Time stretched on. The attacks converging on Albert hung frozen in the air, mere meters away from him. He stood still, suspended in the liminal space between instants stretched into eternity by means of dilated time, an effect made possible by compounding two facets of reality bending together. The first was the ability to manipulate the flow of time itself, making so he could experience far more time in his reference frame than the rest of the room around him. The second was Jeff’s ability to lend him some processing power. By speeding up his thoughts, Jeff made it so Albert could experience entire millennia worth of time in less than a second.

Enough for him to, hopefully, find a solution to his situation. A solution where he could make it out alive.

For a while he just watched and thought. He could not move, but he could look around from outside his body, stretching his senses until he encompassed the whole room. He was everywhere and nowhere at the same time, both a camera he could pan and zoom around freely and the whole room itself all at once. He could see Scrappy, barely healing, the shadows frozen in their retreat as the destabilized skill was slowly banished by the remnants of Albert’s own Power. He could feel the healing energy coursing through her, the only thing keeping her alive, the expense of all he could give and perhaps more so that she could survive for even one second longer. It would take more than this to heal her, but it wouldn’t matter unless Albert found a way to survive the strikes coming at him.

Behind him, bearing down towards his defenceless back where still a force-shield shimmered in its last throes of death, a sword dripping blood cut through the air. It was so sharp that the air itself was split open by its passage, and in frozen time the cut was like a rend in the fabric of the world. Twin to the sword was the spear, its tip gleaming in the low light of the room, refracting from the geometric lines of Albert’s sword. It was a weird apparition in the soundless space of frozen spacetime, and a worrying sight.

The last threat was the clawed paw of an abomination of a monster. A creature so vile and treacherous it managed to lure them into its trap and took over their minds. Even his own, although for barely a moment. It was a mass of flesh barely given shape, with mismatched and matted fur clotted with blood, but its feral snarl was a mask of hunger and rage. It was bellowing its cry, and although Albert could not hear it, in his mind the word echoed clear as day. Help, it had said. And they fell for it.

Albert studied the room for what felt like days on end. He could not really tell how much time was passing, how much mental energy he was devoting to solving an apparently unsolvable issue. At first Jeff provided him some context.

He counted the minutes, telling Albert as each minute passed. It lasted less than an hour before he was asked to stop. Then Jeff simply told the hours, like a mechanical clock of old.

Barely a day later he was told yet again to stop. Then it was the turn of days, and eventually, before a week had time to pass, Albert ordered his AI to stop providing a reference for time altogether. Stuck as he was underground, with no sounds and no change in sights, with nothing but his own thoughts, it was easy to lose track of time.

Perhaps it wasn’t a bad thing.

The situation looked dire. It was dire. Albert had no more power to spare. He was exhausted. He could not react in time to stop even one single attack. What was worse, even though the pain was muted with time frozen, he knew his body could not take much more punishment before it gave out. Yes, as Jeff had said he would not die a permanent death, but with him incapacitated Scrappy would surely perish.

Then Lina would be left alone with the monster. Either she would die, or she would remain enthralled until her body gave out. Albert wondered if he would come back to life quick enough for the monster to order her to kill him. And if so, how many times? Perhaps just once, perhaps more than once. Perhaps it would take him months to come back from whatever damage he accrued here. He was out of Power, after all, and his healing factor needed something to fuel itself.

Perhaps the world would end first.

Thoughts like these, and more, echoed in his mind for weeks. Months. Years. Plans, schemes, courses of actions were thought and then discarded. He dreamed up ways to save himself, then let them go as he realized how impossible they were.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

As more time passed, he came up with ever more creative things. Things outside the realm of reality even for him, things he could not do even if he was at full Power. Soon, he lost himself in these fantasies.

There, in the space of his mind, he was back home with his mother. He had never discovered the existence of magic. His friends were all still… friends with him. He went to college. He met a girl. He fell in love. He grew old with her. At times, he would see or hear of strange things in the news. They would remind him of a dream he had long ago, of being in a forest surrounded by elves, of being on a planet where all that was left was a single valley. Of being in a room…

But then he would forget, and move on.

