Watching two fractured temporal flows rub past one another is an interesting experience. It was possible to see the different degrees of wear and tear through the time, although not very far. Light did screwy things when it passed through the barrier, and visibility was less than twenty yards before details that fine were lost. We could only see the general level of illumination and the shadows of buildings continuing on.
“You sure this is going to work?” Briggs asked rhetorically.
“Not at all.”
“But?”
“Why wouldn’t it?”
“Because it’s stood for a thousand years?”
“And the chances that something non-finite is providing help and destabilization behind the scenes is-?
“Ugh.” Briggs looked up at the fractured sky, flowing through day and night cycles in disjointed speed. “Pretty damn high. What exactly are you planning to do here?”
“I’m going to link up different temporal zones. Guess what happens when the weight of the world starts moving into your own little shard of disjointed time?” I grinned.
“And why do you need all three of us for this?” AA asked, red eyes more cunning than anyone had ever seen an urukhar.
“We’re all Forsaken, but our denial of magic has different forms. A Void is active and purifying, drawing in elements, stripping them of their hostile portions, and exuding purity. In other words, you can rip this barrier open.
“A Source burns away that which is unnatural, like a firestorm flowing out, reducing that which is wrong to naught. So, Briggs can punch out with the force of the Land, and burn away whatever power is holding this thing intact.
“And Nulls reinforce the strength of the Land and existing natural laws. One unlocks the door, one opens the door, and one keeps the door open.” I pointed at the barrier in front of us. “Brutes before bitches.”
AA grinned widely, a ferocious expression with those tusks of his, and his black and grey Helices rose around him, carrying a strange feeling of days long past returning to the present with them.
And that was exactly what he was doing. Like living lines of color, he reached out with his helices into the structure of the wall of flowing time in front of us, smears of colors all across and beyond the spectrum instantly swirling into being inside its structure as his Helices played. He grunted as the reds on them deepened, his crimson eyes narrowing, and found the elements of past and present that his Helices represented. He wasn’t the Shadowknife, but his was the vigorous power of the now and the future, sensitive to those things with the weight of ages upon them, and this wasn’t much different from that.
He grunted, a drop of blood fell from his nose, bright and crimson against his brown skin. Helices swirled horizontally, narrow bands of dark scarlet that splashed apart into thick streaks that suddenly seemed to latch onto something, grip, and then heave it apart.
Sound was sucked away for a moment, the faint rumbles and tiny sounds behind us swept past and into the void beyond, a man-sized tear peeling open in the barrier, and instantly releasing a crazed swirl of winds as air met at different momentums.
Briggs’ Source flared with an Interdiction.
Foundational power raged outwards, conducted perfectly by reality, burning away the things that didn’t belong there, unseen forces and energies that were not in compliance were eaten away, and for a moment, the Veil was fully extruded into the space beyond.
My own Interdiction went off, and the bored hole was locked in place as my Interdiction strengthened the natural laws to the point of nigh-unbreakability.
The opening in the barrier began to wobble, the polyspectral colors of AA’s Helix shot in all directions like devouring worms, far beyond his normal range. The substance of conflicting time was collapsing on this hole, trying to fill it, and instead being totally ignored, absorbed by the laws of reality backed by the weight of the universe behind us.
An almost solid mass of slow-moving air broke past me, bringing with it a morass of sounds, smells, and sensation suddenly rendered into normal speed. I swayed, locked my feet, and reality flowed past into the opening, shattering this section of the fractured city.
Mists and dust from temporal windstorms filled the air as this whole section re-aligned with normal time. The three of us stood there as cross-currents of air whipped back and forth, and bestial cries from deeper within sounded out in surprise and confusion at the change in sensations.
More old and shattered city existed beyond, and while it didn’t seem to have the weathering of the area behind us, there seemed to be a lot more signs of conflict around. Not a big surprise for a slow-time bottleneck, I supposed.
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“There were definitely dimensional hijinks going on,” Briggs grunted. “If you’re going to mess with time, why not space?”
“Yes. The Shadowknives have occasionally scouted within. The distortion in time is greater towards the center. Too, the dimensional area increases. The city is a hundred times bigger on the inside than the outside. What we see are only the shimmering images of the city from the distance, but within, it has been ages...”
“Fuck me. They’ve been breeding an army in there using temporal acceleration.” I slapped my head, and Briggs grunted. “You ever make it to the center?” I asked AA.
He shook his head. “Brother Mountainhammer has tried to get closer from below, but the tunnels are crawling with endless amounts of vermin, Animated fungi, and aberrant monstrosities, who all are replaced with great speed if he withdraws.” He looked around at the collapsing barrier, shimmers now only visible in the distance, where the acclimating area was edged with other shards of time. “We were never able to shatter one on our own, they regenerated too quickly...”
“And your Voids can’t do mass purification or strengthening of the Veil, only localized,” I agreed. “Likewise, our Nulls won’t be able to rip open the barrier at all, although we could probably walk through it.”
