Wish upon the Stars (Original Superhero cultivation sci fi litrpg)

[Malcolm Tent]

Principles of Time with Professor A.D Hawkins was, to put not too fine a point on it, located in a shithole. It was strange, because I hadn't known Moment City HAD shitholes, everything looked so nice and well maintained, but Hawkins managed it. His lawn was overgrown, his house had boards hanging off of it, there was a rusty sign hanging above his door that squeaked annoyingly every time a strong gust of wind came by.

Which is to say, it LOOKED like every abandoned house I'd ever seen…but without any actual damage. The boards were askew, but a tap made it clear they were solidly anchored, the lawn was overgrown, but it appeared to be JUST overgrown enough to look bad, and the sign…well, it was just a really annoying sign that someone had installed badly, but it was also obviously intentional. It made everything Elonwy had hinted at about tests for finding real knowledge seem a lot more reasonable, not that I'd doubted her before.

So when I knocked on the door and it swung open a crack to reveal a bloodshot eye behind a scratched glasses lens, I was less than surprised. "What?" barked the voice.

"Elonwy sent me," I said bluntly, not wanting to do the song and dance. "I'm signed up for the class. It hasn't started yet, right?" I shoved against the door, and the figure backed up, letting me pass as I bulldozed through the conversation. Elonwy had been very clear that this was the best way to get his attention in her instructions. "And how does that work? I'm sure I missed sessions, will I need to be caught up? Is there a textbook? Will you do a recap? And if so how often are those necessary?"

I entered the room at the end of the hall, assuming if the god behind me wanted me to stop he'd stop me, and then…froze. "Um…did I come at the wrong time?"

"No," he said with a sigh as he followed behind me. "You came at the perfect time. It's always the perfect time. Because no one ever takes this class. The ones who decide to give it a try usually see the outside of the house and turn back. It's not really worth the effort for just one credit." He grimaced. "Elonwy. That girl never could mind her business. Always picking up strays."

I chuckled, not that he seemed amused. "Well I'm registered to be here so…I'm ready to learn. Also I have a friend who signed up but she won't show up until tomorrow."

He grumbled. "Interrupting my damned research. Lousy kids. Fine. If you're signed up I guess I'm obligated." Walking over, he flopped onto the couch. "So. What exactly do you know about time?" I opened my mouth to answer but was cut off by a wooden duck the professor had snatched from a table and hurled at my skull. It bounced off my mask harmlessly, but it stunned me into silence. "Wrong," he snapped.

I blinked. "But I didn't say anything?"

"You were about to," he told me bluntly. "Which is wrong. The correct answer was silence, because you know NOTHING about time. Its warps, its wefts, its ups and downs. Time is complex, variable, unusual thing. I've been studying it for longer than the CONCEPT of your family has existed, and I've barely scratched its surface."
I held up both hands. "Noted, I don't know shit about time. That's why I'm here. So…educate me."

He rolled his eyes. "Educate me, he says. Like that's so easy. Fine, I'll try to dumb this down for you, brat. Telling you what I know about time would take centuries, so I find it is easier to begin not with what time is, but with what it is not, and more importantly, what it does not do. First lesson. Time doesn't pass."

"I'm…not sure what you mean by that," I said slowly. "Can you clarify?"

Contrary to my expectation, that seemed to please him rather than annoy him. "Good," he complimented. "Admitting ignorance is a sign of wisdom. What I just said is simple in concept, but difficult to grasp in scope. It is, however, exactly as I said. Time does not pass. Moments are not moving by, there is no STREAM of time, despite the use of that term in certain treatises. Rather, time is a stationary construct, through which we, as beings, journey."

I took a moment to digest that, considering the idea. "Alright," I said slowly. "What are the ramifications of that? For us, I mean."

"Manifold," he replied instantly. "Literally too many to count, but for the purposes of this discussion, the most impactful is the concept of compound energy drain and directionality. Most people who work with time will tell you that altering the flow of temporal energy gets more difficult the more you do it, the further you go. It does not. At least, not if you do it properly. Time is, in fact, a dimension of space, and movement through it is the traversal of imaginary distance."

"Wait, but time attribute energy and space attribute energy are totally different," I said in confusion. "I have an affinity for the latter and had to develop one for the former. The Dean said I'd need it."

He waved a hand dismissively. "Yes and no. Perception is reality for Ascendants. Time and space are treated as different disciplines, so the attributes are separate. The mechanics are…disparate. Time as a dimension of space is less structured at a physical level. It's in a complicated theoretical state. Regardless, many spatial manipulation techniques can have impressive effects when applied to temporal mechanisms."

I nodded along. "Ok. But mostly I'm here because I need to know how to use time attribute energy. Mythcrafting isn't a thing here, so I have no foundational basis for creating techniques or effects."

He raised an eyebrow at me. "You must have SOME temporal abilities, otherwise you wouldn't have been admitted. What can you do?"
"My Domain is…complicated, but I've manifested some of my techniques and abilities as entities," I did my best to explain. "I can access the powers of these demons at will, and they're all able to grow on their own. I have three with temporal capabilities."

I listed off the abilities of Mephistopheles, Overlay, and Limbo, and he listened patiently.

"Well," he said with interest. "I can see why my teacher admitted you. You certainly are an anomaly. What you've done is…quite frankly astonishing. It's a miracle-" he began, looking at me intently. My chest puffed out before he finished. "That you haven't killed yourself by accident."

I blinked at that. "What? I mean…my demons are stable. I've never had a problem with techniques or forms backfiring on me."

"Which would be the miracle I mentioned," he said dryly. "I assume you're some kind of natural Mythcrafting savant. But like most savants, that makes you a complete idiot. People with natural talent are the WORST students. They can't systematically describe their process in any way, they just do what FEELS right, and none of it is repeatable. They develop deplorable habits that take years to correct. I imagine my teacher arranged for you to end up here where I would need to repair the shattered remnants of your nonexistent foundation so he didn't have to."

"But, the Dean didn't send me here," I said weakly. "Elonwy did. You think she did it on his orders?"

He rolled his eyes. "My teacher is a temporal Overgod. He does not TELL people to do things. He simply arranges causality in such a way as to encourage them to do them of their own will. You should be more than aware of such a technique, given your own abilities."

It took me a second to make the connection, just because of the sheer scale of what he was talking about. "Wait…you mean he's using an ability like Limbo? Pruning potential futures until he finds one where she decides to direct me to you?"

"Possibly," he shrugged. "Or possibly it was more subtle. Perhaps he arranged for her to get a glimpse of a syllabus with my name on it before going to work, or perhaps the light caught your eyes in a specific way that reminded her of a fellow student who she cared for. There are as many potential futures as there are stars in the sky."

I swallowed hard. "But that's so much to sort through. The amount of power and effort it would take to prune those. Destroying what must be trillions of timelines."

Another duck hit me in the head. "What did I JUST finish telling you?" he demanded. "Think."

I did, and it came to me pretty quickly. "Space," I said after a moment. "Time is a dimension in space, so you traverse it rather than forcing it to bend. So he isn't destroying the timelines to select for the one he wants, he's…what, wandering through them? How does he anchor the specific timeline without getting rid of the others? It IS called pruning, so he must be culling some."

"An assumption," he said disdainfully. "Timelines branch. Culling a specific line in a specific way can move up a whole branch of temporal possibilities. But there are other ways. Anchoring is a skill you won't need for quite some time."

I nodded along, but I was actually getting excited. I knew what he was talking about now, understood the dynamics on a fundamental level. Limbo worked on the exact principle he'd mentioned. I physically moved through space and destroyed possible futures. This concept could potentially help me massively improve my demon.

"So…what do I need to learn?" I asked eagerly. "Tell me what kind of techniques or skills I need and I'll get them. I can do this."

He rolled his eyes, reaching into a pocket and tossing me something. I caught it on reflex, opening my hand to reveal a gold timepiece. A pocket watch with no chain, and a winding crown at the top. I raised an eyebrow at him, and he grinned. "Oh no," he told me maliciously. "You have no foundation at all. Working with Mythcrafting attributes requires some kind of strong mental construct. Since you don't have an existing one, I get to build yours from scratch."

I held up the watch in confusion. "I don't…get it," I said slowly. "You want me to use this to what? Keep time?"

His wicked smile got wider. "Not at all. I want you to take it apart. Nothing teaches you more about time than understanding the devices that keep it, and watch construction is a fantastic mechanism for Mythcrafting visualization when it comes to time."

I went pale, staring down at the complicated device. "I'm not…but I already have a visualization right? I use books."

He shrugged. "You can still use books. Just draw the designs into the pages. It's the best of both worlds. Regardless, this will be exponentially less complicated if we build your mental construct to fit temporal mechanics before you start actually applying them. I assure you, this will aid you in your quest to learn to Mythcraft better than any other method I could convey. Or you could simply leave me to my research. I don't have any particular preference one way or the other."

Unfortunately, I could tell he meant that. It didn't matter to him if I stayed or went. In fact, I suspect he'd have preferred the latter. Which of course meant I HAD to say. Because I wasn't giving him the satisfaction.

Grimacing, I set the watch on the table and glanced up at him. "So what am I supposed to do?"

He grinned and passed me a small case with a series of VERY tiny tools in it. "First, you need to take this watch apart entirely…and then put it back together. One hundred times." I closed my eyes, taking a long, deep breath to shore up my inner strength. Then I got to work.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

I was being very careful. Slow. Steady. My hands were rock solid, my concentration honed to a razor's edge, everything was riding on this moment…and then my finger slipped and the gear I was tightening popped off and hit me in the face. "Godsdamnit!" I snarled, all but flipping the table I was working at.

Professor Hawkins chuckled at me, and I glared at him. "Having trouble?" He asked wryly.

"Why am I even DOING this?" I demanded. "I'm here to learn Mythcrafting, not tinkering. How is this helping me?"

He snorted, then pointed to the piece I was working on. "What is that?"

"It's a lever pivot," I answered reflexively. He pointed to another spot. "Regulator." Another. "Gear Train. I know the parts. I'm not stupid. I memorized your annoying diagrams. I'm just not sure how this helps me."

He rolled his eyes. "This is the problem with naturals. You don't know how to BUILD. You just 'do the thing' and stuff happens. That's not crafting, it's improv. I don't DO improv. If you're learning basics from me, I'm teaching you right, which means you're going to need to go through the process. Watchmaking is soothing and teaches patience, but more accurately, it teaches PROCESS. That's why the tools you're using seal your stats."

Which was my least favorite part of this damned training. Obstacle courses with no stats, sucked, but they were doable. Delicate machining with no stats was a nightmare the likes of which I could never have imagined.

"I get the concept," I grimaced. "It just feels so…arbitrary. Mental constructs can be whatever I want, right? Why pick something so…rigid?"

"I picked it BECAUSE it's rigid," he snapped. "You NEED rigid. Your thinking is too flexible. Creativity is useful, but it begins to become a liability when you run into problems remaining consistent. Mythcrafting isn't just myths, it's also crafting. It's a science as well as an art, and science needs to be repeatable. Creating a decent worldforce is iterative. You need to experiment, and that means tracking your progress. Creating techniques and Domains is how you learn."

I grimaced, but nodded anyway. "Fine. But what is my goal here? Aside from obviously making a watch. Like what's my first step?"

"Simple," he said with a shrug. "I want you to rebuild those demons of yours from scratch. Not improve, mind. Rebuild. Exactly as they are. You need to understand them and how they work before you can improve them. Learn to improve your Mythcrafting by learning your current limits and then pushing them. If you go by watchmaking terminology, you'll be learning to create watches with more movements. But first you need to figure out how many movements the current constructs have. And before THAT-" he hurled a small wooden duck (that he hadn't been holding before) at my head, bouncing it off my mask. "You need to BUILD THAT DAMNED WATCH!"

I sighed, getting back to work on my project. It was slow, and hard, and frustrating. I messed up a bunch of times. And even when I did it right he sometimes made me do it over because it wasn't good enough. I was so excited when I made my first working watch…until he dropped it from four inches above the desk and it all but exploded on contact. Apparently they weren't supposed to do that, so he made me do it again.

Finally, after HOURS of repetition, we stopped. I let out a long sigh of relief. "Finally. Am I done now?"

"Done?" he asked scathingly. "For the day maybe. If you mean have you learned all there is to learn about the delicate art of horology, then not even close. This is just the most basic practice. Next we move to disassembly and reconstruction, then to repair. You have quite a bit to learn before you're ready to Mythcraft."

I grimaced, sighing deeply. "How will this help, exactly? I get needing to understand the constructs, but how will THIS part help?"

He sighed. "Because Mythcrafting is about intent. The more ingrained the imagery, the more durable the construct. You've accomplished similar things with visualization, but this is a more stable method of taking advantage. You learn the parts, the mechanics, the feel of the metal, the process. You burn it into your brain over and over, and then when it's time to construct, it's more stable. The construct, much like your books, is mostly immaterial, save that it provides you with context."

That made sense. Still, for the moment I was past the worst of it, and I put the tools away with great relish. Then I flexed my fingers, because they fucking hurt. With no stats, the delicate manipulation of tiny objects had been a pretty unusual activity for my hands to undertake. Beyond the finger pain from overuse, the sides and backs of my hands hurt from twisting in ways they weren't used to.

Still, it was kind of satisfying, in a way. Even more than the obstacle course was. It felt good to learn to do something the old fashioned way. I was honestly kind of surprised I didn't get a skill for it, though I supposed I'd have had to reincarnate a demon for that. I wondered if I'd get an offer or if I'd need to go out of my way to do that directly.

Regardless, I was learning, and it felt good to have some kind of measurable control over my growth. The only downside was that the horology lessons weren't actually Mythcrafting related, so my talent wasn't doing much to help with them.

After saying my goodbyes to professor Hawkins (whose first name was apparently Alden), then headed out to return to my quarters. Once I arrived, I climbed into my bed, closed my eyes, and stepped from my Domain into the Stygian Vault via the connection I had with my wife. She was already there when I arrived, but she hopped up, excited to see me, and ran over to wrap me in a tight hug.

I laughed at the enthusiasm. "Someone is excited," I said with a grin. "I take it you had a more interesting first day of class than I did?"

"Yes!" she squealed excitedly. "Professor Strauss took us out of the cities into the tower proper and we got to watch her fight some kind of S-ranked titan monster. It was HUGE and she absolutely demolished it. Suppressed her power to the same rank and then mopped the floor with it using only portals."

I raised an eyebrow at that. "Sounds intense. I kind of want to see that."

She grinned, grabbing my hand and escorting me over to a small bowl nearby. "Luckily, I've got you covered. THIS is my record of memory. It's a new toy I've been testing out. It's an inversion of a stealth artifact I got my hands on in Common City, and I've been using it to learn to steer the result of the Vault's manifestations a bit. I'm still new at it, but this was close enough to the exact opposite of stealth that I got away with it."

I picked the bowl up, turning it over with interest. "It's a bowl. Doesn't the Vault make exact inversions. What kind of stealth artifact is a bowl?"

"A VERY hard to find one," she huffed. "It works by pouring a film of imperceptibility over your head. Coats you in the stuff so no one notices you. I figure the opposite of pouring a bunch of not notice out onto someone would be pouring a bunch of things you DID notice into the bowl. Apparently the Vault agreed, because here it is."

Grinning proudly, she opened her mouth and exhaled over the bowl. As I watched, her breath coalesced into a thick mist before condensing into a liquid. In the bowl, an image began to form, like I was looking at a screen.

I leaned forward for a better look, intrigued about what this battle had entailed that had Callie so excited. In the image, a tall, red haired woman with high cheekbones stood in front of a group of people. Callie wasn't IN the group that I could see, but that was because I was seeing from her point of view.

"Greetings," said the woman calmly. "My name is Professor Sarah Strauss, and I teach Combat Application of Spatial Distortion. Now, can someone tell me the simplest method of distorting space?"

One of the students raised a hand. "Um, teleporting?"

She shook her head. "It is, in fact, spatial lubrication. In fact, that particular power is so ubiquitous that it is considered the most common spatial ability it is possible to be born with. That is not to say that it is weak, however, all manipulation of space can be efficacious if applied properly. Above lubrication is condensation, which the layman may consider teleportation, though it is not, and above that is tearing, which some prefer to term 'portals'. These are the basic tools of a spatial ascendant's trade. And the ones I will be educating you on today."

Turning, she gestured behind her. In the distance, something rose over the skyline. Something huge and terrifying with three eyes and a crown of dark horns. "First, lubrication," she said calmly, swiping a hand over the horizon. The monster, which had been moving forward, simply…flowed across the intervening space to appear a mile or so away from the class, towering over the students. "Second, condensation," she intoned, vanishing to appear in the air across from the monster.

The creature snarled at her darkly, rage and hate writ plain on its demonic features as it lashed out with a fist the size of a small building. "Third," she said placidly. "Tearing."

She waved a hand again, and like she was pulling aside a curtain, the space in front of her rippled, revealing a different viewpoint from before hanging translucently in front of her. I almost didn't realize what she had done until the fist hit the distortion and passed right through….emerging from under the monster's chin and smashing its head back in a truly brutal uppercut.

It started to fall, but with another flick, the portal closed, cutting off the arm entirely and leaving the monster stumbling back dazedly, one arm missing and the stump bleeding profusely. She flicked her fingers again, pulling that same spatial curtain over the arm and making it vanish like a magician at a stage show.

The monster roared and hissed, snarling with rage, and seemed to shake off the damage, raising its other arm to strike her down…and then its head VANISHED.

It took me a second to process what had happened, because the damage was so catastrophic it was almost impossible to piece together without going back over it from the beginning. The arm. The one she'd vanished. She'd teleported it high into the air, fist down. She'd dropped it from miles up and waited for the monster to walk into its own orbital punch. Now I knew what people meant when they described powerful blows as being "like the fist of an angry god".

The liquid dissolved, and I looked up to see Callie grinning at me wolfishly. "She's AMAZING, isn't she?" she asked eagerly. "I'm planning to ask her to be my academic advisor. Can you imagine how much I'll learn?"

Thinking about Professor Hawkins, who was pretty much filling that role for me, I was kind of jealous, but I wasn't too upset. Callie deserved a good mentor, and I was excited to see her catch up to me. This Professor Strauss seemed pretty amazing. But I knew there was more to this than just her showing off.

I grinned as I stood up, calling my staff to my hand as I started to limber up. "Let me guess, you want to see how much of that nonsense you can do on your own?" I asked her with an excited laugh. "It has been a while since we had a proper sparring match. Go ahead then, show me what you can do." I triggered Mornax, pushing it to A-rank with the staff's effects. "Defense only. I want to see what you're really capable of." Without having to worry about hurting me, I saw her start to get really amped up. This was going to be so much fun.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

Sparring with my wife was always a lot of fun. We'd been together for years now, and we knew each other in a way I didn't think would be possible without our bond. My combat instincts, my thought processes, my moods, she knew everything about me and vice versa. Which meant that despite being a rank weaker, she was able to find and exploit weaknesses in my combat style that might be impossible for anyone else.

Which was why I was only playing defense this time. I knew Callie well enough to know she'd be concerned about hurting me. Her blades were both B-rank themselves, and with her Adherent fire playing with space, she had a decent shot at doing damage. The best possible option had been making myself literally invulnerable to her attack so she could really cut loose.

Taking up a firm stance, I dropped my knees a bit, lowering my center of gravity and planting my staff behind me to increase my stability.

Callie grinned at me, Oblique and Gossamer drawn and ready for the battle. I honestly wasn't sure about sparring inside her Domain, but considering all the other nonsense I did in Domains, it was hardly the most absurd use of time I could think of. "You ready?" I asked her with a grin. "This isn't going to be easy. I went all out on defense so you didn't have to hold back, but you won't be able to do any damage when I'm like this. Might be a bit discouraging."

She rolled her eyes, then her shoulders, loosening up her arms as she swept her blades in a figure eight. "You talk too much," she laughed, teeth bared as she stepped forward, her blades flicking out.

Adherent flame blazed up inside Gossamer, even as Oblique filled with the black flames of Heretic Fire. I watched carefully as she stepped forward and…vanished. A blaze of black fire consumed her, and for a moment I thought it was something similar to my Waltz. I quickly realized though that she hadn't exactly teleported, she'd more folded the space. Condensation, as her teacher had called it.

With my current stats, I was more than up to the task of matching her speed, but with a three times modifier on her Might, Callie's physical ability was actually higher than my Perception. Combined with her spatial movement, she'd actually managed to appear in my blind spot, and I only noticed her attack as it came within a hairs breadth from my throat. I ducked my chin, letting the attack clang off my mask, my staff coming around to parry Oblique as Gossamer rebounded from my face.

Callie vanished in a blur, another flicker of black flame. Apparently the Heretic Fire was more suited to condensation, whereas I already knew her Adherent Fire could tear space easily. Callie seemed to notice my slip earlier with the blind spot, and I saw her back off, eyes narrowing as she studied me. I watched, waiting patiently, and she vanished again. When she appeared again, her blades lashed out in a dizzying storm of strikes. I deflected them easily, but the few clangs off my armor and mask made it clear I'd underestimated her.

She was using her spatial condensation to create some kind of weird multi attack that allowed her blade to take multiple paths simultaneously. It was an unfinished technique, and clearly a spur of the moment idea. Only one in five of the visible attacks was actually a real blow, but still, it showed an absurd amount of adaptability. Sadly it wasn't enough, and my stats won out. My Might was just too damned high when I was able to see her coming. Lower Perception or not, I currently had more than two and a half times as much Might as Callie had POINTS. It wasn't a gap she could close.

I eased up as I realized I was getting too into the battle and ignoring my defense only premise. Callie, luckily, was just as excited as I was, and just as uncaring about holding back. She flicked out Gossamer, blue flames rolling, and I blinked in shock as I felt the world shift around me, inverting as I fell out of the sky from about a hundred feet up.

Callie appeared behind me again, but her advantage was negated by the spinning of the room, and I calmly deflected her attacks as I reoriented midair, landing in a crouch with a low boom. The room warped again, and suddenly, I was inside a storm of change. Appearing across the Vault, manifesting in the air, on the ground, and even halfway up the walls, Callie appeared from fire each time to attack, hammering at my weakest points as she became more and more skilled at moving me.

"Stop," I finally called, holding up a hand. She did, and I cracked my neck and looked her over. She looked tired, but not "moved a B-ranker with A-rank defense" tired. "What the hell was that? How were you able to teleport me, my Impact is way higher than yours. You shouldn't be capable of moving me an inch."

She grinned at me. "I know," she said proudly. "That's why I didn't. I couldn't move you at all. So I moved the space around you. I used Tearing to rip a hole from your location to another and let you fall through it. Impact can't protect you from the absence of space."

I blinked. "That…holy shit I didn't even consider that. That makes perfect sense." It reminded me of the void cloaking that Anna had shown us back during our army training. Using space to seal off Perception by literally removing the source to another spatial dimension. Except this was an attack that allowed her to bypass even my footing.

In fact, I was lucky I was so much stronger than she was, because the teleport had cut my connection with the ground, and without my wings out, that effectively severed my defensive form. Luckily I was still in the Seal and my mask, not to mention all the Impact I had on her, so I was able to make up the difference, but taking a closer look, I did find a few small knicks on exposed parts of my body with blood smeared over them, even if my regeneration had long since closed the minor injuries.

Still, it made me smile. "That was fantastic," I said enthusiastically. "With those crazy weapons of yours and your new skills, you could probably kill a B-ranker. The question is, will that be enough to get through the advanced student trial? A hundred thousand enemies is nothing to sneeze at. Even if you have the raw power, you might not be able to keep it going for long enough."

She snorted. "Did you forget where we are? My manifestations inside the Domain are a bit limited, but if we were outside, I could manifest both any item in here AND its exact opposite. And it barely takes any energy. I'll drown those robots in weapons. Here, come take a look at my collection. I've been working hard to fill it out every chance I get. The Asura have been contributing quite a bit of manpower to it, actually. Doing jobs for credits and to earn me weapons directly."

I laughed at that, because I'd kind of forgotten that the Asura served Atlas, and that made her basically their princess. She proudly dragged me over to one wall of the vault, where I could see a huge collection of hanging weapons of various designs. Swords, maces, axes, spears, arrows, flails, and even some farming tools all hung carefully from the walls of the Vault, placed gently on subtle brackets to show them off in the most favorable light.

"So how many of these are…y'know, useful?" I asked her as I scanned them slowly. "Because I can tell they're all C-rank items, but I can't tell what they do, and with this kind of quantity, I'm somehow doubting they're all super dangerous elite weaponry."

She shrugged. "Depends what you mean. Part of the reason for getting them was to test the inversion effects of the vault. Like that hammer over there has a minor repair enchantment on it. But the inverted version has a minor DESTRUCTION enchantment on it, which is a lot more useful to me. Some of them are functionally worthless in their base state. Like that spear is cursed to inflict a fear effect on the wielder. But when I invert it, it actually grants courage when used, which is pretty great. A lot of that stuff is cursed, actually. Cursed items are dirt cheap and they work perfectly with the vault."

I blinked. I hadn't seen a cursed item in ages. I remembered finding some on Callus, and Zeke had been excited to explore the curses, to the point of trading me for one that he said was a little bit odd. I hadn't really bothered looking into them again since then because…well, curses were bad. My gear was always custom made, and I wasn't a loot goblin like my wife, so I mostly didn't pay attention to items we found when we were out and about.

But now that I thought about it, curses were exactly the kind of thing Callie could make use of now. "You don't get affected by the curses anyway?" I asked curiously. "Having them in here?"

She shook her head. "Nope. This is the vault. Vaults are for collecting and isolating. Part of the nature of my Domain is keeping negative effects off of me. Still, even with the Asura helping, I'm bumping up against the limits of what I can do within the time I have left, especially given my need to train. I think this ought to be enough to deal with the advanced trial, but I want to polish my skills a bit more before I made the attempt. I'm also considering waiting to take it until after mid terms. I have to look into the benefits at the different ranks. If advanced will get me a higher score I'll hurry my attempt."

"Good point," I nodded. "I get you there. I feel like it should help. I really want to try it out myself, but it's not even close to time yet. The B-rank trial is a lot harder to get through, especially since I'm only a quarter of the way in."

I frowned at myself. I had been repeating that a lot lately. In my head, out loud, I kept making that same excuse. Honestly it was starting to grate. I knew I wouldn't die in the attempt, was it really such a wise move to avoid it. Given how much stronger my demons had gotten, and how much stronger I'd gotten myself, I could probably do a lot better.

Of course, I still needed to train. I made a promise to myself. Once I finished rebuilding my three time demons, I would give it a try. I wanted to find out what I was capable of BEFORE learning the skills I was sure would propel me to the peak of my rank in terms of combat power.

Callie, feeling my decision through the bond, beamed at me. "Seems like I'm not the only one who's getting all fired up." She winked, letting the black Heretic flame blaze up for a second on her sword as she said it.

Rolling my eyes, I scoffed fondly. "That was a bad pun and you should feel bad for making it. Now, why don't you show me where you keep the food in this place. I know you wouldn't have a vault with no ingredients. I want to see if I can cook for you inside your Domain." Given my experiments with cooking in my own Domain I was betting I could. She lit up like a sunrise, grabbing my hand and dragging me deeper into the vault and I laughed. Guess she was hungry.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

Today was my first day of class. Again. Introduction to Divination Principles with Professor Allegra Saunders was the secondary recommendation from Elonwy. I was still kind of on the fence about the first one, but I trusted my friend not to steer me wrong, so I packed up and headed for my first class (after stocking my scrolls for the day).

Unlike Prof Hawkins, Professor Saunders was NOT understated in terms of her living situation. In fact, even from the outside her house was a sprawling palatial estate that dwarfed most of the ones I'd ever seen. When I arrived at the gate, there was an attendant waiting for me there, ready to escort me off to the side entrance where the class was supposed to enter.

"You were expected," said the servant who met me at the gate. "Please, come this way. Lady Allegra has been eagerly awaiting your presence."

I blinked at that, for several reasons, but tagged along as the gaunt man in the robe led me around the side of the house. "So…what do you mean expected?" I asked slowly. "Like, she knew I was coming because I signed up? Because if this is another 'only one person in the class' situation I'm going to be so pissed."

He laughed at that. "Of course not. The lady deals in fate. In chance and happenstance. Some beings hold greater sway in the rivers of time than others, and those stones, when dropped into the current, produce ripples that even the most amateurish diviners can perceive. With our Lady's skill, your nature was as a sun in an empty sky, obvious and shining with a light that could not be denied."

That brought me up short. "Wait, you mean she can tell I have fate manipulation abilities?" I asked in surprise. My class in Doom Sovereign had been the Fate Walker, and even beyond that, I had always had an…interesting destiny. Even for an Ascendant I attracted strange and unique events at a rate that beggared belief. From conversations with my family and even other candidates, my advancement had been far faster than it should have been, and I had experienced far more than most.

For a while I had assumed that was because I was descended from three different gods, but comments had been made in the past that even for a divine descendant, my luck was a little bit absurd when it came to running into strange things.

Part of what had drawn me to this particular class was the knowledge that while it was time related, it would presumably allow me to learn to access the abilities of someone like Azazel more accurately. My first minister was a big fan of divination, and giving him access to an actual teacher who could show him how it worked would make that even more useful.

When we arrived at the closed door in question, the hooded man knocked heavily on the door in a strange, staggered pattern. The door opened and a dark haired girl with pale skin and black painted lips glared at him. "Oh for- Dylan, what the hell did I tell you about the whole 'mysterious envoy' persona. You look ridiculous. Did you give this one the child of destiny speech? I told you to stop doing that."

I froze. Oh. Apparently I had been overthinking things.

Dylan, aka robe boy, pouted at the girl. "Sally!" he hissed in embarrassment. "Don't ruin my reputation in front of the seekers of knowledge. The Lady is expecting this one in particular. Beyond that, my own senses foretold his arrival. The fate of this one is particularly puissant."

"No, she isn't," Sally snapped. "She said she forgot to send directions to the side door to one of the kids and that they would probably show up at the front gate. That's not PROPHECY, it's forgetfulness. And you don't HAVE senses. You've had to borrow credits from me six different times because you lost all yours in the gambling competitions. You are the least prescient human being I've ever met. I'm including Lyle in that assessment, and the other day, he walked into a HOLE because he got distracted by a butterfly."

She turned to shoot me an apologetic grimace. "Look, ignore everything this idiot said to you. He takes this nonsense way too seriously. The Prof is actually a pretty perceptive lady, but she tends to hyperfocus on the future and fail to notice the obvious. My brother has picked up ALL her bad habits and none of her good ones."

"Sally, knock it off!" Dylan whined. "You're making me sound bad to the new kid!"

She jerked her chin at me. "Come on in, class hasn't started yet. Prof said we'd be starting late today, and she's pretty reliable about that kind of stuff." Letting me in, she led me down the hall towards the front of the house. I was pretty sure. Given the obvious spatial warping it was hard to get a bead on where I was.

"Look, contrary to what he said, this isn't some hyper mystical mumbo jumbo. I know divination sounds mysterious, but really it's just like statistics. But backwards. And some of it you do without any information to go off of. The Prof is a good teacher, and if you have a knack for this stuff you'll pick it up lickety split."

"What about the whole fate thing?" I asked as we walked. "He said that some people have stronger fates. Is that real?"

"Oh sure," she nodded. "But singularities are rare as hen's teeth. The Prof says she hasn't had one in her class in a few millennia. The chances of you being one are pretty damned slim. Just…don't worry about Dylan. He's harmless. Focus on learning more about the class and making the most of your time. The Prof knows how to educate people according to their talents, so the better you do the more you actually learn."

That sounded fair enough, so I decided to just wait and talk to her about it in person. Making a bunch of half assed guesses wasn't likely to be helpful to me long term. This was a school, I was obviously here to get knowledge from experts, not to try to come up with my own solutions to problems that had already been studied.

We walked down a long, thin hallway with nothing on the walls except candles. I was pretty sure it was some kind of servant's corridor. After a few turns, we came to a large lecture hall type chamber with descending tiered seating. The hall was set up in sort of a cone, with the thinnest point being a rounded alcove with a single large table set into the floor. The top of the table was some kind of dark granite, the base was wood, and a long figure stood at the side, a placid smile on her mostly blank face.

"Welcome," she said, in a voice that didn't go above a whisper but rode the acoustics of the room to sound like it was coming from right behind my ear. To Introduction to Divination Principles. I am Allegra Saunders, and I believe you've already introduced yourself, Mr. Wyndham."

Sally sighed. "He didn't, Prof. You skipped that part."

The detached woman blinked. "Ah, my mistake. How rude of me. You may proceed, of course, I didn't mean to cut you off."

"I'm…uh, Shane Wyndham," I said slowly. "But I got by Solomon."

She nodded happily. "Of course you do. Please, come sit down, I saved you a spot by the front. You won't have to run as far when the incident occurs."

I glanced at Sally, who winced and shrugged. She did NOT, tellingly, say anything about not worrying about the proclamation. Lovely. I followed the gaze of Professor Saunders down to the front of the room and sat. I was watched by about a dozen people, mostly older. Unlike my initial class, this one was much more crowded, with plenty of people hoping to learn about divination. I could see Dylan the robe guy in the back, sulking, and Sally sat next to him, much to his annoyance. When I took my seat, I smiled up at Professor Saunders, and she nodded blithely before returning her serene gaze to the class.

"Time," she said in a smooth, empty voice. "Is a river. But not a linear one. It's more circular. Like a three dimensional river. In a ring shape. But twisted. Like an upside down eight. Because it starts before it ends, and vice versa. Everything that can happen has already happened, or won't ever happen, and if you can't tell the difference between the two, then nothing you do will ever matter. Except when it does."

I frowned at her. That was…deeply unhelpful. Elonwy had said this teacher was good at what she did. I had to assume I was missing something. Her eyes fixed on me. "You can see the infinite possibilities, can you not?"

"I can," I nodded. "At least sometimes. I have a special ability that opens up that sense. I can prune the potential outcomes. Or at least that's what I was told it's called."

