For all the magnificent display Lyun had successfully accomplished, there were no immediate signs of it making any notable difference. Sure, the place had gotten warm enough to be really uncomfortable, but that was really the only apparent difference.

“Ah, I guess whatever plan Mheridz might have had, probability simply saw things another way. Chance still remains on my side, trying to have others make dramatic scenes for you simply would have no way to work at all as intended. Instead, you just wasted a large amount of your own ability, leaving you vulnerable for nothing. How very.. unfortunate of you.” “Unlike you, I still feel like I can count on the girl, which is saying a lot considering she’s supposed to be your daughter. If things hadn’t worked out, she’ll figure it out and fix it, I just need to buy her enough time.” “Time?! You speak of more of my own advantages here, you really have nothing. Seriously, you’re wasting so much effort, things would be much easier if you would just give up.” “Ha, ever since all of this chaotic stuff came into my life, I’ve been constantly asked to give up, and every single time I’ve held strong against temptation, I’ve always been proven right. This is no time to give up, this is no time for sacrifices.. this is no timeline for sacrifices. If you feel so fondly for sacrifices and surrender, then go return yourself through the temporal hole you crawled out of and leave us alone.” “My word, this timeline has tempered you, I’ve never witnessed such resolve from you before. Even so, your foolishness still renders you blind to reality, you still have no hope in defiance.” Axln made a direct dash towards Lyun, who in turn made a desperate evasion to give herself a bit more opportunity to recover, sending herself to one of the molten platforms above after a quick teleport followed by gliding with her wings above. The platform though wasn’t nearly stable enough, crumbling on touch, leaving Lyun to simply hover in the air with her wings. Lyun was really worried that maybe.. maybe trying to command such searing heat might have been another bad decision.

A sudden rumble of the room however declared its own disagreement with Lyun’s assessment, she hadn’t done anything wrong. Instruments in the room finally detected ambient heat above acceptable limits, resulting in a sudden siren screeching across the room in a loud shrill. Axln collapsed to the ground, her head taking the immense sound very poorly, both as a matter of natural habit, and a feeling of compounded order that denied her very composition, the sound thus becoming physically painful for her. However, such was not the end, only the beginning, as the emergency water cooling system finally came to life. Panels everywhere split open as a high pressure force of ice-water was propelled into the room at a massive speed in equally massive quantities. The force included a considerable rush of not just ice and water elementals, but also a rush of wind and darkness. The combination started to have an immediate impact on the saturation of fire elementals present, but only in an elemental reaction that brought even more principled force. However, things did not end here. The torrents were controlled by a limiter setup and managed by the citadel through its energy network.. a network that reacted suddenly to the immense pressure combination of negative chance.. and a surge of lightning. The walls above the room detonated with a further resurgent flood where the ladder was, the setup flooding even more water down into the depths below.. a watery presence that was immediately filled with a saturated density of lightning elementals at the grace of the high wind elementals presence. The very power of the citadel was in this room in liquid form, filling dramatically quickly, far more than it should have in normal operations. It really was a conflux of sheer elemental might.

The worst part was that Axln was still at ground level when the tides were set loose, crumpling in anguish at the sonic torment, and thus not being prepared for the onslaught that would follow. Before she knew what had even happened, Axln suddenly connected with the wall on the far opposite side of the endless expanse they were within. The impact wasn’t what phased her though, it was the unending barrage of elementals that came with it which taught her a form of pain she had never known before. Even stopping time did not deny this pain, the overwhelming elemental presence didn’t even need movement in order to tax her chaotic nature, her very form being taxed as she fought to flee the flood. However, above this expansive torrent, she had no place to hide. Unlike Lyun, she couldn’t just stay suspended in the air. In fact, the air itself wasn’t even so inviting, the water pressing upwards rapidly to compress the air elementals into a stronger ferocity as well. This was not something she could survive, not even with her chaotic might, things had gone far too wrong for something like that. However, more so, she knew that this was too much elemental might for others too. Lyun’s lesser chaos would suffocate as well, but even her principled balance would be torn asunder as elements ascended beyond her compatible limits. This disaster had the capacity to kill them both. Axln resorted to scaling the wall itself, the closest thing the room had to stable grounds, as she sought a solution to this mess.

