at her forehead. "I banged my head repetitively against a rocky wall," she stated as if this was a perfectly normal thing to do.

The doctor had no comment for this reply, the only thought he had was, you need some help. Serious help! Something is fundamentally wrong with you, lady!

The doctor recollected himself and went back to business mode. "You know, we offer therapy programs for people with a hard time of fitting into the world."

"Therapy programs?"

"It is a type of treatment which involves non-medical solutions for illnesses that cannot be simply be solved by the use of medicine."

"But I don't have an illness," she plainly commentated.

No, you definitely have a mental illness, lady! In fact, probably multiple of them! He thought after listening to the seemingly crazy girl.

"Are you sure you don't need the... Huh? Where did she go? She was here when I saw her a couple of seconds ago." Selina seemed to magically disappear along with all of her belongings.

* * *

"What is it, our great leader?" The man kneeled down in front of the crystal ball.

"Did you send the boy yet?" demanded the leader.

"Yes, leader, I was able to send the boy to the human realm."

"Good. Were you able to track the location of the Guardian, admiral?"

"No, leader, there seemed to be some sort of advanced cloaking spell on her. The spell was too complicated for me to crack."

"Damn it!" the leader banged his fists on the table, but then looked around, as if he was going to wake somebody up. "How is the development of the demonic breathing box going?"

"Well, its actually a watch, but..."

"Give me an answer to my question or you are dead!"

"Yyyyyes, leader!" the admiral of the Fallen Demons stuttered. "Well, as you know, we use a condensed form of a very rare substance, Xyberonium, to transfer its sustained magical energy to the person whose skin is in contact...."

"And...?"

"You see, seems like we are running out..."

"Running out?" yelled the impatient leader. "You better find 500 tons of Xyberonium before six months, if you ever want to wake up again!"

"Yes, Leader!" replied the admiral as he went quickly to work, demanding his minions to mine faster.