She grimaced. "Sloppy," she said sourly. "Destroying timelines to focus your potential outcomes. As I said, time is a river. Rather than divert the flow, it is wiser to simply swim. Utilize your ability." She gestured for me to come up and stand beside her. "Today, we perform a small exercise." She drew out a coin. "I will flip this coin. I want you to prune the timelines where it lands on tails. Remember. Only heads. Anything else is unacceptable."

I took a deep breath, then nodded. She flipped. I reached for Limbo, incarnating my demon, and the world bloomed into an endless web of possibilities. There were quite a few nearby, but most of them were some offshoot where the coin didn't land or something else happened alongside the flip. In terms of potential outcomes for the toss, there were only a few. I lashed out, shattering a few timelines, focusing the outcome to land on heads. The last viable timeline nearby was locked in, heads was assured, and then, inside that timeline, Professor Saunders winked at me. I saw her do…something, and she reached OUT of the timeline she was in and plucked the coin from another, the motion overlapping with her coin flip as it landed…on tails.

Gaping at her, I stared down at the coin. I saw what she meant. She was saying the same thing as Professor Hawkins, about time being four dimensional. She'd moved between the timestreams seamlessly and then come back, even sidestepping the effects of Limbo entirely.

She passed me the coin, gesturing for me to sit down. I did, still staring at the golden disc as if it help the answers to the universe. Which, to be fair, it very well might. "Time," she repeated. "Is a river. Move within its flow, reverse it, swim upstream. But it doesn't stop. Not really. Not on a grand scale. Which means no matter what your opponent does, you always have a way to move. Always have another path. That is the truth of divination. For it is in divination that we illuminate our truest path. And there is ALWAYS a path to take."

Her voice was no longer serene or flat, now it was sharp, and her eyes glittered like dark chips of obsidian, sharpened to a monomolecular edge. "Welcome to Introduction to Divination Principles. Today, you enter a whole new world." I swallowed hard as I took in the excited gleam in the eyes of the other students. I wasn't the only newbie, from what I could tell, but even the students I knew had been here a while seemed excited. Now I got what Elonwy had meant about Saunders being a good teacher. I had a feeling I'd be learning a lot here.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

Another two weeks passed without much incident. Train, class, train, sleep (with some time for stockpiling scrolls in between). With the demons out doing jobs, I managed to pull in some credits, but it wasn't nearly enough. I was focused mostly on the midterms for income, and I only had a month left to train. Still, I'd made some serious progress, as evidenced by the object currently sitting in front of me.

"So, this is a manifestation of a demon?" Callie asked from where she lay on the table in my conference room. "It looks kind of messy."

"It's…sort of a halfway point," I admitted. I'm trying to recreate Overlay in this form. Once that's done, I can use Brad to insert the timepiece in Owen and anchor him to it the same way I did with Phil and the candle. It's ALMOST done. I just need to have Dantalion scan it to verify."

Overlay was…simplistic. It was a fairly barebones design for a demon, as far as I could tell, albeit surprisingly economical. There were actually a few attributes present. Mostly time, but not just that. One that I was pretty sure was information, one that I suspected was fate (which WAS a different thing), a few more basic ones like light for the representation.

It was fascinating to study it, because I hadn't actually MADE Overlay the way I made a lot of my demons. The DS Mastery skill had essentially designed the subskill spontaneously. It made me so curious about the system as a whole. Where did skills come from? I knew some of them, like my Goetia Staff Art, were created by people and then sort of natural disseminated, but something like DS Mastery, which was only possibly by mashing together the accumulated knowledge of a bunch of die hard players, didn't seem like it had existed before.

Regardless, Overlay wasn't complicated, but it was efficient. Or he was. It was strange to think of the subskill as a person while constructing the timepiece that represented him. I glanced over it. "Twelve movements," I said slowly as I studied it. "Decent balance of attributes."

"Don't you want more time?" Callie asked with interest. "You've got a natural affinity for it now, right?"

"Yes, but that's not how it works," I told her as I studied the device. "Balance is important for function. Attributes are complicated, but also very simple. They do something. You can bully them into doing other things with form, but they mainly serve a specific purpose. In order to make the most of them, you need other attributes to shape that purpose alongside the form. Mythcrafting techniques from just one attribute produces extremely basic techniques."

And that was another tough part of this whole thing. Overlay had been a skill originally, which meant it was constructed from stats. Stats were more stable and discrete portions of mythology, but they were rigid. Remaking the demon into a timepiece was giving me far more flexibility, but it was forcing me to adapt my mythcrafting to fit into the niche of skillmaking. Which I suspect was the whole point of the exercise Professor Hawkins gave me. Showing me how to mythcraft from the ground up, as it were.

My construct wasn't made of stats, but I had to study and learn from the stat aspects of skill construction to make the elements of the timepiece, and that was showing me a bit about how the system combined its mythology. It was making my individual movements more refined and stable as I internalized their construction.

I passed it to Dantalion. "So…what do you think?" I asked the older demon. "Take your time."

He nodded solemnly, picking up the timepiece. Slowly, he lifted it to his eye and began to study it. "I've been keeping up with your lessons of course, my lord," he said as he eyed the timepiece. "And making generous use of the Pillar of Goetia to simulate research. I've needed to confirm quite a few things for myself in realtime, and of course, I'm nowhere close to proficient, but I have at least as firm a grasp on this subject as yourself."

"I figured," I laughed. "I also figure that you're being humble. You probably have a much firmer grasp on this stuff than me. And I don't mind that. After all, your knowledge is my knowledge. Once I incarnate you, everything you've learned will become my own knowledge."

He laughed, not even bothering to look up at me. "This looks functional. And more importantly, it looks ACCURATE."

I shrugged. "It wasn't that hard. I mean, yeah, learning to replicate a skill with mythcrafting was tougher than I expected, but it's kind of basic, and Overlay was the MOST basic subskill I had access to. I've got a long way to go."

"True," Dantalion admitted as he set the timepiece down. "But I think you're underestimating exactly how big an accomplishment this is. While you may be thinking this is a pathetic pace, your only real point of reference for beginner Mythcrafting is Professor Hawkins. What might seem trivial to him is fiendishly complicated to others. Based on context clues, I suspect that this level of progress would take a normal person YEARS of effort."

I blinked at that. "Huh. Not sure how. Constructing the mechanism elements was a bit annoying, but it wasn't that hard. It's all just visualization at the base of it. Anyone can do that. Learning to layer those visualizations on top of each other was tough, but Piece of Mind made it a lot simpler to keep up once I got the hang of it."

"Because visualizations are the area of Mythcrafting where your talent shines the most," he said patiently. "You remember that even your advisor called you a savant. A natural, as it were. The fact that you've continued to improve at this speed proves his words correct. It is also worth noting that he hasn't actually said anything negative about your progress in at least a week, which for someone like him, is its own form of praise."

I…hadn't actually noticed that. He was right though. The Professor hadn't made a single snide crack about my work ethic or productivity in several days. Compared to his previous annoyingly critical manner, it was basically doing a congratulatory dance in my honor, not that I was stupid enough to say that to him. I probably should have noticed that myself, actually, but I'd been so caught up in work and training I hadn't even given it a second thought.

"Alright," I sighed. "If it's ready, we should call Brad in. Are you sure this is going to work? It's not…exactly the same."

He waggled a hand. "It's conceptual, so it should. We can conceive of it working, so there's no reason to expect it won't. Besides, the item in question isn't overly complicated. It's not exactly replacing his current structure, more sort of…melding with it. Then we can remove it when needed for upgrades and it'll act as a sort of talisman. You know this. You came up with the plan."

"Yeah," I grinned. "But it sounds so much more convincing coming from you. It's the extra years. They add gravitas."

He laughed at that, and I sent one of the passing demons to call for Owen and Brad. It didn't take them long to arrive, and as soon as they did, the two of them all but lungs across the table to examine the timepiece. I rolled my eyes, snatching them up. "Stop that, you two," I snapped. "You're grown…demons. Act like it."

Brad and Owen had taken to spending time together, presumably because they were the youngest of my demons, at least in terms of experience and physicality. Brad was proving to be a bad influence on Owen, but honestly I didn't dislike it. The kid might not be any chronologically younger than me, but he seemed so…green. It was nice to see him making friends, and to see Brad bonding with someone.

"Is that it?" he said eagerly, staring at the device in my hands. It was honestly kind of fascinating to look at. Inside the Domain, mental constructs could function to their fullest. Each of the unique elements of the timepiece were a strange, shimmering substance composed of raw attributes. Some of them were interesting colors, and some of them couldn't really be described by a term that pedestrian, but they were all breathtaking to behold.

I nodded, tossing it in the air and catching it. "Of course," I nodded cheerfully. "Take a look. See what you feel."

I tossed him the timepiece, made based on his own construction. My initial schematics had required quite a bit of referencing of the book in the library that represented Owen, and despite being one of the first, trying to unravel the whole thing had been fiendishly difficult. But given the transition, the two items should be VERY similar, if distinct, and since the book WAS Owen for all intents and purposes, the timepiece…

"It feels like me," he said in awe. "I mean. Not me. Because it's a watch. But it is me. It's gorgeous. I feel like it's ticking along to the beat of my heart."

I glanced at Brad. "Heartbeat, huh? Can you use that?"

He squinted between us. "I mean…probably. Where the hole opens is sort of academic. But if he can feel that, then moving it should create a pit where that sensation used to be. I'm not exactly positive how this whole thing works, I'm sort of going off instinct here." He reached out and snatched the timepiece from Owen, who let out a whimper and reached for it.

Brad, not even bothering to ask if it was time, shot his hand forward clutching the watch. Before my eyes, a hole opened in the air over Owen's chest, and Brad shoved his closed fist and the watch both into the gap, before immediately removing his hand. Once it was out, the hold snapped shut with a pop, vanishing as if it had never existed. We all froze, staring at Owen. He stared back, looking shocked, but not hurt or uncertain about anything.

Watching his face closely, Brad nodded slowly, then his hand shot back out and the hold opened. He withdrew the timepiece, then turned and handed it to me.

I took it carefully, staring down at it in awe. It looked…better. Different. Like someone had overhauled it and adjust all the pieces to be just a bit more perfect. Gears were slimmer, movements smoother, it just looked like it was made by a better artificer. More than that though, it felt alive. I could feel the pulse of a pounding heart through the gears, like a being breathed alongside the mechanism, a physical vessel of life contained in a watch.

Turning, I passed it to Dantalion, being very careful not to damage or jar it. He studied it for about a minute before handing it back, and Brad placed it back inside of Owen's chest. "This bears further study," Dantalion said solemnly. "Something…changed. That might seem like a good thing, but it means we don't have enough of a grasp on the mechanics of this process. The Domain altered the timepiece to fit your intent."

I grimaced. "Which means it was a failure. That's not systematic. The Professor is going to be so disappointed. It's fine. I have three chances to get this done. And the changes will help us refine the process, right?"

"They will," he confirmed. "By studying the before and after, we can learn what differences we overlooked between the initial input and the final product. I imagine this experience will advance our Mythcrafting capabilities by quite a bit. Obviously, we won't be tampering with the device until we fully understand its creation and the logic behind it, but until we've completed the analysis, we can learn much from it in preparation for working on the next one."

I nodded. "Sounds good. Well then, if we're done here let's break for the night. Tomorrow, we can get started on studying Limbo." Hopefully my Divination classes would be helpful in deciphering those abilities.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

After finishing the timepiece for Owen, I spent the day with my wife, enjoying my time as Dantalion studied the design to try to figure out where we went wrong. Eventually though, I started getting antsy, and I decided that in order to best grasp the nuances of what had been done, a test was in order.

I considered another duel with Callie, but truth be told she wasn't at a level where she could push me yet, even with her new tricks. Luckily, I had someone who definitely was. So I reached out through a messenger service offered by one of the other temporal studies majors to get in touch with the most deadly single combatant at my rank I knew of. Namely, my bodyguard, Fade Genix.

Formerly a major crime boss (for some value of crime) on the Heirworld where my succession war was held, Fade was a swordmaster who ruled over the "Hall of Steel", a weapon focused gathering of combat geniuses who had risen to the top of that absolute mess of a planet.

The Hall of Steel was ALSO the faction partially founded by Donovan Redfellow, the smith who had crafted my armor, and Fade's sword Devlos on top of that. Even among other B-rankers Fade was one of the most deadly, and if anyone would be able to help me test the new and improved Overlay, it would be him.

Since I had the option to take my Common City time whenever I wanted, I arranged to meet him there for one of my two days the following morning and (after stockpiling my scrolls, bringing my total up to one hundred seventy), I headed into town to find a place to spar with my guard.

As I made my way through Common City alone, I couldn't help but reflect on the coming fight. Fade was, without a doubt, the best possible opponent to train the Overlay. He was a technical master of swordplay who far outstripped Callie and had been training for most of his life. His entire combat style relied on pure martial ability, with just a hint of some metal nonsense to add effectiveness.

This would be a perfect chance to polish my Goetia Staff Art some more. Which, come to think of it, was still not represented by a demon. Studying my Domain, I realized that particular skill hadn't been represented, mostly because while I had passed it on to my apprentice, it had been folded into my pseudo Domains until now. I made a note to look into reincarnating Valtek into the Goetia Staff Art, especially given the synergy with the Pillar of Goetia. I wanted to make sure I had boosted that one up to at least Legendary next time I met with my disciple.

I arrived at our arranged meeting spot, paying a few credit points to rent out the space and then headed back to limber up, calling out the Pillar as I prepared for combat. It felt…nice. I was actually going to have a relatively fair fight here.

Well, no, I wasn't. Fade was a master of battle on a level it would be hard for me to even touch, but as long as he didn't dip into his Chronicle or potential Domain, I was actually on the way to being able to keep up with him. Despite being only a quarter of the way into B-rank to his peak, my Might was over six million with a three times modifier. Assuming he wasn't singularly focused on that stat like Jessie did with her Vitality, chances were good he was probably only at around that level, and that wasn't even counting my Vitality, sitting at an effective fifteen thousand plus the regeneration effect from my bloodline.

With Overlay to help bridge the skill gap, I was hopeful I could at least put up a fight, and it should be more than enough to test out my newest demon upgrade. It was exciting, knowing I might be able to keep up with someone at Fade's level, even if he would probably be holding back a bit. He was not only MUCH stronger than me in terms of overall stats, he had a lot more experience.

Fade arrived not too long after I did, looking energized and just us contained as usual. Fade had this sort of…manner about him. When he was in combat, his whole aura was like a drawn sword, but when he wasn't, he had a way of hiding his edge. It was an embodiment of his Path in a way I hadn't seen from many other people manage. He grinned as he took in my attention. "Always be aware of your surroundings," he said with a nod of acknowledgement. "Good man. Are you ready for this?"

I nodded, spinning up my staff, and he whistled at the object. "A-rank," he said in an impressed tone. "Devlos got a bump from Donovan last time he was around, but he didn't make that staff. Surprised you managed to improve it."

"Metaphysical shit," I shrugged. "Hard to explain. He DID upgrade my armor though." I rapped my knuckles on the Seal of Solomon. "So you don't need to worry about cutting me up by accident."

Fade just chuckled darkly. "I promise you, Shane. I never needed to worry about that. When I cut people, it's because I MEAN to."

Nodding slowly, I closed my eyes, reaching into myself for Owen. The Overlay had made the jump from tier 6 to tier 7 when the timepiece upgraded, putting it firmly in Grandmaster territory, and I couldn't wait to see what it could do. Especially since Owen himself had been training with the ability his whole life, and incarnating him would give me full access to those tricks of the trade.

Taking up a purely defensive stance I associated with Mornax, I prepared for the fight. When I opened my eyes, the world seemed…different. Arrows sat atop my field of vision, shifting back and forth consistently with his movement. Every step, every shift, a dozen more were illuminated, showing me exactly what attacks he was going to make.

It was kind of fascinating, because the Overlay KNEW what he would do, but what that was exactly could change depending on the moment of input. I remained calm and still, prepared and waiting for his attack.

When it came, it was almost confusing. It wasn't just speed, that could be offset by Might or Perception. There was an element of…almost inevitability to the attack. He went from standing completely still not moving to just…BEING there, mid strike. The only reason I was able to intercept it at all was the Overlay telling me EXACTLY where he was going to attack, and even with the warning, I almost missed when it actually happened.

The force of the strike when it landed was monstrous too. I was sure he wasn't totally specced into Might, and that he must have had plenty of stats in things like Perception and Focus, but the blow from his sword was every bit as heavy as the one I might have dealt, if not heavier. My knees buckled slightly at the impact, and I felt the ground literally give slightly under my boots.

Then he was just gone, appearing back in his previous spot. I glowered at him, watching for the Overlay to tell me about a followup. "What the hell was THAT?" I demanded. "What is your Might?"

He shrugged. "Twenty million or so. Why?"

"Because mine is basically twenty five," I said waspishly. "And I was barely able to keep up with that attack. I mean, my Perception isn't exactly fantastic in comparison, but I'm not even talking speed, you almost knocked me flying." I paused, thinking back to lessons I'd had when I was just starting out. "Shit," I said with a sigh. "That was utilization. You were able to exert more force because of the amount of control you have over your body."

He tapped his nose with a grin. "Good catch. Yes, although also no. I WAS exerting more force because of my control, but not just of my body. You're a genius, boss, I'll admit it. Being able to grow this far this fast is monstrous, and your Domain is crazy. But you're missing the foundation that a normal Ascendant would have. Your immediate jump to Chronicle and then Domain means you didn't learn to use your Path well enough."

Lifting a boot, he tapped a toe on the stone floor. Except it didn't make the thump I'd have expected, it made a clang. I blinked, staring down at the floor in confusion for a second before it hit. "You're stabilizing your footing with your Path?" I asked him in disbelief.

"Among other things," he agreed. "I'm also reinforcing the ground when I move so I can express my motion more directly. Even appropriately leveled material has some amount of give, and while it might seem like a meaningless fraction of a second, enough of those start to add up. Of course, there's the more meta aspects of stabilizing my balance, like firming my stance and reinforcing my steps, not to mention amplifying my muscles one by one as my attacks travel through them."

I gaped at him. "You're doing all that for a simple sword swing? And you want me to learn it?"

"No," he said bluntly. "I don't. I realize it might be tempting, but the fact is that learning the interplay of Path mechanics with individual abilities is time consuming and difficult. For someone like me, whose whole tool kit is based around my sword, it's a worthwhile cost. I have one trick, so I learn to do it as well as possible. You however, have lots of tricks. I can teach you to polish this particular ability a bit, but you'll never master it to the extent you would need to. No, in my estimation, you shouldn't even try. What are you testing here, exactly? That prediction ability?"

I nodded. "Overlay is one of my demons. I'm learning to rework them more uniformly so I can improve them more." I described the process, the way it was sort of a capstone to my concept of demons, making them more perfect to grow stronger over time. He nodded along, but eventually pointed out something I hadn't considered.

"It seems to me that you're missing that next step you always had before," he told me bluntly. "Always another form, another pseudo Domain, that was a big part of your strength. Now that your Domain has manifested them, you can stack your demons together, but you can't COMBINE them like you used to to make better demons. Except now that you're standardizing their internal design, couldn't you…do that? Not permanently, I know they're unique beings with minds and souls. But like, couldn't you make some mechanism with the watches that would let them merge together to make more powerful forms."

I stared at him. Because I…had genuinely not considered that. I mean, I loved my Domain, but my demons had kind of taken over my growth. I couldn't innovate like I used to, and that had always been some of my most interesting power expression. But he was right. The watches were mechanisms, I could definitely create a way to temporarily merge them together to create more complicated demons.

My hands started to twitch, visions flooding my mind of new combinations and abilities I could make with all the evolving demons I had improved since my Domain was created. I grinned wolfishly. This was it. This was what I needed. My next step. But before I could test it, I'd need to finish the timepieces for Limbo and Mephistopheles. I had to create the base for this new entity I was going to become, this new form I was going to access. First, the creation of the timepieces…then, the creation of my very first Archdemon.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

I was back. It felt good to be me again. Ever since I had created my Domain, I had felt sort of adrift where it concerned my powers. The demons did all the work, and I just kind of…went along. My favorite part of being an Ascendant had always been innovation. Accepting that my Domain had reached its final form had honestly been a bit underwhelming, and while I'd done my best to learn to work with my incarnation abilities, it wasn't until Fade mentioned it that I realized how much I missed making new demons.

Naturally, in order to actually DO such a thing, I would need to adjust my designs for the timepieces, and there was no one I was more certain could help me than Professor Hawkins.

Still, I had come to Common City for a reason, and I really did need to put the Overlay ability through its paces, so I spent the rest of the day working on my combat skills and stress testing Owen's new capabilities before heading back. The next morning I woke up bright and early, and after stocking my new scrolls, headed for my teacher's house with plenty of questions.

When I arrived, I rapped on the door harshly, waiting for Professor Hawkins to respond. And waiting. And waiting. Finally, I rolled my eyes and checked under the mat for the key, letting myself inside.

Despite ostensibly having two students (Sorwen had taken my advice and signed up for this class, but we'd decided to divide our time so we could each get private tutelage), Professor Hawkins was more interested in his research than teaching. That was the reason for his ramshackle house and boring class name. I'd been told the only reason he even offered a single credit for his class was because he had to offer SOMETHING, or charge for it instead. Apparently he had originally tried to make the class as expensive as possible to scare people off, but everyone had assumed it was some kind of secret elite course and he'd been flooded with students.

Eventually, after some trial and error, he'd figured out the best way to make the course effectively invisible was to give it a boring name and offer the lowest possible reward to make it seem like a pointless intro course.

That being said, because of his categorical lack of interest in teaching (despite Elonwy's protestations that he was secretly great at it), Professor Hawkins tended to forget he even HAD students, and would often get lost in research. Because he was so distracted, he rarely answered his door, and would sometimes forget to eat or sleep for long periods of time. Admittedly, as a god, he didn't actually NEED to do those things, but most deities still did from what I was told, because food and sleep are pleasant experiences and can help keep them grounded.

"Hey, Prof!" I called as I let myself in. "You here? I have an interesting research topic to consult you about?"

There was no response, and I rolled my eyes, heading through the dining room. As I stepped inside, I was brought up short as I ran headfirst into a tall, intimidating man in armor wearing an intricate mask. It was so jarring it took me a split second to figure out what I was looking at. "Huh," I said to myself. "That's weird."

The other me groaned. "Not really. I knew this was going to happen. I remember it from your side. The Professor is doing something weird to the local temporal field. I just came from meeting with him, he's through that door over there. You'll run into yourself on the way out and have this exact conversation."

"Well, that seems safe," I said dryly. "I'm sure there will be no horrible consequences to crossing my own timestream."

A voice echoed from the next room over. "Don't be dramatic," called the Professor. "It's a minor paradox. If you have something to talk about get in here. Don't mind the echo, it's from a potential future that I haven't experienced yet."

Future me shrugged, then gave a wave as he walked past me and out the door I'd just come through. I followed the Professor's voice out into the living room where he was sitting at his desk, working on some kind of weird metallic crystal device that was crackling with some kind of sparkly electricity. "What do you want?" he asked without looking up. "I'm busy."

I watched him warily as he worked on the device, noting the strange stuttering of his hands in the air as they blinked and warped. Rather than move smoothly through the space, they would jutter and vanish, only to appear in another spot. It wasn't speed, because he was moving pretty slowly, just a distortion of the space or time around the object. Honestly, it kind of hurt my head just looking at it.

"I wanted to talk to you about a project," I hedged. "I finished my first timepiece, and-"

"You failed?" he said dryly. "I'm assuming you got the attribute ratios wrong and your Domain automatically refined the design to make it functional."

I grimaced. That had been what happened. Dantalion had confirmed it, I had used too much time attribute and not enough information. I'd done the tolerance math about fifty times, so it was frustrating that I hadn't been able to balance the construction, but Dantalion assured me that the changes would make it easier to adjust the formulas during my next construction effort.

He rolled his eyes. "I TOLD you not to adhere too strictly to the initial design. Stat blocks are inherently more stable than Mythcrafted construct elements. There's a higher fault tolerance when crafting with stats."

"I didn't do that," I snapped. "I spent weeks refining my approach. And it was close. There were only a few minor alterations. The next one will be better."

"Maybe," he snorted. "Except the complexity of the other two projects is exponentially higher. The Overlay project was your training wheel design. We'll see if you learned enough to offset the steep jump in difficulty. Now, I'm assuming you didn't come here to beg me to do your homework for you, so what exactly is this project you want help with?"

So I told him. I described the process of making forms and pseudo Domains, which was itself an application of Mythcrafting, and what I was hoping to accomplish. He listened carefully, face betraying nothing, and then eventually nodded. "It's…intriguing. There's no real reason you shouldn't be able to anchor the mechanisms together, but making them recombinant is going to be tricky.

"I have to admit, your Domain opens up certain avenues of exploration that would be difficult to pursue otherwise," he said, setting down the tools he was using. He tapped the surface of the device in front of him and it snapped shut into a perfect sphere, completely devoid of energy as it thunked to the desk.

Turning to regard me directly, he searched my face. "I would be interested to see what you might be capable of creating. And to that end, I would be willing to take a more active role in your construction efforts. Understand that I normally would never interfere in the learning process, but I'm willing to make an exception for two reasons. One, you've brought me a research project worth pursuing, even for someone like myself, and two, your information demon allows you to study and retain action in a way a normal student cannot."

My eyes widened. "So you're going to help me design my next two timepieces?"

He nodded slowly. "I will," he said after a moment's pause. "But I will not design them for you. You will be doing the bulk of the labor and invention, I will simply be correcting mistakes as you make them. It will be frustrating and demoralizing. You will most likely wish to quit before we've gotten very far into the project. Should you do so, you will be removed from my class, and potentially from this major. I do not accept student assistants lightly, nor do I allow anything less than perfection from those I so honor."

Translation, screw and you're gone. It almost sounded like he was trying to get rid of me, but I knew better than that. If he wanted me gone he could have bounced me at any time. I hadn't paid credits for this course, only received them, which changed the calculus a lot in how easy I was to eject. That was another reason he structured the class this way.

No, he wasn't trying to get rid of me, he was expressing his faith in me. If he didn't think I could hack it he wouldn't have allowed me to work with him at all. Swallowing hard, I gave a long, slow nod. "I understand. I'd like your help, Professor. I promise to commit myself entirely to the project." I paused slightly. "Do you think it would be possible to finish the designs, at least preliminarily, before midterms?"

He raised an eyebrow at me. "If you're really prepared to focus entirely on the work, I do. This will be a gruelling process, but you will learn much. Of course, these designs will be basic timepieces. Teaching you how to anchor them together temporarily won't raise their quality. Iteration and experimentation will still be needed to improve them."

I knew what he meant. The complexity of a timepiece was dependent on the number of movements. Overlay, for instance, had twelve movements. I wasn't certain if there was a hard limit to the number of movements, but I suspected the optimal state of each demon was probably about seventy two movements. My Domain tended to respond well to that number, or it had in the past.

This essentially meant that Overlay was operating at sixteen plus percent of it's optimal efficiency, at least as it could be measured by this particular method of construction. Being able to identify that fact was one of the major benefits of the Professor's style of Mythcrafting, even if it was a bit demoralizing to learn that I was quite that inept working with my natural talent.

Which meant that even once I perfected my first Archdemon, I would have plenty of room to improve that design and the designs of any others I managed in the future.

"I understand," I told him, bowing formally at the waist. "I'm ready to begin learning. However long it takes, however much effort I need to put in, I'm not afraid. Pain and hard work are things I'm very familiar with."

He rolled his eyes. "You think I don't know that, boy? If I wasn't aware of your work ethic I wouldn't have made the offer to begin with. Just don't quit on me and disprove my high opinion."

Nodding to him, I straightened, waiting to see what he'd do next. He reached down to open a drawer and scooped the sphere into it before slamming it shut carelessly. "Now, in order to proceed, we need information. Summon your information demon, as well as the demon who represents our next project." He paused for a moment. "Actually, I believe this will require a more personal touch. Call forth your Domain, I shall inspect it myself."

I swallowed hard. I knew I could let more powerful beings into my Domain, but it wasn't something I did often. The Professor was just a fragment of a god, to be fair, but he was still a deity. Still, if he wanted to hurt me he could have done it effortlessly. Taking a long, deep breath, I reached for Gehenna, projecting it into the world around us as I pulled the professor into the throne room. From there, it was time to get to work. I only had a bit less than a month to finish crafting the design for my Archdemon. From there…well, I would just have to hope it would be enough for the midterms.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

The next month (thirty two days actually, but the estimates for the midterm had been just that, estimates) went by both slowly and quickly. Slowly because I spent it constantly grinding mechanisms for the two timepieces, and quickly because I could feel the midterms approaching and felt like I never had enough time.

Professor Hawkins hadn't been kidding about how hard he was going to be on me either. Constant berating, constant correction, information jammed into my head non stop in a way I had never experienced before. I had taken to incarnating Dantalion at all times during lessons because it was the only way I could absorb the information he was force feeding me, and I still needed a parallel or two active to catch the overflow.

I hadn't wasted the time outside of study either. Aside from the full five hundred scrolls I had on hand now, I'd managed to grind another mile of Domain out during my downtime, bringing me up to a respectable thirty five. I was tempted to burn the scrolls on stat bumps immediately, but decided it would work better if I waited until after midterms. My reputation around here wasn't too expansive, but if I could hit advanced or do well on the midterms it would probably give me quite a boost in terms of stat points.

More than that though, I had managed another three pages of my Chronicle, one for each of the completed timepieces. I'd bumped them up to thirteen movements apiece and that had seemed like a particularly notable accomplishment, especially given what I had hopefully managed to pull off with the finalization of the project.

Which was what brought me here now, to the bunker where I had been told I'd be able to take my advanced student trial.

I gripped my staff tightly as I stood outside the door. I hadn't needed to pay for this trial, but apparently that was a one time thing. We got one free attempt, and then it cost a hundred credits each try. The teacher who had helped me set it up had mentioned that they wanted to dissuade reckless idiots from challenging it over and over again until they passed. The comment had seemed particularly pointed, presumably because I was so low in B-rank, but I hadn't worried about it much. I had plenty of confidence in myself.

Not that I was sure I'd win here, but I was confident enough in myself to make the attempt. Taking a long, slow breath, I stepped through the door. "Trial taker," came a voice much different from the one I'd spoken to about my original trial. "Do you wish to proceed with your assessment?"

"I do," I said immediately. "Specifically, I want to take the advanced student trial."

As I spoke, I scanned the room. It was strange, sort of an endless grey space, except it had a floor. No walls that I could see, and there were clouds of mist drifting aimlessly in the distance. It was kind of unsettling, like I was looking into a bottomless pit, but sideways.

"Trial begins in one minute," said the same voice. "Please prepare."

And prepare I did. First thing on the docket was defense. I summoned Mornax immediately. I could have incarnated him, maybe boosted by my staff, but that wasn't what I was here to test. I would have him on hand to help, but I didn't want to rely entirely on one ability to pass. It would probably be pretty easy, if time consuming, but that wasn't what I needed.

This was about preparing for my midterms, which meant it was about learning to use my attributes, to explore my mythcrafting, and to push the boundaries of my Domain. Because ultimately, that was what this was about. Me getting stronger. Becoming more.

With Mornax on hand to act as cover, I could let loose without worrying about being drowned in long range fire. Especially if I combined him with my temporal abilities. I selected my most useful demon for this phase of the training. Overlay. I let out a pleased sigh as the familiar arrows filled my vision, some green, some red. There were no enemies yet, but the predictions came anyway, which was interesting. Presumably it was the temporal aspect of the demon.

"Challenger," came the voice from the mist. "Your trial begins. Hold back the hordes or fall in the attempt. Should you wish to submit, you need only shout your surrender. Good luck." And then, within one breath and the next, the army appeared.

It was a lot of robots. Maybe that sounded obvious, like it would be common sense. A hundred thousand is a big number, so of course it would be a lot. I had expected it to be an immense number, enough to fill my vision, to stun me into silence. I had prepared for the sheer mass of my enemy ahead of time.

Except I really hadn't. I couldn't have, really. It wasn't possible. If you've never SEEN an army of a hundred thousand people, you can't imagine it. It doesn't compute. It's not logical. Hell, a hundred thousand people was enough to fill a medium sized town, but even THAT didn't really explain the scope of it. Because towns were abstract. You saw a few people at a time, maybe a small crowd of a hundred or a large one of a thousand. You didn't see an entire town worth of people all committed to a singular goal. Gathered and prepared to do violence with the sole and supreme purpose of taking YOU out of the world.

It was so shocking, I almost died. If it hadn't been for the Overlay, I probably would have, but I woke up in time to move aside, vanishing from the path of a series of fireballs.

The back line of the arms was mages, and they all had powerful ranged capabilities. Archers rained shots on me, knights rushed me. It was like a flood, a torrent of violence and death pouring down on me like it had burst from behind some horrible infernal dam.

My staff rose, flickering out as I smashed aside a blow, my body drifting in the other direction to take cover behind Mornax, who stood unwavering under the sea of attacks, turning them aside like a stone in the middle of a river. I deflected blasts of fire, redirected bolts from crossbows, and sidestepped sword attacks as the enemy surged around me. Valtek had been upgraded during my month off, Goetia Staff Art taking his place, and the demon had been hard at work, using the spare time to grind up the Master rank the staff art had been at since I last trained my apprentice.

Dipping back, I pressed my spine to Mornax, using him as a wall to defend myself as my staff wove a symphony of destruction in front of me. Despite the sheer number of them, it started out as being mostly manageable. Only so many robots could attack me at once, and the long range automatons weren't exactly careful with their blasts. But as the battle wore on, the machines started to adapt. The mages got more precise, the combatants learned to take their time and wait for openings, and they backed off to avoid getting in each other's way.

