488 With Time

Chronomancy, in my most humble and unbiased opinion, is the single greatest magical lore one can master. I would dare say it is an essential magical lore. The ability to control time is power over life itself. Everything has occurred at some point in time, or will occur at some point in time, and to dictate the flow of the world, or at least your relative flow to the world, is a power above powers. Space and time are intertwined, but only one is progression unto itself. Nothing happens in a stable point of the present. In understanding this, you can manipulate your existential progression across the world.

But the manipulation of time goes beyond the elongation of the present to the point that the flow of history stands still, and you, aside from what other Chronomancers can match your abilities, are the only entities in steady motion. Time is a current, and its overwhelming motion is pointed forward into history. It is the potential to pre-arrange and manipulate specific points in history that Chronomancy bestows its highest potential; too many look backward, too many try and imagine somehow achieving the Tier that would allow them to manipulate the past.

I have no such interest. The past has already been manipulated. You took your chance; you made your decision. Let the water turn to stone. Let it stay steady so the foundations of the present can extend toward tomorrow, and it is toward tomorrow that we must look. It is toward tomorrow that we must apply ourselves. For it is only the future that is unfettered in possibility and potential. You are who you are now, but tomorrow you are someone else, and with every passing day, someone else further. The thing about wielding time is that you expand the tomorrows. You can experience all tomorrows, and you potentially can chart your course in a way no one else can. You can stride away from the indignity of now until the possibility of “when.”

As you pass through the pages of this book, I implore you to wield your Chronomancy and use the spells you learn upon these pages. This is more than just a tome. Rather, it is a layered tome, written across time, countless times, in so many different ways. One, after all, can exist in parallel across the seconds. From this almost frozen present, I can project so many instances of myself into an expanded future, until every moment and heartbeat that follows becomes a small eternity unto itself. Until I fracture the cascading waters of time and become a legion of myself.

And you can as well. If only you devote. If only you give yourself time to ripen and grow, you can evolve as well. When you do, wield this power and sink deep, for on the precipice of nigh-infinite time, all other possibilities might follow. And all enlightenment might come as a second birthright…

—The Thing About Time: Essentials in Chronomancy by Hero-Mage Melaia Kelhaus

488

With Time

“Well, it holds the shape of a mouse. It vaguely looks like a mouse. It has four main limbs and some fingers… Human fingers, but fingers nonetheless. It's an improvement. It really is. Oh, stop cradling your head, Insul. You're behaving like a child. Performing magic requires repeated failure, until finally, out of nowhere, you succeed, and you wonder how you ever failed before.”

The horrid flesh cake that was meant to be a living rat violently defecated its internals. A spray of pitch-black excrement erupted out from its orifices, followed by a bubbling pool of chunky blood. Then came a third hue: an oily yellow that brought with it a nightmarish smell.

“Oh, those are the fat deposits inside bursting. This is also a very good sign!” Helix slapped Shiv on the back, and the resounding thud echoed through the room. “It truly is. Stop being so downcast. Why, most Biomancers would literally kill to be in your position. Literally kill! Many have killed others to learn about the body's mechanics using their Biomancy. Not a few have murdered families, thousands upon thousands, to understand why we default to cancers and tumors. The fact that you have even given this thing any shape at all means that you have substantial talent. This is a monumental feat. You should be jumping for joy right now!”

Helix didn't lack passion before his Excaliburization, and after, his passion only grew, along with his self-reassurance and confidence. Even so, his encouragement found itself outmatched by Shiv's flat and impassive affect. Inside, he wanted to punch something. He wanted to smash something until it turned into little bitty red chunks. He wanted to smash the monstrosity he'd just made most of all. It was a childish feeling. His Harbinger criticized his impatience over and over again. Even so, he couldn't shrug off his disappointment.

And that was just it. He was disappointed; disappointed where mere weeks or months ago he would have been overjoyed just to wield the weakest of magics.

“And Helix is right,” the Harbinger intoned. “You are developing at a staggering pace for a Biomancer. But it is less simple talent and more so the opportunity to twist and experiment with flesh in a way no one else can—in a way that divorces you from logistics and sacrificial economies. Ancient Biomancers who butchered thousands stand outright inferior to you because they couldn't use their spells upon themselves without facing that final oblivion. You can, you have, and you learn firsthand. So compose yourself. Stop groping for instant expertise and take your time.”