“We have to stop this for now, this place isn’t safe anymore. There is no choice, we will have to flee to the other principle.” “Why exactly would I want to flee? I have you exactly where I want you.” “Lyun, don’t be such a fool, this place could kill you just as readily as it could me.” “Maybe, but I just have to be faster then, right? I mean, I’m pretty sure I could outlast you. You’ve become the last chaotic threat to both worlds, there is no way I could afford to let this advantage slip by. If you however decide to flee, know that you will probably never find me again. So, what shall it be? Are you willing to fight, or will you simply surrender?” Axln could feel Lyun’s question echoing a life-changing moment for herself already, the entire choice that had sent her already on this path. In that same way, Axln had already made her choice, she had to save Lyun no matter the risk, she had already sacrificed too much to do anything else. Axln unleashed a volley of force from her perch, the intensity of the void fading over the distance as it was consumed by the dense elementals along the way, fading completely before even reaching Lyun.

Axln was measuring her circumstances in complete shock. Lyun had commanded her own misfortune into opportunity, revelling in her own disaster and taking power from it. She had turned this lair filled with chaos against her, weaponized principle with chaos itself. It was as if she had found order in chaos, and from it created chaos from order. Axln was starting to doubt her own superiority here, there was something much greater going on, something she still did not understand. As usual, Axln had missed the details hidden before her. However, even so completely outmaneuvered, she still could not afford to lose. Even if such might be a little against her new design, she still had access to her own gift. Her gift was itself a flow of elements, something which would endure this ferocity by becoming even stronger in it. However, it would be extra taxing to use, not only because commanding the gift would be at the cost of her own chaotics, but also because the augmented elements coming from her would itself impact her. But, if she was going to convince Lyun to submit to chaos, first she would have to have elementals turn against Lyun too.

For how invincible Lyun felt, it had thus taken her completely by surprise to suddenly get thrown by a sudden sandstorm, the sand catching her wings and bringing her down. She splashed into the fast moving water, the sand turning to mud to weigh her down even further. Her power gear defended her by a degree of the water’s intensity, but she had reacted with it a bit slowly, not expecting a sudden elemental attack from a fiend. Creating a platform by commanding the frost elements of the room into an ice form, she stood upon the platform created, feeling like she was reusing old tricks to new ends. Her gear thus shook as it tried to endure crushing shadows impressed upon her. Lyun herself was having other problems in endurance, her feelings of the conflict shifting in the familiarity in design. Dealing with Axln throwing attacks like any other fiend had made it really easy to deal with such a fiend. However, with the fiend throwing attacks like the Axln she used to know.. it was leaving her feeling a touch conflicted. Certainly though, this wasn’t Axln, Axln was gone.. right? Was there any chance that Axln could come back to them? She knew it was foolish to have such doubt, but she couldn’t help it. Mheridz was probably going to even mock her for it later, at least if they were even still around later.

… Even still around… Mheridz certainly was still around. Lyun might have a bunch of confusions with all the complicated logic, but this point had come up repeatedly enough that she could be certain about it. Mheridz was able to still exist here only so long as there remained a way and a cause which would still bring her back to this timeline from the future. Still having a chaotic threat, that would be a reason. However, if Mheridz could not be born, she would then have no way to return from the future either, invalidating her existence. The simple fact that Mheridz was still here helping her out.. that would only be possible if there remained a way she might still exist in the future. That however made no sense if her mother was no longer of a principle form, if the old Axln could not make it happen. Knowing that, it assured that there was at least a way to bring Axln back, she only needed to figure out what that might be. 「While everything points to the fact that a time transfer would have replaced the present one with the future one, there is no grounds to dispute a claim that the chaos child’s existence would require a principled design origin in order to be present at all. Chaos has no grounds for how Axln could have remained after such an occurrence.. but neither of you have left yourself so limited by such primitive rules. Axln must have then achieved another breakthrough of true chaos, one that is clouding her from chaos itself.」