As their formation smoothed out, I realized this situation was untenable. There was no way I'd be able to keep this up. Which was fine, I was just putting Overlay through its paces to see where I was at. Now though, now it was time to test out my newest unique ability, the form I had spent the last month perfecting and preparing, the one I had only last night managed to activate reliably. Closing my eyes, I reached into myself. I pulled on Limbo, on Overlay, on Mephistopheles, calling to mind the mechanical clockwork of their timepieces, the ones I had worked so hard on and knew so well.

In my mind, I found the gears I wanted, the seamless mechanical perfection marred by seeming irregularities to leave an opening. Then I slotted them together. One. Two. Three. I felt a weight settle on me, a colossal gravity crushing down on my shoulders like an iron mantle, crushing me to the ground. "Archdemon of time:" I intoned as I opened my eyes. "Kronos."

The clockwork joined together, not just the clockwork of the watches but the clockwork of all reality around me. I could hear it echoing through the world. Tick. Tick. Tick. It slowed with every beat, until finally, it all but stopped. Not complete silence, but a gaping pause between reports of the clock that I stood inside.

I took in the world around me coldly. I stood in a field of silent statues. Knights with drawn swords, balls of flame and bolts of lightning hanging in air, bolts from crossbows suspended as if in amber. I took it all in, processed it, and couldn't help the slow, cold grin that pulled at my lips.

Time. I could see it. Not in a way that I really understood. The complex webwork of gears that overlaid the space around me was dizzying and hard to track. Limbo allowed me to glimpse actions associated with each gear, Overlay showed me how they affected the ones nearby, and the black ruinous flames of Mephistopheles flickered between the gears, the slow march of ruin an ever present metronome in this temporal tapestry.

Of course, I couldn't keep it up. My head all but split as soon as I accessed it. I had to focus on individual gears to even process what was happening, and even then, only after I triggered my staff, pushing this form to A-rank, was I able to actually ACT on the gears.

I took a long, slow breath, processing the factors, triggering a parallel or two to helps sort through it all. Then, ever so slowly, I reached up with my staff and jammed it between two of the ethereal gears that lay atop the skin of the world. With a colossal effort, I hauled down on the staff, moving the gear, which moved another few gears nearby, and as I did…about a dozen of the robots dissolved into greyish dust.

Gaping, I stared at the space where they had been, swallowing hard. The dust floated in the air, suspended in time, and it was easy to see what it was. It was remains, the leftovers of ruin, of the ceaseless march or time's destruction.

I whooped with laughter, shoving the staff into another gear, I ground my teeth and grunted as I hauled, the same flash of black fire consuming the nearby robots.

Again and again I worked the level, ratcheting the gears, destroying the enemy. Of course, it only worked because they weren't real beings. Robots were objects, rendering them far more vulnerable, not to mention I was an A-rank archdemon scrapping B-rank bots. But still. It was absolutely amazing. I couldn't stop, it was almost addictive…up until I collapsed.

It took me a second to notice, actually. One moment I was standing swinging my staff, then I was on my back, staring up at the ceiling. My head was swimming, my body shaking and twitching with exhaustion. Whatever I'd been doing, even for an A-ranker it was too much. I blinked, the darkness that had begun to claim my vision chased away for a moment, then I shifted back from Kronos, resuming my normal form.

"I concede," I shouted into the sudden flood of noise. The clamor went silent, and I looked around to see all the robots gone. I should have been upset, but I wasn't. I was elated. I let my head thump back against the floor of the grey room, my chest heaving with bellows of mad laughter as I took in what I had just accomplished. As trials go, that one hadn't been bad at all.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

Tomorrow was the midterm exams. It had been quite a journey getting here, admittedly. I hadn't even had time to take a class from the Dean yet, so invested in my progress with my timepieces and creating Kronos. Now that I had crafted my first Archdemon, however, I was pretty sure I could middle through whatever the midterms had to offer.

It was with a particular pep in my step that I headed to visit Elonwy to finally register for the Dean's course. I had about twenty five thousand credits on hand at the moment, and I wanted to both check up on the prizes for the midterm rankings and sign up for the Dean's class now while I had the credits available. After finalizing Kronos and seeing just how much potential mm new Archdemon had, I felt like I could take on anything. Which admittedly was probably a bit ambitious, but still.

"Hey there El," I said to my friend as I strolled up to the counter at the exchange. "Isn't a wonderful day?"

She looked at me suspiciously. "You're too happy. Did you eat a mind slug? They get into the food sometimes. Does your left ear itch? Is your right eye one micron more closed than your left?"

I paused, frantically thinking about her questions, because now that I thought about it my ear kind of did- "Wait a second," I snapped. "Those are psychosomatic triggers."

She grinned. "That's true. Good catch. Unfortunately for you, catching onto the mind slug test is the REAL mind slug test." I rolled my eyes, and she just laughed. "Anyway, what can I do for you, kid? Here to sign up for midterms?"

"Obviously," I said with a laugh. "And to find out how exactly this whole thing works. I'm going to shoot for the rankings. There's a prize, right?"

She snorted at that. "Yeah. There's a prize. For the top five. First place gets seventy five thousand credits, second place gets fifty, third place gets twenty five, fourth place gets ten, and fifth gets five thousand credits."

I whistled. "That's a steep drop past third place. Must be competitive."

"Extremely," she said with a grin. "What makes you so sure you'll be able to even place? What if they test something you can't do?"

I considered that. "Nah," I finally said. "I've been thinking about it, and I think the test has to be something universally applicable. People can take any classes they want, or none at all. So while they have to prioritize the skills that we need to learn here to test what we've been able to pick up, they also need to make it accessible to people from all different branches of the major. Like people could be taking totally different courses, but all working just as hard. I doubt they want to punish people who put in the work."

"You think so?" she said with amusement. "What makes you think they care? This academy is a colossal entity with a nearly endless time in operation. What makes you think they don't arrange the exams specifically to weed out anyone who isn't a monster?"

"Because if they did that, there would be no reason for them to have a top five," I said bluntly. "They could just offer a prize for the winner. No need to encourage everyone to try their best."

She nodded in acknowledgement. "You have a point," she admitted. "Fine. Yes. They test skills from the major using a device. I can't tell you much about the item, just that it's a way to genuinely assess how well the user understands temporal mechanics in a practical sense. I can't give you any details, because it's supposed to be a surprise, but as long as you've been learning and exploring how time functions, you should be able to apply it on the exam."

That was a relief. Not taking the Dean's class had been a calculated risk, but I was sure that I could learn more from him with access to a proper temporal form. If my affinity for time was high because of the bloodline, I was betting Kronos pushed it even higher. Now I was starting to get excited about all this.

"Alright," I said eagerly, slamming my hands down on the table. "Sign me up. Is there a fee?"

"To take your midterm exam?" she asked slowly. "No. There's not a fee to participate in a mandatory assessment."

I snorted. "Your scorn would be a lot more convincing if I hadn't been here for months already. I know what this place is like. I could absolutely imagine the Dean charging people credits to take the midterms and not telling anyone and then automatically failing them when they didn't ask."

She paused. "I…I have no rebuttal to that. He totally would. And I kind of want to see it happen. I'm going to suggest that to Professor Hawkins next time I talk to him."

"Please don't," I sighed in despair. "And if you do, don't tell anyone it was my idea at least."

"Oh don't be a baby," she said heartlessly. "Imagine how much renown you could farm if that rumor got out."

I snorted. "Somehow I don't think having an entire major full of time wizards swearing vengeance on me is worth a few stat points. But if I change my mind, I know just who to call. Now, how do I sign up for the midterm?"

She rolled her eyes. "Just give me your ID number as usual, ass." I did, and she tapped it out on the screen.

"Nice," I said in relief. "Now, I wanted to sign up for the Dean's course."

"Which one?" she asked archly. "He's got like…fifty going at any given time. Most of them take place in the same block of schedule. He overlaps them with time instancing to make it harder to pin down where he actually is at any given time."

Sighing, it was my turn for an eye roll. "The one you recommended last time, genius."

"Ah, that one," she said wisely. She pulled out a piece of paper, scribbling out a name.

Quantum Resonance Dynamics and Temporal Diffusion Substrates with Professor Samuel P. Gibbons-25,000 credits

"This the one you mean?" I winced. Twenty five thousand was everything I had. I felt like I remembered that being cheaper, but apparently not. I nodded, and she tapped a few things on the counter. "I need your number again, you know how it goes." I spat it out again, grimacing the whole time. She looked sympathetic. "I get it. Using up all your points at once sucks. But it'll be worth it. If the Prof thinks you're up to snuff for working a project with him, your foundations must be solid. You'll do great. And the Dean is a genius. You don't become a time Overgod by being mediocre."

I sighed, but nodded. "Just make it quick. I can take it. Rip it off like a bandaid, it won't hurt if-"

"I already charged you," she interrupted me. "Like forty five seconds ago. I take it back, you're being way too dramatic. Aren't you married? Does your wife put up with you whining about spending money like that?"

Grimacing, I let out a despairing sigh. "I wish. My wife is a loot goblin who has recently become a hoarder. I mean, she always was, but she's gotten really invested in buying new loot, and has been spending every credit she can get on stuff for her Domain. I don't know if you've heard of anything like-"

"It's a treasury type, isn't it?" she said dryly. "People obsessed with collecting loot get them sometimes. Let me guess, she's a spatial major?"

"Did I tell you that before?" I asked suspiciously.

She snorted. "If you did, I don't remember, but I don't really need to. People with treasury type Domains always end up in the spatial department. They're all pack rats who keep everything. Means they need a lot of space. It's like how people with Domains based on cutting or severing concepts always end up in weapons. The two things just go together."

"Well, does that mean you know a cheap way to get free stuff?" I asked hopefully.

She paused. "I…actually do," she admitted. "Not useful stuff. But stuff. There are a bunch of majors based on crafting here. Crafting majors make a lot of stuff, and a lot of it doesn't work properly. Sometimes that's an accident, sometimes it's even on purpose. But items with bad construction or negative effects aren't really useful to most people, so the crafting students created a place to dump them. There's a canyon where people toss their most useless or cursed objects. They call it Curse Canyon."

"That's…clever," I said slowly.

"No it isn't," she said bluntly. "It's the dumbest name imaginable. But I didn't name it, so I don't know why you're aiming that sarcasm at me. Point is, free stuff would be found there, even if it's not USABLE stuff. I know that's probably not helpful, but-"

"No, it is," I assured her. "More than you know." I didn't explain Callie's Domain because it didn't seem like mine to share, but a cursed canyons was PERFECT for my wife's Stygian Vault. Her ability both protected her from harmful effects AND let her create and inverted version of items, which when combined with curses could create uniquely useful and beneficial items for low prices. And free was the lowest price there was.

Honestly, I wanted to go find the place now, but I knew better than to run off to some absurd cursed landfill the day before a big exam. I would wait until the day AFTER the exam to run off to the cursed landfill. That was called wisdom.

"So, you know my wife is in the space major," I pushed Elonwy. "And you mentioned knowing what our midterm is. Do you know what THEIR midterm is?"

"No," she scoffed. "Why would I possibly know that? I'm not a spatial major and never was. I know ours because I TOOK it, for several years in a row. But I would imagine it'll just be some form of space manipulation. If she's been putting in the work passing should be easy. As for PLACING…that's a bit more up in the air."

I chuckled. "Heh, because she has wings, I get it."

"Nope, still don't know her," she corrected. "Had no idea she had wings to begin with. Now get lost, you're clogging up my line." I looked over my shoulder at the complete lack of any notable human forms, then back at her, and she just smiled sweetly, I rolled my eyes and waved my goodbyes as I turned and headed outside.

Sometimes I forgot that my Leviathan incarnation made this effortless for me when most Ascendants had trouble coming in here. Still, it had been a useful trip. I wondered if I could figure out the exact specifics of the exam before I went in just from the few clues I had.

I probably couldn't…but I knew someone who might be able to. In fact, I sometimes WAS someone who might be able to. I reached into myself, poking Dantalion inside the Domain to let him know what I needed, then left him to his own devices, if he couldn't figure it out, then oh well, but if he could it would be a nice little boost for me going into the test.

Once that was done, I incarnated Angelic Bond, reaching through it to contact Callie. I hadn't been able to figure out anything about her test, but I'd tell her about mine in case they were similar in any case. Besides, she liked hearing about my day. After that, I'd make us dinner and head to bed early. It would be a good idea to get some rest. After all, tomorrow was going to be a big day.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

I woke up the next morning excited to greet the day. A quick scroll production session and then I was in my armor and ready to take on anything that came my way. I strode down the street, stopping at Sorwen's door with a quick knock. My friend emerged a few seconds later, looking nervous but determined. "Winnie," I said with a nod. "You ready for this?"

She snorted. "Are you? Do you even know who we're up against, Shane? You've been buried in your classes and training for months now. Did you consider it might be a good idea to interact with other people in our major? Scope out the competition?"

"Socializing," I said with a grimace. "Gross. Besides, didn't you do it for me? I happen to have advance knowledge about the test, though not much of it. I'll trade you my info for yours."

Despite my flippant dismissal, I HAD made friends here, I'd just gone for quality over quantity. Sorwen and Elonwy were both knowledgeable and competent people. That hadn't been why I'd befriended them, obviously, but it was a happy coincidence, and hey, maybe it was my nonsense fate at work.

Rolling her eyes, she just sighed at me. "Fine. I suppose that's a decent trade. But you go first."

I smiled at the exasperation. Over the months I'd been training, I'd interacted with Sorwen (now Winnie, because it amused me to see her expression when I called her that), regularly. Time had taken some of the shine off the apple, and while she wasn't exactly shit talking me like Benny did, she was a lot less…respectful. Which I preferred. Friends should be informal. It felt less like she was looking at me as a meal ticket to endless wishes.

So I gave her a quick rundown on what I knew, what Dantalion THOUGHT, and what we were pretty sure wasn't the case. Like I'd told her, it wasn't much, but it was more than she knew now, which was useful. She still pouted at the fact that I'd gotten one over on her, but she ponied up her information anyway. "To start with, I should ask what you already know. Do you know the names of anyone in the major?"

I shrugged. "The people who were in orientation with us? Technically? I forgot them, but I could have Dan dig them up if needed. Does that help?"

"No," she sighed. "It doesn't, because none of them are relevant here. Freshmen aren't expected to place in the midterms. We're MOSTLY not expected to place in the finals, though that's more common. You're going to be going up against upper classmen, mostly. No post grads or anything, but some of these people have been here a few years."

That brought me up short. "That's…how? Like we're not frozen in time, because I'm still getting renown from back home regularly. And the tower was sealed for ages before the current crop went in. So wouldn't all the upperclassmen be gone by now?"

"They covered that in one of my classes, actually," she said with a somewhat excited gleam in her eye. "It's fascinating. The tower exists in a sort of atemporal state of quantum uncertainty. Each person is connected to their own timeline, but also to the tower's timeline, and they exist in both simultaneously. The tower is considered a marvel of temporal engineering, and the whole thing is unique to the Dean's school of temporal mechanics."

I blinked. "That actually is fascinating. And weird. But fair enough. Anyway, upperclassmen are the competition, got it, now why don't you tell me WHICH upperclassmen I'm worrying about."

"Right," she said, shaking off her academic fervor. "So, there are five people in the major you need to worry about. I'll list them from least to most troubling. Build the suspense. First up we have Crash. He's an upperclassman with some kind of fistfighting Domain. Not sure how it works, but apparently he can just kind of…break time. He punches and things slow down. He's a musclehead and a thug, but he's surprisingly well versed in temporal mechanics."

I raised an eyebrow. "Punch based time powers? That's novel."

She shrugged. "Takes all kinds. Next up is Sylvia Strohm. Her Domain is water based, and she appears to treat time like a literal river. Desrick Flint traps time in amber and then throws it at people, he also has a Domain, as do all the top five I'm aware of. I haven't seen any of this, mind, it's just information I gathered from friends in the program."

"The amber thing seems kind of gimmicky," I observed skeptically. "Is that really useful?"

"It's important to remember where we are," she warned. "Most of these Domains only lightly touch on the time attribute, but they don't NEED more than that/ Having the attribute allows Mythcrafting with the attribute itself. The actual function of their Domain is less important than the techniques and knowledge they can bring to bear after being in the program for multiple years."

We walked as we talked, stopping for coffee (which she paid for because I was broke now), as we headed for the exchange, where the test was being held. "What about the last two?" I asked with interest. "They're the strongest?"

"The most inconvenient, at least," she snorted. "Orion is an archer with causal arrows, and Kent Masters Domain appears to involve stealing time in some fashion. No one is actually sure what he does, but he's widely agreed to be the most likely to take first. Besides his Domain being pretty mysterious, he's also top of his class in a lot of advanced courses. He's considered something of a prodigy."

I frowned. That was bad news for me. I had a natural talent for Mythcrafting and I had my bloodline to increase my affinity for temporal attributed energy, but I didn't know nearly enough about how time worked. I could only hope that the test, whatever it was, leaned into the aspects of temporal engineering that I DID know. Which was basically watchmaking and broad scale theoretical nonsense. Plus whatever weird pseudo infinite structure Kronos gave me access to. Which I had a feeling was probably WAY more advanced than anything I was supposed to be able to access, and that using my staff to essentially lever the gears around was the stupidest, most brain dead way possible of exploiting that power.

We would see in a moment, however, because our little walk was over. We'd arrived at the exchange. I stopped at the edge to consider how to proceed with Winnie coming along, but to my surprise, she kept walking right in. The resistance field around the place seemed to just be gone. I guess they'd turned it off for the exam.

I exchanged a look with Winnie, wondering exactly what we were walking into, and then we headed inside. As we entered, I was shocked to see exactly how packed the place was. I knew that there were more people in the department than I'd met, naturally, but I hadn't know there were THIS many. Easily into the three digits, and this was just the B-rank section of the major. I imagined there were similar or even larger amounts of people in the other two sections.

To my surprise, when we got inside, the counter and the screens that displayed the exchange rates and jobs were all gone. The space where I usually met Elonwy had been completely filled with something I could barely even process.

It was an hourglass. Kind of. It was huge and exceptionally fancy, with strange glowing blue sigils etched into unnaturally silver mercurial metal. The glass portion of it seemed to be so polished it was almost invisible unless you caught it at the right angle, and the top was full of an odd diamondlike sand that sparkled too much to be natural.

That wasn't even the part that shocked me. The part that blew me away was that not only was the dust not FALLING, but it was apparently being kept aloft by the spherical metal contraption floating in the neck of the hourglass. A spherical metal contraption I recognized.

"That bastard," I groaned as I stared at it. It was the device that Professor Hawkins had been tinkering with when I approached him about Kronos.

Winnie grimaced. "Oh come on," she complained. "We walked past that thing every day for weeks. Did you even ask what it was? Because I didn't even bother. Every time it caught my eye I got distracted."

Our pontificating was cut off by a loud bang as a familiar figure stepped up next to the hourglass. "Greetings, students," Elonwy said mildly as she withdrew the oversized hammer from the crater she'd just made in the floor. The surface repaired itself immediately, but she'd made her point. "My name, as most of you know, is Elonwy. I'm a post graduate student and a clerk at this exchange. Today, I will be acting as your proctor."

"Wait, Elonwy is proctoring?" I asked in disbelief. "Why did they put her in charge. Isn't she just a normal post-grad student?"

"The post-graduates are S-rankers," Winnie said scathingly. "And Elonwy isn't JUST a clerk. She's the CHIEF clerk. Did you seriously not bother to do even a modicum of research into the person you talk to every day?"

I shrugged. "Who researches friends? That's super creepy."

"Some of you," Elonwy said loudly, glaring at me in an obvious 'shut up idiot' way. "Might have ideas about this test. Some of you might have worries. I assure you those worries are unnecessary. Not because the test won't be difficult, but simply because they won't accomplish anything. Many of you will probably fail, no use worrying about it.

"Now, on to the specifics," she said grandly, gesturing at the hourglass with her hammer carelessly, and pretending not to wince when the hammer smacked into the glass. It didn't break or even crack, but I could tell she was embarrassed. "THIS is the Tachyon Timeglass," she said grandly.

She gestured at the glass again, this time avoiding the hammer blow. "It possesses the power to distort the laws of temporal causality. Each one of you will approach, will be scanned by the time sphere in the center, and then will be posed a challenge. Time will be distorted to speed up the passing of the sand. You will be expected to resist that passage, by whatever means you have at your disposal.

"Be warned, however," she said threateningly. "The sphere will adapt to your condition, posing the greatest possible difficulty based on your knowledge and experience. This test will be the most difficult test possible in the exact way you wish it wouldn't be. It will NOT, however, be impossible. Room will be left for you to succeed, or even thrive if you can push yourself to greater heights."

She slammed the hammer down viciously, sending chunks of floor flying as her eyes burned with enthusiasm. "So give it your all, because as you know, great rewards await past this point if you can take them."

I saw a fanatical glint mirroring her own in the eyes of many of my fellow test takers, and I grit my teeth. The sphere would scan us and adjust to our capabilities, but I was guessing it would adjust more to raw attribute power than it would to knowledge, despite what she said. This would be a test of finesse, not muscle. Luckily I had plenty of both, and in Kronos, the two were even the same.

The upperclassmen were probably able to operate above their level, all of them sitting at peak of B-rank and probably good enough to cross the divide, but I had my own methods of pushing the envelope. Like everyone else, I felt a fire ignite in my blood as I stared at the huge timeglass, ready to begin my test. I couldn't wait to see how far I'd go.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

The test was very intimidating. The buildup, the scan, the general demeanor of the proctors, all of it was essentially designed to put us in a certain mindset, to keep us off balance. It all worked, too, and I for one had been pretty keyed up going into the assessment.

Unfortunately for them, I hadn't STAYED keyed up. Because while the timeglass was deeply imposing and presented a terrifying obstacle for each of us…well, it wasn't exactly dynamic to watch. Seeing someone try to make sand fall slower was pretty much the least interesting experience possible. Even the imposing crackle of electricity dancing over the surface of the sphere couldn't keep it interesting for more than a minute or two.

Which admittedly, KIND of made it worse, in a way. Because trying to simultaneously keep myself honed to a razor's edge and remain mentally prepared was MUCH harder when I was bored out of my skull.

Still, I kept Dantalion active, letting him scan the contestants as they went, and after a few tries, he started being able to construct a kind of representation for their efforts that would let me conceptualize what was going on. That part was actually pretty interesting, and I got to see quite a few fascinating manifestations of temporal power, even if they weren't especially compatible with my own style.

The most interesting of the lot were, as Winnie had mentioned, the five most senior upperclassmen who were expected to take the top spots.

First was Crash. It wasn't a question I needed to ask, nor did I have to wait for an introduction. It was obvious. Water was wet, the sky was blue (or most of them were anyway), and Crash was Crash.

He was big. Like…bigger than me. Eight feet tall and made of solid muscle. His skin was covered with silver tattoos that writhed and twisted in patterns that made unsure if they were stationary or not. His long brown hair was wild and untamed, and his green eyes sparkled with a mad lust for battle.

To no one's surprise, he didn't even bother announcing himself, or preparing the device. He just hauled off and punched. The air, no, the world itself fractured under the blow, and I blinked as I saw the punch land a second before it was supposed to land as he fractured causality. The diamond dust had flowed immediately after he stepped up, as if it had known, but the punch slowed it.

Inside the timeglass, the sphere pulsed, and the time or space or whatever he'd cracked started to repair itself. He frowned, punching again, and again it began to knit back together. The more he punched the faster it was repaired, and I saw him grit his teeth as he picked up speed, letting out a storm of blows as he tried to overcome the orb's repairing operation.

Sadly, it wasn't to be. One minute and forty two seconds after he began, a single fragment of diamond dust landed on the sphere, signaling the end of the attempt.

Elonwy looked impressed, since this had been the first real showing from an actual contender for the rankings. As a midterm, this was meant to test skills, so the actual threshold to pass wasn't particularly high. Ten seconds would get you through, and even that wasn't a point everyone was able to reach.

"Not bad," she said with a nod of respect. "First of our contestant to pass a minute, and made it past a minute thirty in one push."

Next was Sylvia Strohm, who floated the dust on a whirling sea of silvery water attributed time. It was boiled off by the sphere in one minute and twenty eight seconds, vehicle Desrick Flint's attempts to freeze the dust in solid time was melted in forty five seconds by the sphere, having been particularly vulnerable to the effect it had used for some reason.

Orion…Orion was impressive. His Domain manifested around him fully, the first of them to actually utilize projection. It condensed as a giant hall of mirrors, showing reflections of him as he raised a bow and fired. A few thousand causal arrows cut through time, each one striking a piece of diamond dust, suspending them like a snowflake on a string. The sphere severed the strings easily, but he pinned them back, and it went on like that for two minutes and ten seconds before the first piece of dust touched the sphere.

Last up was Kent Masters, the strongest of the contenders, the mysterious master of some thief type Domain, according to Winnie. He approached the timeglass slowly, almost leisurely. Kent was a small man, a little thin, with a wispy mustache and a goatee. His nose was crooked, but in a jaunty, sort of dashing way, like he'd gotten punched in a bar fight that would have made a good story to tell your friends.

His eyes were warm and alive, a bright topaz that stood at odds with his dark hair, and his teeth were straight and gleaming as he bared them in a rictus of determination that might have been mistaken for a smile on a lesser man.

Those eyes locked on the sphere as he raised his hand, calling forth his Domain. It came in a wave of strangeness and possibility. A surging cloud of multicolored illumination somewhere between a mist and actual light, the internals shifting and rioting in a way that almost hurt to look at.

It drew in my gaze, capturing my attention, dragging me deeper as I looked, and I was absolutely positive that Winnie's rumors were wrong. This wasn't theft. If he could steal time it was something besides this Domain. This was…I didn't know what this was. It was primal and horrifying, twisted and beautiful and painful and bliss itself. A name appeared in my mind. Arcadian Nexus. This was the ultimate possibility, the true apex of potential. This was imagination at the height of its glory, right before it tipped over the edge into madness.

The Nexus surged forward, covering the timeglass, and flowed right through the glass into the interior. It seeped into the diamond dust, infusing it all, and I watched it start to slow. It was gradual at first, like reverse momentum. It was a bit of drag, then a bit more, then eventually it crawled until finally, it came to a stop.

Below the cloud of shimmering dust, the sphere pulsed, dark electricity surging over the surface before it discharged into the cloud of dust. The light flickered madly within the diamond fragments, twisting and retching as it tried to escape the lightning. Kent gritted his teeth, tears pooling in his eyes, or so I thought. Turned out it was blood, dripping over his cheeks as he fought back viciously against the current. Finally, after three minutes, the first piece of dust drifted down to touch the sphere, ending the attempt.

Kent was on his knees, panting with exhaustion as he glared at the device. Elonwy nodded approvingly. "Well done," she said in a gentle voice. "Three minutes seven seconds. Best time so far." She glanced at me, clearly wondering what I would do.

"I'll go," I said as I stepped forward. Taking a deep breath, I reached into my soul, into my Domain, and followed the same procedure as last time. I connected each of the timepieces, hooking them all together to create Kronos, letting him fall over me like a cloak. But this time, I pushed it further. Tapping into the Pillar of Goetia, I triggered the boost I usually used on individual demons, pushing Kronos up to the next tier.

Tier 9. A-rank. Mythic. It wasn't my first time touching that level with one of my demons. I'd used the boost before, many times. But it felt so different here. Kronos wasn't a PERSON. Not really. Not like the others. He was an office. A rank. Kronos was a title that I was assuming. This time, it wasn't one of the demons who had reached A-rank, for the first time it felt like it was really ME being pushed up.

I grit my teeth, letting the pressure flow through me and into the armor I was wearing. Without the Seal, this wouldn't have been possible. I could feel it. What I was doing shouldn't be something I was capable of. I was playing with forces beyond my control. But with the Pillar propping me up and the armor as my solid ground, I pushed through it.

Forcing myself to focus, I trained my eyes on the timeglass. In this form, I saw…everything. Too much. I had to force myself to refine my gaze, to look at ONLY the diamond dust, because in this form, at this rank, I could see so much more of the substructure of time. More than I could process or understand. Gears within gears within wheels within specks of dust. An infinite recursive pattern of ever shrinking machinery making up the substrate of creation.

Blowing out a breath, I forced myself to focus harder. I took a step. I could see the gears within and between the dust. I watched it turn as the time advanced. I wanted to do something fancy, to use Ruin to take it apart and get an all time high score that would blow away my competition, that was what I'd been planning.

That wasn't happening. I could barely think. Barely move. I was DROWNING in time. I grimaced, reaching for the Pillar of Goetia. With all the force of will I could muster, I shoved it forward, following my instinct to locate a specific spot. The butt of the staff slammed into a spot between a pair of large gears, and everything stopped.

The dust froze, or at least slowed down so much it looked like it. The gears WERE turning, still, slowly, digging into the staff. I could feel them crushing down on me like the haft of the weapon was my body.

Inside the timeglass, the sphere pulsed, electricity crackling through the space and time and through the dust to reach my staff. It conducted into me like I was sticking a fork in a lightsocket. It hurt. A lot. I ignored it. It got harsher. The crackle of the electricity howled in my ears, spitting and snarling like a rabid animal as it savaged my body, trying to tear apart my very will.

Not that I let it. I just stood. I let it tear and rip and sear. I didn't care. It was just pain, just sensation. I'd felt worse. It kept getting more extreme, more absurd, and I kept digging in my heels. I think I should have stopped, should have let go, but hands were stuck to the staff like they were magnetically sealed. All I could do was ride it out.

Eventually, it was too much. Even I had limits. I cut the boost from the staff, letting Kronos lapse back into B-rank. My hands came loose, and I stumbled back, falling to the ground, still twitching with the aftershocks of the horrible pain.

Everyone was starting at me in shock. I panted, trying to speak a few times, and nothing came out but croaks. Finally, I managed to say. "Did…did I pass?"

Elonwyn stared at me seriously. "Shane, you passed the next highest contestant almost two minutes ago. We tried to shake you out of it, but you were…stuck. I think it was going to kill you." Her eyes snapped to the timeglass, or more accurately, to the sphere in the center, which hung half melted, molten slag dripping into the bottom.

I realized what happened. My staff had pushed Kronos to A-rank, but the staff itself was doing the heavy lifting. More specifically, my staff had gotten into a direct competition with Professor Hawkins time sphere…and had obviously won.

Clearing my throat, I glanced sheepishly back at Elonwy. "I…uh, I don't have to PAY for that, do I?"

 

[Malcolm Tent]

My teacher was not pleased. "Well," he demanded harshly. "What exactly do you have to say for yourself? Do you know how much it cost to make that sphere? And you just melted it to slag. Not to mention the midterms weren't OVER, so now they're being delayed."

I winced. "Does that mean I didn't place first?"

"What are you, stupid?" he snapped. "Of course you placed first. You beat the second place entrant by almost doubling his time. If you don't win, who are we supposed to give the position to? I'm just not sure why you felt the need to put yourself into some kind of berserk state and slag my device with your stupid overpowered tree stick."

"Hey," I protested. "That's not fair, the Pillar didn't do anything wrong."

He sneered. "No, its master did. But I shouldn't be surprised. Who uses a staff? Not a spear, or a sword, or some kind of halberd. A staff. Your solution to your problems is LITERALLY whacking them with a big stick!"

"Come on, that's not fair," I whined. "I use my staff for more than just smacking stuff on the head. There's like…leverage. And there's a range advantage. It's very complicated, but it's definitely more useful than you're making it sound. Don't shit talk my soul weapon, old man. There has to be some social convention against that."

His face twitched. "I forgot it was a soul weapon," he grumbled. "They're not exactly common these days. It's not as easy as you think to connect an object with your soul before creating a Domain."

"Which is to say…" I said maliciously, knowing from his tone that I'd been right.

He sighed. "I'm SORRY I insulted your soul weapon. Whelp. Regardless, you DID pass. I admit, I was watching your trial. And that was an…interesting tactic. By which I mean stupid. Headbutting a door until the latch breaks is TECHNICALLY a method of opening it, but that doesn't make it a good one. How you gained access to the temporal substrate I have no idea, but you're lucky your weapon was handling most of the strain or your eyes would have exploded out of your head like eggs bursting on a hot pan."

"Oh," I said lamely. "I uh…I knew that. Did it on purpose."

Rolling his eyes, he pinched the bridge of his nose. "That form of yours is interesting, which is why I helped you create it. I did NOT tell you to use your tr- your soul weapon to forcefully elevate yourself to the next rank. I didn't tell you that because I assumed you would realize that the creation we made is BARELY considered a B-rank creature, and that pushing it up a rank put you PERILOUSLY close to trying to force yourself into the domain of an S-ranker."

I froze. I had not realized that. I swallowed hard. "And if I had done that?" I asked warily. "Pushed myself too close to S-rank by accident?"

"S-rank is a qualitative difference to the ranks below," he said frankly. "If you attempted to breach that limitation without a Saga to strengthen your body, you would probably turn to dust. Or possibly explode. Your armor and weapon MIGHT have allowed you to survive a few seconds of it, but at your current rank I doubt it. Maybe if you were an A-ranker you might be able to brute force it for an infinitesimal amount of time."

I cleared my throat. "I'll keep that in mind," I said uneasily. "Glad I didn't decide to try that somewhere else, at least." I paused for a moment. "What's the temporal substrate."

"The mechanical underpinnings of time," he said bluntly. "At least to me. The substrate exists for everyone, but tends to manifest differently depending on your perception of temporal workings. Access to it is not a bad thing, but you've dived FAR too deeply into a pool where you should have been paddling around in the shallows. You may study the levels of access you've experienced in the past, but today's feats should not be repeated, for obvious reasons."

"Even after I take the Dean's class?" I asked quickly. "The class name actually mentions substrates. Is that what he teaches?"

He raised an eyebrow at me. "You signed up for that?" he sounded surprised. "It's extremely expensive. I don't know any freshmen who have taken it. I suppose Elonwy pointed you in that direction?"

"She did," I nodded. "Seemed to think it would help me."