A thought crossed Shiv's mind, of potentially cutting the Harbinger out and throttling the skill for its incessant criticism. He turned his Psychomancy upon that thought and crushed it until not even fragments remained. The idea vanished, dissolved, and he briefly lost track of his own frustration as his mind was wielded against itself.

As the strain of overfocus collapsed in Shiv's mind after his internally cast Psychomancy spell, he regarded his handiwork with a slow nod at first, which then became an active attempt to raise his own morale. He was in a stupor, lost in a whirlwind of intensity and emotion. This was good. It was no longer an act of self-deception to think that it was true. He was advancing quickly, especially in his most favored magical discipline. He shot Helix a genuine look of thanks for his time and tutorship, and did the same as he looked over his shoulder, but found Ekkihurst wide-eyed. Yet it wasn't judgment or apprehension that inspired the expression upon the vampire elder's face, but one of slight paranoia.

“Three thousand attempts to grow a partial set of organs for a living creature is not merely fast progression, Legend Helix. I think we understate our praise to some extent. Three thousand is not nearly enough for skin and for bones. I would be proud of a novice if there was any structure at all." Ekkihurst stepped closer and gestured at the rat thing. “This thing's bones have grown wrong and have spread, mingling with the cancers, but the shape is there, and the ligaments and muscles are there as well. Yes, many of them are contaminated, and the cells blur within each other. Several points have kidneys sprouting from where they don't belong, but they are there as well. The stomach is there. It's facing the wrong direction, but it's there. The skin, where the teratoma does not consume space, stretches across most of the body. This is… quite remarkable!”

“Yes, quite remarkable,” the Harbinger said, forcing Shiv to look upon Ekkihurst's emotional core. He wasn't lying, merely exaggerating. Still, it was enough to rouse the Beast of the Ninth Circle, which lifted its head and angled one lazy eye at Ekkihurst, but did nothing else. “Shiv, I think heeding Valor's suggestion that we slow our pace and take time for ourselves was necessary. It was necessary for more than the recovery of our Multitasking skill. It is necessary for all our skills, and it is necessary for our temperament. We have suffered from too much success.”

Suffered? Shiv thought. I didn't know someone could suffer from success. Success is usually a good thing.

“Success is the optimal outcome. Success is the desired end, but behaviorally and habitually, psychologically especially, it may not be the best outcome for you. Your Path allows you to develop along a toxic axis of activity, and your actions therefore have become malformed in certain ways.”

And what does toxic axis of activity mean? Shiv asked.

“It means your stupidly stubborn efforts have brought you bountiful rewards paired with an unhelpful dosage of instant gratification. It means that in the span of a few months, you have become a Legend thrice over, with more to follow and a deluge of Heroic skills otherwise. It also means that you are unaccustomed to enduring failure, day after day, hour after hour, attempt after attempt. The times have changed you. This wouldn't have bothered you when you were working in Georges' kitchen. This wouldn't have even annoyed you. You have been overfed on victory, and now the taste of the slightest setback has filled your mouth with bitterness. And it is the fact that this is an intellectual setback that makes it especially potent. Physical weakness can be overcome. You work at it; you simply accept that eventually you will be stronger, but you've always underestimated your own mind. You've always thought of yourself as a simpler creature than most. You accepted that. You coped, but now you realize there is a possibility you are not so simple, yet you fear proving that early assumption right.”

Shiv mentally waved the skill off. Alright, alright, I get it. I need this. I need to re-balance my mind and all that. Still, I thought I would have been able to make an entire rat by now. I felt really, really close that time. I was so sure it was gonna work. I was feeling it in my bones…

“Because you were close, closer than ever before. Look at what you've done, think back to where you were, and put everything into perspective. Apply that perspective to yourself. Expectations of instant perfection are merely a mechanism we torture ourselves with. See what you have actually done and enjoy your labor.”

And so he looked down upon the Biomancy table, surrounded by a containment field meant to protect his spells from spilling over into his surroundings, which had been erected by both his masters. The room itself was further warded against any odd displays or outbursts Shiv might experience, caused by a sudden Skill Evolution or emotional imbalance. The chamber was placed in the bowels of Courtney. Next to being his restaurant, the Court Leviathan also doubled as the perfect training facility thanks to the pre-existing bio-forges in its bowels, perfect for Shiv to indulge in similar experiments as its previous users, without succumbing to sadism.

This rat was a near thing, indeed. Shiv examined it with his Atlas of the Flesh-Scryer and surveyed its organic architecture. It did have a stomach. It had a nearly full digestive system, mostly unaffected by tumors. Its biggest problem was simply that it was wired the wrong way, a result of Shiv growing overwhelmed by the other complexities inherent to a body.