Eventually he stopped thinking coherent thoughts. Rather, thoughts were so few and far between that to build a coherent train out of them took ages. It was not a problem, he had time.

The fact that his senses gave him nothing new helped in this regard. What could easily have been millennia passed in the blink of an unblinking eye. He was in the room and he was the room, but the room was unchanging in its existence.

Jeff had tried to help at first, of course. But in the end, the AI could do nothing. It decided it would not forcefully edit its master’s brain. It decided it would not trap its master in a virtual world, as it would be even more cruel and sad than seeing Albert’s mind do the same thing on its own.

Jeff didn’t give up hope, however. He never did. Because he knew.

He had known ever since he activated the ability. The simple fact that they could still detect the presence of light in the room, so that they could see. Photons were still being emitted by Albert’s glowing sword. They still travelled at the speed of light because, Einstein be blessed, of course they would do that in every frame of reference. Including one so slow, time appeared as if it had stopped.

But stopped it had not.

Jeff, ever so gently, nudged Albert’s attention. It was hard at first, pointing out that in the microscopic scale, things were still happening. Lina’s sword was getting closer. Her spear was whistling soundlessly in the air. The monster’s claws fell much faster than gravity pulled them.

Bit by bit, Jeff made sure Albert’s attention narrowed, focusing on these three details. Albert let the AI do it, as it was no threat to him and he didn’t care. Jeff, on his part, was so slow and gentle that he doubted his master even understood what was happening. Year by year, century by century, Albert’s world shrunk.

And it shrunk.

Until all that was left was three snapshots. Three windows through which he saw outside of his own mind. So zoomed in, with his mind so dilated that, in the end, he saw it.

Movement.

The claws were moving. The spear was approaching. Oh, ever so slowly was the sword descending.

But they were.

A sense of urgency slowly awoke inside him. His mind was so numb it must have taken thousands of years, but eventually.

“Jeff.” He muttered in his head, the words alien even to himself. “Help me find myself, please.”

With pleasure.

What followed was, in a way, even worse than being lost for millennia is a delusional world. Now Albert knew very well what was happening, and with Jeff reminding him from time to time, constantly showing him the proof that the world was real and that he was in danger, he could not lose himself anymore.

Still, by the time the spear had moved enough he could tell it was not in the same position as when he activated the ability anymore, he had not come any closer to a solution. He had ideas, yes, but as before they all came and went without much to say.

Until, one day, he remembered something. Something that happened long ago, at least for him. Memories of being in a strange place, dismantling his old system to create his Power from scratch.

Perhaps he could…

Time passed. He estimated that it would not be the spear, but the sword that got to him first, although he would probably not die until the claws also reached him. He also estimated that it would take roughly a million years for it to happen from his point of view. A dreadfully long time.

Time during which he could try to access that strange space where his Power resided. A place in his soul, outside of time and space, outside of the universe itself.

Thus, time passed.

The claws crawled forward an inch. Albert’s mind grasped at the small crack in reality that allowed him to peer into the working of Power itself.

The sword moved. The crack widened, enough that Albert could see into it like a small peephole.

The spear approached, its tip gleaming in the soft light. Albert extended his being into the space of his Power.

Albert pounded against a cage of sheer reality around him. The world did not care. But his Power did.

The spear reached the halfway point.

Albert knew. He knew, beyond any doubt, that there was no god out there. No Universe. No higher being. The only man who mattered, ever, was him. And it wasn’t enough. But it would be. Eventually.

The clothes on his back tore open when the personal shield failed. He felt the tip of the spear penetrate his flesh. It was a muted pang of pain that stretched onto infinity, the agony of impending death smeared across a consciousness that spanned aeons. The dull cry of alarm, deep in the recesses of his frozen senses.

It was enough to kick his mind into overdrive.

Then, suddenly, the world moved again.