"It will do that," he admitted. "Had you not achieved at least this level of competence I suspect it would have been wasted on you. I admit, when you mentioned wanting to take one of my teacher's courses I didn't expect it to be that one. It's an interesting selection."

Blowing out a breath, I nodded. "Well, I need a lot of credits. I'm trying to get the ascension thesis. Not just me either. There are quite a few of us. The midterm will put me close, but I have a friend who needs a copy as well." Winnie had spotted me the credits I needed for my candle, not to mention she'd been a huge help to me here, and we were in an alliance. I wasn't going to leave her out to dry, which meant I needed to place on the final and not just the midterm. "I take it getting first place in the final won't be as easy?"

He snorted. "No," he said with a laugh. "We call the midterms mandatory, but that's only for lower level students. Advance study candidates are exempt from the midterm exams. For example, your project with me, had you had more time under my tutelage, may have exempted you."

"So you're saying all the teacher's pets are going to come out of the woodwork for the finals?" I asked with a grimace.

"Not just that," he said with a malicious grin. "The finals are cross discipline. They have subgoals for each major to pass, but there's a shared component to the final exam that requires large scale cooperation. You'll form teams and work together to accomplish goals, all for the sake of powerful and unique prizes."

I groaned, letting my head fall into my hands. "Of course we will. Because why wouldn't we? I almost forgot this is an Ascendant school and everything has to be done in the most absurd over the top way possible."

He shrugged. "Even the gods can't escape our nature. Stories wish ever to be told. We try to minimize the showmanship to foster real learning, but at a certain point, you need to make it exciting." He raised an eyebrow. "Or did you think that a giant hourglass full of diamond dust was the only medium we could possibly have used to test your skill with temporal mechanics?"

"It did seem a tad overdramatic," I admitted. "Though I guess I'm used to that kind of thing at this point. Honestly, the REST of this place is almost weirder for being so practical. For some value of that word."

"Like I said," he shrugged. "My teacher tries to foster a real learning environment. One benefit of being an Overgod is a certain level of perspective on such things. Not removal, exactly, even Overgods live by the same waves in the ocean of fate, they simply don't mind spending longer between the crests." He grimaced. "I sound like Allegra. Insufferable woman. Never tell anyone we had this conversation."

I rolled my eyes at him. "I promise not to tell anyone you believe in anything except the cold mechanical precision of gears and sprockets. But still, finals sound…intense. I don't suppose you can give me a tip about what's coming?"

He raised an eyebrow at me skeptically. "Do I strike you as the kind of teacher who gives out helpful hints to my students?"

"Yes…?" I said hopefully.

"No," he corrected. "I will not give you a hint. However, I WILL tell you that there's an information packet on the general rules of the final exam available at the exchange, should you choose to purchase it. It costs one credit. I believe it's been purchased about seven times in the past hundred or so enrollment periods."

I blinked at that. They had a guide for sale? Actually, come to think of it, that fit the vibe of this place to a T. There had been information on the midterm (albeit not much) available when I'd asked. It struck me as amusing how few people seemed to consider just…asking. Even I hadn't thought of it. I suppose we were all so used to things being unnecessarily complicated and dramatic that we didn't really know how to handle reasonable people acting reasonably…mostly.

"So," I said slowly. "Does this mean our lessons are over? I completed my work on Kronos, and I have examples of how to build timepieces. This was only an introductory course, after all, so I'm probably not entitled to more." I was kind of sad to see the last of my grouchy old mentor, even if I doubted he felt the same.

To my surprise though, he rolled his eyes. "Fool," he said scathingly. "If I let you run around doing incompetent nonsense after teaching you the bare minimum you'll ruin my reputation. Melting people's treasured artifacts and playing with the deep substrate like some kind of child. You obviously can't be trusted to take care of yourself responsibly with what I've taught you. No, I'm afraid I'll be forced to continue your instruction for the foreseeable future."

"Right," I said, hiding a smile. "Of course. Wouldn't want you to be embarrassed. But what about the Dean's class? And my divination course?"

He waved me off. "Don't worry about the Dean's course. He holds them in an atemporal instanced classroom. No time passes while you're inside. They all technically happen at the same time and occupy the same space. Don't take too many, though. We've had a few students develop paradox sickness because they kept running into themselves as classes got out. Never ends well."

"Alright," I said with a grin. "Then I'm in. Lessons continue. But I only have three temporal demons and they're all finished being upgraded. What should we work on next?"

"I suppose your Azazel would be the simplest," he shrugged. "He possesses the divination aspect, though through a non temporal attribute. I suspect it's fate or some other nonsense, but it's at least adjacent. It'll give you a starting point, and should help transition you into Mythcrafting other attributes without a temporal linchpin in the design. I've noticed an overreliance on time mechanisms in your work."

Sighing, I could only nod. That had been the problem with Owen's original timepiece. I'd started addressing it, and we'd managed to scrub most of the problem from future designs, but those were time based designs to begin with. I was still going a little heavy on time elements, but since they were a core theme it wasn't too big of a problem.

I stood, holding out a hand to my mentor. "Look," I said after a moment. "I know you don't do the sincere thing, but I do. I appreciate all your help, and I couldn't have done this without you. I've learned a lot from you and hope to learn a lot more. Thank you."

He stared at me for a moment, then sighed, rolling his eyes as he shook my hand. "Very well, since you DID take first place, I suppose I can break my rule and give you a small compliment. You are an adequate Mythcrafter. Verging on competent. And I suspect some day you may even be acceptable, or dare I say slightly above average."

Snorting I released his hand and turned to head back to my rooms. I needed to catch Callie up on everything I'd learned and tell her my results. We were only a few steps from getting the ascension thesis. After that…well, if I wanted to help Winnie get her copy I'd need to start preparing for the finals. I had a feeling they weren't going to be anywhere near as easy.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

The next day was a busy one for me. Firstly, because it was FINALLY time to cash out my next batch of scrolls (five hundred twenty of them this time), and secondly because I had arranged to escort Callie to the Curse Canyon to look for loot. I was excited to see the place, and to spend time with my wife, now that I'd finished my midterms.

As soon as I woke up and finished condensing my scrolls, I headed for Common City to meet up with my allies to get all my points in. More than just the ones I'd get from the scrolls, I should have netted a solid chunk after my showing in the midterms, and combined with my Wishmaster income I was betting I'd be raking it in this time.

Honestly, it was shocking how fast I was making it through B-rank, but then again, B-rank was just the beginning, and I WAS an intergalactic crime boss. Getting through A-rank would be literally ten times harder, and I wasn't looking forward to that at all, especially since I would presumably be out of the academy by then, and missing the prime income source of this place as I made my way through.

Of course, I WOULD presumably be netting a lot more points per scroll, so I wouldn't be moving too slow. Speaking of which, I had been hoping that I might have pushed my per scroll point limit up, but I'd managed to bully my stat screen into listing it recently and unfortunately, it was still stuck at 2500 points.

I chuckled as I slumped into a chair at my favorite bar to wait for my friends. I'd gotten the word out about my early visit, and a few of my allies had chosen to use theirs ahead of time. It was technically a new week, though it was generally a bad idea to do a weekend/weekday back to back visit like that because it would essentially screw you for the rest of the week. I wasn't too worried since I had two days off, and I was only planning to use one today.

"Well, don't you look excited," a familiar voice said as I turned to see my best friend drop into a seat next to me. "Let me guess, you did something crazy, or stupid, or both, and took first in your midterms?"

"That sounds like loser talk," I said as I glanced back over to where Abel had just sat down. "Did you hear a loser talking?"

He nodded solemnly. "I did, but to be fair, that's what all of you sound like to me."

I barked out a laugh. "I'll take a bottle of Drevaln Blue Rum," I told the bartender. I didn't usually drink, but rum was pretty tasty, as long as I only had a little bit. Granted, it cost me a hundred credits, but I had a bit of pocket money, and I could make that bake easy enough. We'd all passed our midterms, as far as I knew, so a small drink for everyone as a treat wasn't a bad idea. The guy passed me a bottle of shifting dark blue liquid with silvery stars suspended in it, and a few shot glasses at my request.

Pouring a bit into two of them, I filled one for myself and raised my glass. "To victory," I said with a grin. "Long may she reign."

"So," Abel said as he downed his shot and licked his lips. "You never answered the loser. You take first?"

"Of course," I said with a dignified sniff. "I AM the Wishmaster. I have to uphold a certain standard of quality when it comes to my comportment. If I don't set a good example for you hooligans how will you know what to do?"

I checked the door, confirming more of our friends filing in, and waved Bethy over as I spotted her. She didn't have her siblings with her this time, just her butterfly friend Casi, who looked way more terrified of us than anyone really should. Bethy spotted us all and cheered, zooming over and bodying Abel off his stool as she claimed it for herself. "Rum!" she cheered happily. "It's not wine, but it'll do. I thought you didn't drink, boss?"

"Seemed like a nice thing to do for the group," I shrugged. "Besides, I only had a tiny bit. And I have more effective Vitality than most peak B-rankers. And a regen ability. I don't think I actually CAN get drunk at this point, so it's not too big a deal to drink this for the taste." I smiled past her at her shy friend, who was all but curled up in a ball behind Bethy. "Would you like a glass, Casi?"

"Hell yes she would," Bethy whooped. "One for each of us!" She grabbed a pair of shots and poured the rum into them, tossing hers back and pushing the other toward Casi, who took it and sipped it gingerly.

I rolled my eyes. "Don't let her push you around," I told the shy girl seriously. "She can be a lot, but she doesn't really know it. If you tell her you're uncomfortable she'll back off."

Raising an eyebrow at Bethy, I nodded to the girl. "You bring her for a reason? Not that it's not nice to meet your friends, but she doesn't seem like she wants to be here much. I assume you had something in mind?"

"Actually was kind of hoping you might help rebalance her a bit," she said cheerfully. "She's got a pretty even spread of stats, but I think she could do with some specializing. I figure you need some stats anyway, and you usually don't focus too much on Creation or Fantasy, so it would be a good chance to help her fix her build."

"Oh," I said with a blink. "I mean…yeah. I can't exactly give her every scroll or anything, but I don't mind lending a hand. You sure that's what you want, Casi?"

To my surprise, the previously shy butterfly girl met my gaze without flinching. "It is," she said immediately. "My main stat is Creation, with Fantasy as a secondary. But because of how my abilities work I've accrued a pretty solid amount of stats in every category, and it's starting to limit me. Bethy says that if I can specialize there's a chance my ability will evolve on rank up even if I don't mix anything in. I mean, I know that people say that, but at higher ranks it's almost impossible to pull off. If you can help I would owe you one, even beyond whatever point you'd get from me."

"Casi is SUPER tough, too," Bethy chirped excitedly. "Her Chronicle is all weird and it can store people's powers, and then she can like…turn them into butterflies."

Casi sighed. "That is a gross oversimplification, but I appreciate the vote of confidence."

I chuckled, and we dropped the subject for now. We needed to wait for everyone else before actually breaking out the scrolls anyway, because there was no way Casi would be able to support all those wishes by herself. It turned out once she had some time to warm up to people Casi was a surprisingly outgoing and charismatic person. She told us all about her time in the trait major, her goals, her family. It was nice getting to know a new friend.

Callie arrived pretty early on, and she pulled a seat near me, joining the conversation without a problem, as did Jessie after her. Finally, after everyone arrived, it was time to begin. I busted out my full stock of scrolls and passed them out to any of our allies who wanted them, excited to see exactly how much I would gain after the no doubt huge boost from my epic meltdown during the midterm.

Sure enough, aside from the one point three million I got from the scrolls, I raked in another FIFTEEN AND A HALF million or so. Between the midterm and my income from being Wishmaster, I was seeing a frankly staggering amount of gains here. Months of training had definitely had an effect as well in terms of getting my name out there, probably helped by the Gehenna court running rampant across Moment City.

Granted, it wasn't as much as I might have made earlier on, because a lot of the higher quality renown I would have gotten from high rankers had been soaked up already, but enough ants can eat an elephant and all that, and it was clear that even the smaller streams of income were still definitely adding up.

Wishmaster status. B-rank. Ability: Legendary Wish- Ten times a day grant a Legendary wish in return for proper compensation. Wish must be feasibly achievable by the candidate's own efforts within a three day period with current statistics.

Legendary Path of the Demonbinder- The Domain of a Great King.

Might-9,825,421(x 3)

Impact-215

Fantasy-6,233,568

Vitality-8,521,871 (x 3)

Focus-5,824,853

Perception-4,941,640

Creation-6,843,143

Progress to next rank: 42,190,711/100,000,000

Soul strength- Obsidian Soul Body

Body Forging: Nine Phoenix Reincarnation Art- 27/81 drops- First Layer (Life Nova) 9/9, Second Layer ( Cosmic Phoenix) 9/9, (Ruin Phoenix) 9/9

Chronicle: Myriad Demons Manual (pages bound:9- 4 Zagan, 1 Leviathan, 9 Nine Phoenix Reincarnation Art, 1 Limbo, 1 Overlay, 1 Mephistopheles)

wish scrolls stockpiled: 520 (5 in the possession of friends to be used over time)

Domain size: 35 miles

Soul supported stat number: 2500

Bonded companion: Archimedes (Life Nova Phoenix)

Weapon: Pillar of Goetia

Stored: 10 Adherent Fire, 7 shadow attacks, 10 shadow jump (seven in reserve), 10 Stealth charges,10 triple strength tranq blows (ten in reserve), 10 spider leg attacks (ten in reserve), 3 gravity attacks, 1 shadow clone, 18 scan heals (I-rank ability so Shane can hold more)

Financial resources: 0 B-ranked, 0 C-ranked, 0 D-ranked(worth 100 E-ranked, past master rank is a watershed)

Frozen Moment Academy Credit points: 74,900

Archdemons: Kronos- Archdemon of Time- Tier 8 (Limbo, Overlay, Mephistopheles)

Honestly, I was blown away. I was right on the verge of passing the halfway point of B-rank. While a lot of this was definitely renown from being the Wishmaster, it was also a fact that the Frozen Moment Academy was just…amazing at what it did. Comparing it to the Academy back on Callus, the former barely deserved the name. I couldn't help but wonder if this was what it was like at the Aetherbright Academy back when it was still running, before it had been turned into a toxic experimental wasteland.

I shared my progress with my wife and my closer friends, though they all decided to keep theirs to themselves. Now that we knew the finals would be cross major, no one could say who would be on which team, and everyone was already shifting into the mindset of a friendly rivalry in preparation for those of us who would be on the other side.

We all enjoyed the day together, spending about half of it just talking, eating, and drinking. Finally though, everyone had to get back, since plenty of us weren't even intermediate and were working with a lot less downtime.

Once everyone was gone, Callie and I set off on our own adventure. I could tell she'd been all but bursting at the seams to leave for a while now, but she'd forced herself to stay calm and wait. After we separated from the others though, she was practically dragging me in the direction of the place the next moment, and I couldn't help but laugh at her enthusiasm.

When we arrived, we stopped outside a huge, imposing black gate, and I was surprised to see an actual guard waiting outside. We had to stop and get permission to enter, which made sense in retrospect, but it didn't take too long, and the gate opened before us before too long. "You ready?" I asked my wife with a chuckle as I watched her stare through the gate in awe. She didn't even stop to respond before sprinting inside. Though I guess that was an answer in its own way.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

The Curse Canyon was…weird. It was a canyon, like I expected, and it WAS full of junk, kind of like a landfill, but it was also kind of strange. For one thing, the air and space around the canyon's edges were strange and irregular. Sometimes I could see a heat haze like a mirage, or a cloud of sparkles, or the image of a creeping shadow shaped like a man.

As we walked inside, we passed through several patches of unusual effects that tried to grab hold. Heat, cold, light, dark, it felt like someone had set the air around us to randomize. The strangest part was that the varied effects were often contradictory and pressed against each other, but instead of exploding or fizzling out or whatever, they were just coexisting like it was no big thing.

"This is astonishing," Callie said with an awed expression. We had just walked into a sort of entry nook of the canyon, where the walls of cursed items had risen around the gates. We were on a path that snaked its way through, going ever deeper, and the piles of random junk followed the sides of the path, descending like some kind of sea of trash.

I nodded, glancing around with interest. I had Mornax active, and Callie had covered herself with Adherent fire to block out the effects, but it was still kind of overwhelming. I considered activating Dantalion's data collection ability, but I was pretty sure there was way too much going on here for me to process without using the staff to bump him to the next rank. "How exactly is this place stable?" I asked curiously as we walked. As we entered, one of the guards had followed us inside. I supposed he was there as a guide, but I figured if he was going to get a free traveling companion I could at least learn something.

To my surprise, Callie answered. "Supression," she said immediately. The guard shot her a surprised look, and she nodded back smugly before continuing her explanation. "You ever been somewhere really cold? And sometimes in the winter, the water in the pipes freeze if you don't keep it running, causing the pipes to burst?"

I nodded, and she continued, gesturing to the rest of the canyon. "Well, that only happens if there's a small amount of water. If the pipes are full, they can't freeze. When water freezes, it expands. It HAS to expand. Full pipes don't have the room for expansion, so the inward pressure forces the water to remain in a liquid state long past the normal freezing point."

"So this place is containing so many curses that they're holding themselves inert through sheer force?" I asked with interest.

She nodded. "Looks like. It IS fascinating, though it's also really dangerous."

"Why is that?" I asked as we hopped over a small patch of ominous looking swords that had 'coincidentally' rolled onto the path.

"Pipes don't freeze when they're full…at first," she said ominously. "Eventually, once it gets cold enough, the energy trying to force the water into a solid state overcomes the resistance of the pipe containing it. Then the water freezes, no matter what's in its way. Which in the case of this place means…well…boom."

The guard cleared his throat. "Begging your pardon, miss, but that's not QUITE accurate in this case. The canyon itself is a magical construct created by the dean of several departments. While that might normally be a concern, that would only be true if there was no release valve for the building pressure."

"Ah, so there are pressure releases?" she asked excitedly. "Where might those be?"

"Those would be the crucibles," he said with a shrug. "There are a few devices or places that are catalyzed by the condensed curse energy. Like the Cauldron, or the Compactor."

Interesting names. "What is the Cauldron?" I asked, naturally more attracted to the magical sounding device than the one that sounded like it was made to crush trash. "And how do you know all this? If you don't mind me asking. Are you not just a guard?"

"Guard duty here is more complicated than you might think," he said wryly. "Lots of calculations and rebalancing of energies. Natural formations arise here VERY easily, and the guards are tasked with traveling around and breaking them up before they gather too much momentum. Unless one of the students finds one and purchases experiment rights for it. But that's not too common.

"As for the Cauldron, it's…complicated," he grimaced. "Basically, the Cauldron is where we put potions and liquid creations that go in here. We just dump them all in a big reinforced bowl that does the same thing as this place on a smaller scale. Over the millennia, there have been some truly ridiculous concoctions added, and over the years the Cauldron's contents have become…strange."

I blinked at him. "Im sorry, you're saying people dump random potions, most of which are, by definition, improperly made, into a giant bowl and let it pressure cook under waves of curse energy for millennia? What possible use could they have for that? Like there's no way it's drinkable."

"It's not," he laughed. "But it IS unique. Students can apply to have a vial of Cauldron Concoction withdrawn for credit points. Because of the constantly shifting nature of the Cauldron, every vial is completely new, and its effects can change from one moment to the next. Not all of the potions are failures, either. After so long concocting, the Cauldron has become something of a pet project for the alchemy faculty. They offer extra credits for students who dump any leftover mixtures they have in there at the end of the semester."

I could tell Callie wasn't too interested in that, even if I kind of wanted to snag a vial, so I moved on to something a little more relevant. "Where do you keep the most harmful stuff?" I asked as I looked around. "Stuff that will kill you if you look at it."

He sighed. "The lethal curses are the Chamber. Dean Harper captured a fragment of a Void Child of Overgod level quite some time ago, and he's been conducting experiments on it for a number of centuries. It isn't particularly self aware," he said as I saw my reaction. "It's been lobotomized. He's just using it to test attribute combinations that have a pronounced effect on Void spawned creatures."

Dean Wallace Harper, the Dean of the Department of Atypical Physicality. Also known as the Monstrosity, he was the Overgod in charge of Bethy's department. I hadn't heard much about him, but I got the impression he was the kind of guy you wouldn't want made at you.

"Are we allowed to visit the Chamber?" I asked carefully. "Like to take stuff?"

Callie's vault was fairly unique in terms of utility, and its nature made it so that the more dangerous the item she inverted, the more beneficial the effect. I wasn't sure how something like direct damage would translate (maybe it would make a knife that healed you when you got stabbed), but in terms of utility, we wanted the worst stuff we could find here, and it sounded like the Chamber was where we would find it.

Understandably, the guard wasn't prepared for someone to ask to go to the most dangerous and useless place in the canyon, but I imagined that even if this wasn't a common request it wasn't TOO rare, because he adjusted to the question quickly enough.

"Anything involved in an active project would need to be exchanged," he hedged. "Credit points would work, but alternatively you could submit findings to the project you think might be relevant. If you find something unique, you'll be counted as having contributed to the result that comes from it, and you can redeem your contribution points directly."

I raised an eyebrow. "Contribution points?"

"All large scale research projects award contribution points," he clarified. "These are the currency that postgraduates and even teachers use to redeem benefits. They can be put towards increased research focus, additional manpower, materials, expert consultation from the deans, they can even be used to fund new and original research projects directly.

"Honestly," he admitted. "I don't think it would be possible for you to contribute to a research project the Dean has been operating for hundreds of years, but if students DO earn contribution points, they have the option to cash them out directly. It's kind of like selling them to the project staff because you can't use them. That's basically the only way I could see you getting permission to take anything useful from the Chamber."

I had been wondering why he would mention contribution points if students couldn't get them, but it made sense if there was no other way. Besides, when it came to damaging the Void, Callie and I knew a little something we might be able to contribute. I doubted there was anything we could come up with that an Overgod wouldn't be able to parse at a glance, but it was highly possible that Heretic Fire represented an attribute they might not have seen here before in that exact form, not to mention Adherent Fire or any of our other Void resistance tricks like Leviathan or Zagan.

One of the big benefits of my current path was exactly how muddled some of my demons had become. I was pretty sure I'd accidentally created more than a couple completely original attributes without meaning to. I'd have to study those to learn more about them, of course, because they were the embryonic form of what I would need to do when I constructed my Worldforce. But for now, because of exactly how much variety existed in Mythcrafting (literally anything you could imagine could be an ingredient), there was a decent chance we had something interesting to show them.

Despite my face being covered, I could tell from the guard's expression he knew roughly what I was thinking, and that he wasn't surprised at all. "Do you want me to escort you to the Chamber?" he asked tiredly.

"I think that would be helpful," I said immediately, my competitive drive ignited by this new challenge. Learning new ways to hurt the Void wouldn't be a bad thing either, given the ongoing war back home. Through the bond, Callie's fighting spirit burned as bright as mine, planning to submit both her original attribute and her father's special anti-Void flame for consideration (after a clarification on source, obviously, plagiarism was for scumbags) and see exactly how far our unique advantages could take us here in a place ruled by beings beyond our comprehension.

Apparently, the guard was used to cocky freshmen who thought they knew everything, because he just chuckled. "Yeah, you seem like the type. That was why I followed you in. Come on then."

We both grinned as he turned around a particularly towering heap of what appeared to be axe head, leaping over a ditch to land on what I swear was a refrigerator, and then began to hop from one large object to the next, heading off in a seemingly random direction. I grinned at Callie, incarnating Sammael, and unfurled my wings, igniting my Cosmic Phoenix bloodline as I swept forward focusing the spatial attribute on closing the distance with the guard.

I heard Callie's should of outrage and heard her own wings flap as she blurred after me, her Adherent fire warping the air as she sped to catch up. I didn't even need to look over my shoulder because of the bond, but I did anyway, just to see the look on her face.

Being back in the sky again, flying through this place without a care in the world, was a wonderful experience. For a few minutes, we didn't worry about curses or Domains or Overgods. Just playing around. And racing to keep up with our guide. A race that I won, obviously.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

We approached the Chamber relatively quickly. We touched down in a small clearing on top of a literal mountain of junk, and I glanced around to try to spot the details or the nearby landscape of the canyon.

First thing I noticed was where we appeared to be. The canyon extended in all directions, so I couldn't say for sure, but I THOUGHT we might be in the center of it all. It certainly felt like the center. Of the canyon. Of the universe. It was…heavy. I could feel the power weighing on me, beating on the air like the heartbeat of a colossal giant whose very blood had a gravity to match a thousand suns.

There was a hole not far away. A single dark square surrounded by a rim of innocuous grey stone. Carvings covered the rock, almost invisible from wear and time, if not for the subtle blue glow emanating from within the lines.

"This is the Chamber?" I said, trying not to let my voice shake. "It's certainly…impressive."

The guard just smiled. "It's funny. So many people have come here to see this. They come for the unique opportunities, or the items, or the project. Ultimately, they come for the power. But so many of them miss the obvious truth. Power isn't an abstract. It's a truth. A destination as well as a journey. I've seen many places in this academy, but this is the only place where I've seen this particular phenomena. Do you understand what I mean?"

I swallowed as I stared into the hole. "Power is an attribute," I said slowly. "This place has so much energy it embodies the CONCEPT of energy. That's part of what the Dean is making here, isn't it?"

He let out a laugh. "A byproduct," he admitted.

I turned to look at him directly. "I never asked your name," I said accusingly. "And you didn't offer it."

"Both of those statements are very true," he said with a wide grin. Too wide, actually. In fact, a lot of things about him were slightly off. He was too tall, his shoulders too wide, his eyes had no whites, just endless seas of green. How had I not noticed that. It was so obvious in retrospect, but I just…hadn't seen it.

Which made me pretty sure who I was talking to. "Dean Harper, I presume," I said with a sigh. "The Monstrosity?"

He let out a barking laugh. Literally, it sounded like a barking dog. "Well, I kind of gave it to you, but I suppose being willing to admit it so easily is its own kind of impressive. You're not upset about my little joke, are you?"

Callie was frozen, staring at him as she realized what I had not ten seconds before. "You're an Overgod," she said slowly. "You…why are you here? What is someone like you doing guarding the canyon? Don't you have better things to do?" Her voice was shaky, and I could feel a bit of panic through the bond, though I returned it with my own reassurance to try to help her through it.

"He's not a guard," I said immediately, sure of that fact. "I bet there's only ever one guard here, and it was the other guy. I'm more curious how you knew we were coming, and why you'd bother meeting with us. We're not in your department."

He shrugged. "You're interesting. I sensed something unique about you two. Something deadly. Not to me, obviously, but we hunters of the Void can smell our own. I suspected you might have something to contribute to my little case study here, and I wanted to see what it might be."

"But how did you know we'd even be here?" I asked cautiously. "Are you watching this place at all times or something?"

"In a certain sense," he said casually. "It's more…primal than that. I am, at my core, a beast. What kind I shan't say, but a beast I was, and that comes with certain instincts. Once you reach the heights I've attained, those instincts cease to be bound by things like time or causality. You could consider it a form of precognition, or you could consider it the exact opposite. It depends heavily on perspective. I knew you would be here because you came here, and you probably came here because I knew you would. Cause and effect tend to warp around creatures like myself."

I grimaced. "I bet the Dean loves that."

"Why do you think he created this academy?" he said dryly. "The chance to study Overgods in our natural environment is hardly commonplace, and the intersection of so much fate is a contradictory soup of temporal inconsistency. We each have our own peculiarities in that regard, and we study each other as often as the students who arrive."

I glanced back at the entrance. "So you wanted us to come here. To see what we could do to the Void Child. You think we have something you've never seen before?"

"Possibly," he said with a shrug. "I am very old, but my lifespan is not infinite. There are indeed things in creation I haven't seen. Admittedly, their number grows fewer every year, but I don't suppose the supply has dwindled completely just yet."

Callie stared at him suspiciously. "You're in charge of Bethy's department," she said slowly. "Did she tell you about us?"

That did sound like her, but I didn't think so in this case. This wasn't about Bethy, this was about us, and our relationship with the Void. Sure enough, Dean Harper chuckled. "The Hybrid? No, she and I haven't had time to speak one on one. Her kind is rare, admittedly. Especially spawned from such a potent vampiric bloodline. But I've seen Maenad Vampire hybrids before. If she seeks me out I may see fit to gift her an opportunity, but she isn't interesting enough to warrant a personal visit. You, however…your power is fascinating."

"The Heretic Flame came from my father," she corrected. "He was-"

"A Void Vessel who rebelled," he said impatiently. "Obviously. I'm not an idiot, girl. But I'm not talking about that. Your other aspect is more interesting. An Anti-Void perhaps? It's difficult to describe. Not simply an attribute, but the foundation of a state of being. An inversion, maybe, or perhaps a divergent reflection. A twisted mirror of the emptiness between realms. And the opposite of emptiness should be fullness, but that's not what you possess."

She frowned. "It's not…it's not a reflection. Not really. It's a shadow. My vault is reflective, and based on the same principles, but it's not the same. The Adherent Fire is something else. It's the result of the opposite of me, not of the Void. The opposite of a Heretic. The opposite of Void destruction, but not the true Void."

He nodded with interest. "Doppleganger," he said, like he was chewing the word. "Shadow self. You've had quite a few strange encounters. But then, you'd have had to. Unique things only come from the collision of coincidence."

"Why do you WANT her Adherent Fire?" I asked. "It doesn't really destroy the Void. Not like the Heretic Flame does."

"Children," he sniffed. "So impatient. "It's a foundation, boy. A seed. A possibility of something new. A Void that is not a Void. A space that is not a space. Tell me, boy, with such a parent, what children might emerge from such an abyss? What creatures might come forth?"

I knew what he meant, kind of. Callie had done something like that one, in The Quiet Room during my trial. Created a sort of false Void that ran beside a space so isolated that even gods couldn't get inside. It had been an impossible, ridiculous thing, but at the time it had seemed less important than everything else going on.

As for his second question…I hadn't considered that. But thinking about it, I wondered if he might be right. Because the Adherent Fire was the opposite of the Heretic Fire, but like Callie said, it wasn't a real reflection. There was a seed of the original deep inside, a spot of black in all that cobalt blue. If her not Void germinated Not-Void Children, would they inherit that Heretic nature. Would they be a natural counter to the Void Children?

"So, what do you want, exactly?" Callie asked suspiciously. "Just a sample of the flame?"

He snorted. "Nothing so crude." He snapped his fingers and a strange object appeared. It was almost perfectly round, but looking close I could see that it wasn't smooth. It was some sort of multi sided prism with so many sides it both was and wasn't spherical. "I want a spark. A seed to germinate. The start of the downfall of the creatures I so despise. In all Chaos there is Cosmos, after all. What is the beginning but the precursor to an end?"

I glanced at Callie, wondering what she would say. "What will you give us for it?" she said slowly. "Aside from contribution points. Will you tell us more about the Void? About what it is and how to fight it?"

He raised an eyebrow. "I suppose that wouldn't be out of the question," he said slowly. "Though it will diminish the contribution points I might grant for accomplishing my task. Not to mention I don't know exactly what might come of this experiment. It's a fascinating potential path, but potential is inherently unrealized until it ceases to be."

We shared a look, but it wasn't needed. The Void was our biggest problem back home. If we could learn new weapons to use against them, it would help Atlas defeat Morwenna, which would tip the god war entirely back in our favor.

"Fine," she said slowly. "But rather than contribution points, I want you to help me pick a few useful items that will work well with my Vault. Let's say three of them. No price paid, I get them free and clear." She was gambling a bit there, but not much. Dean Harper was an Overgod, and this was his project, if anyone knew the items inside it would be him, especially given what he's just told us about his potential precognitive abilities.

He shrugged. "Very well, my aid picking three treasures from my collection. I can even help you suppress any of the ones that might be too dangerous. Do we have a deal?"

I got the impression we were getting the short end of the stick here, and I knew Callie felt it too. But it didn't matter at this point. Even if the flames were worth an immeasurable amount, they would only have value like this to Dean Harper. Callie had been around the Dean of the spatial department multiple times, and he'd never expressed an interest in her Adherent Fire. The Monstrosity had some kind of issue with the Void, and it was the only reason we'd been approached.

Callie nodded, and he grinned that too wide grin. "Lovely," he said, tossing her the sphere. "I trust I don't need to instruct you on the process?"

"I've done it before," she said simply, focusing her eyes on the orb.

A flame kindled inside it, and she focused on the point of light to the exclusion of all else. Dean Harper nodded in satisfaction, then turned to me. "So, how about you," he said casually. "I got the impression you might have something interesting to share."

I considered my options, knowing he'd have seen most of them, probably. I considered Mephistopheles, but the candle had been bought here at the exchange, so I doubted it was that. I went with my first instinct, and incarnated Leviathan. He watched with interest as the demon descended into my body.

"Nothing ground breaking," he said after a moment. "But a reasonable defensive attribute. I'll give you a hundred contribution points for it."

I hesitated for a second, then nodded. "Fine," I said. "Now tell me what I can get with those." If possible his grin got even wider, and I couldn't help but think I'd just made a mistake. It was too late to back out now, I supposed. All I could do was stay the course.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

We descended into the Chamber without me deciding what to use my contribution points on. There were just too many possibilities, and I couldn't decide what I should commit to. I was considering spending them to get my hands on another keystone artifact I could use to alter one of my demons, but I didn't have a demon in mind, and given what department Harper was in charge of I also had to consider the possibility of getting my hands on another phoenix flame, so I put it on the backburner for now.

Fortunately, my deliberation at least wasted enough time for Callie to finish condensing her anti Void inside the sphere. After that was done, it was time for us to make the trip down to learn more about the Void from our host, hopefully this had all provided some intel that was worth the cost, otherwise we'd wasted potential gear Callie might have gotten on nothing.

We approached the hole in the ground slowly. "So do we just jump in, or…?" I trailed off, waiting for some idea of how to proceed.

