DB Multiverse

At last, the silence had fell on the rubble and the grey dust, on the mutilated bodies and the destroyed landscape.

The old man remembered of that little moment of mercy after the dreadful crash of the numerous explosions that had almost deafened him.

Of that time he had found himself alone, all alone with his pain and that damned grey dust. Nothing but silence, pain and dust.

One who had never gone through Hell the way he had would never understand the magic of that moment.

The silence, the pain and the dust. Nothing else anymore. No more scream, no more fury, no more blood... just the silence, the pain and the dust.

The sudden yelling from voices unknown to him had put a brutal end to that magical moment. They forced on his eyes, closed by the pain and the relief, a very painful return to the bright light of a sun that had forgotten to stop shining.

His mind, dulled by the weariness and the pain, needed a few minutes to find its way back to reality. Some long seconds were needed for his eyes to see anything else but the blinding glint of the light on the grey dust and for his ears to decipher the words he could perceive, those words which were lost in the buzzing that was filling his ears.

Finally out of that dull torpor, he understood that it was the fallen heroes who were calling and answering one another.

Yes, all of them were alive, worn-out, defeated but alive!

He saw one of them, the little bald man wearing that orange outfit, he saw him making a superhuman effort to sit down. He had seen him swallowing something that he had taken from his pocket then getting up as if nothing had happened, as if he had never fought and had never been injured.

His eyes, wide with surprise, had then focused on him as he was going from one to the other of his comrades, making each of them eat a curious medicine that enabled them to get up without showing the mere scratch.

What kind of strange miracle was this?

He hadn't been dreaming! He had seen, with his own burning with fever eyes, the body of these men being broken under the merciless attacks of these two angelic demons.

The old man had then shaken his head. What if that entire nightmare was nothing but a bad dream? Maybe it was possible to dream while you're awake? How sweet would it be to wake up!

But it wasn't time for sweetness, not yet. Now, it was time only for pain and suffering, blood and silence. The deafening silence of the shadows of the martyrs sacrificed on cruelty's altar.

A reverent silence that husky voices broke.

The same voices that were now echoing, pulling the old man away from the blue screen of his thoughts.

He didn't feel the pain squashing his body anymore, he didn't feel the dust sticking to his bloody and feverish skin anymore. He didn't even see the ruins surrounding him anymore. Through the murky prism of an almost dull look in his eyes, he only saw some vague figures standing.

He watched, and his heart shattered a bit more as he finally understood that the archangel had gone away as well, just right after he had got up.

Hope had flown away while the impossible had forced itself on the nice blue screen once again.

Precisely, the blue screen: it was back, bluer, greener, even shinier... A screen that suddenly deepened and took the form of a long blazing corridor. And at the other side... Yes, over there, at the very end: Alba... Alba who was smiling, Alba who was waiting for him, Alba who was calling him. Alba... still so pretty... always.