The tumors themselves were also stabilized as Shiv referenced his existing blueprint for the rat, harvested from a near-dead living rat. His goal was to create a perfect replica of the creature, in age, shape, and aesthetic, down to the last hair. He was far off, but not so far anymore. At least there was something bordering a rat now. At least he didn't need to cast this back into the bio-vats so it could be melted down as a resource for Courtney to absorb.

Still, despite his acknowledgment of personal progress and the stabilization of his mood, he wondered why he felt like something was missing, like he was not pushing himself to his fullest potential. He'd gained several levels for multiple skills, all related to his Biomancy, but it seemed like there was something he couldn't grasp, some other aspect of himself that he hadn't drawn upon to push his effort to the very limit.

Shiv folded his arms and stared at the mutated rodent. He thought, and then he angled his neck to regard his mentors. “Helix, Ekkihurst, is there… a way to somehow make it so I can see when these mistakes will come in advance? Some kind of Divination or pre-simulated Biomancy skip spell I can cast so I can guess what's going to go wrong before it…” Shiv suddenly blinked. “Before it happens. Before… time. Yeah, time.”

He perked up as a new idea manifested. He reached into his cape and pulled out a textbook he'd borrowed from the Phoenix Academy library. It was supposedly the oldest and most formative Chronomancy text on Integrated Earth, written by one Melaia Kelhaus before her sudden disappearance some few thousand years ago, not long after the Heroic Incursion. Shiv had asked Valor about this Melaia Kelhaus, and though he professed to have heard of her, he'd never encountered the Chronomancer in person, at least not in his personal memory.

Nonetheless, The Thing About Time was an art piece of a text. What Shiv held in his hand at present was simply a withered, thin page that held a few descriptions and an array of varied shapes on the front and back, and at face value, to those who could not draw upon the golden mana of time, a single page was all they would see.

But long-lived mages knew better, and even those devoid of Chronomancy, only experienced with the lore of magic as theories unto themselves, were drawn in. Helix and Ekkihurst reacted instantaneously, leaning in to examine the page.

“Ah, the first Hero-Chronomancer's piece,” Ekkihurst said with a nod, and Shiv detected a measure of jealousy but more respect in his tone. “Did you know that Grandmother Orphereus claims to be a disciple of hers?”

Shiv's mind came to a halt before time did. His thoughts veered away from the text and the secrets it might reveal toward the nature and mysteries behind its author. “What?”

“Oh, yes, it is her great claim to fame as well. She supposedly stands among the few on Earth to have mingled Social Skills with lore of time. What Skill Fusion she has specifically?” Ekkihurst shrugged. “I cannot tell, for she will not. To speak with Grandmother Ophereus with intentions of prying at her secrets only results in you losing yours. A folly I was not one to commit.”

As the Elder vampire laughed, Shiv tasted something else in the air, something reeking from him: a measure of fear more than respect. Maria Corcusa's master had to be a terrifying presence in her own right to leave the ancient Biomancer shaken so.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“But where did you get this?” Helix asked, his own inquiry tense and disbelieving. “The Thing About Time. It’s… Are you aware that this text will destroy itself if an orc touches it? It will cast itself into the future as its pages fragment, and it will be scattered across time in a grand irony or a final insult.” He leaned back, wrinkling his nose. He was drawn in two directions: retreat so that his presence might not offend the page, or touch the page to see if the supposed enchantment would activate.

Shiv, meanwhile, found himself surprised twice over. “You think this Hero-Mage Kelhaus put that spell on the page?”

“Oh, we know for a fact she did, out of personal distaste for my brethren and me, and special ire toward the Challenger, whom she views as a deviant from her higher path of virtue. And speaking of deviant, it is worth noting that we orcs know Melaia Kelhaus to be of the Path of the Philosopher, rather than the Path of the Mage. On top of this, she is broadly known as a Legend-Philosopher, despite disappearing without a trace long before this world ever reached the Legendary-Tier threshold, and lacking any documented appearances in another world. I suppose vanishing across time may have made things messy, to the point where even her Path was altered.” Helix smirked. “Or perhaps it would be more accurate to describe that change as an evolution, would it not, Insul?”