Dean Harper clicked his fingers lightly, and there was a ripple in the space around us. Not the air, mind, the SPACE. Whatever he did had shifted the underpinnings of reality on a layer beyond the physical. In fact, looking closer it didn't feel like spatial manipulation either. More like he was interacting with reality itself.

There was a low groan and the stone around the hole warped and shifted. It wasn't smooth or fluid, either. The rock jerked and twisted, screaming in an almost inaudible subhuman warp as it was forced to become something it wasn't meant to be to suit the unnatural will of the monster accompanying us. Finally, after about a minute of the unsettling reformation, it stopped, and we were standing at the top of a shaft of darkness ringed by a steep set of stairs that only extended about a foot from the wall.

"What the fuck was THAT?" I asked in an appalled voice.

Harper shrugged casually. "You wanted a method of descent. Now there's one there. You'll find the underpinnings of creation are more malleable at my level."

Which was an understatement. Because that wasn't Mythcrafting. It wasn't even Worldforce as far as I could tell. That had been…thought. He'd just smashed his merciless will into the universe like a club until it did what it was told. The rock had been in PAIN. I was starting to understand why they called him The Monstrosity.

Of course, I didn't say any of that, because I wasn't an idiot. I mounted the stairs and descended, though I went first just in case. Callie was still at C-rank, and I wasn't risking her safety. Especially since I had the Seal protecting me, and an A-rank suit of armor outstripped any defenses she had on hand. We hurried in, both of us eager to be as far away from Harper as possible right now. Which both did and didn't work, because he vanished as we headed down, but appeared at the bottom when we reached it. Joy.

"Welcome to the Chamber," Harper said proudly as he gestured around us at the walls…which I immediately realized were made of fucking BONES.

"Is this an Ossuary?" I asked slowly, stepping away from the walls as best I could. The bones were more than just calcium and marrow. They were steeped in the same kind of power that was brewing topside. Namely, they were all cursed. Every single one of them.

Along the walls, stretching off into the darkness, I saw small alcoves, within which pedestals of bone held up weapons and artifacts. It was a formation, all of it intricately slotted together. The bones were sucking up the cursed energy that the crucible was focusing into this place and then transmitting it like wires transmitted electricity into the weapons, which were giving it shape and function.

The energy from the alcoves rose like heat, collecting on the ceiling above us and being swept up in a torrent of dark power that flowed off into the distance like some horrible river. Even looking at it hurt my eyes. Harper chuckled. "It's wonderful, isn't it?" He said happily. "Certain materials have attunements to certain attributes, as I'm sure you know. Even mundane materials have inclinations. Bone, for instance, has a deep connection with the attribute people often refer to as 'resentment'. Resentment is, of course, the component medium of curses, and as such, bone soaks up curse energy like a sponge. It's an excellent conversion matrix for the crucible."

I looked around at the walls of interlocked bones with a slightly sick feeling. "Where did you GET all these?"

"Oh here and there," he shrugged. "Curse bones need to come from the unwilling, but you'd be surprised how many students wander in with corpses in their spatial storages. And of course, the bones don't need to be human. Plenty came from monsters and beasts hunted for credits. We buy at a premium if you have any to spare."

He headed off down the tunnel, and we followed, mostly because the idea of standing around alone in this place made my back sweat. This was not a safe place to be. "So…why curse energy? Does it have some sort of special effect on the Void?"

"In a sense," he said hesitantly. "First, we should start with the obvious question. What do you think the Void IS?"

Callie answered. "The Void is the soul of the universe. The spiritual emptiness that stands opposite the flesh of realspace. People like to pretend it separates worlds, but that's not it. It lays across reality, not between it."

He nodded. "Well put," he complimented. "That's absolutely correct…and also completely wrong."

"What do you mean?" I asked as Callie flinched back a bit. "How can it be both?"

"Because of the nature of the Void," he said patiently. "The most direct manifestation of what I mean is something you're familiar with. Recursion. Recursion is the power of belief, the trend of faith as a force that moves creation. It is, in some ways, the collective belief of reality, altering the universe in the same way that more individualized recursion alters us on a singular level."

We headed deeper into…something. Some kind of labyrinth of bone. "The Void IS the spiritual component of reality, where realspace is the physical. However, the reason this is important to note is that recursion has a much deeper impact on spiritual matter than physical."

Callie froze, her eyes going wide in horror as she figured something out. "You're saying the Void is…nothing? Potential? That the manifestations it produces are subconscious alterations based on what we believe as a collective?" Her voice was horrified, and I didn't blame her. If that was true…

Harper shook his head. "Not exclusively, though partially. What you're missing is that while universes don't have WILLS exactly, they do have…echoes. A universe is a realm, and is created by a creator god. This is a distinct position outside the cultivation hierarchy, mind, and shouldn't be confused with gods or Overgods. Regardless, because of this process, it is important to remember that universes develop certain tendencies."

"So the Void is a reflection of the subconscious of the creator god who created it?" I said uncertainly. "But wouldn't the Void be huge, spanning multiple planes? How does it pick which tendency to express."

"Calling the Void 'The Void' in the singular is inexact," he clarified. "There are many Void, just as there are many realms. The Void is usually a sort of amalgam, a composite of multiple factors. Culture and belief do have some effect, as does the natural tendency of the universe. However, the latter manifests itself more directly than one might expect."

My eyes went wide. "Void Children!" I said excitedly. "They're the manifestations of the tendency?"

"Well reasoned," he beamed, seeming genuinely impressed. "They are indeed. Void Children are the direct manifestation of the originator tendency. They act as a sort of guiding force for the Void and its denizens. If recursion is the wind that blows across the fabric of the Void, Void Children are natural windfarms. Or perhaps antibodies would be more accurate. You could consider them the subconscious manifestation of the suppressed portions of the creator god's psyche. Literal inner demons."

I frowned. "So…we need to beat them," I clarified.

"Well, not necessarily," he hedged. "Void Children can vary based on the nature of the creator god that spawned them. Some can be reasoned with. Some are quite mad. Depending on your situation, you may be able to make peace. But barring that potential outcome, you WOULD need to remove the Void Children, or at least disperse their centralized leadership, in order to take control of the general trend of the Void. Without the Children to guide the spiritual aspect of creation, recursion will become the dominant force in the spiritual space, and the Void will change to better reflect the denizens of realspace. Though whether that's an outcome you would desire can vary wildly."

We walked as he talked, heading deeper and deeper into the maze of tunnels. "Ok, this is all fascinating," I said slowly. "But what does it have to do with this place? With the resentment?"

"Ah, of course," he said with a chuckle. "I got a bit distracted. Hazard of age, I'm afraid. I so rarely get to discuss my hobbies, and I tend to wax philosophical when given the opportunity. The answer to that is simple. What IS resentment?"

I shrugged. "It's…bad feelings?" I said vaguely. "A manifestation of animus."

"It is, and it isn't," he said, with the tone of someone frustratedly trying to describe a flavor they've never tasted over the phone. "But the answer I was looking for is that it is a subconscious force that interfaces directly with inner demons. More than that, it is often used as a shield against them. How many times have you heard of someone using hatred to divert animus from one target or even from themselves?"

"That does happen," I said slowly. "But I'm not sure I understand your point. You're…what? Altering the Void Children with the resentment to repurpose them into helpful entities?"

He stopped walking. "No…" he said slowly. "But that is a FASCINATING research direction. I may use that. No, we aren't applying the resentment to the Children at all. Rather, we're using the resentment to trigger the universe's natural defensive instincts against the Children themselves. Essentially tricking the body into killing its own immune system."

We finally came to a stop outside a huge pair of bone doors, and he turned to face us. "Should our research bear fruit, we would be capable of weaponizing the conscious remnants of the tendency, for whatever values of consciousness you might believe exist, against the Void Children. These natural defenses are very real. In fact, prior to the advent of our current method of cultivation, they were triggered fairly frequently. Ancient Ascendants used to call them 'heavenly tribulations'."

He turned to the door, bracing his hand against it. "As it stands, we haven't managed to rouse that particular reaction yet, though we've taken steps to explore the reasons why. Namely descending to lower planes where the creator gods were weaker and the tendency is more easily influenced. But the star of this little project is, of course, the most powerful of my research subjects. The being I described to you in the canyon."

Pushing on the door, he swung it open, letting it fall ajar to reveal a colossal chamber inside, presumably the one that gave this place its very name. "This is an Overgod level Void Child. The purest manifestation of a realm's inner demon I have ever found…and I believe, the key to extinguishing the Void Children from all planes and handing control of the Void back to the denizens of the realspace that it echoes." And with that, he turned and walked into the Chamber, and we followed closely behind.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

The Chamber was huge. Legitimately one of the biggest things I'd ever seen underground. In fact, it was so big I couldn't see the edges. Past a certain distance, clouds of mist obscured the edges of the room, and even directly on the other side of the door we weren't up against a wall, so I couldn't even use that to estimate room size.

But that wasn't what held my attention. No, that particular honor went to the THING in the center of the room.

The Void Child Overgod looked…wrong. It was almost humanoid. Kind of. It floated in the air, made of shadows too dense to make out individual details, but also lustrous enough to highlight certain features.

Subtle things about it were off, in ways that hurt to look at. Its shape was a mockery of humanity more than a similarity. Like someone had tried to design the most horrible, offensive caricature of a person they could imagine, and then dipped it in some kind of conceptually despicable acid and let it start to melt.

It was suspended over the room high enough up that I suspected it was bigger than I had guessed, perspective warping my perception of it to make it seem more of a size with the humanoids it mocked.

The actual suspension was being done by, oddly enough, chains of energy. One of them formed above us, channeled through the door from the river of resentment that had been flowing over our heads during the walk. There were innumerable chains, all linking together and braiding into bigger chains in midair to create sturdier ropes of links that would actually fit around the abomination.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" Harper asked proudly. "I defeated it in single combat in a higher realm I visited. The fight lasted a hundred and twenty thousand years. I almost died over a thousand times. I did die at least seven. It remains one of my most cherished memories."

I noted the oddly long arms, the broad shoulders, and then I glanced back at Harper. "Did you base your body off that thing?"

"Of course," he said immediately. "It was one of my mightiest foes. I incorporate the power of all my defeated enemies into my form. Admittedly, this diminutive human appearance is not my TRUE visage. Should you lay eyes on my primal self your mind would tear itself apart in a desperate attempt to protect your soul from destruction. Even this fragment is far beyond what a mortal brain can accommodate."

I sighed. "Alright, fine," I said as we took in the monster. "You're scary, the Void Child is scary, this whole place is scary. So…what does that do for us? Why do you need Callie's Adherent Fire? How does it relate to your plans?"

"Excellent question," he all but shouted. "I had an idea once I saw your wonderful flame. The anti Void can nurture anti Void Children. If the Void Children themselves are antibodies of a sort based on the subconscious, could we not attune the anti Void Children to the conscious, or rather, to the more overt tendencies?"

Callie's face lit up. "You want to slip them into the system and use it to trigger the tribulation force," she said excitedly. "I understand! The Void Children are a natural expression of the creator god consciousness. If you can trick the more active portion of the tendency into accepting the anti Void Children, they might influence it. The anti Void hates the Void. Its core is the Heretic Flame. If the tendency weaponizes the anti Void Children you're hoping that hatred will be absorbed and give the resentment something to latch onto."

"Precisely," the Dean said proudly. "Of course, this is hardly a short term solution. Even for one such as myself the timescale of such a project is momentous. This possibility may only become viable far, far in the future. But still, it IS a research direction, and that in itself is worthy of celebration. After all, what purpose is there in research if not to innovate?"

"Understandable," I said after a moment. "But is there anything more…direct you can tell us? I mean, we've got a lot to unpack here, admittedly, and this is going to do us a lot of good long term I suspect. But do you have like…a few other attributes we might be able to weaponize?"

He raised an eyebrow at me. "I suppose I might be able to part with something that could help as one of the girl's promised reward items. But the question then becomes, what exactly are you hoping to accomplish? Do you want to destroy the Void Children? Subvert them? I don't know your situation, so it's difficult to make suggestions for that purpose."

I turned to Callie. "Well, you're the Void expert, love. So, do you have any ideas what might help you? We could just go for some directly applicable abilities like buffs or enhancements. The opposite of curses."

She bit her lip, clearly thinking. "The opposite of curses," she said slowly. Her eyes flicked to Harper. "Do you have any curse based phoenix items? Do such things exist?"

"They do," he acknowledged. "And yes. Are you planning to attempt to weaponize your husband's bloodline abilities against the Void Children? I suppose a curse with a consciousness might be more likely to interface with the tribulation force. I haven't tried that tactic. Another possible avenue to pursue."

She shook her head. "Not like that," she corrected. "Resentment is…it's not what we need. That's like trying to cure poison with poison. Void Children are the inner demons of the tendency. You don't fix resentment with more resentment. You fix it with forgiveness."

My eyes went wide. "You want to invert a resentment themed phoenix artifact with the Vault and then merge it with one of my demons," I said in shock. "Create a phoenix whose sole purpose is to alleviate the subconscious darkness that manifests from the Void?" It was brilliant, honestly, in a very crazy sort of way. I wasn't sure I could even use one of her manifested items as a base for a demon…but I also wasn't sure I couldn't.

In fact, it would make a lot of sense. Several of my demons' original forms had been based on attacks I had stored from Callie, so there was precedent for it. I'd need a demon who would resonate, but I was pretty sure I actually had one. Genesis Burst was made to heal souls, and this would essentially be healing the soul of the universe, on a very small scale.

Honestly, it was something deeply theoretical I wouldn't have even considered if I hadn't been training Mythcrafting with Professor Hawkins recently. I was blown away by the whole idea. I hadn't even considered combining Callie's vault and its inversion with my ability to integrate objects via Brad's mysterious attribute. I glanced at Harper. "Would that work?" I asked slowly. "What would an inverted resentment attribute do to a Void Child?"

"Haven't the foggiest," he said with a cheerful shrug. "Do you think manifesting this much energy is simple? This project is the accumulation of generations of research and funding. It's the collected resentment of an entire academy's worth of students' failures and mistakes collected in the most streamlined way possible. The amount of resentment collected and shaped in this place is beyond the scale of what you could possibly conceive from your limited perspective. Manifesting an antithetical force on this scale would be impossible. And anything less…"

"Wouldn't work," I sighed as I glanced up at the captured Overgod. "So do you think it's worth trying?"

He laughed at that, though not unkindly. "Of COURSE I do. It'll be a fascinating study. I'm curious how it would even function. Would you need to purify them alive? Would destroying them purify the negative trend? Will anything happen at all? So many interesting questions."

"And you have a phoenix artifact that'll work?" Callie asked again. "What is it exactly? It has to be at the right level for us. I can manage a B-rank artifact, but nothing beyond that."

"Phoenixes are fascinating creatures," he said with a nod. "They have almost no natural affinity as a species. Or rather, they have an affinity for affinities. Phoenixes are the ultimate evolvers. They can adapt to almost any environment, change to suit any type of energy. There is almost nothing in creation that a phoenix can't embody. I suspect it has to do with the mechanics of their rebirth. Regardless, yes, I possess an item created from such a phoenix."

Snapping his fingers, he did…something. There was a shudder and a device appeared in his hands. It was, quite frankly, the most horrible thing I'd ever seen. A black metal gauntlet with spikes coming off of it. It had what could generously be described as a shield welded onto the forearm, but was, in reality, something more like a sawblade, except it was sort of domed (or maybe coned, since even that had a point) with small slits in it.

"This is a lantern shield," he said with amusement as he saw our reaction. "The flame inside of it is a substance I affectionately refer to as 'Hatefire'. Most people assume it's some kind of ghostflame, but in fact, it originated from a resentment attributed phoenix whose soul was bound into the shield by a relatively mad witch hunter I once had the misfortune of meeting. This item is exceptionally old, and has degraded over time. It is currently approximately low B-rank in terms of Impact. The Hatefire has been eroding the structure for quite some time."

Considering the guy who made that claim had casually mentioned have a hundred and fifty thousand year FIGHT, not long ago like it was an evening at the theater, I didn't want to know what he considered exceptionally old.

Callie, meanwhile, was staring at the object, looking wary but determined. She reached out and touched it, and it vanished. "That's one," said Harper with amusement. "You have two more."

"What do you think I should try?" she asked the Overgod. "You said you'd give advice."

He nodded thoughtfully. "I believe you should take advantage of ambiguity in the nature of your power. There's a spear in here that absorbs blood to enhance its durability. An inversion of that would potentially be the ability to ERODE the durability of other objects the more blood it SHEDS. Which might be useful."

"That would work," Callie said with a nod. "How about something purely beneficial?"

"An inverted curse," he nodded. "There's a cursed set of manacles that prevents wounds from healing. Deeply unpleasant items. I suppose an inversion would create healing shackles, which might be useful. Their ability to shut down regeneration is one of the most effective I've ever seen, so I suppose the inverted set would be able to heal injuries regardless of the cause."

Callie lit up at that. I couldn't blame her. That sounded incredibly overpowered. "Those would work," she said excitedly. "When can I pick them up?"

He rolled his eyes. "You can't. The Lantern shield was never an integral part of this formation. The other two are. I'll need to extricate them manually and send them to your residence. For now, I believe I have upheld my end of our bargain. I have research to resume." He tossed the sphere of Adherent Fire into the air with excitement. "You two know the way out. You can go."

And then, suddenly, he was just…gone. We turned and saw the door rushing toward us, warping the very space until it swallowed us up, slamming shit behind us, I looked around at the walls and the bones glinted menacingly in the low light. I called for Zagan, coating us both in purification, and I triggered my rank boost just in case. "We should go," I told Callie quietly. And then I took her hand and we ran. Worst. Host. Ever.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

We ended up back in Common City before too long. We didn't run all the way there, obviously, but we did hurry back because we had some research to do. As soon as we were somewhere private (we ended up having the meeting in my Domain, in the meeting chamber behind my throne room), I called Dantalion out, along with Wisdom of Solomon, and even Nine Phoenix himself, and consulted them about the feasibility of Callie's idea.

I was pretty sure it would work, to be honest, but then, I didn't have the theoretical foundation that Dan did. Even during our incarnations, I was only absorbing relevant memories when they came up. Dan was constantly intaking so much information that a full download every time I incarnated him would have gridlocked my brain every time I'd tried. He knew everything I knew, and plenty more, and he was the first person to ask about a project like this.

Of course, I DID have some ideas, especially given my research, but I wanted a second opinion, and sure enough, he gave it to me directly. "It might work," he agreed after a moment's conferral with the other two. "In fact, I believe it can. But there's a problem, and I think you know what it is."

I sighed. "Structure," I said grimly. "Brad's technique isn't designed to function as a full support. This would be a comprehensive upgrade for Genesis Burst. I take it you came up with the same solution as I did?"

"You need to use Mythcrafting build a support structure," he confirmed. "Something that has an opening where you can slot the device. Brad can open pits in anything, and if you leave a space for it to occupy, it should allow the timepiece to act as a foundation. Personally, I would advise putting it off until a later date, once you have more practice."

"No," I said immediately, voice firm. "No waiting. It needs to happen now. I can just…feel it. It's important."

Callie perked up. "Important as in 'I'm paranoid my wife will lose her ugly new shield' important or 'tomorrow afternoon we're all going to be on fire' important. Because one of those is going to pull a thread." Her tone was joking, but I could tell through the bond she wasn't happy with what she was feeling from me.

I just shrugged. "No idea. Just…important."

"Why did you have to be a Fatewalker," she moaned. "Why couldn't you have been a 'detailed hand written manual-walker' or a 'good news about cake-walker'?"

"Aesthetics, probably," I grinned. "But I'll pass the suggestions along to the DS developers if I ever end up meeting them. Anyway, I can come up with something for a timepiece, I have the experience. I'll need to study the lantern shield after you invert it. Are you sure it won't like…hurt you to have it permanently removed?"

She waved me off. "It's fine. I've been working on my Domain a ton. I can remove things permanently under certain conditions. The only real drawback is that the lantern shield itself won't be able to leave the vault. In order for the inversion to remain permanently active I need to sacrifice the original. It's called Enshrinement, and it's a new trick I've been working on. I was going to surprise you with the ability to make powerful permanent items we could sell."

"That's amazing," I told her, my voice filled with awe. "Your vault has so much potential already, but permanently making inversions is…that's a game changer."

No wonder she'd been putting so much work finding new artifacts to test out. Crafting wasn't so easy that just anyone could do it, and the canyon made it clear that it was apparently a lot easier to make things that cause harm than things that help. With access to the local supply of cursed items and the ability to make permanent stuff, Callie could potentially supply our whole faction with high quality, powerful gear.

Honestly, I had kind of taken for granted how overpowered my Domain was, and that was still true, but this kind of proved that I shouldn't underestimate the Domains of other powerful people my age. Not just Callie, the midterms had shown that Domains could have strange and complicated effects that surpassed my expectations.

"Alright," she said excitedly. "So, we're really doing this. Creating a new phoenix template. I love this kind of stuff. Speaking of love, what should we call this stuff? The opposite of Hatefire is…what, Lovefire?"

"We're NOT calling it that," I said firmly. "I'm not telling people that I'm a love phoenix. Besides, Hatefire is just a catchy name Harper used. It's more resentment than hate, remember. We're supposed to be pacifying them. That's why I picked Genesis Burst. It's a healing flame for souls. I'm imagining us helping the Void Children pass on, releasing them from their suffering. So how about something like…Peaceflame."

She reached out and took my hand, smiling at me softly. "I like that," she said in a warm voice. "I like that a lot. And I like that you think of it that way even more. This is a special template. I'm glad we're not making it with animus in mind. That feels right."

I squeezed back. "This is like Life Nova," I assured her. "Its purpose is healing. It's just a different kind of patient."

"Actually," she said slowly. "Maybe we can fine tune it with a bit of tweaking. How do you feel about some test subjects? Remember we wanted to try to help Bethy's siblings? Their behavior certainly sounds a lot like the resentment Harper told us about. In fact, some people consider Vampirism a curse. I bet your Peaceflame could purify their bloodlines."

"Huh," I said as I thought it through. "Maybe some of us will be on fire tomorrow afternoon. Though probably not that soon. But yeah, if that works…we could help Bethy. Fully help her. Purify all the malice from both bloodlines maybe. Or at the very least purify the bloodlust from the vampire." The more I hashed it out in my head, the more excited I got. Bethy had been asking for help for so long, and I'd been working in stages, but it was easy to get wrapped up in my own stuff, and she was always so good at keeping things bottled up."

Callie brought my hand up to her lips and kissed it with an adoring smile. "I'm sure she'll be thrilled. But are you sure you can do it?"

"Bethy is still peak C-rank," I informed her excitedly. "With the Pillar, I can bump myself up to A-rank. Her bloodline is strong, but direct exposure to a specialized purification phoenix that's two ranks higher? If it's feasible on her siblings, I can make it work. In fact, I can alter my timepiece design to MAKE it more feasible. I'll need to talk to Professor Hawkins about this. Lucky we got those contribution points. Harper said you can use those to commission research projects."

Professor Hawkins had been planning to continue my education, but not the same way he had when he'd been working with me on our project. That was actual interference, and I got the impression he hadn't really been SUPPOSED to do it, and had used my interesting concept as an excuse to help.

Now though, he had no excuse. The contribution points would provide a way for me to pay him, and for him to help more directly with my development like he had before. I was hoping with his help, we'd be able to create something that could help not only the Void Children, but my friend and her siblings too. I knew Lark was worried enough about them to pawn them off on us, which said some fairly alarming things about their states of mind given the kind of things he did casually.

She nodded excitedly. "I might approach one of the crafting professors if I can find and in. I bet they would have some amazing ideas for how to apply my Domain, and I can't imagine it's a common mechanism. I bet a crafter would be fascinated to study how it works. Or deeply offended that I'm essentially phoning in their whole profession…maybe I shouldn't talk to a professor."

I waved her off. "I get the impression most people kind of count Domain stuff as part of your bag of tricks. You're a crafter now, they'll consider you one. Also, realistically, no matter how cheap your ability is, it has limits. I doubt you're a threat to literal crafting gods, much less a whole faculty of them. Like there's only so much one person can damage the market, especially if you can only do one for one swaps with permanent items." I could see her point, but it didn't seem likely that her power was going to seriously disturb the crafting ecosystem here of all places.

She coughed in embarrassment. "Oh. Right. Guess I got a bit carried away thinking about how cool my new power is."

"Nah, I get that," I assured her energetically. "My new Arch-Demon form is fantastic. There's something so fun about iterating and working on new applications for your abilities. Honestly, I've been feeling a bit aimless since I completed my Domain. The thrill of discovery is something I always loved. Hence the whole…seventy two demons thing."

She snorted. "I've been deceived. You're supposed to be a big reckless meathead. Turns out I married a huge nerd. Oh the humanity."

"Hey, watch it," I said dramatically. "You're going to ruin my reputation." Pulling my mask up, I leaned down to give her a peck on the lips. "And I love you too. Fellow nerd. Don't worry. It'll be our secret. Just between you and me. And me. And me. And a fourth version of me." I shot a glance at my demons. "Keep this one in the box, boys."

"Wasn't listening, don't care," Dan called as he looked over his shoulder briefly and returned to his powwow.

I shook my head despairingly. "No respect," I whined. "I remember when he used to call me 'my lord' all the time. I've clearly been spending far too much time with him working on my research. The shine is off the apple."

Of course, Dan was ALWAYS respectful. He was teasing, something he DID only get comfortable enough to do once we'd worked together for a while.

Callie just nodded. "I too have trouble maintaining respect for you after prolonged exposure. You're best enjoyed in short bursts. Like a puppy." She winked, blowing me a kiss as she hopped out of her chair. "Whoops gotta go love you, bye!" She vanished in a burst of blue black flames.

I rolled my eyes fondly. She could travel to her Domain from mine through the Angelic bond, though she only used like that it when she was being playful.

Chuckling, I turned to Dan. "So, any notes?" I asked my information demon. "I know you WERE listening. I was always planning to ask for your feedback. I think the Professor should be able to help, even if this isn't his exact field of study."

"Outside his bailiwick as this may be," Dan said wryly. "The man is a god, and an experienced Mythcrafter. He should be more than up to the task of aiding us, even in such an obscure endeavor. Though the involvement of the lantern shield does worry me a bit. Even if it has degraded, are we really sure putting such a thing into a timepiece is wise?"

"I considered that," I admitted. "But since Callie is making the copy, it won't be the original. No chance of a freak recovery because the inversion won't be a degraded ancient artifact, just a normal one she made."

He hummed in acknowledgement. "Well then, I suppose I have no further concerns. I take it you plan to approach him soon?"

I nodded solemnly. "Yup. Tomorrow. Tomorrow I'll try to start this research project. Like I said, I have the feeling this needs to happen soon." I had no idea why, but my instincts were screaming at me that getting this done was important. I was happy to work on the project, I just really wished I could do it without the knot in my stomach. I had a feeling my instinctive drive to hurry meant nothing good.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

"I can't help you with that," my teacher told me bluntly after I explained my problem to him. I froze. I hadn't expected that. I'd figured he would be excited by the challenge, especially with the contribution points to smooth things over.

"If this is about payment," I started, scrounging for an alternative. Did I have anything else the professor wanted? I was a decent Mythcrafter by this point, and getting better by the day, but I didn't have the theoretical foundation to manage something this complicated. The interaction between the two Domains, the ancient drained artifact, and the Nine Phoenix Template needed to be machined to a nearly infinitesimal precision. I had zero hope of doing it alone.

He sighed, shaking his head. "I don't mean I WON'T help you, kid. I mean I CAN'T. Your proposal is fascinating, don't get me wrong. But it's got no theoretical grounding. I wouldn't even know where to start. Your demon's unique attribute, the inverted object, the anchoring mechanism, not to mention the unique nature of the totem you're attempting to make. It's like trying to stitch together a masterwork painting from scraps of other canvases. It's MUCH harder than painting it yourself."

"So…it's not possible," I said, slumping back onto the couch. "If you can't do it…"

"I didn't say that," he snapped. "There's just too many variables. Hell, I could probably manage if I had a bit of experience with even half those factors. Though I'm guessing you don't have and drained remnants of ancient deities perfectly attuned to phoenixes lying around for me to experiment with."

I froze. Because…I did have one of those. In fact, I hadn't really found a USE for it since I had finished using it to craft my Cosmic Phoenix bloodline. "Would something like a sword made from a phoenix feather formerly imbued with hostile worldforce that I cleansed work?"

He turned to stare at me. "Explain," he said slowly.

So I did. I told him about Drexel, about cleansing the feather with Atlas's ritual, about using the Cosmic Phoenix flame to create a template and then refine my bloodline, and how I still had it just kind of…lying around.

Because of the suppression in the chasm for who knew how long, mixed with the purification, the Cosmic Phoenix feather sword was about peak C-rank or low B-rank at this point. It used to be much more powerful, but a large portion of that power had been worldforce I'd wiped out, and it hadn't been able to recover more than a bit of its former strength.

"What is your life?" he complained. "I'm a literal god and I don't run into so many good things. A Cosmic Phoenix feather? One that perfectly complements your body tempering technique? Do you know how RARE those are? People LITERALLY compare rare things to phoenix feathers as a godsdamned idiom!"

I shrugged. "I mean, there are a lot of universes out there, I'm sure they're not that rare."

"And you think ALL universes have spatial phoenixes as their creation event?" he asked dryly. "Kid, you literally have a Domain. You know that gods evolve them into realms, which can evolve into planes. How many gods do you know whose Domain is founded on something like phoenix fire? And how many of those do you think make it to Overgod or Worldgod? Beyond that, phoenixes are adaptive. A space attribute phoenix needs to be exposed to an extremely overbearing spatial terrain, and those aren't common in almost ANY universe."

I thought about the chasm, but I realized by now that my universe wasn't exactly standard. It wasn't some super special unique snowflake world, but there were quite a few rarities tucked under the hood of my little corner of the sky.

Deciding it would be faster, I just withdrew the feather, setting it down on the table with a clank. The item was still in the shape of a sword, having been forged into that form by Drexel presumably. I didn't really use those, and I'd been considering giving it to Callie to see what the Vault might do to it, but this seemed like a more urgent use, sadly.

He reached down, picking it up gingerly. "And you said you already have a matching template and bloodline?"

"Yeah, I deduced it myself," I said proudly. "You think that'll help?"

"I do," he said with a thoughtful nod. "I can use it to map the interaction between the artifact, your bloodline, and the timepiece. It should allow me to model a projected design outcome for the new template. You'll need to curate it carefully to make sure it fits the mechanism. We need to ensure that object, timepiece, and template are all perfectly aligned. Especially if you plant to build in an anchor point for other mechanisms like last time."

Grinning sheepishly, I shrugged. "I mean…I kind of was. I'd have three of them now. Or at least, Life Nova basically counts. I might need to anchor the template there when I design my timepiece for that one. But that leaves me with a need for a matching demon to use as a baseline. Mephistopheles fit the ruin phoenix well enough for us to brute force it, but this seems like it'll be more delicate."

"Your Waltz should do," he said with a shrug. "It has flame and space attributes. That should be plenty to work from." He nodded as if he was solidifying his idea. "Yes. With a stable template to reverse engineer, a similar object to map the trajectories, and a trial run with all the necessary attributes, I believe I can come up with something."

"Will the one hundred contribution points be enough?" I asked worriedly. "Wouldn't this be two research projects?"

He waved his hand dismissively. "Prototyping is a part of development. Upgrading your Waltz should be within bounds, considering we won't need to apply for too many materials for the work. Not NONE, mind you, but the ones I need will be reusable. I suspect a quantum state multiplier would be helpful here. Temporal resonance stabilizers for the chronoflow inducers…" he trailed off, clearly noting my blank look even through my mask.

"There are tools that can aid in Mythcrafting," he said dryly. "Shortcuts and analysis devices that can streamline the creation process. I didn't apply for any of them last time, because quite frankly your other projects didn't warrant the expense. Contribution points don't go on trees. But with an actual project budget, we can afford to be a bit extravagant, and especially if we're planning to complete two such fascinating constructions before the finals, we will most likely need it. You DO want them done by the finals, I assume?"

I consulted my instincts, knowing they wouldn't steer me wrong. "Yes," I said after a brief consideration. "By the finals is important."

He wrinkled his nose. "Must you rely on base instinctive divination in my presence? You could at least pretend to think critically. Allegra is a terrible influence. But no matter. You've stated the projected timeline, and we shall simply soldier on." He picked up the feather sword. "I assume you won't mind me holding onto this? I need to take some readings. I'll also need to examine YOU to establish baseline parameters related to your cosmic bloodline."

I nodded dazedly, but in my head, I was already all but blazing with excitement. Mephisto's Waltz was one of my earlier creations, but its use had somewhat waned over time. It was based on one of my mother's techniques, actually, and had been the first one I'd created when she explained technique creation to me years ago.

Sadly, over time, I had sort of left it in the dust. Teleportation through flame became more difficult as I arrived in more weighty places with higher Impact. The Waltz used Mephistopheles's destructive flames to essentially destroy the space between the start and end of my movement. It was powerful, but also inelegant, and it got harder the further I went.

But this…this could be a game changer. The Cosmic Phoenix bloodline was one of my most powerful and mysterious. It had strange interactions with space that even the Dean considered interesting. Imagining what a….a Cosmic Waltz would be capable of left me almost shivering with anticipation. Not to mention possible combinations with my other phoenix template demons, because this would mark several of them.

Professor Hawkins was looking at me with an amused smirk, but he didn't make any comments about my obvious enthusiasm. I supposed he was used to seeing this from students. "Sure," I told him as I passed the blade over. "I'll leave it with you tonight and head back over tomorrow for the testing. How do I transfer you the contribution points?"

"You don't," he said bluntly. "You're not a postgraduate student or a faculty member. You can't HAVE contribution points. Dean Harper will be holding them in trust, and I'll contact him to retrieve them. It's functionally the same process as you transferring them yourself, but there's no real mechanism for students to accrue contribution points. The instances of it happening are rare enough we've never seen the need to formalize it, and when it does the student in question mostly redeems them on the project in question."

