Very few trickster gods lie. Their craftiness is in their word play and being able to out smart those that cross their paths.
~Syn, Goddess of Observance and Truth
It was nearly five minutes before Crow could move. Losing a block of his memory was hard to reconcile. Knowing he lost it only made it worse. It felt like a void had opened before him that made him question why he struggled to live. Things felt meaningless, and that was the scariest part.
Lily came out of the Soulscape and silently hugged Crow by putting her little arms around his neck. She was still too small to fully reach around, but she held on as if she was hugging a tree.
She gently sang to him. The words couldn’t be understood, but the melody spoke to the soul. It was a song that only needed to be felt, not understood.
In the end, it was her tears that shocked him back to awareness. Each one was loaded with a terrifying amount of lightning, and as they touched his flesh, it felt like he was in the middle of a violent storm. Those tears were like a jolt of adrenaline pumped right into his heart. Thankfully, only two drops landed on him, or he’d most likely have turned into a crisp.
Lily returned to the Soulscape and explained to him everything that happened. She filled in the gaps of his memory as best as she could, but there was no way to help him recover what he lost.
“Thank you.”
*You’re welcome.*
“Attempt two,” Crow muttered and entered the Clocktower again. He failed another four times before finding the door, and Lily was there for him the whole time.
When he finally found the door, he cursed endlessly. It was in the cellar of a building right next to the fountain. He found a wrecked door and realized he needed to phase through the floor.
However, the hours he spent phasing through walls and doors allowed him to understand his ability better. Not only could he improve on its efficiency, but he also decreased the energy drain. Now he could pass through six walls before he had to slow down and regain his mana.
If that was rewarding, he gained a bigger understanding of his Ghostly Aura, which he originally just associated with the ghost mana in his body. Now he felt there was some special relationship between the aura and time. He noticed that while his aura was activated, it slowed the scorpions that came into contact with it.
Obviously, the current aura was close to his body, so the time shift was barely noticeable. However, if he let the aura infuse with his body—including his eyes—he could somehow affect time. Or maybe he was speeding himself up? Either way, he could respond to attacks and even counterstrike with ease. At least against the smaller scorpions, it wasn’t a problem. However, the mother scorpion drained his mana too fast, and in his current state, it wasn’t possible.
It was like Ghost Phasing, once activated, it drained his Source at an alarming rate, and the stronger the opponent, the more it drained. He didn’t name the ability yet but was leaning toward calling it Ghost Time to keep the same naming sequence.
Overall, the insights into his Ghostly Aura let him know it was much more versatile and complex than Ghost Phasing. Crow was very pleased with the gains he received.
Even if he had to relearn the things a few times to gain them. Lily remained attentive and helped keep track of any insights he had. With his ability and the little bit of guidance he gained from Lily, he could quickly replicate the things he forgot.
Reaching the next challenge, the fifth one, if he counted the one where he created his Ghosting technique, he found himself inside a catacomb-type area. All around him were hourglasses of all types. Watching the sand fall reminded him of his last challenge—the sand stopped falling at roughly an hour each time. Either he was being mocked, or his previous challenge was inside an hourglass.
The area around him started to darken, and he noticed when the last grain of sand fell, it was like a candle was snuffed. Crow wasn’t sure what the darkness meant—if anything. So he ignored it and explored the area. It wasn’t overly large, and there were nine rooms total. Eight of them surrounded the central ninth room. As he passed through each room, he looped back to where he started.
Each room had hundreds of different hourglasses, including sizes, shapes, and even the sands were distinct. However, the hourglass in the center of the ninth room was the most mysterious. The sand inside it flowed backward, and there was a single word etched into the fine wood with an elegant hand: Paradox.
At first, he thought it had to do with the sand flowing backward, but the rooms became darker and darker as the hourglasses dropped their last grain of sand. It was then that Crow saw a reflection in the glass of Paradox.
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Crow was looking at himself, and he was flipping over specific hourglasses. Something he hadn’t done up to this point. This was the paradox, a time loop in which it was impossible to tell which action came first.
After memorizing the entire sequence, he went back and flipped all the hourglasses. In the ninth room, the Paradox Hourglass sunk into the ground, revealing a doorway.
He stepped through into an empty room.
“Hello?”
No one responded, but he felt as if he was being watched.
A single step forward and a glowing sphere filled with golden light appeared before him. Curious, he stuck his little finger into the strange energy and quickly pulled it back.
The change was so minor, but his Sage’s Mind saw the difference immediately. His finger shrank and reversed its age. The feeling caused him to shudder inside. It was beyond bizarre, and his mind felt like it was close to shattering as it tried to cope with the reality of time reversal.
Time’s complexity was beyond a normal brain’s understanding. In a panic, he sat down and cultivated. Crow embraced the meditative state to bring his mind back to normal and calm his overacting heart.
“That was a warning,” a coyote said, standing in the shadows in the room. It was large, larger than an Elkan beast, and it stood upright on two legs which meant it practically towered over him.