Yeah, this really did unfortunately change everything. Now, she had to figure out a way to actually save Axln, she couldn’t just get rid of such a fiend so carelessly. That was bad, because the situation had gotten really tense, these extra complications were really stacking on a pile of risk for her. Actually, in consideration, if Axln’s existence was being cloaked from chaos, that was probably so that the fiend version wouldn’t know that there yet remained a rival of its dominion. That then also implied that Lyun had to ensure the secret stayed safe too. Meanwhile, she had to figure out a way to provide the real Axln an opening to regain her place in their timeline. How then could she provide Axln with the opportunity she would need? 「Of everything before you, the fiend is the chaos composite, there isn’t even a trace of shared chaos to be found. Four bodies, two people, one being. If Axln’s being is no longer a part of her body, then every last trace of chaos in that form is an impostor. When Axln became of principled chaos, her person became of chaos too. The person is the threat, the body is innocent. Drain the person from the body, and leave her deprived of the temporal completely. When the temporal is gone, the fiend will have nothing left. If Axln is then still there somehow, she will be free to claim back her own dominion.」

Lyun actually really liked this plan, as in all consideration, chaos itself wasn’t all that bad. It was all the stupid temporal that was a pain, the stuff that made chaos so primitive and annoying. When she had her own dangerous temporal arm, she had to do everything she could to protect everything from herself. When she was able to cast off the temporal, she started being free to make a difference, to actually protect others, to actually become a better person. Now, Axln was back to being tainted by the temporal again, and things would just get better again if such a taint was gone. People needed to be free to grow and improve, this temporal was trash. Alight with inspiration of a directed vengeance, Lyun turned her undiverted attention to the temporal of the room. It was a good thing she did, because such a temporal had her in its sights too, a rift path ripping the distance between them so that Axln could ambush Lyun with a close range dust claw strike. Lyun tried to grasp Axln in the process, but Axln knew better than to provide that opening, the fiend recoiling away in a flow of her strike, the impact throwing Lyun in the opposite direction.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

Of course, this worked because such pretenses of permutations of elements were still defined within her magic shift as being valid. Axln might not be capable of casting spells, but she was fully capable of flowing with the movement of an elemental effect through the domain of spellcraft. The most obvious solution would then be to simply expand the area of her shift so that there were no places Axln could simply use the gift, she would have to resort to spellcraft. However, Lyun didn’t have nearly the chaotic reserves for something like that, not while her spell domain was already so complicated. However, Axln herself simply held a strong dominion over both sand and shadow elementals. What if then the dominion of spells didn’t have spells that matched either? Sand, that was too physical to count, it was basically an object. Shadows, that was just the non-magical state of things without light. Distances could not be bent by light either, light was only for seeing. Teleportation wasn’t actually elemental at all, the two were completely incompatible.

As she created these concepts, she got to witness Axln’s assaults break down one after the other. Axln’s strike came around for another round.. but the claws crumbled to nothing before such crude blades could strike her. Axln tried to recover by collapsing shadow elementals to provide her with a recoil.. the shadows not even resolving any effect. Left to tumble beyond the shift, Axon turned to another rift warp.. but this time leaving the fiend to tumble at the edge of her shift instead, the rift unable to pierce the distance. The fiend then crashed into the water once again, scrambling to recover with a rift away from Lyun to a distant wall. It was perfect, but it was not enough, Lyun needed to be able to create more than just a defense, but a sizable offense too. She needed the power to ultimately decimate the temporal.. and to her, there was nothing more appropriate than a direct solution. As yet another adjustment to her shift, she defined a spell class that wielded pure unrefined mana, in the way as any other spell burst. Such mana though was magic in its most pure form, a mass collective of the entire principle, like it was everything all combined into one. In fact, in special stipulation, this would be like a convergence of elementals if compared to the area beyond her spell shift. A mana blast would be as life elemental itself. However, in her domain, raw mana would lose its impact quickly, flowing instead into those who could command spells. It was this concept that explained how mana was recovered at all, because mana was the balance attained in spells, the neutral state that magic could eventually reach naturally, which would then revert to its original usable form.