I shrugged. "Fair enough, I trust you to make it happen."

He raised an eyebrow at that. "I suspect you don't realize the value of what you've offered, or you wouldn't be quite so cavalier. But in this case your trust is not misplaced. In fact, allowing me to fund the project will have benefits. My faculty access is far greater than most. If you had to put a title on it, you would probably call me an advanced professor. I get preferential deals on certain project assets and have access to locations and devices other faculty do not. Ones you would be unable to avail yourself of had you a way to directly fund this project."

"Well, I appreciate it," I told him respectfully. "I appreciate all the help you've given me."

"It is in my own best interest," he shrugged dismissively. "You present several unique research opportunities. Assisting you is simply the most efficient way to gain further access to those potential benefits in a timely manner."

"Timely manner," I said with a chuckle. "Was that a joke?"

He glowered at me. "It was not. I do not make puns. They're the lowest form of humor. Regardless, you may leave. I have an artifact to study and preliminary plans to make. My designs will no doubt require revision once we've completed the tests, but having a baseline will help me prioritize the most necessary tests and minimize waste. We only have so many contribution points to spend, and two iterations to complete with them. Best to maximize resources."

He's already seen my process up close, so he had more than enough knowledge of how my designs worked to begin the process on his own. I nodded gratefully and turned to leave, ready to head off and tell Callie the project was go.

"Oh, and make sure to bring your wife with you for the testing," he said lazily without looking up. "I'll sign off on an entrance pass. If she's going to be constructing the anchor material for the second iteration, I'll need to analyze her ability and how it works on similar objects. It would behoove us to start the process early."

Huh, apparently I was going to get to see the inversion of the feather after all. I couldn't wait to see what that ended up being. Maybe Callie could use it for her research while she still had access. It should be an interesting application of space, and might help her draw the attention of some of her department's professors. I couldn't wait to tell her all about this. My next few months were going to be both busy and exciting.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

The next day, Callie arrived early in the morning. I was beaming as I met her at the platform with a cup of coffee. After stocking up on my scrolls, we headed for the address Professor Hawkins had given me, both excited about the experiments to come.

"I can't believe I didn't even THINK of inverting the feather!" Callie gushed as we hurried down the street. "It's PERFECT. I can't wait to see what we end up with. I could learn so MUCH. The cosmic phoenix flame was instrumental in creating my Domain, and I just know that learning its inverse will help me take a step forward in my application of the Adherent Fire!"

I had to stifle a laugh at her enthusiasm. She'd been in mid search for an advisor to work with her on the Vault when I'd contacted her, and she was more than happy to put that search on hold to come do some research with my mentor. The two of them had never met, but she'd heard a ton about Professor Hawkins from me, and she was excited to see the real thing. Not to mention she was, despite her namecalling, as much of a nerd as I was about these things.

We arrived at the spot in question pretty early on, but I was more than a little surprised to see a familiar face waiting for us. "Elonwy?" I asked in surprise.

My friend turned to arch an eyebrow at me. "What? You thought I was growing out of the back of that counter or something? I CAN leave the exchange. And no way in hell was I going to miss a new research project. Your little independent study with Prof Hawkins was one thing, but this is a real funded project. The amount I can learn from this is immeasurable. Plus I might be able to sneak a few turns on the equipment when the Prof is busy with your tests."

"And the truth comes out," I said dramatically, raising the back of my wrist to my forehead. "Our friendship was a lie. You were just using me to farm benefits."

"Obviously," she said haughtily. "Dance for my contribution points, monkey."

I snorted at her. "Are we talking animals now?" I asked her snarkily, putting a hand over mine like I was pulling away a cloth and revealing my middle finger. "Look, a bird."

"Shane, do not openly mock S-rankers," my wife said tiredly. Elonwyn grinned smugly at me…until Callie continued. "You should be more subtle about it. They can't do anything to you if they don't have proof. And sometimes they don't even notice."

Elonwy let out a snort of laughter. "Oh I LIKE her. Now come along, children. We have a lot of ground to cover, and not much time. We'll be taking my car. It's parked right over here."

I blinked. I hadn't really SEEN any cars around here, and had just kind of assumed that parallel development had led them to take their transportation in a different way. Instead, she led us around the corner to…well…a car. It was an old looking beast too. Big heavy wheels in the back and a pair of fins coming off the body. The paint was a sort of shifting hue of winter colors, starting at the hood in matte black and then flowing through that to blue, then green, then purple at the tips.

"Get in," Elonwy said as she popped open the drivers side. I grimaced as a small tidal wave of papers flowed out from the seat, and she quickly shoveled them back inside with an embarrassed cough. "Watch my research," she said apologetically.

We did our best, but the whole car was buried in almost an avalanche of what appeared to be scrap paper with ideas written all over it. I picked up a few of them, and some of the ideas weren't even related to time. "Orange parka fashion statement?" I read aloud. "Blue snakes are sneakier. Invest in wombats."

"Shit, I forgot about that," Elonwy said with a wince. "Car, remind me to call my broker," she announced loudly.

Callie reached down to pick up another torn scrap with a message written across it. "Remember to install voice activation system in car," she read aloud, before flipping it over. "Remember to buy voice activation system, and pay extra for installation at purchase."

Elonwy's eyes widened. "Is that where that went? I thought I put that one in the visor. Wait, what DID I put in the visor then?" She reached up and opened it, drawing out yet another scrap of paper. This one was covered in huge bright red letters that red "DO NOT OPEN THE DOOR IN THE BASEMENT!" She paused, reading over it worriedly. "I…do not remember writing this. I DO remember leaving that door open when I left home this morning. That's concerning." She stared for a second then shrugged. "Oh well, I'll deal with that later."

"That seems like it might be important," I said weakly, trying not to flinch at the feeling of utter doom wafting off that note.

She waved me off. "It might not be from now. I leave myself notes from other timelines sometimes, I might be talking about opening it later on. I'll just close it when I get home. I can take care of anything in my house…probably. Nothing in those notes is almost ever serious. I mean, there was the plague of Second eating Scarabs that got out of the box I found in the Heartbeat Temple, but I don't have any mysterious containers lying around right now. I'm almost positive."

"How are you this disorganized?" I asked worriedly. "You run the exchange, we should all be dead."

She rolled her eyes. "I'm living at least eleven different timelines right now, Shane. Some of them are moving at different speeds. One of them is yesterday. Two others are happening next year. It gets hectic, ok?"

"Wait, is that your ability?" I prodded with interest. "Some kind of temporal omnipresence?"

"No, temporal folding is a technique," she said dismissively. "It's an advanced discipline."

I remembered that teacher who taught it, and how I'd thought it might be relevant to Limbo. Sadly, I didn't think I'd be able to take it. I still hadn't had my first class with the Dean yet, actually, I needed to make sure to go to that. Professor Hawkins would probably try to get me out of it, but Dean Gibbons was one of the most knowledgeable temporal engineers in existence. Even a minute of his time was priceless. Or rather, pricey, because I'd already paid and it wasn't cheap.

Elonwy put the car in gear as we fumbled around for seatbelts. Wearing them seemed pointless given our strength and gear, but she insisted, so we buckled up. Within seconds, we were peeling out, and I had to slam my eyes shut as the world outside the car…bent. It was a strange and deeply unsettling thing to witness, as the images splintered into a million stop motion captures of overlapping time, and it was burned into my brain.

I groaned and gripped my head, and Elonwy hissed in sympathy. "Ah, sorry. I forgot to warn you. Four dimensional travel can be a bit rough on the uninitiated."

"Wait, this car travels in time?" I asked in confusion.

"Well, it travels in time as a dimension in space," she corrected. "The fourth dimension is still a spatial construct, there's just temporal overlap. There are spatial ramifications to its access that I can't really explain without getting extremely theoretical, but yes, this car is my thesis project. It's ALSO the only way we're going to get to the lab in any reasonable amount of time. It's not close." I kept my eyes closed, and covered Callie's face despite knowing she REALLY wanted to look. Finally, after what seemed like a few moments, the car jerked. "Alright, we're here," she said casually. "You can look now."

I uncovered my eyes with a light wince, but nothing happened. We were no longer moving. Now we were parked…in a neighborhood.

Specifically, along a street lined with nearly identical houses, each one of which had a nearly identical mailbox out front of it. Nearly because they each had a slightly different number on them, and the one we were currently parked at was listed as number ten thousand four hundred and seventy six.

"Where are we?" I asked cautiously as we climbed out.

"The Nested Continuum," she said grimly. "This is technically one house. It's been put through an infinite potential loop by the Dean. It's one of his experimental labs. He abandoned it a few centuries ago once he finished gathering data, but he ran so many different experiments here that the houses ended up as storage for most of the high end equipment in the department."

I looked up at the house. "Interesting," I said as I fought the urge to trigger Kronos and look at the timescape here. Considering what had happened when I boosted that form, I was pretty sure I should NOT do that. Instead I followed Elonwy around the house to what appeared to be a large, flat grey pair of doors set diagonally into the ground at the base of the house. She knelt down, fishing out a key, and jammed it into the metal without having an actual lock present.

The doors swung open soundlessly, revealing a set of stone steps leading down into darkness. Without saying a word, Elonwy strode off into the hole in the ground.

"Come and meet us in this creepy dungeon," I muttered. "Where nobody can hear you scream."

Callie snorted, knowing I wasn't really worried, but she threaded her fingers through mine anyway. We descended the stairs together, and as soon as we entered the darkness, it sort of…consumed us. Like it was some kind of straw sucking us up and spitting us out the other side, but it all happened in a few steps.

We arrived in a large open room full of strange devices. The walls were lined with shelves, some containing glass jars or boxes with unusual things in them. Organs that acted like working parts, energy that shifted along a spectrum as if it was dying and being reborn, flames that weren't moving at all, frozen in time before our eyes. Professor Hawkins was standing at one of the machines checking some readings I couldn't parse.

When we entered, he looked up and caught our eyes. "Oh, you're here," he said absently. "Excellent. Here, take this," he flicked his hand and my cosmic phoenix blade shot out and thumped into the wall a few inches from my face. I swallowed and grabbed it, trying to pull it free and being forced to genuinely strain to do so.

I passed it to Callie, who deposited it immediately in her Domain before turning to take in the sight of my advisor doing what appeared to be mad science. "So…" she said lightly. "Nice to meet you."

"Likewise," he said without looking up. "The boy never shuts up about you. I'm certain you're a lovely person. Apologies for my current state of distraction."

"Not at all," she assured him. "I was expecting it. So, you want to see what my Domain does?"

He nodded. "I do, it certainly seems novel enough. If the functions are complete enough, we can attempt to use your method as a foundation for the form in question. Which means you'll need to present me with a copied artifact to analyze."

"Sure," she said excitedly. "I can do that. And I'm excited to get your analysis on this one in particular. I don't suppose you'd be willing to share your findings?"

"By all means," he shrugged. "I'm not certain the data will be legible without an understanding of the machine, but I assume Shane can parse it for you over a long enough time period." He tapped a few more things. "Now," he said as he turned around. "It is time to begin. Present the inversion, and we will commence the experiment." Somehow, that was WAY more ominous than the creepy dark hole in the ground. Go figure.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

Despite how ominous the Professor made the experiment sound, the first thing he wanted to do was, obviously, test the sword. He had us square up in a cleared area of the basement, and I triggered my staff and Mornax, making sure my defenses FAR outstripped the bounds of what even the cheapest artifact could do in the hands of a peak C-ranker.

The new sword was…weird. It looked very similar, except it was reddish purple. It burned with a weird kind of destabilizing light. Looking at it made me uncomfortable in a way I couldn't pin down.

Honestly, it kind of reminded me of the lantern shield in a way. Not in terms of attribute, but more the general malice of the thing. This might be a better comparison than I had expected, actually.

"You ready for this?" my wife asked gleefully as she whirled the absurdly powerful artifact. "I'm not going to go easy on you just because your mentor is here. Despite her words being for me, her eyes weren't leaving the blade, fixed on the flickering red of the glowing sword and its almost unnatural pulsing.

I just chuckled. "Professor? Elonwy? We good to start?"

The Professor held up a finger, then reached up to smack the side of the machine he'd been fiddling with. It whined and spat out a puff of smoke and he nodded. "Now we are. You may begin." Before we started work, I called Dantalion from Gehenna, sending him over to study the machine and the results that the Professor was working on as we tested. I even triggered my staff's boost a second time, making sure Dan was pushed up to tier nine for his study session, just in case.

Callie surged forward, wings fluttering, body flowing from one movement to the next. She looked…ghostly. Almost surreal. I could see that she'd been working on applying her spatial manipulation to her sword work. I hadn't seen this little trick before, so it must have been new. What was DEFINITELY new, however, was the strange sensation I felt as I moved to avoid the blow.

I felt like I was trying to dodge gravity. Not in the sense that it was heavy, but in the sense that her strike was EVERYWHERE. It closed in from all angles, seemingly taking up way more space than it was supposed to and I grimaced as the blade clashed against my rocky flesh with no possible means of avoidance.

"What the fuck was THAT?" I asked in disbelief. "That was…were you attacking me from a hundred angles at once?"

"Not exactly," said Elonwy as she approached to examine the blade where it pulsed eerily in my wife's hand. "If I don't miss my guess, that's some sort of spatial singularity effect." She glanced at Professor Hawkins. "Am I close?"

He looked up from his position studying the device. "Yes and no. It's not a singularity, but it is a sort of…collapse. The original form of that attribute expands space in a stable manner. This one seems to CONDENSE space in an unstable one. Imagine the space surrounding a person was crumpled up in a ball and hurled at them. Everything collapses inward, using the blade as a vector. All directions become the strike as it closes in around you."

Callie looked almost apoplectic with joy. "That's AMAZING! Shane, hold still and let me do it again!"

And so she did. Again. And again. And again. She moved like a ghost, slashing at me from blind spots and weak points in my perception, not that it mattered because as soon as she started to attack all I could perceive was the sword. After a few more tests, she started trying to infuse her Adherent Fire, which worked surprisingly well, but the more she tried to wean herself off depending on the inverted phoenix sword, the less it worked.

"Damn it," she snapped. "I don't need an attribute for this. I CAN recreate it with the one I have, just watch."

She flicked her fingers and the sword vanished, replaced by Oblique, the inverted form of her soul weapon. Without missing a beat, Elonwy appeared, holding out a hand, and Callie dropped the original phoenix blade into her hand. Elonwy nodded. "We've still got the monitoring equipment up and running, so I can give you the readings of your attempts as you work. Do you want to study the results we already have?'

"No need," I said with a grin. "I've already had someone on it." I glanced at Dan. "You get enough to distill some of that for her?"

My information demon nodded. "I did. At least some of it. I'm lucky I was operating at peak efficiency, or I might not have managed even this much." He glanced at Callie. "How should we do this?"

"I have an idea," I said excitedly. "Hold on." I reached into Gehenna again, withdrawing Owen and calling out Angelic Bond. "Alright, do you three think you could make something work here?" I asked them in an eager tone. "If Dan could download the info he's got into the Overlay and then Angelic Bond could transfer it directly to Callie? Like a training program."

"It IS information," Dan said slowly. "Owen himself contains an information attribute, as you're aware. My own capabilities are almost entirely based around that attribute, from what I can surmise. You've seen the things I can accomplish within that purview."

I had. Dan could do more than just analyze data. He could INTERFACE with information. Back during the succession war, he'd actually manipulated a computer using his abilities with data. I hadn't had much use for it since, because I didn't interact much with machines, but it was a clear demonstration of exactly how much potential he had with the information attribute, if nothing else.

"I just wish I had timepieces done for all of you," I groused. "I could create and Arch Demon for this exact purpose."

"Do NOT do that," Callie snapped from where she was standing. "That would be a huge waste of time and effort. If they can't help me as is, I'll just deal with it on my own. Don't waste one of what I imagine are limited slots on this. I assume they're limited?"

I frowned, thinking about it. "I don't know," I said slowly. "My powers usually work better with significant numbers. I don't think there's a limit on Arch Demons, but I do think I shouldn't make too many. Either nine or thirteen. Either way, you do have a point." I glanced at Dan. "See what you can do, and if it doesn't work you can just upload the info directly to Callie."

Dan nodded, and then got to work. It didn't actually end up being too hard, and he was able to connect to Owen's information attribute and use him and Angelic Bond as a medium to upload the processed information he'd gotten from the machine.

Then we were back to training. Callie raised Oblique in the same stance as earlier, and then flowed forward again in that same ghostly way. As she attacked, her blade swept up and I braced for the attack. My forearm snapped up out of reflex, and I deflected the strike with a clang.

Callie backed off, watching me carefully, eyes gliding over inputs I couldn't see. She tried again, and this time I felt the blade close in on my hand specifically as it got close. The next strike closed in on my whole arm, then my side. Finally, after about twenty minutes, she lashed out with Oblique and the space around me all collapsed, narrowing my field of vision to the blade in a way that made it inescapable.

The slash sparked off my armor without even striking my stone flesh, but it was still impressive. We turned to the Professor. "Did those readings help at all?"

"They did," he acknowledged. "You are the originator of the inversion process, so tracking how you adapt your attacks manually to the new application gives me insight into the necessary energy patterns you'll use when inverting the new artifact. I'm somewhat surprised you managed to recreate it so easily, I admit."

"Attributes make things easier, but they aren't necessary," Callie shrugged. "You can use a general destruction attribute to destroy a table just as easily as a specialized table destroying one, right? Shane managed teleportation with destruction when he made the Waltz. That proves you can reach the same conclusion via a different route, and there are a lot of similarities between the Adherent Fire and this new attribute. I just had to bridge the gap."

The professor nodded. "Exactly right. Mythcrafting is a specialized means of achieving goals, but not the only means. Shane's ancestor's Wish skill proves that extreme precision of application can accomplish as much as dedicated Mythcrafting under the right circumstances.

"Of course, that's not ultimately a useful route in the long term," he cautioned. "Remember that Mythcrafting is ultimately an expression of knowledge to prepare for the construction of your Worldforce. Skills or techniques, they're all just starter methods to learn to construct your eventual divinity. Taking another route to replicate a technique without having the attribute is a clever workaround when you need to use it in combat, but it ultimately fails to produce the same benefits."

Callie nodded solemnly. "Understood. I won't make it a habit. Still this technique is going to be damned useful combined with my swordplay. I'm going to call it Certitude."

"So," I asked my mentor as he picked up and examined the sword again. "Is that enough? You have the readings from the duplicate, the readings from the original, the readings from Callie adjusting her technique. Will you be able to help design the timepiece?"

"Not yet," he cautioned. "There's still one more factor that needs to be accounted for. The body tempering manual. Part of the process we need to recreate is the connection between the bloodline, the object, and the timepiece. It's vital that you be able to create a template and use the object as a focus. Luckily, you already have a template made for this one. If we can deduce the signature of the energy of your bloodline, we can reverse engineer the linking process, and we'll be able to create a timepiece that can use the object as an anchor while still maintaining the ability to create a viable template."

I groaned. I'd forgotten about this part. "Right, the bloodline analysis," I said grimly. "I don't suppose that's going to involve a quick scan with a painless light scanner that will easily get all the information you need in moments?"

"We have one of those," he said with a shrug. "You can use it if you want. But it's not going to be as through as a proper bloodline sequencer. Those are a bit more…invasive. But they work. And it still won't take too long. Just a few minutes. Of course, those minutes will be excruciatingly painful, but that's the price you pay for progress."

Sighing, I glared at him. "Why did I know you were going to say something like that? Ok, where is this bloodline sequencer? I'd like to see whatever torture device you're about to subject me to."

"It is NOT a torture device," he said with dignity. "And it's over there." He pointed across the room and my jaw dropped as I followed his finger.

"Is that an IRON MAIDEN?" I ground out, pointing at the coffin like machine with long needles dotting the interior. "How exactly is that NOT a torture device. Iron maidens are LITERALLY designed for torture."

He shrugged. "It's not an iron maiden, though I admit there are similarities in the design philosophies. You'll be fine. It won't last too long, and you'll barely feel it." He walked over and pulled the coffinlike device open further, and I winced at the bloodcurdling screech it emitted as it slowly opened. He ignored my further intensified glare, turning to prepare the device. I was not looking forward to this.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

I had to strip off my armor before climbing into the bloodline sequencer, unfortunately. Surprisingly, the needles actually didn't hurt that badly going in. They were freakishly sharp and the actual piercing action was pretty quick. I was relieved it wasn't as bad as advertised…until the sequencer turned on.

After that, things got murky. There was a lot of screaming, some begging, I think somebody cried. It might have been me, but it was really high pitched, so I was secretly pretending in my head that someone had let their baby crawl into the cellar.

It really didn't last that long though, and when I was finished, Callie helped me out of the sequencer and back into my armor. By the time I was redressed, the pinpricks were all healed by my enhanced regeneration. I was still sore, and I grimaced as I dropped down on the bench at the edge of the room. "Well, that sucked," I groaned to my mentor. "That better have been worth it."

"It was," he assured me. "With the last parameters ready, I can enter all the data into the Quantum State Multiplier. It'll use The Nested Continuum as a brute force analytical tool, dispersing the calculations over a countably infinite number of potential variations of this reality to help us refine the design. I'll be doing the design work on the final iteration myself, but having the multiplier hash out all the boilerplate design elements will allow me to cross reference with my work to identify problem spots ahead of time."

Nodding vaguely, I tried to look like I was paying attention and not about to pass out. Luckily, I don't think the professor cared much. He snagged a chip from the side of the iron maiden-like sequencer, carrying it over to a new device that looked like nothing so much as a microwave.

Popping the chip in, he snagged a chord from the machine he'd been using to analyze the swords and plugged it into the back, then gestured me over to stand next to him. Popping the door of the microwave thing open, he stuck the sword inside, then slammed the door and hit a bunch of buttons.

There was a low thump and a groan as the lights around us began to flicker. Inside the microwave, a spark of blue light started to glimmer, then surge. As we watched, the power was sucked out of the whole place and into the Quantum State Multiplier. Right before our eyes, the sword lifted off the bed of the microwave, floating up into the air, and sort of…warped. A million shattered timelines overlapped the image, not just of the blade, but of the space around it.

While the sword shrank, the nearby space was filled with theoretical parts and mechanical devices, clashing into each other in a sea of light and sound as they warred for supremacy, like they were battling it out to see which part was best.

It only took about fifteen minutes for all the parts to combine themselves in the optimum fashion around the sword. The blade itself remained outside the watch, with just a hole in the center for it to be inserted with Brad's ability. "You, come over and examine this," the Professor said as he snapped his fingers toward Dan.

My information demon didn't need to be told twice, he hurried over to begin scanning the timepiece. Meanwhile, I just stared at it as he studied, trying my best to memorize it myself for the process of creation.

"So what do you think?" Callie asked from beside me. "Can you do it today? After that mess earlier I wouldn't blame you for waiting. We can try tomorrow."

That actually had been my plan up to now, but after some time thinking it over I'd decided against it. "This is the easy part," I said with a shake of my head. "Don't forget we have a limited amount of time in the Continuum. My contribution points can only do so much. He needs to study the process of me creating the timepiece here so he can reverse engineer it and compare as he adjusts the next iteration."

"It won't be as difficult as you might think," called Professor Hawkins as he approached. "I was already planning to suggest it. Not because of the hurry, mind, but because there are several devices here that can interface with your Domain to act as a guide for the creation process and enable me to not only take more detailed measurements, but aid you in production more completely. It should make the process much smoother, and I can step in to make alterations if necessary."

"I thought the Quantum State Multiplier would just make it perfect?" I asked with a raised brow.

He shook his head. "Mythcrafting is based on imagery and intention. Mythology is a matter of human perception, so it can't really be calculated to exactitude. No matter how high quality your equipment, there will always be a difference between a technologically designed blueprint and one that came from a real mind. Humans have instinct and creativity. That's why this design is aligned with your other timepieces at only thirteen movements. It gives you the chance to refine it yourself over time."

"And that's why you're doing the second iteration yourself," I realized. "Because the Quantum State Multiplier can't make the necessary adaptations."

"Of course," he snorted. "The QSM does the brute force calculations to get them out of the way. It gives me a starting point, but how to apply those data sets will be up to me. The only reason we can use it for this part is because you've already done all the groundwork. You have the template completed, have the bloodline, and you're using the original artifact as the foundation. All the variables have been removed."

That made sense, if they had a machine that could do this kind of thing easily there would be no reason to teach it at all. "Alright," I said as I stood and stretched. I was feeling better after a bit of rest. My absurd Vitality and my regeneration made it easy for me to shrug off most things that weren't a serious life threatening danger. "So where is this device?"

He led me across the lab to a small futuristic looking table. It was dark blue with strips of glowing white crystal inlaid into it in strange circuitous patterns. He slapped a palm on it. "You'll take this into your Domain to begin the process. I'll access it from out here and communicate through the device. It's designed to interface with Mythcrafting constructs, and is especially well suited to the style I've been teaching you."

"Got it," I said as I leaned down to pick the thing up. "I can just enter my Domain here, right?"

"Of course," he snorted. "There isn't anywhere in this academy that might be destabilized by accessing a Domain. Spatial irregularity of that level is usually reserved for things like traps or defenses meant to keep out high rankers."

I'd actually seen that done a few times back at the beginning of my journey, though it wasn't aimed at Domains. Still, it was interesting to see the similarities.

Stepping back, I entered my Domain. Stepping inside with the table rather than projecting it was easier, and I appeared inside the throne room, making my way into the conference room behind it where I was planning to do my work.

Nine Phoenix and Brad were waiting for me there, and Dan arrived not long after. "Alright, so everyone knows what we're doing here?"

After getting the nod, I set up the crafting table next to the larger conference table that was already there. "Ok Shane, now you'll need to synchronize with the harmonic crystal relays," said Professor Hawkins voice through the table. "Those shiny strips are made to absorb your attributes. Once you've completed that step, I want you to slip one of your mental parallels in there. Remote control skills like that are an excellent substitute for more dedicated Mythcrafting methods."

Nodding along, I followed his instructions. First was the attributes. The plans had identified the attribute compositions we would get the best use out of in this case, though only generally. Like he'd said, he'd fine tune it as we went. Still, it meant I knew what we needed for the most part. The cosmic phoenix attribute, a general spatial attribute, speed, motion, momentum, there were a lot of minor attributes that could be used to create strengthened alloys (so to speak) of attributes that would make for better parts.

For normal projects, we would try to keep the number of attributes small, but since we were using a real artifact as the core, we wanted to synergize the design as much as possible. Real objects were more complicated than most Mythcrafted constructs, which meant more attributes were necessary to create a proper facsimile.

Once I had loaded all the attributes in, I split off a parallel with Piece of Mind and slipped it inside as well. From there, it was time to begin. I focused on the Mythcrafting process, beginning to construct my elements, and…I was blown away.

Normally, I needed serious focus throughout my entire construction process to maintain the integrity of my parts, but with this thing, even a brief flicker of attention would create the foundation and then I could just add to it. My elements were held in perfect stasis, without any need for input once I'd established them, but were responsive when I needed them.

The Professor watched and weighed in, adding notes on what I was doing and micromanaging my designs at some points, while going silent and allowing me complete creative freedom at others. I could see what he'd meant earlier, about the machine not having instincts. Certain design choices just felt…wrong, and I changed them almost instinctively, with no pushback from Professor Hawkins.

We breezed through the design, and it felt so much smoother and more natural than my last attempts. Mephisto's Waltz had arrived during the process, and he also weighed in when asked. The Professor consulted him on several design choices as we went, making alterations to more accurately capture the essence of the demon in question.

Finally, we reached a critical point. "Brad," I called to the young demon. "Open the pit," he stepped forward, raising his hands, and a dark void formed in the air in front of the timepiece. With no hesitation, I snagged the cosmic phoenix feather blade and just shoved it into the hole in the air. After that, we went back to work, altering and adjusting the device to make sure it was holding up like we needed before the final step.

"Alright, Wally," I asked Mephisto's Waltz (because Wally was a better name, it just sounded fast). "You ready for this?"

He confirmed, and I nodded to Brad, who began the process again. Once more, a pit opened, but this one opened in the air in front of Wally himself rather than in front of the timepiece. Reaching out, I gently lifted the timepiece off the table and set it into the hole, then pulled back to let Brad close it.

As before, there was a sort of…shift. I could tell it was adjusting internally, and I watched worriedly as he twitched and shuddered, before it finally ended. Mephisto's Waltz…no, Cosmic Waltz, had officially completed his transformation. He'd even been boosted a tier to tier seven, putting him almost up to date with my other top performers.

Having finished, I felt a wave of weakness overtake me, and I dropped into a nearby chair. I heard a wild laugh through the table, and the Professor's voice erupted forth like a trumpet of salvation. "It WORKED!" he cackled madly. "It worked perfectly. I have all the data I need. It'll take me a month to complete the preliminary designs, and then we'll need to dial it in. Now, return that crafting table and you can go. I have work to do."

AN:// Early chapter happy friday lol.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

We left the Nested Continuum immediately after the experiment. Despite knowing what was going on there, the whole place gave me a sort of creepy, mysterious vibe. I was glad to be out of there, and as soon as Elonwy dropped us off outside my residence and vanished, I headed inside to show Callie around my place, glad to be back in my own territory where nothing was waiting to infringe on my normalcy.

Which, obviously, was why when I arrived at my door, I found a pair of strange boxes waiting for me that I'd never seen before.

I froze in my tracks as I approached. "Huh," I said, staring down at the two boxes with interest. "Never seen those before. How about you?" I kept my tone nonchalant, but I had a weird feeling. My instincts weren't telling me I was in danger, but they weren't telling me I wasn't. It was a strange sense of almost deja vu for my danger sense.

Callie shook her head. "Nope, but then, this isn't my major. They probably aren't aimed at m-" she stopped as the boxes changed. Before our eyes, a series of silvery letters scrawled themselves gracefully across the dark surface of the box. Shane Wyndham. Calliope Wyndham. "Oh," she said suspiciously. "Nevermind."

Which was very dark. The wood it was made of (if it was wood at all, it was hard to tell), was so dark it drank the light, seeming to almost highlight the tracery of decorative silver flourish behind it like the void of space emphasized the stars. Originally it was a smooth black surface with a frame along the edges of the top and side panels made of inlaid silver, but once Callie had noted the absence of a reference to her, the names had just written themselves on the boxes.

The thing that bothered me about them took me a second to pin down. I'd seen lots of magic and artifacts, and they'd done a lot of things. These boxes, by all rights, should just be more of the same. So it took me a second to identify what was throwing me off.

I triggered Dantalion, scanning the artifacts, and it clicked into place without much trouble. Black boxes.

The term "black box" was ubiquitous. I had no idea where it came from, or where I'd even heard it. But at some point, someone had started using that phrase as a euphemism for inscrutable technology, and it had stuck. But despite having heard it plenty of times, I had never seen ACTUAL black boxes that defied analysis.

These things were LITERAL black boxes. Even Dantalion couldn't see any information about them. They were just fancy, creepy looking boxes that had seemingly come from nowhere.

I glanced at my wife. "These aren't your other two artifacts, are they?"

She shook her head. "Definitely not. I already got those. Besides which, why would one be addressed to you? No, these are new. And a mystery. Do you think we should open them? I don't get a dangerous feeling, but my instincts aren't as sharp as yours."

"MY instincts aren't as sharp as mine," I said dryly. "Not in this case. I'm getting conflicting impressions here, but if I had to guess, whatever was doing to the boxes to scrub them of information is interfering. I'll open mine. My armor should protect me, and I'll use Mornax just to be safe. A-rank and everything. Give me some space."

Callie didn't look happy, but she knew that if anything could get through my armor and Mornax at A-rank, there was little to no chance that either of us could do anything about it. She backed away to make some room.

Once she was backed up a bit, I triggered Mornax and boosted it with my staff, then inched forwards cautiously and knelt down to open the box with my name on it.

I blinked as I stared down at something I hadn't expected to see. A mask. An intricate masquerade mask carved from that same black wood with the same silver tracework. Leaning against the mask was a black envelope with my name on it in silver lettering. I opened it carefully, wary of traps, but the inside was just a pressed, embossed paper card with that same flowing script.

Dear Mr. Wyndham,

Through meritorious acts of service or daring feats of intrigue, you have caught the attention of a select group of students and faculty dedicated to the identification and enrichment of talented seeds of potential.

Attached is a mask that acts as an entrance pass to a small gathering being held in Common City tonight at the stroke of midnight. Please arrive on time, properly attired, and in possession of both your mask and this invitation. We look forward to making your acquaintance.

Sincerely, The Lazarus Club

I reached up and handed the card to Callie, who took it and read over it, eyebrow going up. "Ok…well I can't tell if that's flattering, condescending, or worrying."

"Yes," I replied bluntly.

She laughed. "Fair enough. Seems like they're some kind of talent scout secret society. I'm guessing they reached out because of your mid term grades. Though the timing is a little weird. Maybe they were waiting to get us both together here? What do you think they actually…do? And should we even bother going?"

"If I had to guess," I said with a sigh. "They're investors. Based on what they didn't say, they do favors for up and comers and probably expect them to be returned later."

"Makes sense," she grimaced. "The boxes are a demonstration, I take it?"

I nodded. "The fact that they knew you were here, when, and could arrange these at exactly the right time is interesting. The boxes themselves even moreso. They must have someone from the crafting faculty. I don't think a mortal ascendant could have made these. Dan isn't a normal analysis skill, and he got NOTHING from these."

She grimaced. "More than that, if we got these, chances are good some of the others did too. We don't have a way to get in touch with all of them in short order, so it's not like we can call a meeting about it. There's no way Bethy isn't going to show up," she sighed. "And she'll probably bring her siblings, and maybe the butterfly girl."

"I'm more worried about Benny," I frowned. "If the faculty involved are from the crafting departments, the chances of him getting tapped will be higher. He hasn't told me much about his situation, but I think he's been making a splash. The science he learned from Sebastian is odd and probably unusual even for this place. Not to mention he has that dragon with him. Though I still don't know where he's keeping it."