This was something Shiv was growing to love about the world: mysteries coming together, bits and pieces of information one side knew and the other lacked, until all the pieces were assembled into a whole truth. The Republic held an inheritance of the material, the orcs had a lingering animus against the author, and the vampires, or at least one among them, could claim to have a direct connection to Kelhaus. Three things came together, and Shiv suddenly knew a lot more, even before he delved into the tome proper.

The spell upon the page was titled Languor in its ancient translated tongue. The linguists of the Republic couldn't quite figure out where the tongue originated, only that it was probably from a place called Turkee, named after a long-extinct bird of all things—or so some scholars claimed. Others vehemently disagreed, saying that it was a result of mistranslation or being lost in translation, as Old Anglish was often so willing to bastardize other tongues and names for their own convenience.

But those details came second to what Shiv truly wanted to learn. The page came alight when Shiv cast a spell. It was a spell he cast by instinct the first time he gained his Chronomancy skill, and one all Chronomancers knew by intuition and observation. After all, it was simply the hardening of their mana field. You made time dense, shrouding yourself in a shell in which time barely flowed through you, bringing the world outside of your barrier to a near standstill while you swam at a velocity relative to your own power.

Shiv thought of the act as halting time before. It wasn't. It was drawing time—elongating the present. It was causing the passage of time to trickle rather than flow. It was Languor, inflicting a lethargy upon the pace of the present, so that the future might yawn and extend further, like a thread being drawn toward the horizon.

This time, however, things were different. Instead of hardening his field around himself, Shiv extended his mana from his hands. He'd learned this ability after repeated instances of experimentation. His field was a bounded one, which meant it was rigged and rooted to his person and couldn't be projected further in the same way his Nihilist or other mana types could. That didn't mean he couldn't have it envelop an object, however. Tactile contact was still a function of a bound field.

A spread of golden mana wrapped around the single page, and suddenly the fabric was disrupted. A burst of fractal mana flashed through the room, and from the insides of the fracturing parchment emerged the true shape of the chronomantic text. It was a dense tome, still thinner than one might expect, but a tome nonetheless. Its outer shell was gold-plated enchanted metal that was mithril, further laced with strips of adamantine that ran along its corners in an X-shape of interlinked chains. The wards sealing the book from opening unlocked themselves with a satisfying click, and Shiv flipped through its pages.

After casting Languor, a whole expansion of other spells took shape. Magic was a branching art, spreading from a foundational lore and expanding further until it encompassed aspects of mana, both minute and expansive, in so many expressive ways. The thing about magic was like language: sometimes it was most literal, but its finest applications came when it was being analogous or metaphorical. As fire could burn, so too could it inflame you in various ways. So too could it turn friction against you. So too could it change a furnace into a bomb or ignite your body from within when a series of temperatures were met internally, in contrast with the world outside.

The art of Chronomancy made Pyromancy seem dull in comparison. Languor, the way of slowing time and elongating the future, was the foundation of Chronomancy, but there came a deviation. The stilling of the present and the stretching of the future were the next two branching art forms, and it was the future that Shiv sought. For he wanted to know of his impending failure before it arrived, and so the spell he had to cast was a predictive spell, an anticipatory spell, and a dual-layered spell. First, he had to create a mana simulacrum using his biomancy and project that along the course of a potential future.

And it was in this section of the text that Shiv was corrected of another prior misunderstanding. He wasn't altering time itself in any sense. He was altering himself in relative terms to time, using it as a set of rails. The art of moving himself backward and forward along his personal timeline was simply called Transpositioning—which itself was at once a general theory of Chronomancy and also the name of a singular spell. The fascinating thing about Chronomancy was that it was built on a scant few spells, while other lores had so very many. Yet, even though Transpositioning was one of these few spells, it was, in effect, an omnipotent spell in many respects. Being able to move yourself in relation to time allowed you to move things you were attached to, or interfaced with, across time as well. If he struck an entity at a certain point in time, and so when he bound himself with an anchor, it wasn't so much that he defied space as it was that he was forcing his personal Chronomancy to align that moment of impact again, regardless of everything else that was happening at present.

This act was called Rooting. At a certain point, Kelhaus wanted to consider Rooting a separate spell all of its own, but then she realized it was simply the culmination of the Transpositioning spell itself—after all, one had to breach and shed a portion of their mana to achieve an act of rooting.

And these acts of rooting were essential if one wanted to interact with the world itself, for any contact a Chronomancer made with something moving at a different pace and axis of time demanded a stabilization and a breach in balance of mana derived from their field.