Of course, Lyun was basically making excuses in the end, she just wanted a way to make sure that elemental saturation didn’t leave Axln’s body in a dangerous situation that she couldn’t actually fix.

Lyun then snapped her fingers again in Axln’s direction, a shimmering projection of infinite complexity developing above her, spinning in all directions at once. With a swift motion, she extended her hand in a forward motion, as to signal the target of her attack. The condensed mana surged forwards, reaching the end of the shift as it split into an ethereal haze. The very elements of the room were drawn to this condensation, the room almost seeming to spiral in its course as all of the elements empowering the current calamity were drawn into the same flow. Axln knew this was a problem, so she simply resorted to stopping time and stepping out of the way. See, chaos would always serve her against the principled. However, once she resumed time, it was as if the entire room had rotated with her, the entire projection shifting to the new course, collecting even more elemental density as a result. Nope, time had to be stopped, there was no way she could allow this course to resolve. Axln again stopped time, taking the chance to consider her options. Even with time stopped, her chaos was automatically being sapped at a rapid speed. Meanwhile, even though none of these stupid principles could work in her timestop, her own couldn’t either. She would have to confront Lyun directly, chaos to chaos. Of course, she was far more attuned to chaos, but that drain effect still left her feeling afraid. Axln scaled along the ceiling this time, aiming for a rapid pounce that would leave her only near Lyun very briefly, allowing the ambush to connect and her to pass by without that dreaded draining occurring.

Lyun suddenly felt a series of impacts to her back, all happening in a very brief window. The fact that each time she also felt time suspended around her explained everything to her. In a quick reaction, she simply pulled out an old concept.. because she was still flying. This was obviously the same terms that would result in her going phantasmal again. Of course, her entire thought patterns extended only while principles were suspended, but it was her chaos that governed the rules, and such chaos still worked while time was suspended. Exactly as time froze for her, the phantasmal rule took effect. However, the clock given for such a rule would only progress while the principled could observe the passage of time. On the other hand, such was itself a measure of the principled, it wouldn’t naturally exist while time was stopped. This was the part that flourished the most of Lyun’s creativity, while in the presence of stopped time. There, she compounded a very finite idea.. that chaos was still her domain too, and she had controls over the laws of her domain. If her domain was stopped in time, she could decide what that would itself look like. So, as a result, she would be phantasmal for two instants.. instants which of course wouldn’t progress if time was stopped, and that would include being phantasmal in chaos. In fact, obviously, mana itself couldn’t be changed while time was stopped, no matter what might occur in that trapped time.

At this point, she was untouchable. Axln could no longer physically harm her until two more moments had passed. Axln's chaos could not impact her principled design, because that was right now mana, and mana was immune to any influence while time was stopped. Axln could not impact her own chaos either, because chaos could not impact chaos directly. Lyun actually had no idea how long Axln might have struggled with these rules off in her own portion of suspended time, but there came a time eventually where she found herself in an enlarged bubble of suspended time, with Axln simply trying to cling to the ceiling.