“So, all types of the Forsaken are needed to do this.” He paused in thought. “Could Casters accomplish it?”
“Caster Interdictions work by infusing masses of magic into the Laws, not by resonance. They’d have to somehow find the core Laws or areas being affected, unravel the effect without everything blowing up in their faces, push the effect forwards, and then try to mass stabilize it... I think they could probably shrink the area rather clearly, but trying to use the world itself to do the heavy lifting? No.”
AA grunted again. “Well, we have the area open. Are we going ahead? And who are we bringing?”
“Just us.” The other two looked at me. “Fido and Shirley need to stay back for raw brute power. You just told me that there’s a multi-zero to one-time ratio at the middle. That’s years in a day. In short, there’s going to be an endless number of monsters coming out from inside here, without a whole lot of downtime in between. It’s going to get worse as we push towards the middle and shrink the territory as we do.”
“Where’s the extra area coming out of?” Briggs asked.
“Mu Spore means Aberrants. Aberrants probably mean Leng. Leng means Dream.”
Briggs glanced at me. “So... old home week?”
“Yes and no.” My eyes narrowed, looking at the overgrown, fallen city above. “Dreams recur. We’re going to be cutting through this area, and the extra area will evaporate back into Dream as we do... but that’s going to be putting a lot of Real Stuff back in very close proximity very suddenly.
“Instant fight, and us sitting here at the border waving hi,” Briggs mused.
AA looked back. “They are competent, but they will not be able to handle what is coming,” he agreed flatly.
“We have our first volunteers.” They both looked up sharply, as a group of blood-red mantises seven feet tall hopped through the next barrier down a block or two.
“Their claws are edged like sabers. Mind them,” AA grunted, his Glaive Zeitgeist humming as he straightened.
“And we haven’t even managed to clear anything else that lives here,” I mused, Tremble drifting to hand and Stand moving into position as I drew Fall.
“Happy day, happy day,” Briggs said. “I raise a question... I think it will be smarter to rip them open from the inside, instead of the outside, given the time compression?”
“Depends if its slow or fast time, but yeah. Slow from outside, fast from inside.”
“Can we skip some?” Briggs asked.
“Without the world sitting right there like a boss, who is in charge in any particular shard? Nope, we have to plow a path all the way to the middle.”
“This will be a fight!” AA grinned cheerfully.
“You got a Healing Edge?” Briggs asked, knowing how important that was for sustained combat.
“Gave Doc to Feist and the girls, just in case. I’ll have to make do with Battle Focus and Revitalizing Strike. You get that Healing Edge long knife done?”
He grinned widely, and pulled out a knife Jim Bowie would have loved, cream-white steel, crimson along the edge. “Meet Nurse!”
Both AA and I laughed, and I glanced at AA. “How about you, Brother?”
He paused for a moment, looked at the both of us... and then at our Weapons. He snorted almost to himself.
His gauntleted left thumb touched the ring finger of that hand. “I have a Ring which continually Heals my wounds.”
Briggs and my breaths hissed out, surprising him. “A Ring of Regeneration? Are you kidding me?” I exclaimed... in a very low voice.
He seemed pleased at my reaction. “I am the only Brother to bear one, it has been passed on by my predecessors. Supposedly it came off a Titan’s hand, long ago. It is very, very old.”
“And if it weren’t, the number of Fifteens willing to make one would doubtless not be very high. One hundred and eighty goldweight...” I gave him a gentle slug on the shoulder, and he grinned ferociously. “Well, you won’t need much rest time, if the fights aren’t too long. Your Crystal Shield is on the weak side...”
He didn’t look too happy, but could only shrug. “I usually hunt beasts, I don’t fight them toe-to-toe...”
Which was true. Ambush attacks from a sweeping heavy poleaxe didn’t require a lot of staying power. He was a Dark Waters specialist, Shadow and Ocean. He hit like a truck... and Cutting Life let him do it straight up to something now, which was helping him evolve his tactics to something more straight-forwards.
Which, if his performance on the battlefield meant anything, he was truly enjoying. Urukhar loved them a good bloody fight.
“Regeneration does not help with getting tired, however,” I admonished him, and he blinked, then nodded slowly. “Do you have True Arsenal, and Revitalizing Strike?”
“True Arsenal, yes. Revitalizing Strike, no,” he admitted.
“One blow, complete recovery of fatigue and stamina,” I told him, and he made a thoughtful face. “In a battle of attrition, it is mandatory. Make it a priority. Your Ring gives you long-term Healing power, but is easy to overwhelm in pitched combat. Do you have Battle Focus and Battle Vigor?”
“Not yet.” He made a small sigh again. “There have been many ‘little steps’, as you say, that us Brothers are just getting to.”
“Priorities and Karma, I understand.” Getting enough Karma to pay for all that stuff once you were a Ten was no small thing, even for a Void Brother...