[3rd Person POV]

The sound of water softly pattering on a lonesome piece of vegetation, pearling down sickly colored leaves and trailing down on them, only to fall on the hard ground below filled the air around Norbert. The Death Minion was holding a banged-up, brazen watering can, sprinkling murky water on the singular Nether Lily that had been planted on the small grave near his shack.

Norbert stared down on the grave. Ever since his Ladyship had come to his homestead on that particular day, to lay this nameless pony child to rest here, he had taken it upon himself to tend to this specific burial site.

For him, who could bring his fallen brethren back from the clutches of death for the right prize with but a flick of his wrist and was by almost all definitions an ageless being himself, the rites and customs other species held for their deceased always had held a curious point of interest.

Also, it was a nice change of pace, to tend to something besides the other Minions. Kept things fresh and helped break the monotony that was his existence most of the time.

Satisfied with having done his duty here for today, Norbert walked back to his homestead. He set down the watering can beside the door and went inside. Closing the door, Norbert went straight to the chair next to an old desk, two out of four furnishings that filled the single room, the other two being an ancient potbelly stove and his bed.

A content sigh escaped Norbert’s lips as the ancient Blue reclined in his favorite chair. Reaching over, Norbert took a hold of the chipped tea cup sitting on the table and idly inspected its contents.

The liquid that one might generously call “tea” inside, his very own secret blend of five different fungi only growing in the Brood Cavern, the best pieces of mangy rat fur available and steeped in water straight from the Soul River was still steaming, with the occasional bubble rising up from it. With the slow deliberation of a true connoisseur, the Death Minion took a long sip of the hazardous liquid and sighed again.

Yes, moments like this were true bliss.

And like true bliss, all too short and fleeting as a sudden sensation managed to flawlessly end the old Minion's state of being as the very fabric of reality itself rippled like a disturbed surface of a lake. To anyone else, it might have been unnoticeable but for Norbert it was like someone was slamming his face into a wall, only to make him take notice of the whole building.

The unearthly cry of sheer anguish that followed, on the other hand, was enough to rouse the metaphorical dead. It was a vocalization of loss, despair and carried the weight of a soul that just had ripped an important part of itself ripped away, to never know it again.

Without missing a beat, Norbert set his cup down, grabbed his scythe and left his shack. Standing on his porch, he looked up, towards the caverns ceiling. Norbert took a step forward and without any further noises, the robed Minion disappeared.

Over the whole course of his life, many had speculated that Norbert somehow had come to master the arcane art of teleportation, given how he seemed to be able to appear out of seemingly thin air at will, reaching the farthest places of the dark citadel within heartbeats.

Things could not have been farther away from the truth, however.

Teleportation was a magical art so virtuous, something so powerful and delicate that Norbert was pretty sure that even in his next eight lifetimes, he would be unable to even try his hands at the very basics.

To teleport oneself or others, the spellcaster had to release the bonds that held together the most fundamental parts of the body down to the cellular level without destroying them. After that, the caster had to weave the spell in a way that it linked itself to the ethereal winds of arcane energies that flow all around the world, in order to reach the travel destination. After that came of course the hardest part, namely to put the body or the bodies of the recipients of the spell back together in the exact same way they had been before the spell had been casted. One hundred percent precision was crucial here, because even the slightest mistake could prove disastrous at this stage of the spell. Missing eyebrows, hair or toes were the smallest of things to happen if one was careless. Finding oneself with one´s lungs instead of the feet or finding oneself missing the entirety of one’s skin or at worst, just a formless heap of quivering meat where among the worst possible outcomes one could suffer from a flawed teleportation.

Instead, Norbert had managed to polish one of the Blue Minions' very core abilities to perfection and above.

Invisibility.

Being stuck with the frailest bodies of all Minions, the Blue Minions had to rely on various tricks to survive since the times of yore and this was their most well-known and used means to do so.

Every Blue worth his salt could cloak himself in a shroud of magic that let them vanish from the eyes of their surroundings and only the mightiest of sorcerers or eldest of beasts were able to still detect them, once cloaked.

Norbert succeeded even then by honing his own invisibility to such a degree that he was able to fool the very laws of time and space themselves. Once he became invisible, he effectively stopped existing for the universe around him and thus was able to move through the fabric of reality itself with nothing more but a simple step and a clear picture of his destination in mind. In a way, Norbert was able to travel from one end of the world to another in one simple step should he ever need to. That he himself was the Minion of Death might or might not have played a role in all of this too.

One heartbeat later, he found himself in his Lady's private quarters, the woman in question lying curled up in a fetal position on the floor and staring catatonically straight in front of herself with her eyes wide and rivers of tears flowing down her cheeks.

“Milady?” Norbert rasped as he neared the prone figure. “Milady, can you hear me?”

No response.

For a few moments, Norbert simply stood there, pondering what to do next. At least until a semblance of life returned to Umbra´s body as she turned her head slightly to look up at him.

“Milady, are you well?” Norbert asked, knowing the answer from the get go.

“…” Umbra´s lips moved wordlessly.

“Are you able to stand up?”

“It… something is… gone…” the words came at a slow, anguished pace, the dark toned woman’s face again contorting into a mask of suffering.

Norbert nodded. “I thought as much.”

“Umbra?” Onyx called out as the dragoness came into view, holding one hand to her own head and wobbling slightly. “What in the name of the Everflame just happened?”