Benny had confided that he'd brought Toast with him on this trip last time we'd talked, but since Toast was a whole ass dragon and I hadn't seen him, I wasn't sure what mechanism he'd used to transport the dracolich here.

"The point is, we have to go," she said with a grimace. "But should we like…tell someone? Elonwy and Hawkins are at the Continuum, but we might be able to get in touch. They may know more about this organisation than we do. In fact, I can almost promise they do. Going in blind seems reckless."

I nodded. She was right. We had to go, simply because after getting this project running, I'd finally realized how many resources we could have been using to make our advancement faster here. Even a hundred contribution points had been enough to streamline MONTHS of work to help me create Cosmic Waltz and prep for my next upgrade. If this organization was faculty inclusive like they said, it could be the key to getting more contribution points.

Those points would allow us to not only help our friends get access to all the various ascension thesis versions, but massively speed up our progress to the next rank, something I highly suspected I was going to need soon, though I couldn't put my finger on why.

I walked over to my bed, pulling open a drawer in the end table and taking out a small bronze device the size of my palm. It was covered in dials and knobs, and I started turning them, flicking through settings until I found the one I wanted. Then I pushed down, depressing a trio of buttons that caused the gears inside the device to whir. Along the outside edges, tiny bulbs flickered and there was a hiss of static. Finally a voice crackled out from the device. "What do you WANT, Shane? I told you to leave me alone to work, that doesn't mean go somewhere else and call me from a distance."

"What do you know about the Lazarus Club?" I asked bluntly, knowing he wasn't in the mood for pleasantries when he got like this.

There was a pause. "Did you get tapped?" he asked suspiciously. "That seems…fast. They usually don't bother with first years. I suppose you did make a splash at the mid terms. Very well, what do you want to know?"

"Who and what are they?" I asked. "And should I trust them?"

"Of course not," he snorted. "Never trust anyone. Terrible habit. But the Lazarus Club are MOSTLY benevolent. They are a sort of favor trading circle. Get their hooks into impressionable students and make them dependent so they can call in favors later. Their membership is…extensive. Most of the professors were Lazarus."

I nodded. That was pretty close to what I'd expected, at least the basics. Though I was curious about one thing. "So does that mean they'll make us stay or kick us out if they find out we're not sticking around? None of my people are planning to do the full four years here, as you know."

"I know," he said with a laugh. "But it doesn't matter. The Lazarus Club is more interested in sowing karma than anything else. Personally I disdain karmic manipulation, messy stuff, but I can't claim it isn't effective. Joining creates a karmic connection with the other members. If you run into one out in the world you'll be compelled to help them."

I grimaced. Karma. The Judgement Pope, one of my grandfather's fellow disciples, was a karmic manipulator. I didn't like it much either. Messy was a good way to describe karma. Luckily, back home at least it was a rare attribute. Judgement was the only person I'd really heard of who toyed with karma, and he was on good terms with the family, so I hadn't had any trouble with it personally, but I was wary of the ability all the same.

"What do you think I should do?" I asked my mentor. Honestly, I really did think having access to a powerful backer here before leaving would help us make the most of our time. We were planning to dip out after the first year, and I doubted we'd have time to really mine the academy for all the benefits it could give us at the current rate.

Even with help from the Lazarus Club, it seemed unlikely we'd get everything we could before leaving, but maximizing our gains should be a priority. But then again, forming karmic entanglements was dangerous, especially to people who had access to karmic abilities.

"I say go for it," he said, in a voice so uncaring I could HEAR the shrug. "Karma is an esoteric discipline, but something most karmic manipulation specialists don't like to admit is that it works less concretely on people who don't fear it. Karma is, even more than most abilities, highly subjective, and the amount of respect you place upon the karmic ties in question has a great deal to do with how much influence they have over you."

I laughed at that. "So your advice is to take their money and then not worry about it?"

"Basically," he confirmed. "In any case, be careful about making further agreements there. Much like any other society, the Lazarus Club is not a monolith. Side deals happen all the time, and THOSE can be problematic." With that final warning, he hung up, leaving me sitting there holding the bronze device pensively. Well…that hadn't been ominous or anything.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

"You look ridiculous," my wife said bluntly as we got dressed for the event. "I can't believe you're going to go to a party dressed like that."

I put a hand on my chest in faux shock. "Me? But I look magnificent. I have all this fancy armor. And I'm wearing the mask they gave me specifically for the event. I can't imagine why I wouldn't be cutting the most dashing of figures."

"Because you're wearing their mask on TOP of the one you already had on," she said with an exasperated attempt at hiding a smirk. "They're supposed to conceal things about who we are. YOU are a six and a half foot tall behemoth in A-rank armor wearing two masks stacked on top of each other. You might as well wear a name tag." I brightened, a piece of paper appearing in my hand with a pen, which Callie slapped out of my grip. "NO NAME TAGS!"

I laughed as I retrieved the pen and paper, stashing them back in my ring. "You never let me have any fun," I complained dramatically. "But fine, I'll be good. Besides, Bethy will be there, so there's a ninety percent chance something will be on fire before the night ends even if I'm on my best behavior."

We headed out to the platform, making our way to Common City directly. We'd been assured in a note under the masks that the Lazarus Club would handle travel arrangements. We wouldn't be required to spend days off or get permissions. Sure enough, they let us right through. We continued our discussion as we walked, with me tapping into Murmur just in case.

"I wish that wasn't true," she grimaced. "But at least TRY to play nice. These people are dangerous. I know you're used to clashing head on with anyone who starts trouble, but not everyone here is going to respond to that. You always let me do the political stuff, so can I handle our introduction?" Through the bond, I could tell she was mostly terrified I'd be informal to some scary Overgod and get us swatted like flies. Which…was probably fair given my recent interaction with Harper.

I wasn't rude or hostile, really, but I didn't like to bow and scrape. I could also tell that she was picking up my own worries on that subject, and that we were kind of feeding into each other in an anxiety loop. I grimaced and clamped down on the bond, just enough to break the spiral.

She blinked at me. "Huh…" she said slowly. "I didn't know it could do that."

"Neither did I," I admitted. "I think it might be a side effect of Angelic Bond hitting tier eight. He's been growing consistently, getting lots of use. It makes sense that we're discovering new tricks and even a few traps. We'll need to watch out for that." The path to our destination wasn't complicated, and I remembered it easily enough.

"Fantastic," she drawled. "Because downsides to skill growth was exactly what I wanted to hear about tonight."

Chuckling, I stopped as we turned a corner, arriving in front of a large flowing building with a domed roof. "Alright, this is the place. Is everyone else here yet?"

Behind us, I heard a loud electric sting of organ music, and the sky flickered with lightning as thunder shook the street nearby. I turned as a voice boomed. "I'M BACK BITCHES!" in a sensational explosion of sound that was all too familiar to me.

"You've never been here before," I responded mildly as Bethy melted from the shadows.

She pouted at me. "Well I can't say 'I have arrived, bitches'," she complained. "That sounds stupid." She whirled to glare at a corner. "And did I say you could stop hitting the thunder sheet. You're totally ruining my entrance."

A girl stepped from the dark, red eyes blazing with barely suppressed hatred. "This is STUPID!" the delicately featured blonde snapped. "You're the worst!"

"Daddy said you have to listen to me," Bethy said imperiously. "Otherwise I can beat you up a bunch. Or have Shane do it. A proper vampire is always mindful of their surroundings, and they know that a good entrance is the key to success. This is why I'm Daddy's favorite and you and Will got sent here to be my gofers."

"We are NOT your gofers," the girl, who must be Tamsin, hissed in outrage. "We're your bodyguards."

Bethy snorted. "You guys aren't even as tough as me. I could totally kick your ass even though you're B-rank. You're the worst vampire ever. And I'm gonna break through soon too. Once I'm B-rank you guys will have to be nice to my friends all the time, not just when I'm watching. Otherwise I'll just eat you both."

I wasn't sure what being B-rank had to do with that, but I grimaced and tried to interject. This wasn't the place for the current discussion. "Bethy, maybe you guys can settle this another time. Like any other time. Literally. We're about to walk into the lions den here."

"There's gonna be LIONS?" she squealed excitedly.

"Turn of phrase, sweetie," Callie chimed in fondly. "There won't be actual lions. Probably. I don't see why there would be, though I guess no one definitely shot it down so it IS possible…"

I groaned. "Do NOT fall into her rhythm. This is how we ended up with that cult. No Bethy, no lions. But there WILL be potential enemies. And I could use you on our side against them. Especially when the others show up. Do you know if Chelsea is coming?"

"She got an invite," she confirmed. "And she should be on her way. Applesauce and Mel are coming too."

I tried not to choke at this most recent outrageous name. He wasn't even here this time…or so I thought, until I heard an outraged choking sound from behind me. I rolled my eyes, turning to find Abel stepping into the streetlights with Mel, Benny, and Jessie. "That's not even a NAME," he accused Bethy passionately.

I nodded to Benny. "So, they're inviting anybody to this thing, huh?"

"Well sure," he said lazily. "How else would you have ended up here. I assume they need someone unnecessarily tall to use as a hat rack. Speaking of your ridiculous head, are you aware you're wearing two masks right now?"

"Of course," I said imperiously. "This is the new fashion. I wouldn't expect a philistine like you to recognize good taste."

"Nope," Bethy said, popping her lips. "Definitely not. You look super dumb, boss."

I pinched the bridge of my nose, or at least the approximate area of it. "Thank you Bethy," I said tiredly. "I'll keep it in mind. Now, are we waiting for anyone else?"

"I think a few of us are already inside," Benin volunteered. "We waited for you because I assured everyone you would definitely be late. Like you are to literally every important thing you have to do."

Scowling, I raised a finger at him. "I was NOT late," I snapped at him. "I'm exactly on time. YOU just have a weird thing about always being early because your mom brainwashed you."

"It's called manners," he said acidly. "But I could see how you might think of that as brainwashing." Despite the tone, I knew he was messing with me. Benny categorically disdained any of his mother's etiquette lessons. His punctuality was the only trait he'd inherited from her, and even that was sporadic.

"You're stalling," Jessie cut in with an eyeroll. "And my girlfriend is inside, so I don't really feel like sitting through it. So slap each other in the face to psych yourselves up or whatever nonsense ritual you need to do, but we're going in."

I frowned. "Well you don't have to be mean about it. We can go in if you want. Everyone have their masks?"

Most were wearing them, but not all, and when I brought it up, they slid them on their faces, each mask fitting perfectly over their features as if made for them. I kind of wanted to take one of these back for Zeke to study, he'd probably be fascinated.

Once we were all prepared, I stepped up to the door, banging on it sharply as I waited for someone to answer. Sure enough, it only took a second before it opened a crack revealing a black and silver mask ringed eye. "Password?" The voice was gruff and obviously exaggerated, clearly trying to sound menacing.

The head jarred as something smacked into it, and the door guard yelped in outrage. "Shup up Frank," snapped another, much more reasonable voice. "There's no password, they're wearing the masks, which means they were invited. Do you want to tell Clarissa her guests didn't arrive because you wanted to feel like a badass?"

Opening the door, the short, red haired man grimaced. "Sorry Bobby," he muttered. "I was just kidding around."

Bobby, who was blonde and a fair bit taller than the broad shouldered Frank, shot us an apologetic smile. "Sorry, Frank doesn't usually pull guard duty. Clarissa found out that he was stealing her breakfast rolls and he's being punished."

"I don't know who that is," I informed him cheerfully.

He balked. "Oh…right. Anonymous. With the masks," he winced. "I probably shouldn't have used our real names. Or Clarissa's. Shit."

"It's fine," I assured him. "I don't even remember your names."

"Oh, I'm Frank," Frank said brightly. "And he's Bobby." Bobby turned to glare at him, and Frank grinned maliciously. In the end, they both just rolled their eyes and turned away from each other.

Clearing my throat, I offered a hand. "I'm Shane," I said deliberately. "So now we're even."

We weren't, because my identity would be obvious to anyone with a brain. But it was a nice gesture, and I could tell they appreciated it. "Right," said Bobby. "Well, come on in then. Everyone is already inside. Just follow the hallway straight back. And don't listen to anything calling your name. Someone decided to get wisps for the decorations and they got loose in the corridors. They're not dangerous if you ignore the whispers."

I held back a snort at the comment, because it was the most Ascendant thing I'd ever heard. "Noted," I said with a grin.

Bethy bounced forward, to slip in between us. "Oh, do you guys let people perform? I'm a really good singer. I'm famous back home." She put her hands on her hips, taking a strong pose as she shared her past as an idol.

He raised a brow. "I mean…I guess? There's no rule against it. I don't think." He glanced at Frank who shook his head. "I'll put the request through channels. I suppose. Someone will be in touch."

Grinning at seeing a complete stranger put through something we had all experienced a thousand times, we stepped past him into the hallways. Bobby nodded us through, clearly distracted but still doing his job as welcoming committee to at least a nominal degree. Once we were through, the two of them stepped out of the door we'd come in through, slamming it behind them and leaving us alone in the halls with only one last look back.

Waving our goodbyes before they vanished from sight (and why they'd chosen to do that I had no idea other than just to be dramatic), we made our way deeper into the building. The hallways were carpeted with actual grass, painted so black they looked nonexistent, with tombstones built at intervals demarcating the walls so we didn't bump into them.

Around the corners, balls of white ghostly mist floated, zipping out of sight as soon as we noticed them. Glancing at my wife, I took her hand as I stepped to the front of the group to lead. Then without another word, we headed into the dark. I guess someone wanted this party to be to die for.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

The inside of the building where the Lazarus Club held their event was huge. Obviously. I gritted my teeth as we took yet another turn. "WHY are Ascendant buildings all so BIG? What does anyone need this much space for? Do we just do it because we can? This can't be cheap to furnish."

"It's all about reputation," Abel shrugged. "Making things bigger is a status symbol. And it shows off power. Spatial manipulation at this level isn't cheap."

Callie nodded. "This is actually technically spatial condensation. It's the second level of spatial manipulation, and one that a lot of people never get to. It's a nonstandard usage, mind, because instead of packing all the space from the building into a small area, they're packing more space into the building itself. Infinity crystals make it a lot easier, but the work in here is seamless. This was done by a professional, it's very stable."

"Well spotted," came a cheerful voice from around the corner. "We had one of the professors from the spatial department whip this up a few centuries ago. Or so I'm told, I wasn't around for that." A girl stepped around the corner, waving brightly. "Hello! I'm Clarissa. Sorry, I noticed you hadn't arrived and assumed you might have gotten lost. The layout in here is a mess."

I grimaced. "I thought we would be fine if we avoided the wisps. They said it was straight ahead."

The girl was about our age, at least physically, maybe a bit younger. She had long, curly blonde hair and bright green eyes behind the same black and silver mask all of us were wearing. But the eyes in question were…off. They were bright and approachable, but also unfocused, like she was looking THROUGH us instead of at us, and her happy smile was just a little too wide. Something about it combined with the lighting to give her an eerie, sinister vibe that clashed with her friendly demeanor.

"It WAS straight ahead," she said apologetically. "And you did not avoid the wisps. One of them was mimicking the hallway about halfway down. You stepped into a perception vortex and turned without noticing. You've been walking down a hallway that doesn't exist for almost an hour."

"Wait, what?" I blanched. "Don't these things eat people?"

Bethy chimed in happily. "Oh they've been trying. The hallway has tried to digest us like four times. I keep scaring it off though. I assumed that was just a feature of the party venue. Is it not supposed to do that?"

"It is not," Clarissa said slowly. "But fear not, I came to get you. Although I guess fear isn't really on your list of reactions. I was expecting you to be a bit more shaken up. Not that I'm not glad you're ok!" She looked a bit flustered, which was a normal reaction to Bethy's weirdness. "Anyway, please, follow me to the actual party."

Callie shot me an uncertain look. She was clearly getting the same weird vibe from this girl I was, but while I WAS unsettled my Danger Sense and Azazel were both pretty silent, so I didn't think she was an immediate threat, like, say, the hallway that had apparently been trying to EAT us for the last hour. I made a mental note to remind Bethy to let us know any time something tried to consume us for sustenance.

It didn't take long for us to arrive at the party proper. Sure enough, it was very on theme. A huge open graveyard full of tombstones and mausoleums. Everyone at the party was dressed in complicated black and white outfits with leather and lace trim. Honestly they were dressed a lot like Callie and Bethy, but where my wife and friend looked ethereal and otherworldly in the ball gowns, most of these people just looked pretentious, though admittedly I might have been biased.

"Welcome to the Lazarus Club!" Clarissa said cheerfully. "I hope you enjoy the party. Please feel free to mingle among the guests, we encourage all potential members to form lasting life long friendships with other initiates. Anonymously. Obviously you should tell no one your identities."

"But didn't you tell us your name immediately after meeting us?" I asked uncertainly.

She beamed at me. "Well spotted!" she said again. Then turned and walked away without another word.

"Wow," said Bethy immediately after she left. "What a deeply weird person. And that's coming from ME. Still, seems like she knows how to throw a great party. I've never been to one where the hallways tried to eat me."

"Again, not a feature," I reminded her. "And in the future, if you notice an incorporeal entity trying to digest us, please let someone know." I trailed off as I looked around, noting the mist creeping around the tombstones. "Hey…does that mist feel familiar to anyone else?" I wasn't sure what about it drew my attention, but something contained in the vapor was calling to me like a beacon, and not in a nice way.

Callie squinted at it. "Yes…" she said slowly. "But I don't know how. Like I don't think I've felt anything like it before. It reminds me of something though. I get a weird feeling from it."

"Creepy," I nodded. "Like…explicitly. Like someone bottled the uneasiness you feel when watching horror movies. It's kind of a neat touch for a party like this, actually. I wonder where they got it."

Shrugging, I decided to talk to some people. I wasn't expecting to form any strong lifelong friendships with anonymous people, but I could be friendly. I tried to at least avoid any gods I noticed, since I knew Callie was worried about my informal manner of addressing them, so I found a random guy nearby who was sipping a drink from a silver chalice and approached him.

"Interesting drink," I said with a wave. "Bright green and steaming. How's it taste?"

He took a long sip, looking pensive. "Brisk," he said eventually. "But with a lack of immediacy. The sense of ennui is palpable." I blinked at him, not sure how to respond to that. He stared at me carelessly for a few more seconds before his face split into a grin. "I'm SCREWING with you, man. It tastes like raspberry. It's fruit juice. The cup is enchanted to make it do weird shit." He held out his non cup holding hand. "I'm Ian, nice to meet you."

"Aren't we not supposed to give away our identities?" I asked mildly.

"Yeah…no one is really sure why they say that," he said with a shrug. "Because no one listens. I know the name of every person here. Except you. You seem new. Hence the teasing."

I laughed at that, returning the shrug. "Fair enough. I'm Shane, nice to meet you too. What major are you in? Am I allowed to ask that? This is my first real cross major function outside of my immediate friend group."

"Alchemy," he said modestly. "And nah, it's fine to ask. Some people get annoyed, but you can't be responsible for everyone's weird hangups. Honestly, you never know who is gonna come back anyway. Usually at least someone disappears after one of these." He said that like it wasn't even remotely unsettling, and I raised an eyebrow.

"That doesn't…bother you?" I said slowly.

He shrugged again. "Not really. They always show back up eventually. There's a lot of theories about what causes it. My personal favorite is the time slip that pops up randomly nearby. Though my best friend insists that they're being replaced by evil clones, and my girlfriend thinks they're being possessed. We have a betting pool on it, so whenever someone figures it out we're sure to get some answers, if only so they can collect."

I frowned at that, but I had to admit it wasn't exactly unusual. Ascendants went through a lot of weird stuff, and we honestly tended to normalize a lot of the crazy because if we didn't we'd never stop reacting. Something occurred to me. "So…Clarissa. Is she one of the ones who went missing?"

"What, the vacant stare and creepy smile?" he asked brightly. "No, she's just weird as far as I know. I mean, maybe she was one of the missing, but if so it happened before I got here." He paused. "Although…" he trailed off, looking around. "Well, everyone who comes here gets an invite. You usually don't get to know who sent yours. But I know at least one or two of the missing were invited by Clarissa. Might just be a coincidence, given the numbers, but it bears thinking about."

As someone who was probably invited by Clarissa, I definitely agreed with that last part. "What else have you heard?" I asked him quietly. "It might be important for me to know…in case I want to get in on the pool."

He nodded knowingly. "Of course, remember, the timeslip theory is the most reasonable. After that, the most popular are possession, and for some reason, a lot of people have money riding on facestealing spiders. That one seems far fetched to me, but one of the enchanting wonks has this whole complicated thesis on why it's the most likely option. He's very convincing. Personally, I don't believe he's right, but I think he might be trying to breed a species of spider that he can pin it on to win the prize money. So…you know, probably watch out for that."

"Right," I said flatly. "Face stealing spiders. Fantastic. It's fine, I didn't need to sleep anytime soon. Or ever again."

"Don't worry," he said cheerfully. "They can still get you while you're awake. According to the specs in that guy's thesis they have paralytic bites. Seriously, he laid out the specifications in EXCRUCIATING detail. It reads like a game plan. Though some of it is probably nonsense. There's no legitimate reason a creature could only lay eggs in living human brains."

I flinched at that, deeply appalled by the whole idea, but given his earlier joke, I couldn't tell if he was messing with me again. I was ninety percent sure he had to be, and I was still formulating my response when something around us changed. Out of nowhere, the slight, ambient light around us, so dim I barely noticed it was there…went out.

"Shit," Ian said in annoyance. "What fresh hell is this?"

The darkness persisted for only a few moments before the light came back (still emanating from somewhere too subtle to track). I glanced around worriedly, wondering what had happened. Which appeared to be nothing. Like I had expected a murder or an attack or even a kidnapping. But there wasn't anyone missing or dead. In fact…

My blood went cold. A slight effort of will and Dan was running in the back of my head, doing a quick headcount. He was almost always able to mine information from my memories. Which was why he'd been able to clarify exactly what was wrong in this graveyard.

Namely, the issue was the number of people. Not a LACK of people, mind. A surplus. When the lights had gone out there were a hundred and thirty seven people at this party. And now there were exactly a hundred and fifty. Thirteen more people were in this room than before the lights went out, and because of the masks, I had no earthly idea which ones weren't supposed to be here.

I sent a quick mental message to Callie, begging off my conversation with Ian as I headed to find my friends. I wasn't sure why these people had shown up here, but I was mostly positive they wouldn't have bothered with the theatrics if they'd been invited themselves. Something was wrong, and we needed to figure out what. I was halfway to Benny's position when exactly WHAT was wrong decided to make itself clear in the worst way possible. A random masked partygoer turned, their head opening like some fanged flower, and bit the face off another attendee. That, of course, is when the screaming started.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

As soon as the first person got eaten (started getting eaten? I wasn't sure if they were going to be ok, but Ascendants were tough), I immediately took off at top speed. Previously, 'top speed' for me might have been flying or a combination of my wings and Mephisto's Waltz. Now though, things were different. Top speed for me now was my newest form. Cosmic Waltz.

Tapping into my newest demon was an interesting experience. I hadn't had a chance to test it yet, but once I triggered the incarnation, I felt everything around me shift subtly. Things slowed down, though not by much, and not in a way that felt like it had anything to do with time. Rather, the space around me had been altered. Now it felt like it was heaving and thicker, like I was underwater.

I would have thought the sensation would have made me slower, but rather than weigh me down, the heaviness seemed to provide purchase for me to kind of…swim through space. All around me, I could see strange flows and currents I couldn't see before, albeit very faint ones, and I could see places where they crossed and overlapped, changing directions or speed as they passed.

My eyes scanned the currents, looking for any spot near one of my people, and I found one. Stepping into the current in the heavy space, I felt myself whisked away into a torrent of spatial energy, torn through the distance between myself and my friends.

I recognized the effect, because I had experienced it before. This was spatial lubrication. Rather than actually condensing the distance, this was an overlaying pathway of turbulent space that acted kind of like a spatial waterslide. I stepped in at one spot, then appeared again at another, pulled through the spatial riptide by my new power.

Cosmic Waltz was a REAL spatial traversal power. Mephisto's Waltz had been more like short range fudging of the space. It was slightly more streamlined because I didn't have to worry about how it worked, but in terms of distance or accessibility it couldn't compare.

I emerged from the stream of space already spinning my staff, calling out for the explosive power of Mephistopheles as I smashed down on the monster's head as it struck down at my best friend. "Get LOST!" I snapped as the creature shot backwards with a scream as the ruin infused flame ate into its skin.

Landing gracefully, I flicked my staff stylishly to clear off the burned skin and chambered it behind my back. Benny just rolled his eyes. "Most dramatic thing I've ever seen in my life," he said dryly.

"You're welcome, dick," I snorted. "See if I don't just let you get eaten next time. Come on," I grabbed his shoulder and yanked, sending him flying off his feet as I tossed him into my Domain. Without waiting, I took off back into the currents, emerging behind Jessie, then Abel, then Bethy. I didn't grab Bethy's siblings, because I didn't trust them in my Domain, but they seemed to have retreated pretty fast anyway.

I arrived next to Callie after a few jumps, and I was relieved to see that my wife was fine. Her blades were out, and she'd taken one of the monsters apart into pieces, even through a rank difference. I couldn't help but beam at how strong she was. She whirled on me as I landed, and I held up my staff to block, just in case. Luckily she noticed it was me and stopped her swing. "You're ok," she said in relief. "Where are the others?"

"Domain," I said shortly. "Where the hell did these things come from? How did they sneak up on us like that? Lights or not, someone should have seen them coming."

She snarled wordlessly, pointing at the mist. "Through THAT. It's not a creep mist, it's fucking Void miasma. That despair mist from the shoals? Same stuff, just much weaker. They used it to prime the space for an assault. The spatial nature of this building means they were able to corrupt it into a partial shallowing. The tower isn't connected to the Void, but there are still realspace adjacent positions here. Especially in weak spots like the ones formed by work like this. They piggy backed on the spatial distortions behind the building to slip through."

"Wait, what?" I snapped as my staff lashed out and caved in the skull of a nearby monster. "These are Void spawn? How the hell are these HERE. You just said we're not connected…to the Void."

She saw it click as the thought settled in my head. "Shit," I said darkly. "Harper let someone into that godsdamned chamber and they got infected with Void corruption."

"Probably more likely they volunteered to be a vessel," she said in a tired voice.

"How the hell have they not been CAUGHT yet?" I demanded as I glared around for any clues. "I know the Void is slippery, but there are Overgods here."

Callie grit her teeth. "There's more than just the Deans though," she hissed. "That Void Overgod isn't as harmless and tame as Harper thinks. It's protecting them. We have to…I don't know, tell someone."

"We have to get out first," I said grimly. "And more importantly, we need to figure out what this was about. Ian was telling me about Clarissa and these people going missing, and assuming that's a coincidence would be insane. Which means she's probably a vessel herself, and if so, why the hell did she invite us here?"

I wasn't seeing a point to this whole thing. I mean, even if I assumed that the monsters had been their whole plan, what was the point? Why would they come here just to-

There was a shift in the air, not spatial, or temporal, but…fate. Something changed in the destiny of the world. I felt terror flood my body, something so deep and primal I couldn't even process it for a moment as it slammed into my lizard brain and sent me panic spiraling into what I could only describe as a stun lock.

Luckily, I wasn't alone. Cosmic Waltz, Azazel, my demons were still with me, and they pushed me to react to the source of the fear. I stepped into a spatial current, pulling Mornax around me like a cloak as I pushed him up to A-rank and appeared behind my wife, staff raised in front of me to protect her.

The unnatural scream that preceded the explosion of chest pain was so loud it hit me like a physical blow. Which did nothing to prepare me for the ACTUAL physical blow that followed the huge, serrated antler that punched through my chest and out my back.

I gaped, staring down at the injury in disbelief. Mornax. My armor. The staff had barely managed to halt the attack as it caught on the tines of the antlers, but it was too little, too late.

"SHANE!" I heard Callie's scream of rage as my knees went out from under me. My vision was going blurry, but not so blurry I couldn't think. I jerked back off the antlers, kicking the monster away, and I reached for my Domain, pulling out all of my tier eight demons. As I did, I pulled on my staff. Upgrade. Upgrade. Upgrade. I got through three of them before my brain filled with pain and noise and I had to stop.

Azazel, Dom, and Sam hit the horned monstrosity head on, while Life Nova dropped to his knees beside me and started flooding me with power. I groaned as my bloodline ignited, feeding a bonfire into my chest as it knitted me back together. "Shane!" Callie said, kneeling next to me frantically as she started pulling out inverted objects with healing properties. "Stay with me baby, it's gonna be ok."

I coughed roughly, hacking up a piece of what I was pretty sure was spine. "I'm fine," I rasped. "I'm healing, but you need to get in the Domain. They're here for the lantern shield. I figured it out right before that thing attacked."

She cursed. "The resentment," her eyes narrowed. "Harper played us."

"I don't think so," I shook my head. "There would have been no point doing it that way. We know why they're here at least. Now the problem is what the hell we're going to do about it?"

Because I was in bad shape. My armor would recover, it was designed to do that, and my wounds were already healing. But the thing had punched through me like wet tissue paper. It was A-rank, I was sure of that, but it was strong for A-rank. I could hear my demons ganging up on it, and the numbers were enough for now, but it wouldn't last.

I was about to try to stand up when I felt another shift in the air. A long, world wear sigh echoed through the graveyard. "Enough," said a lazy, familiar voice.

Then everything just stopped. Literally. I heard the sound of clocks ticking, the echoing click slowing until it finally stopped. I sat up, groaning, to find Professor Hawkins standing in front of…an abomination.

Standing fifteen feet tall, crouched on overly long spindly legs so tall the knees stuck up past its shoulders, the monster was terrifying. I could see my blood glittering on its horn as it loomed over the frozen demons below it. Which was less than expected. Several of them had been crushed, apparently. I winced at that.

Professor Hawkins was holding a stop watch, looking down at the face with a frown. He glanced up at the monster coldly. "Do you know how far you've set my work back?" he said levelly. "My rendering tools are still connected to the timepiece that idiot is using right now. I'm gathering realtime feedback. Feedback he wasn't SUPPOSED to be aware of so I could get untainted data. And now you went and tried to infect it with your Void nonsense."

The monster glared down at him, blue flame eyes I associated with the Void set in a shiny onyx skull that sat over its face, braced by its horns. He raised an eyebrow, and the thing let out an inhuman scream that started in its chest and burst free of its oversized fanged maw as it lunger at the professor.

It turned to ash on the wind before it reached him, dissolving under the wasting of centuries or millennia as it was destroyed in an instant. I gaped as time resumed across the graveyard, blinking in shock as I realized my pain was gone, and that my armor was now completely repaired. It had a self repair function, but not at that speed. He'd somehow managed to completely revert the damage to my body without even seeming to notice me.

Grimacing, he turned to frown down at me as I climbed to my feet. "Do you HAVE to make a mess every time you do anything, or is it just personal preference?"

Coughing lightly, I climbed to my feet, marveling at the feeling of not having an antler through my lung and spine. "This one wasn't my fault. "We have to talk. Immediately. We learned some things about Dean Harper that might be relevant to the academy. Can we talk somewhere private?"

Rolling his eyes, he raised a hand and clicked his fingers, and suddenly we were standing in his living room. Not just Callie and I either. Will and Tamsin, Bethy's siblings, were here with us, looking confused and kind of irritated (Will was missing an arm and a portion of his torso from the flesh flower monsters). "Now," the professor said as he flopped down on the couch. "Tell me everything you know about Dean Harper." Judging by the glint in his eye when he said that, I had a feeling we were going to be here a while. Lovely.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

"So…what the hell is going on?" I asked Professor Hawkins grimly after I finished filling him in on Harper's chamber and the mess with Clarissa. "Why do they want the lantern shield? He didn't seem like he expected it to cause problems when he removed it."

He rolled his eyes. "Harper doesn't EXPECT problems, he precipitates them. I knew about his little pet project. Everyone does. But if that thing is aware and has breached containment, we have a huge problem."

"Can't you just…kill it?" I asked hesitantly. "Like it's pinned down and weakened, right?"

He snarled silently. "No. It has vessels. High level Void Children are monstrously hard to properly dispose of. That's the point of the research. With vessels in play, that means it has vectors. If we destroy the main body, its soul will fragment and scatter into the tainted. It'll burrow in, lie dormant until they leave, and then consume them once they're returned to realspace."

I swallowed hard. "That…sounds bad. Does that mean we can't do anything? Because I feel like we should do something."

"We ARE doing something," he said bluntly. "We're completing our prototype. Your new demon will be the perfect counter to this infestation. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if part of the reason they tried to steal the lantern shield was to prevent it. If we can complete our research in time, we can use it to cleanse the Void taint from the students."

Gritting my teeth, I glared at him. "I don't care what they want, I care that they tried to MURDER my wife. If I find out who ordered that, the only cleansing I'm going to be doing is wiping their brain matter off the butt of my staff."

"Agreed," Callie said darkly. "I did not appreciate watching you almost die. In fact…I think it's high time that I finished what I started before entering. No more stalling. I'm breaking through to B-rank tonight." Despite her steady voice, I could feel the shaking, almost uncontrollable rage flooding the bond at the idea of losing me. I realized after a moment that I was flooding it right back, and we'd gotten into another panic spiral.

Closing my eyes, I took a long, slow breath. "Alright," I said slowly. "Let's calm down. Both of us are a little keyed up. I'm ok. You're ok. Everything is alright. You were waiting to break through for a reason, remember? You wanted to hit Advanced status?"

"I don't care," she said bluntly. "Honestly, my priorities have changed. With all this, not to mention the work on the new timepiece…I need to be B-rank. If I had been, I might have been able to help at least a bit against that monster, at least by relying on my Heretic Fire. As it is, I'm useless."