Normally, the text would end here and continue on into the other sub-branch of chronomancy titled Presentism. Much akin to Transpositioning, Presentism was both theory and spell, focused on the lore that the future was not yet manifest and the past was too solidified to be changed. Meaning that the eternal and ever-passing present is the only actual thing the mage can manipulate.

Though that seemed like a useless thing to manipulate at face value, it was actually a grand power unto itself. The ability to alter how one experiences the present causes fluctuations in the pace of time. Thus, this allows a mage to create conflicting flows of time and disruptive currents, to wield time against itself.

This was where most of the offensive Chronomancy spells follow, in which portions of a being's body were rent apart not by physical forces but by temporal displacement. As a limb was trapped in a chronomantic bubble, in one place, the body had to go another. Even should one be tremendous in physicality or force, time abides by its own laws, and once rendered null of magical resistance, dismemberment was less a possibility and more a predetermined outcome.

But that was simply the most vulgar usage of Presentism, and Shiv wasn't here to focus on that spell either. His point of interest was a specific variant of Transpositioning. As he tried to cast the book into the future, it resonated like a bell as it briefly blinked out of his hands with a flash of gold, then rebounded and returned to him, this time with its contents expanded. The Transpositioning chapters were multiplying before his eyes as pages expanded from pages. They erupted in surfaces of extending gold, emerging as materials derived from magic itself. It was along those pages that Shiv found what he was looking for: the chapter focusing on the spell of Predetermination.

And that was the chapter Shiv stopped at while he turned the fullness of his concentration to developing his enhanced Reflexes skill.

“Deathless, may I inquire what you are trying to do?” Ekkihurst asked, looking at the glowing book in Shiv's hand with his head tilted.

“You familiar with the Predetermination spell?" Shiv replied.

A flash of understanding came, a light behind the vampire's eyes. “Ah, I see. Well, such an operation would be complex. You must shroud your existing Biomancy mana with your chronomancy and ‘thin’ it, extending it into the future. At least, that is what I understand from my admittedly amateurish knowledge of time magic.”

“The fact you know what Thinning is means you're about as amateurish as I am,” Shiv admitted with a chuckle. He'd never attempted a Thinning before, which was simply the faintest projection of a Chronomantic echo into the future. Yet it wasn't a Rooting. It didn't breach the spell so much as it traced the most likely path. To do this, however, required a monumental amount of effort and concentration. The main issue with the future was that it, well, hadn't happened yet, and likelihood was not the same as fate. As such, predetermination wasn't possible when one was still partially submerged in the world. They needed to be completely consumed by chronomancy to be made into a predetermined construct. Effectively, this meant that someone was completely isolated from external and other environmental factors. There were simply too many details about the world to make a certain future written in stone.

However, if you cast something into your own future, if you tethered it to your relative position and jumped or accelerated time along a specific axis, thus partially transpositioning so many times that a temporal mirage developed, you could see a faint emanation of what was to come extend along that chronomantic tunnel. A sort of faux-portent could be manufactured.

As always, the simplified theory sounded basic. All the mechanics coming together—that was the problem with determinism. It was easier to fling something into the far future rather than keeping it controlled, for the flow of time yearned to be accelerated. And other laws came into effect as well, laws like the rules and limitations of tangibility; theories like the temporal homeostatic stability theorem. There was a reason why Chronomancy was hard to mix in with other magics, because most mana didn't technically have any mass. Using one kind of magic to move and manipulate another weightless and metaphysical energy tended to see both vanish in the far future in entropic fragments scattered across time, rather than cohesive wholes without proper control. Shiv didn't have proper control. He had the opposite of proper control. So far, he flung himself across time, and that was made easy by instinct but also by a sense of piloting. He knew where he was accelerating to, and he had a literal mass to bind himself to.

This was also why anchoring a spell was easier than casting it in the far future, for you could anchor your spell to a specific position in your past. It happened. The mana was spent. The action was performed, and once swallowed by your bounded form, it was carried across from time and held in reserve in a sort of parallel present, always moving a bit slower than your actual one. What predeterminism needed was different. It needed you to constantly shift something, to constantly project and extend until that mirage could form, and that wasn't easy. That wasn't easy without weight.

Shiv looked down at the mutated rat. There was weight here. There was more than a little weight. With this attempt in ruins, he could extend his experiment and see if he could develop two magical lores in tandem now that he was dedicating significant time to study.

Blowing a hand over the mutant's tumorous form, he shrouded it in his Biomancy and shed a portion of the crimson mana. Its architecture was layered, and it projected a rendering of its total architecture. Shiv did this several times in quick succession until it was dense and complete, with almost no details missing, or so he thought. Both Helix and Ekkihurst extended their mana fields to add in a few portions.