“Ah, good timing. Help me get her Ladyship onto her bed,” Norbert instructed gently but without missing a beat. “We will need her to be comfortable for a good while.”

“Well… if ya say so. I still don´t know what´s going on but I guess being comfy cannot hurt,” Onyx mumbled more to herself as she picked her friend up and carried her into her bedroom.

After being laid onto her bedding, Umbra found it in herself to address her Minion, all the while staring at the ceiling.

“Norbert… I… something just…” she reached to her right arm with her left hand, obviously searching for something that was no longer there. “I just… something just vanished. From my mind, my memories…”

Norbert nodded.

“It is almost… almost like something took a scissor and cut someone out of a photograph. Leaving only empty space behind. Only… only with the photograph being my memories.” A sob fought its way through between Umbra’s lips. “Everything else is still there, but now there are these… holes in everything. I know that there should be someone, a face, a name but I just can´t grasp it. Someone I knew, someone I held dear to me." She wiped her eyes and closed them shut, searching her mind, hoping to clutch at what vestiges of this mystery phantom might remain, but found none. "I still see places, remember doing stuff connected with whatever disappeared but… the rest is only smokes and shadows. The more I try to remember the more it slips away, like a dream.” Another sob and this time, Umbra clutched the fabric of her tunic just above her heart. “But dreams don't hurt like this! Why does it hurt so badly?”

Gritting her teeth, Onyx stared down at the Blue Minion herself. “Same here. I was just taking a nap when suddenly it felt like someone had sunk their claws into my brain and ripped something out of there with some kind of magic mumbo jumbo. And since we dragons are pretty damn resistant to all kinds of magic, that makes me damn uncomfortable. So mind shedding some light on what in Tartarus just happened?”

Sighing, Norbert propped himself on his scythe. “I will try to put this in as simple terms as possible. An existence has just been erased from the stream of time by some unknown force or reason, along with its home plane. Whatever or whoever that was has been completely erased from existence. I suspect that this person you are talking about, my lady, belonged to this plane of reality. By all intents and purposes, it is as if this person has never existed in the first place and this subsequently caused a backlash in the minds of everyone who ever interacted with this erased existence, which caused a loss of all specific memories regarding them. Furthermore has this erased all recordings in whichever form and any items tied to this reality too, in order to keep the frail fabric of reality from being torn asunder from any sort of paradox.”

“What?” Both Onyx and Umbra asked at the same time.

“As a representation of Death, I know this much about this affair but not more.” Norbert conceded, shaking his head slightly. “As I must admit that even my own memories have been affected, in order to keep the cosmic balance.”

Struggling to sit up, Umbra had to take Onyx's claw as the dragoness carefully sat down on her friend’s bed, resting one comforting hand on the woman’s shoulder.

Fighting through another series of sobs, Umbra slung her arms around her knees and peered at Norbert from underneath the veil of her bangs. “Is there… is there any chance these… memories can be restored? It just feels like I just lost a part of myself and then someone stabbed me through the heart with a red hot glowing fire poker… I’m not sure if I can manage to endure that.”

Norbert shook his head “I am afraid not Milady. Once something is lost from the stream of time, it can never be restored.”

This in turn caused fresh tears to stream down Umbra´s cheeks and caused Onyx to wrap a wing around the shivering body of her friend.

“Can´t do anything huh?”

“Well, if I would venture a guess, the company of a good friend and lots of comfort food might be able to dull the pain over time.” Norbert offered. The old Minion regarded his lady shrewdly, hesitating as to whether continue. "This may sound callous, my Lady, but this pain will pass. Whatever may have happened to this plane of existence, its end came too sudden, too abruptly. The sheer backlash resonated violently with all those who came in contact with it, but the cosmos is nothing if not thorough. The pain will fade, as will any lingering memory or traces of this person. In time, you will even forget you knew them in the first place, all traces will be erased from the minds of all beings."

Pulling Umbra a bit closer, Onyx looked at the Blue before finally making a shooing motion with her free claw. “Well, then git. See if ya can find Gnarl or Wiener or someone for that food while I´ll take care of the company part.”

A slightly muffled “Thank you” came from the leathery confines of Onyx wing, causing the dragoness to look down for a moment and peer at the still shivering form of Umbra, who was all but merging into her side, seeking warmth and comfort to tide herself over this heart and mind breaking moment of higher violence.

“Hey, any time demonette.” Onyx said in a soothing tone “What are friends for hn?”

As Onyx looked up to address Norbert again, the Blue was gone without a trace.

Author's Notes:

Well, ya.

For all of you who are scratching their heads and asking themselves "WTF just happened?" or "Am I the only one who not get´s what this chapter is supposed to tell us?", it is rather simple.

See, fellow writer and friend of mine The Emerald Nightingale went and deleted his story Delta Guardian, to start it over again for various reasons as version 2.0. Now, his MC Zinnia and my own Umbra had become pretty entangled with each other but due to us not really thinking things through, their whole realtionship ended more or less in a dead end and vegetated there for a long time.

But before we had been able to resolve things, Gale went down the road he did and that left MANY things never to be cleared up, so I had to come up with a solution and finaly decided to pull some wibbley-wobbley timmey-wimmey stuff in order to explain why Zinnia suddenly disapeared from the Multiverse.

I hope that could clear any questions, if there had been any.

With that, I bid all of you wonderful peeps and peepettes out there a good night and we will return to our regular program with the next chapter.

Cheers luvs~