“You know what I’m thinking?” Crow finally asked.
“No, but I’ve been at this a long time. It is easy to read a youngling like you. That sphere is your reward and is what is called a Death Loop—don’t worry, it’s mine, not yours. You can call it a Time Echo. Either way, I don’t recommend trying to understand it right away. I guarantee it’ll help you understand time much deeper than you do now. Have you realized why the Door of Paradox comes with such a… horrible side effect?”
Crow nodded. He hadn’t thought about it until the entity just asked, but feeling his mind almost shatter, he knew. It was protection.
“The mortal mind is fragile, and the Void beyond isn’t something it can easily handle. Grasping at the laws of time is a foolish endeavor, but your approach is unique. Blending ghost mana and time and possibly touching on the laws of reincarnation and… well, I won’t get into all that. The thing I find fascinating is that you are a Druid taking this path. What about your heritage, the oak branded on your chest?”
“I haven’t forsaken it. My heritage is my soul, the essence of who I am. Somehow, I think the spiritual nature of my skills is related to that heritage. I can’t really explain it, but I feel I’m on the right path.”
“I profess I do not know as much about the Draoidh, but I believe the most powerful members often communed with their ancestors. Did you know another class of Druid was lost to time?”
“What do you mean?”
“Ovate is the title of the young Draoidh, those without a path yet. Typically, most will eventually become a Druid and, if luck holds, an Archdruid. However, to become a Draoidh, an Ovate needed to create a spirit companion. To become an Archdruid required at least three spirit companions, which meant your spirit and mind both had to reach a certain level of power.”
“Is that the alternate path?”
“No. Bards have lost their original purpose. You use them as historians, and that wouldn’t be wrong. The thing you’ve lost is your bloodline specializations. I don’t know all of them, but I have a feeling you are touching upon becoming a Bard of the Spirits, sometimes called a Spirit Bard. Bloodlines will often gravitate toward one of those specializations. The problem is that I can think of two more that might equally suit you as well. Bard of Scholarly Talents and Bard of the Histories.”
“How many more are there?”
“Not sure exactly, but less than ten. Then again, that’s based on what I know of the past. Bloodline mutations aren’t uncommon among beasts, so I assumed they work the same in humans. Even back then, Spirit Bards were rare, and I think it has the strongest chance of manifesting in you. I sensed it previously.”
Crow thought about that and realized he was referring to when he exploded the stele in the first challenge. At the time, he just felt a massive surge of energy and didn’t give it much thought, but in hindsight, it was really beyond what he’d expected.
“Now on to what happened here. That sphere is an aspect of time, as it could be part of the past, present, or future. The part that might break your mind is that now you’ve interfered with my future death loop, you might have disrupted it.”
“Uh, why would you let me do that?” Crow felt something was off about it the entire time, but now he realized why. He had physically touched parts of that future, and with his unfated status, there was no telling what he might have done.
“Because I’m a trickster god, and what better way to create chaos than to toy with an unfated.”
“Aren’t you afraid you expedited your death?”
“Tricksters don’t think that way, and my nature prefers to see things I set in motion create ripples.”
“So you used me, which is why I’m in this trial without a token?”
“I think I’ve been more than fair. That technique you created—not even I’d be able to mimic it, and I’ve given you the tools to expand on it. Even your allies have benefited.”
“That reward still seems small compared to the chaos you probably caused using me. Which I’m pretty sure will directly impact my karma.”
Silence. Crow stared unwaveringly at the coyote and wondered if he took it too far. However, he remembered who he was dealing with—this son of a bitch owed him for those god damned woodpeckers!
“Very well, you might be right. Never let it be said that I don’t reward those that aid me. I’ll help you in this trial like I’ve already done and can even grant you some reward—”
“Python’s Tongue.”
“You sneaky bastard!” The coyote chuffed with laughter. “To think you were trying to trick a trickster, but I’d long suspected you were going to ask for it. If you complete all the rounds, it’s yours. But… I have to warn you. I announce the rewards at the end. They’ll know you have it.”
Crow grit his teeth and nodded. He had a feeling that the rewards weren’t originally announced but that this bastard was up to his tricks again.
“I agree, but I get a checkpoint after each challenge.”
“I can’t. I do not set that rule, and I can’t undo it. All I can do is guide the rewards you get.”
There was no reason he should feel this irritated with the trickster, but he was. Crow suspected it had something to do with the thing’s nature. Every time it spoke, he felt like the bastard was setting him up.
“Since we are all settled up, you passed this round since you gained more knowledge about time and didn’t lose your mind in the process. Your girlfriend passed too, but that Acco kid…” the voice sighed. “Don’t worry, another few days, and I’m positive he’ll pass. Good luck… you’ll need it.”
The door appeared, and the coyote disappeared.
“Jerk,” Crow muttered before stepping through and into the lobby, having reached a checkpoint.