“Fuck,” Shiv muttered under his breath. “Added a human appendix again.”

“Tends to be reflex,” Helix said. “You know your body, and you are used to using your body. When your mind does not stay in the steady state of thought, you default to intuition, and so the mistake is made. Don't worry. A few more times, and you will be more flexible.”

Shiv nodded and applied this moment to the snapshot. He wouldn't forget. Not this time.

Now for the harder part. He poured his golden mana and consumed the mouse. His magic swallowed both body and Biomancy, and slowly, carefully, he began to inch it along its interconnected future. He was holding onto the mouse, and he was attached to it. Both he, the mouse, and the text were caged in a singular bound field of manipulated time.

Shiv shifted and awkwardly shuddered in place. He briefly blinked a quarter-second into the future, but he grimaced as he realized he applied the effect to his entire body rather than a specific part. Undeterred, he exerted more effort and created a quarantine zone around his hand that he was to move further across time. He was going to shed and fling a part of his... No, he wasn't supposed to shed or root anything. This wasn't anchoring. This was predeterminism.

Shiv slowly pulled his field back and stabilized it. Alright, maybe the best thing to do is to keep myself as a complete whole. I'll just skip myself a little bit, a little bit, and a little bit until I hit the future.

Shiv did so. He did so with both theory and intuition in mind. He let his instincts guide him, but he let his knowledge, what paltry amount he had, be his thread, his track.

Slowly, Shiv began to stutter once more. His pace was intermittent and awkward at first, but over actual minutes, he began to flicker faster, with more alacrity, until finally there was a shimmer above him: a faint, extending mirage. There he saw a version of himself extending into the future, drawing away from him like the top of a flame would dance from a candle. Instead, it wasn't bending to wind but toward the vector he was trying to accelerate toward the future, made certain by his bounded field.

And much like his flickering person, a smile twitched and threatened to form on his face. He felt the book he was holding grow heavier. He saw the mouse extend as well, a temporal echo of its form stretching out from the magical cage that held it into the air above, then along an axis of the world that only he could see as a Chronomancer.

Then, without any warning at all, he, and no one else in the room, only he and the shadow behind him, the shadow of Shiv's mind world, came to a violent crash.

There was a flutter of hair in the corner of his eye. Shiv's mind ground to a halt.

He didn't have long and flowing hair. He wasn't that short. He wasn't feminine in shape and dressed in voluminous robes.

That wasn't him. That wasn't his past extending out from his person. That was someone else.

As soon as he turned, he saw her. She was little more than a shade, a ghost cast across time, emitted by the light reflected from the front of his tome, but she stared upon him as if she were right here. It was like she sensed him—more unbelievably, it was like she was analyzing him and examining him from across time into the present. He stared at her, and though her features were darkened and without detail, her eyes were bright and burning—like his. He saw a shroud of enkindled flame. He saw a crown of translucence, and he saw her form rich with golden resplendence, yet holding so much else. He saw her shape, he saw her core, he saw her mind, and she saw him.

Shiv reacted. He didn't know what was about to follow, but he didn't want to risk anything, not with at the very least Legendary Chronomancy involved. He couldn't suffer an irreversible temporal displacement that would leave everyone else alone.

He allowed his spell to collapse, but was alarmed to see that where his magic crumbled and faded, the book’s didn't. He remained encrusted in golden magic as the foreign shadow strode closer across time and shed her own shell in part. The outer layer broke away, revealing an even more radiant core that spewed pitch-black fire from only a few vents. She was shrouded in flowing robes partially veiling plates of metal armor. Flames spilled out from around her eyes, between her lips, and under her fingertips. These details were not cracks, but rather points of release. Aspects of deliberate design.

Shiv tried to take a half-step back, but he was no longer in his own field, instead caught in another’s. For a moment, his mind whirled as he prepared to dive Backstage, assuming this to be a trap.

“Hold,” the woman spoke to him for the first time, her voice mature but light. “I wish to see you. I wish to observe you. Hold, please, and pardon me for this conversation.”

Aegis of Assimilation 287 > 302

Harbinger of Tripartite Ruin 474 > 477

Atlas of the Flesh Scryer 199 > 200 (Skill Evolution Imminent)

Inertial Overdrive (Heroic) - Lord-Maelstrom of Hungering Kinesis (Unique) 441 > 455