"It's your call, Cal," I shrugged. "With your Domain established already you're more than prepared for B-rank." She nodded fiercely, leaning up to peck me on the cheek before she turned and ran out of the room. "Wait, that's not-" I yelled after her in a panic. "Damn it, she's gone. I didn't mean right NOW." Turning my glare on the vampires, I said, "Follow her!"

Tamsin glared at me. "We don't work for you. We-"

"Do you like the ground?" I interrupted her. She blinked, clearly confused. "The ground. Solid earth on which to stand."

"I…yes?" she said slowly.

I nodded cheerfully. "Cool, well unless you want me to drop you into a bottomless pit where you can spend the rest of eternity falling into endless darkness where your feet will never again find purchase, you'll follow my damned wife and keep her safe. And if something happens to her because you're making me take time out of my day to threaten you, I'm going to stomp your faces in and wear your heads like shoes."

The psychotic vampire siblings were deeply unpleasant people, and I was completely fine with threatening them with violence to keep my wife safe. Once they ran out of the house, of course, I called up Cosmic Waltz. "Do me a favor, find the Asura and let them know Callie needs a guard. Or ten."

"She'll be fine for tonight," my mentor assured me. "I'll put Elonwy on protection detail until your people are in place. Once she's B-rank I assume she'll be quite a bit more durable. Her racial trait seems well crafted. Shockingly so for a lower realm."

"Her dad made it," I nodded. "He's a fairly influential god back where we're from."

He hummed without interest. "Fascinating," he said with zero actual enthusiasm. "In any case, now that you're here, I'll need your help testing a couple of thoughts I had about the project. I wasn't planning to bring you in this early, but since you discovered the monitoring, my plan to have you running around independently to get pure data is pretty much shot."

"Sounds fine," I told him with a shrug. "But before that, do you have like…a place I can put my friends? I left them in my Domain after the attack, but I don't want to keep them in there all night. They all have their own majors. I don't want to send them back immediately though."

He raised a brow at me. "No, I don't have a place to keep C-rankers. I'm surprised you bothered to ask. I'll write them notes for their classes. I AM a professor. Now, why don't we focus on these tests? Follow me." He gestured for me to trail behind him, and I did. He led me down a hallway and to a small, wooden door.

Pushing it open we walked down a flight of creaky wooden stairs, arriving at a basement workshop I hadn't seen up to this point. "So, we don't have quite as many tools as we would have in the Continuum, but I'm spacing out my hours there to maximize point value, so we'll need to make due."

I nodded, walking into the lab slowly, taking my time and trying to puzzle out what everything did. There was a lot of stuff. Boxes of spare parts, machines humming with strange energies, an odd piece of machinery that didn't appear to actually DO anything aside from moving in interesting ways like a piece of modern art. In the center of the room, there was a particularly odd device.

"What the hell is that?" I asked, pointing to the raised platform covered in large runes. Or rather, tiles with runes on them. The platform was about five by five feet, with each square foot taken up by a single rune that I didn't recognize. The runes all glowed in slightly different colors, and the back of the platform had a large arched bar that acted as a single guardrail.

He snorted. "That is the dimensional resonance frequency oscillation platform."

"What does it do?" I asked him suspiciously. "Because you only give those long complicated device name answers when they do something you're embarrassed to admit."

"I'm not embarrassed," he frowned. "It's just a complicated piece of machinery that would require highly technical scientific jargon to explain to you, and I don't have the time. But you don't need to know what it does. Just how to use it. Follow my instructions and the tests will go quickly enough."

It occurred to me that this whole exercise might not really be about testing at all. Thinking about it, I owed him, so I would do it. And I knew he wanted to finish this project, sure, but I also suspected the professor was using this as an excuse to distract me from spiraling about the Void vessels. He knew what I was like, and he knew that if I didn't have something to focus on I would spin out and drive myself crazy.

"Now, what you need to do is climb onto the platform," he said carefully. "By matching your harmonic frequency to the shifting gradient patterns underlaying the rune schema, you can synchronize your dimensional resonance with the platform, allowing for an enhanced examination of your temperospatial substructure."

I frowned at his pompous tone, annoyed that I didn't actually understand…at first. Then Dan chimed in from the back of my brain and I narrowed my eyes. "Wait,are you saying you just need me to step on the runes as they light up?"

"I didn't say that," he corrected me. "It may be true. But I didn't say it. Now get on the platform and put your feet on whichever color I tell you to."

Grumbling, I climbed onto the platform, getting ready to apply my boots to whichever rune he mentioned. "Alright," I told him when I was in position. "All you have to do is give me the color, and I'll hit it immediately."

"Chartreuse," he said after a few seconds. "Mauve, Cerulean, Periwinkle." He continued calling out colors and I continued not hitting all of them because the names were only somewhat familiar. After a few seconds, he called me to a halt. "Stop, stop!" he snapped. "What are you doing? I told you the colors."

"I don't know what color Mauve is," I told him bluntly. "Or chartreuse. I DO know cerulean and periwinkle, but that's only two out of four."

We kept at it like that for the next two hours. Finally, after an unnecessarily long series of footwork drills, we finally completed the testing to his satisfaction. Once I was finished, I said my goodbyes, retrieved the notes that each of my friends had been offered, and headed back to my residence.

When I arrived, I decided to check in on the others, entering my Domain directly to maintain their security. When I got there, I was all but mobbed by my closest confidantes. Well, mostly my closest confidants. I was also surprised to see one less familiar but still known face among them. Ian.

"You came with us?" I asked him as everyone else scattered. "Shows a lot of trust."

He was B-rank, but not a vampire of anything, so I wasn't too worried about him being in my Domain. Still, I was surprised to see him. He didn't seem to share that sentiment, because he just gave me a tired smile. "I didn't have much choice," he said ruefully. "One of your subordinates grabbed me during the fight. I'd have been dead if he hadn't."

I assumed he was talking about a demon, though I didn't know which one. "Well, you're welcome," I said with a laugh. "Make yourself at home for now, we'll get everyone settled tomorrow and you can get back. I suspect Professor Hawkins gave me a not for you too."

"Thanks," he said gratefully. "I'll take you up on that." He looked like he wanted to leave it at that, but to my surprise, he felt compelled to add one more bit of information. "You helped me out, so I have one other bit of information. If you want it."

"Of course I do," I assured him. "Something about the missing students?"

He shrugged. "Maybe. Something I heard Clarissa talking about with one of her recommendations. Didn't make much sense at the time, but after this mess tonight I'd have to be stupid not to know she was suspicious. This was before that though. Ages back. I heard her talking to one of her suggested entrants. She mentioned a red door."

I froze. Because I had heard that phrase before. Or rather, I'd seen it. On a piece of paper tucked into the visor of a cluttered car that belonged to my friend. Elonwy had a note about not opening a door in her basement. She'd mentioned forgetting it and leaving it open. What was it? What did it have to do with the Void, if anything? I had no idea, but I knew this was at least a place to start. I guessed tomorrow I'd need to get in touch with a friend.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

Finding Elonwy's house was harder than I expected. Which, reasonably, should not have been the case. Not that it shouldn't have been hard, but that I expected it not to be. Randomly figuring out where someone lives without asking them SHOULD be difficult, but for some reason I had just assumed it would be a piece of cake.

It wasn't. After getting my friends home safely (with the help of the Asura), and getting some rest, I woke up the next morning and stockpiled my scrolls ready to take on the day. I wasn't sure what the red door was, how it was connected to the Void, or what exactly Elonwy had to do with it, but I wasn't afraid to find out. I was ready and motivated, and I was going to get the answers I needed by hook or by crook.

That motivation lasted me through about lunch time. At that point, I ended up at a cafe where I ordered a huge coffee and a big piece of tiramisu and decided to try to eat my feelings while I came up with a different game plan.

After that, I called the professor, and after a bit of pleading, he told me where to go after I explained my concerns. Finally, I ended up in the front yard of an innocuous looking house in Common City with an overgrown front lawn. Since Elonwy was nominally a staff member, she was technically entitled to live in Moment City, but most of the people she knew were staying in the A-rank residences, and Common City made it easier for her to commute back and forth.

Oddly, the thing that shocked me most about this was the car. Based on the setup as communicated, there was a decent chance Elonwy could actually DRIVE between cities. That was kind of amazing.

My awe stopped at the car, however. When I arrived at her place, I found myself pretty disappointed with the aesthetic. It looked old and run down. Not just an overgrown yard, the wooden boards on the house were uneven and bowed, some places had been inexpertly patched with cheap pieces of poorly matching wood or plastic.

I frowned, because this didn't really seem like Elonwy. Sure, her car was a mess, but that was research stuff. She was always pretty well put together in terms of organization from what I'd seen. I climbed the creaky porch stairs, careful not to make too much noise, then I knocked on the door.

There was a brief paused, then the door was yanked open and a spiky haired woman with dark purple eyes the same color as her mane glared out at me. "What?" she snapped angrily. I blinked, not expecting a stranger. She appeared to be A-rank, and not low into it, but something about her was…off. She was thin, almost unnaturally so. Not 'I work out a lot' thin, more like 'I forgot to eat this month and also have a tapeworm' thin. Almost skeletal.

Her nose was pieced with a dark iron hoop and she was wearing a lot of eyeshadow. I cleared my throat to stop myself from dwelling on the alarm bells she was setting off. She felt familiar, and not in a good way. It wasn't the Void though. It was something else. Someone else.

"Hello," I said pleasantly. "I'm looking for Elonwy."

"Why?" she demanded hostilely. "I don't know you. What do you want with El? She didn't tell me anyone was coming over."

I chuckled sheepishly. "Ah, sorry, the Professor asked me to come get her. He had some research tasks he needed her for and he's too busy to come himself. You know how he gets when he's working."

Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. "Yeah," she said after a moment. "I guess. I'm Janet, her roommate. If you came here for the professor… fine, come inside." She didn't seem particularly enthused about that. I got the impression she was more worried about getting Professor Hawkins attention than me coming in though, probably because I was a B-ranker.

I stepped into the house, and was almost immediately hit in the face by a wall of scent and offensive sights. Trash, cobwebs, books and papers, all strewn about on the floor, haphazardly pushed against the walls to make little walkways through the filth. This wasn't disorganized, this was…wrong. No one should be living like this.

My mask covered the disgust, thankfully, and the woman didn't seem to notice. "She's busy right now. Working. I have to go downstairs and get her." She gave me a nasty smile. "You know how she gets. Stay here and don't TOUCH anything."

"Yeah," I said blandly as I pushed a blackened banana peel away from my foot. "Wouldn't want to make a mess."

She ignored me, turning to stalk off down the hall. I waited for about ten seconds, then triggered Murmur along with my staff and followed her. With my stealth form at A-rank I was sure I would be impossible to detect, especially in this mess, but I still went slow, making sure I gave the form time to bake the stealth into itself.

Creeping slowly down the hall after the woman. I followed as carefully as I could, trying my best to avoid stepping on anything that might give me away.

Following her trail wasn't hard, especially not in Murmur. I made my way to the end of the hall she'd gone down, and I came to a halt right at the end. Where I found a door. A red door leading into a basement. It was closed, and I waited a minute to open it so I could have the most information for stealth and prevent detection.

Pushing it open, I stepped onto a set of rickety wooden stairs bolted into the wall, slowly creeping down to peer into the basement.

Janet was on her knees next to a figure sitting in a chair. "Shit, shit, shit," she was muttering. "Why didn't you tell me you were having people over? Why did I latch this thing so tight? And will you STOP CRYING YOU STUPID BITCH!" She screamed the last part hysterically as she fumbled at a large dark device wrapped around Elonwy's neck.

My friend was sitting in a chair, staring straight ahead. Her face was completely blank, but tears were leaking from her empty, unfocused eyes, and she was making faint whimpering sounds. My knuckles cracked as I stared down at the scene. I didn't know what that collar was, but I was doubting it was anything good. Clearly, it was only usable here while she was home, probably to prevent the Professor from noticing.

I was already walking down the stairs, staff coming to my hands as I prowled forward. I got closer, taking my time, slowly closing the distance. When I got close enough, I called for Mephistopheles, my most dangerous form, and triggered the staff to push him to tier 9.

Stepping forward, I lashed out with my staff, focusing all of the ruin flame into the butt as I slammed it violently toward the base of Janet's skull.

Janet, however, was not a pushover. A-rank or not, she was on a level far above where I was. I might be swinging A-rank right now, but this was an A-rank who had subdued Elonwy, even if I was pretty sure she cheated. Even from perfect stealth, with an A-rank staff infused with A-rank ruin phoenix fire…I missed.

Well, I partly missed. Something alerted Janet, and she turned in time to notice and backpedal, but the densely packed sphere of ruin fire grazed her eye as she did, and she clutched her head screaming, stumbling back as my staff sailed on and smashed into the black metal of the collar she'd been undoing.

Of course, I was already triggering Mornax alongside my staff, and it turned out to be just in time to prevent myself from being eviscerated by a literal SCORPION tail that shot out from behind Janet, slamming into my gut hard enough to send me flying.

"Godsdamnit!" she screamed, clutching her ruined eye. "You stupid little shit! Now I'm going to have to kill you, and then her, and then go underground, and the Lord is going to be furious."

I coughed, climbing to my feet. Mornax and the Seal had protected me, but that had still hurt. She was STRONG. Whatever her racial trait was, it was clearly high tier. "The Lord?" I asked wryly. "You realize that Void Child probably cares less about you than a dog cares about a literal flea, right?"

She sneered. "Moron. You think you understand anything? We were CHOSEN. He called for us and we came. That forms a bond."

"Yeah, I'm sure the trip from two towns over was filled with hardship," I sniped.

"You think his reach is limited to just this?" she giggled madly. "You think the call only went out to students? To faculty? He's been SCREAMING for millennia. The rest of the idiots have just been too blind to hear it. But we heard. Across so many planes and realms. We heard and we came to his aid. We are his faithful, and we will free him."

Just like that, something I had put out of my head finally clicked. And my blood turned to ice. Deveskane. The god who had manipulated us into helping him summon the tower. I had been wondering how he'd known. Been wondering what he hoped to accomplish here. Was it just about the thesis? But now I had another idea about why he might be here. A horrible, terrible, gutwrenching idea.

Deveskane was a god of sealing. But he'd proven that with the proper preparations he could also UNSEAL. Unseal trapped things that had been contained by forces much greater than himself. Things like Void Child Overgods that had apparently been talking to people in several realms.

Janet seemed to take my silence as surrender, and her gaunt face drew up into a cruel smile. "Now you see how futile it is. How we've prepared. There's nothing you can do to stop what's coming, and you will die knowing everyone you love will follow soon after."

I blinked. "Wait…what? No, I was thinking about something else. I'm not worried about you anymore."

She sneered. "Bravado or idiocy? I wonder. Do you want to die with dignity, or do you truly think you can destroy me because your little sucker punch earlier did some damage. Even with one eye and all your little tricks I could swat you like an insect. My eye is already healing. Your flame is terrible, but I have my own countermeasures to such things."

"Oh that?" I asked as I pointed to her face. "Yeah that isn't optimized for use on people. Like sure, it will do some damage. But that's not what it's FOR. The Ruin attribute was grafted onto the black armor piercing flames, which means it's more properly meant to work on objects."

Smiling sadistically, she stepped forward, raising her tail as if to strike me down. "Ah, so bravado then. You've accepted your death and plan to be put down gracefully?"

"No," I said patiently. "That's not what I meant at all. Though I do appreciate you letting me monologue. I was trying to come up with a way to stall that didn't involve getting my ribs played like a xylophone, and your condescension really helped."

"A fool after all," she said, scorn dripping from her words. "What good would stalling do in this situation? Charging another attack to use against me after the first one missed?"

I grinned beneath my mask, eyes sliding past her at the figure slowly standing from the chair, hands clutching the shattered remnants of a black iron collar. "Nope," I said cheerfully. "I don't need another attack. Because I didn't actually miss the first time. I just wasn't really aiming for you."

 

[Malcolm Tent]

Elonwy looked PISSED. Which was understandable, and also very bad for Janet. She seemed to know it too, because she whirled on her heel and tried to bolt for the stairs, and Elonwy didn't even blink. My friend flicked her fingers, and the other woman froze in place. Janet squirmed and jerked, and rather than stick her in place, the effect let her slowly pull free…and then snapped her immediately back to her starting point.

Each attempt left a sort of echo stuck in the air where she'd snapped back. Elonwy walked over to the nearest one, extended the nail on her pinky…and slashed its throat.

The echo exploded into golden motes of sand, all of them flowing along the distorted space Janet had traveled to reach that point, and when it slammed into the scorpion woman, her eyes went wide and she let out a choked scream. Blood fountained from her mouth, and she hung there in the air for a moment, choking on it.

Eventually the effect stopped. But Elonwy just moved on. One by one she executed the images of her roommate, and one by one Janet suffered a sort of diluted version of those deaths while suffering seemingly no damage.

I swallowed. "Remind me never to piss you off," I said shakily.

"Oh?" she asked mildly. "Do you think you're likely to need a reminder after watching all that?" She smiled sweetly and I tried to suppress a shudder. "I didn't think so."

"Right…" I said slowly. "Anyway, are you ok? That looked…rough."

She groaned, rolling her neck. "I don't even know where she GOT a Drayven Subjugation Collar. Those are banned almost everywhere I've ever even heard of. You can't even use them on animals. Little asshole cozied up to me until I thought we were friends and got me in my sleep. She was conditioning me whenever I was home and letting me out during the day. She suppressed my memories with the collar."

"That's awful," I grimaced. "Did she…was she involved in the mess with the party?"

"She was," she winced. "And it was my fault. She learned about the lantern shield from me. Must have told her bosses about it. As for who those are, we'll have to see. I assume you don't mind if I take her to the Prof for questioning. If you think THAT was unpleasant, you don't want to know what he's going to do. She'll tell him things she didn't even know she remembered. Literally, I've seen him pull confessions from parallel timelines beyond the knowledge of the subject."

I nodded. "Of course, but do you mind if I ask her a few things first? I need to know something and I think she can tell me."

"Well, you saved my life, so I can probably swing that," she said dryly. "And thanks for that, by the way. Seriously. I owe you in a big way. If you need anything I can accomplish all you have to do is ask." At my obvious delight, she cautioned me. "That's a much smaller list than you might think. I'm still a student and employee. I can't bypass school rules or spot you credits beyond what I already have. Speaking of, don't you have a class with the Dean today?"

I cursed, checking the time on my ring. "I do. In an hour. I spent most of my day looking for your house. Can you give me a ride back to Moment City when you're dropping her off?"

"No problem, now, you have questions for her, you said?" her eyes hardened as she turned back to her roommate, and Janet wilted under her glare. "Questions she's going to answer in detail, isn't she?" The other woman nodded frantically.

Janet's previous bravado was gone. Her pale, thin face, previously cast in a sort of hungry malevolence, was twisted in an oddly fragile expression of naked fear. Having seen what she was doing earlier, I remained unmoved. " You said you were all called by the Void Child. How many of the others have you met?"

She might have been scared, but she wasn't sorry. Her eyes flickered with seething hatred, but cowardice won out. "Only a few," she said slowly. "The Lord keeps us separate. He knows the faculty have many tricks. Compartmentalizing limits our exposure."

"A few isn't none," I said bluntly. "Have you met a man named Deveskane?"

Deveskane was a god. Emphasis on WAS. The limitations of this place, namely that one must lack a complete Chronicle, meant a fully fledged god wouldn't be able to come in. The only possibility was that he'd used the Chasm to seal himself so he wouldn't recover.

How long had he been planning this? What had that Void Child shown him? Thinking about all the things that had lined up for events to turn out this way…but no, that was a trap. He didn't need ME to free him. He needed SOMEONE to free him. The Hermetic Hall was built to unseal the tower, and had been operating for who knew how long. Atlas and I got pulled into the breakthrough, but that didn't mean we'd stepped into his trap. He just needed a push over the finish line.

If it hadn't been us it would have been someone else. The Chasm was a trap set for Deveskane's enemies. There were multiple outcomes that would favor him. Still, he'd known some things about the Chasm the rest of us hadn't clearly. How much was up for debate, but whatever he'd been taught he'd used to infiltrate this place.

Janet's face went pale. "What? No! I don't know who that is! I've never heard of him!"

"Wow," I said dryly. "You're a REALLY bad liar. I expected more from a sleeper agent. So you know him then? Good, then you ca-"

My speech cut off as Janet threw her head back and SCREAMED, her mouth erupting with an eerie blue flame reminiscent of the eyes of Void spawn. She went up like an oil soaked rag, immolating to ash in seconds, and the flame even burned through Elonwy's restraints.

"No!" shouted my friend, darting forward to try to save her roommate. By the time she arrived all she could do was scoop up handfuls of cooling ash. "Damn it!" she snapped, ash covered hands tightening into fists. "I wasn't DONE with you!" She screamed, smashing her hands into the concrete floor of her basement, sending clouds of ash into the hair as she pummeled the rock into dust.

I cursed. "Damn it," I said as I knelt next to her. "Sorry. Can you…can your power undo that?"

"No," she said grimly. "Her soul was consumed. Not just her soul, her potentiality. That flame consumed her existence. That was temporal fire."

"Wait, that wasn't the Void Child?" I asked as I stared at the pile of ash. The color had me convinced it had been the Overgod that killed her, but it wouldn't use temporal energy. That implied someone from our major. Worse, if they burned through Elonwy's restraints that easily, it implied a god.

Elonwy nodded at my worried silence. "Yeah, I think this was probably a faculty member. They turned one of ours."

Which was bad. Because it meant we couldn't trust the faculty. I was pretty sure it wasn't the Professor, because I'd be dead if he thought I was a threat, and Janet had needed to work around him to subdue Elonwy. The Dean was obviously out too, but other than him…who knew? Which meant we couldn't afford to run our mouths about this.

Actually, thinking back, maybe the Professor had even known. He hadn't mentioned talking to other faculty about it. I was pretty sure he told the Dean, but that seemed like a safe choice. If he was keeping quiet, I kind of wish he'd shared that with us, but I guessed that wasn't really his style.

I reached down and offered Elonwy my hand, pulling her to her feet. "I'm sorry," I told her sincerely. "This was on me. If I hadn't questioned her, whatever killed her might not have triggered. The Professor probably could have gotten more."

"Not your fault," she said with a sad smile. "Mortals are all helpless before the whims of gods. Even S-rankers aren't an exception."

I knew at least one who was, but it didn't seem like a good time to nitpick. "So…what do we do?" I said worriedly. "I mean, I came here to investigate the red door, but does it even have any significance? Or was it just some kind of code they used to denote places where they conducted experiments?"

Frowning, she turned and headed up the steps to the door frame at the top. Kneeling, she touched the base of the red door. "I think…it's a cloaking device of some kind? Maybe Void infused. This must be how they were able to try to subvert me without the Professor noticing. Doing it here and hiding the traces are one thing, but blocking the perception of a powerful god isn't that easy."

"That tracks," I grimaced. "The Void excels at stealth and isolation." I frowned at the frame. "Does this mean there could be a bunch more of these in people's houses, with captives behind them being brainwashed?"

Elonwy's eyes hardened. "There may be. I don't…" she shuddered. "I can't describe what it was like. I don't remember it all. I don't want to. But even the flashes that crawl through my brain, the little flickers that dance behind my eyes when I close them. It was awful. Thank you, Shane. Really. Thank you so very much for saving me."

"I think your memory might still be on the fritz," I said dryly. "Because I seem to remember YOU saving ME. My ass was grass if you hadn't woken up. All I did was jam up the collar. It was your will that let you force it the rest of the way open and break out."

She smiled warmly at me. I could tell she was amused by my insistence on downplaying my role in things. "You know, most people would just agree if a powerful S-ranker said she owed them a favor."

"Favors are nice," I said gently. "Friends are better. I don't have so many of the latter that I'm willing to trade one for the other."

That surprised a laugh out of her. "How are you a B-ranker with that kind of idealism?"

"I married up," I said with a grin. "My wife keeps me honest." And it was true. Callie was a true hero, and always had been. I was always more light grey than anything, but she'd been keeping me on a brighter path since we'd met. Without her, I wasn't sure who I would be, but it definitely wouldn't be anything like I was now.

"That's so cute," she cooed. "And I'm almost positive it's going to get SO annoying after a pretty short time. You two really are sickeningly in love."

I laughed, the familiar banter (even with someone a bit less familiar), washing away some of my unease. It wasn't gone, but talking about Callie warmed me enough that I could put things out of my head, at least.

We climbed the rest of the steps, emerging out into the hallway. Elonwy's face twisted in horror. "Dear gods," she wailed. "What did that lunatic do to my HOUSE? It looks like a pig sty in here."

"Don't be silly," I told her sympathetically. "Pigs live in much better conditions than this."

"Just because I owe you doesn't mean I won't smack you if you deserve it," she threatened in what I was pretty sure was a joking tone. "Anyway, it doesn't matter for now. I promised you a ride. Don't want you late for your first class with the Dean. Let's get going." My eyes widened and I bolted for the door. I really hoped we would make it in time.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

I arrived at the door to the classroom with moments to spare. Probably. I wasn't actually sure how the Dean's class worked. The temporal mechanics were vague and far above my level, but I was pretty sure I was right on time. Or early. Or late. Or possibly all three at the same time somehow. Time manipulation made my brain hurt sometimes.

Either way, I knocked on the door and then pushed it open, shooting Elonwy one last glance as I stepped inside.

"Ah, Mr. Wyndham," came the Dean's cold, implacable voice. "I was wondering if we would see you. You DID pay to attend this class, yes?" I looked up to find him standing at the base of the steps leading into the room, eyes pinning me like a butterfly to a board.

Swallowing, I looked around. "I…thought I was on time."

"Were you?" he raised an eyebrow. His eyes pierced me like daggers for what felt like an eternity but couldn't have been more than ten seconds, then he shrugged. "Fair enough. I haven't actually left this instance since class started. I've been running this course nonstop for the last ten hours from my perspective, bridged across several weeks. I don't like doing these, so I try to just get them out of the way."

Frowning, I nodded and grabbed a random seat, sitting down to observe. The Dean walked back into the center of the cone shaped amphitheater, hopping up to sit on the table in the middle. "So, newcomers means a bit of rehashing. Which I suppose calls for cooperation. Show of hands, how many of you know what time is?"

Several hands went up and he snorted. "Trick question. None of you knows what time is. I don't even know what time is. Why is that?"

This time, far fewer people raised their hands. The Dean pointed to a delicate looking girl with short dark hair. "Ms. Lehayne? You suspect you have some keen insight into a problem even I can't find an answer to?"

"No, sir," she said immediately. "I believe there is no problem at all. You don't know what time is because time doesn't exist."

He grinned, the first sign of genuine enthusiasm I had seen from him. "Excellent. That is excellently put. Time does not exist. And yet, we study it, manipulate it, base our lives around it. Time, as they say, is the fire in which we burn. You claim this fire to be a falsehood?"

"I don't," she contradicted. "I said it doesn't exist, not that it's not real. The two statements are not synonymous."

"Precisely," he said with a satisfied nod. "There is, and this is completely true, no such thing as time. It is not a law of reality. It is a concept that we, as humans, coined to allow for the tracking of the progression of the world. As Ms. Lehayne stated, that does not make it fictional, any more than any other attribute or Ascendant construct is fictional. But the key to utilizing time properly is to grasp that simple fact. Time is a thing of our own devising. We created it. We control it.

"I am sure you have heard many explanations for what time is since coming here," he said, hopping down and strolling over to begin scribbling on a board. "Time is four dimensional, time is a river, time is an omnipresent energy field, time is a mirror, an airplane, a cat with five eyes. Time is sentient, it's autonomous, it's jealous of women with curly hair, and men with hobnailed boots."

I raised an eyebrow at those, but he just pushed on. "These things are all true. And they are not true. They are lies, and also incontrovertible facts. Time is what we make it. It is, above all other things, OURS. Time obeys. It capitulates. And the second you forget that is the second you cease to study or manipulate time and become swept up in its current. Time is fickle, if nothing else, and it will control that which does not exert control in turn. Time is OURS, ladies and gentlemen, and never forget it.

"This, more than anything, is the reason that this class is not offered for free, or at the beginning of the year," he said wryly. "In order to understand what something is, you must understand what it is NOT. You must learn the rules before you can rewrite them. Each of you has been taught some form of temporal mechanics. You have learned a form of time manipulation, have learned to see or interact with the temporal flows in some way."

"And those are, what?" I demanded. "Lies? Made up?"

He rolled his eyes. "Everything is 'made up' Mr. Wyndham. Family is made up. Love is made up. Language, mathematics, art, music. These things are all 'made up'. Do you deny they exist? Do you consider them fictions?"

"I mean, no," I said slowly. "But that's not really the same thing."

"Is it not?" he asked with an arched brow. "Time is the first of man's great deceptions. Not against one another, though perhaps it is that as well, but against the universe. At the beginning of creation, before we understood what an Ascendant was, before recursion was defined, man looked up at the stars, watched their passage and decided to lie to reality. And guess what? Reality believed us."

A hand went up. "Are you saying that time is the first attribute?" someone asked excitedly.

"Sure," he said with a shrug. "Or the second. Or the billionth. I have no way of knowing nor would I care to pursue such knowledge. Regardless, the concept of time has shaped reality as we perceive it, as have all human concepts. Though most to a lesser degree. These things, however, are irrelevant. Can anyone tell me WHY I decided to tell you all this?"

I was amused to note that everyone was watching with rapt attention. Not the kind of attention you paid when you'd heard something before. Which meant either the Dean had lied about covering the old material again, or he was doing things out of order, which Elonwy had warned me might do. In either case, no one seemed to know for sure, though the short haired girl from earlier, an A-ranker, raised her hand again. He pointed to her imperiously.

"Is it because you want us to challenge our preconceptions?" she asked tentatively.

"Precisely!" he said energetically. "That is precisely why! Time is nothing. It has no meaning. We teach you the 'rules' that work best for us, ones that follow the warp and weft of the byzantine web of human perception as we recognize it, but ultimately, these are just guidelines. As I said, time is OURS. The time we teach is not YOUR time, only a first step to discovering your truth. Do not be bound to the outdated norms you consider 'facts' nor treat the teachings of your elders as gospel. There are as many types of time as stars in the sky."

He stared us all down like a hungry wolf, and I felt a shiver go down my spine. "Now, you may be thinking, with that being said, 'why bother listening?' 'why bother learning from you at all?' Or any number of other absurd questions. Are any of you thinking that?'

Credit where it was due. The tanned, blue haired guy who raised his hand was brave, even if he was also obviously an idiot. "I mean…yeah," he said sourly. "We paid ten thousand points for you to tell us everything we've been learning is bullshit?" He glared right back at the Overgod leading the class. "Doesn't that seem kind of like a scam?"

"Maybe," said the Dean with a shrug. "Tell you what. I'll refund your credits. You can get up and leave right now, get a full refund, and there will be no penalties levied against you. Of course, just as you resent time wastage, I feel the same, so you will never be permitted to take this course again. But then, it's just a scam, right? So I'm sure you aren't worried about coming back here after this."

"I…um," the guy said shakily. "I don't want that. I was just asking."

"Well you know what they say," the Dean said warmly. "There are no stupid questions. Only stupid people. Which would be you, in case you missed that. Now shut up until the course ends. I find your voice grating." He looked around at the rest of us. "Anyone else? Remember, no stupid questions."

He waited a few moments. "No one?" he asked in faux shock. "Astonishing. Now, those of you with sense the universe gave a toaster probably assumed I had an answer prepared for that rhetorical question. You were correct." He slapped the board, where he'd been writing down some of the models people used to represent time. "These models work. All of them. Some well, some poorly, but they function. You can LEARN from each of them. Find what works well, find out if it works well for you, if it doesn't toss it and find something else.

"These constructs are prototypes for your process," he stressed. "They are examples of solutions your predecessors have come up with to problems you will face. You are not here to learn about time. You are here to learn HOW to learn about time. How to understand it yourself. You're here to learn underlying elements that compose all concepts of time, and to find some strange ones that never occurred to you but sound good when you say them out loud.

He wrote out a sentence, smacking his chalk against the board when he finalized the exclamation point. "Questions make answers," he said bluntly. "You cannot give a response to a query that has not been posed. Our job is to tell you the questions so you don't need to discover them for yourselves. Your job is to find your own answers."

I hadn't been expecting this. Any of it. And honestly…I was glad. I loved the whole concept. The freedom, the innovation, they were…intoxicating. Sure, it was intimidating, and I planned to continue using the timepiece constructs because they fit my whole meta incredibly well. But now I knew that I wasn't bound by what Professor Hawkins thought was true. I could rearrange things a bit, play with my results. And I did my best work when I was experimenting.

The class went on like that for a few hours. The Dean outlined the most common constructs people used for the understanding of time, then poked holes in them mercilessly. Then he poked holes in the holes.

Despite having told us there was no REAL definition of temporal mechanics, he gave us so much information on the subject my brain was starting to hurt. While time wasn't a solid, factual thing, in the way some people assumed it was, it WAS a concept defined by humans, so there were common elements, just like the Dean had said, and he steered us through all of them.

Some he admitted were strong conceptual underpinnings. Clocks were a popular symbology, for instance. Mechanical precision was a logical and easy to conceptualize construct to work with, and it was a favorite for beginners with the time attribute.

Some people went with more esoteric constructs, like the river or even more abstruse ideas like time as a drop of water. Liquid seemed to be a popular medium for illustration, ironically for the exact OPPOSITE reason to clockwork. He talked and talked and talked, and bb the time the class ended, my brain was so full of information I felt like my skull was creaking.

Finally, the lesson ended. "Well, that's all," he said with a smile. "For you at least. Leave and come back at your next appointed class time. It will seem instantaneous for me, but that's not your problem is it?" I staggered to my feet, heading for the door, but once I was out I didn't head home. I took out the device my teacher gave me and asked him to send Elonwy to pick me up and bring me to him. My brain was firing on all cylinders, and I wanted to use it. I wanted to be part of the development team for my next demon.