“I came to realize that you might have brought yourself the greatest of defense, but you also left yourself with nothing you could do yourself, putting us at a stalemate. It got me realizing that one of the big problems you’ve got left is that you aren’t eternal, not like chaos. If we’re just going to sit here waiting forever, that’s actually fine to me. When you finally get bored of this, we can just move ahead with your conversion.” “Wow, you really do like looking down on me, don’t you? It’s a shame though that you always seem to miss the little things, forgetting that one thing that always never seems to matter to you at that moment.” Axln hesitated in alarm, worried about some unexpected trap Lyun might have arranged. While Axln was searching around for the less obvious, Lyun smacked her with the more obvious, fist to jaw. Her hand of course was still phantasmal.. but that did not impact the design of her own chaos. Chaos began to flow once again through her, leaving Axln even weaker. Axln tried to drive her away.. but that was futile phantasmally. Trying to flee proved equally futile, Lyun was simply too fast, having pressed herself into the challenge of Axln’s impossible speed in the past. Of course though, there were still limits as to how much she could do this to Axln, and even with Axln’s growing weakness.. she still found her own limits to be too impairing.

Instead of drawing chaos into herself, she needed another destination to funnel it. Considering her options, only one thing drew her attention, the collective surge of elements primed to hunt down the temporal. She knew that such a thought could be seen as stupid, wouldn’t chaos serve to weaken such a design, unmaking it into the void? Actually.. no. Chaos was not the threat here, true chaos was actually her greatest strength, and that came itself from chaos. The temporal simply resolved chaos in principle as a state of nothingness, whatever best matched that. Considering how much more chaos could be, that was a limitation that made her own limits seem endless. Chaos in reality had no boundaries, it could be anything. Committing this realization, she delved further into Axln’s chaos, redirecting it with her own design towards the meteoric strike she had formed earlier. As she continued to draw chaos, her very surroundings became empowered by true chaos, taking in that along with the empowered might of principles left to it. As the mass of principles became bound and tuned, it too began to take up its own state of chaos. The principles trapped within the time suspension began to then move, no longer constrained by undesired chaos. As such collided with the border of the time suspension, the principles shared the momentum of it’s own time, scattering a presence of time flow beyond the field of time. This chain reaction continued over and over until the very room’s worth of elements started to crawl into movement, gradually gaining its original speed.

Axln found herself no longer being chased, but equally understood why. Lyun had completely pulled away and left her to yet another inevitability. With or without time stopped, the principles present would hound her down without pause. Probability had no place in this, the entire place was already weaponizing misfortune into making such a calamity even more effective. Anything else she might have done.. really, there wasn’t anything else she could have done. Her choices here were to suffer or surrender, there weren’t any other choices. However, she had instead hesitated, the magnitude of what had just occurred having distracted her from what little opportunity she had left. The entire magnitude of principle thus connected with her, crushing her under its immense authority. The whole process left her a faint haze.. but fortunately she wasn’t gone, not yet. Technically, if she had been capable of replenishing herself here, if she hadn’t found her chaos spontaneously so limited.. if she hadn’t originally arrived here so weak after that draining explosion from her own timeline.. she might have been capable of much more. However, one thing was at least certain by now, even with those advantages, she would have reached this point just the same with just the same insight. This was not a confrontation she could win, this Lyun was beyond even her.

As such, once again, Axln resorted to the option to give ground instead of pressing forwards. She had only one escape left, she needed to flee to the other principled plane, it was the only option left to her. Maybe she could restore some temporal presence to make a difference.. maybe she would have to simply accept her defeat and return to the temporal without Lyun. Either way, it was time for her to depart along the one avenue left to her. Lyun meanwhile saw Axln’s departure, knowing exactly where the fiend had fled to. Lyun had no choice either, she had to chase after that fiend, to make sure it did not escape.. to make sure she got her friend back. However, she was well aware that making the jump might become a one-way trip, she needed the shared link to allow Axln to bring them back. It didn’t matter, there were no alternatives here, she needed to bring this to a close at last. Besides, there weren’t any other obvious escapes from this place anyway, it was honestly the final reserve left to her.

Lyun traversed the expanse between worlds once again, this time as only a single person. Axln was already exceptionally vulnerable, it was only a matter of severing the final traces of the temporal in order to bring this hunt to an end.