Terius reaches the outer perimeter of the keep, a four-yard-high wall with a main gate that remains closed most of the time. A grand doorway to the left of the gate is used throughout the day for foot traffic, that door is wide open. Terius lines himself up and flies through the doorway and down the four-yard passage through the wall with its murder holes and hot-oil spouts. As he passes through the physical space of the keep, the emotion emitted with the leaking power doubles in pressure. It’s like he’s free diving 20 yards underwater. Terius focuses on his breathing and remains calm.
Terius explodes from the dark passage into the courtyard. A contingent of guards, perhaps this is Sergeant Brandt, is running awkwardly towards the Keeps front steps. Not slowing himself; he continues to fall upright towards the front entrance. Flying well over the heads of the stumbling guards.
Having been there many times he knows the door mechanism well enough that with a few kinetic nudges to a latch and a hard shove of kinetic on the right edge, the door swings open before he flies through it.
A subtle shift in concentration releases the pressure he’d been exerting against the flow of time, allowing gravity to resume its normal behavior to roughly set him down in the grand entry.
Four guards are standing at the door leading to the reception hall. They are all standing still as if waiting to hear a noise to repeat that has recently startled them. These are wearing the Brust colors of red and gold marking them as a personal detail. The pressure coming from inside that room is almost unbearable. How these guards are holding on is beyond him. He starts walking towards them when he notices the shadows are moving faster with every step. Stopping and then taking a step back has the shadows slowing their advance but not entirely.
It was such an innocent detail that he almost didn’t realize what he was seeing. He changes course and goes to a window set halfway between the entrance and the doorway with the four guards. They seem to be done waiting and are laboriously turning towards the door they were meant to guard. Terius stands for just a moment and watches in amazement as the sun moves rapidly towards the horizon and sets in less than a minute. He sees the moon moving just as rapidly across the sky and is sure if the rapidly moving clouds would allow him to see them, the stars would be doing the same.
Terius speeds up his mind as fast as he can, pushing his thought process beyond biological limits, he doesn’t have words to quantify this ability. But it makes the whole world look like it’s running at a snail’s pace, except this time his world is moving slower than a snail. This anomaly or effect he’s never heard of. What do you call an area where time is slowed down, a time-sink? He realizes he’s putting off the inevitable again and turns away from the window where the rising sun is beginning to cast shadows from the west.
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Terius once again fast travels, this time pushing time hard enough to make gravity six times stronger than is natural, if he had room to get up to full speed, he’d near the speed of sound. Since it was only another ten yards to reach the doorway, he covered the distance a little faster than if he was walking. Maximizing his fast travel ability is barely countering the effect of the time-sink. With his mind accelerated the guards once again appear frozen from his perspective. The time to be subtle is over, he uses a blast of kinetic energy on the door hinges and latch, shattering the mechanisms. Tiny splinters stay frozen in space where the wood shattered. Then directs a series of kinetic shoves to knock the door back his way and then up and over the frozen guards. Another couple of falling strides has him in the room where Lord Brust and his Lady are listening to petitioners.
The source of the pent-up earthquake, fear, and time-sink is somewhere in this room. The pressure, which he now understands to be the time-sink is unrelenting, the harder he pushes against it the more he feels compressed. He stops his fast travel but keeps his mind functioning as fast as his spirit allows.
Staring straight ahead he categorizes what he sees. Lady Brust is looking at the petitioner a rural looking man, possibly a farmer and his rough-looking companion, she’s smiling but her eyes show concern. Lord Brust is also smiling but is turning to speak to his friend and advisor, Horace Moon. Horace doesn’t look happy, but he never does. The crowd is mostly locals, merchants by their clothes. He starts to meticulously look over each of them.
Something draws his attention back to the two rural petitioners in the center of the room. The companion has strange proportions. At first his height put him at maybe 12 or 13, not quite fully grown. His face while youthful is twisted as if in agony. No not agony that’s terror, he’s afraid and he’s also not frozen like everyone else. He is clearly breathing as if not affected by the time-sink.
Terius fast travels across the room, slowing to a crawl even though he should be moving over several hundred miles per hour at this point. Up close he sees the youth is terribly disfigured.
An assessment of the boy’s combat posture shows he isn’t trying to defend himself. Terius isn’t surprised when his laboriously slow moving fist, makes contact with the boys head, rocks him off his feet and renders him unconscious.
Time resumes, the fear dissipates. But the mountain of pent-up energy is just as overwhelming. Terius looks over the unconscious young man with all his senses and sees a primitive spirit cloak dissolving from the inside. He quickly makes one of his own, inverts it and covers the inconceivable spirit contained within the young man. Terius’ spirit gaze is momentarily drawn into its depths and he feels his mind start to unravel from the immensity before him. Averting his gaze and working by feel, he finishes the cloak. Doing otherwise would have led to madness he’s certain. Now just like every other year, the unusual, abrupt display of power in Brusk Valley disappears.
A half dozen powerful entities on this continent and the neighboring one to the north cease looking longingly towards Brust Valley and turn their attention elsewhere.