Chapter 16 | PoV: Aisha
Aisha stepped to the side. The waves of heat and blades of air rushed by, missing her. She kept the time bubble bound to her body, and her body alone. Sand cycled like a mini tornado where she had stood moments ago.
It took three seconds in Aisha's personal time for her opponents to react to her having dodged their attacks.
She rushed forward, trying to close the distance between her and the mages. There, she could fight back, to deliver powerful blows with muscle alone. How strong would she be if temporal magic came with projectiles and offensive magic? She wanted to find out if that was possible one day . . .
That weird idea aside, beating the mages unconscious or dead meant that she'd have nobody to push back the tempest. So, she needed to get back to the caravan—she needed to draw the mages closer and closer, so that their large sphere of safety would connect with the caravan.
Three seconds. The reaction times of her opponents finally caught up, and launched new attacks forth.
Aisha changed her course, heading past the two mages, moving towards the caravan. An incantation reached Aisha's ears, the words sounding out ten times slower, almost incoherent and laughable. She had no clue what was being cast though, or where.
A barrier of cutting wind suddenly raged in front of her, laced with mana.
She paused in front of it for a moment. Did she turn around and fight the mages? Or did she attempt to get through this obstacle?
Yeah, she wanted to get through.
Aisha set up a time bubble in front of her, creating an area of lower wind. She stepped into it. She walked as if the air was normal, getting through the barrier one step at a time—
She quickly found out that this was a partial mistake.
The speed bubble around herself interfered with the slow bubble she had created to counter the wind. While her speed aura attached to herself and didn't catch the winds inside it, it brought her time back down to a more regular count of time.
Instead of being faster and against mages in slow bubbles, she was now normal against the slow.
Three seconds became one and a half. No—faster. She had slowed the air much more than that.
She heard an incantation. Then a second one coming from the thermal mage.
The wall of wind dissipated as the aeolian mage focused on other spells.
Wind rushed at her from multiple directions. Heat blasted her backside. She couldn't dodge them all. She couldn't bubble them all out of being dangerous. One bubble . . . A second bubble . . . Move away from that gush of air . . .
The remaining wind and heat hit Aisha like a wagon against a cricket in the street. She dropped to her knees, body shaking.
She felt wounds open up as the air cut against her like lashings from a whip. Her robes lacerated, cut into tatters. How could she have been bested so easily? How had she made such a mistake? Was she not nearly as strong as she thought she was?
She dropped the slow bubble, and attempted to ramp up her personal speed bubble.
She felt stunned, pressed against the sand as heat and wind battered her like a flag in the wind. She took the beating for moments, trying to gather herself. Pain lanced through her body. Dull aches pulsed from head to toe, screaming from her back.
She would not be defeated. She would get out of here if by nothing other than spite. Spite at these assassins sent after her. Spite at the person who sent these buffoons. Spite against the world, for possibly dying on her first trip outside Glorestra.
She would not let it end like this.
She pushed herself off the ground, resolute. Blood dripped from open wounds on her back. Sand and dirt flew into her wounds, creating a problem for when she got out of there alive.
There was a spell she knew . . . maybe? A little bit of theory. An idea once entertained, but discarded. A possible essay after she finished her . . . current one—the one revolutionizing spell backlash.
Why was she so drawn to making essays that people could kill over? Not that she knew for sure if these assassins were sent over her essay. It could be because of literally anything.
Rafiq's words echoed in her mind.
“You may want to burn that essay.”
Aisha almost laughed. Yeah, maybe she shouldn't put this spell into an essay.
She held her staff tight and traced lines in the air. She channeled temporal mana into a unique shape. Incantations created shortcuts to these patterns—the unique mana signatures of a defined spell. The spell she cast was a hundred times more complex than her time bubbles. Despite that, the spell formed correctly.
Wind battered her, the scorching heat cauterized her wounds while setting her skin ablaze. It burned like the fires of Hell—not that she knew what those felt like.
The mana hung in the air, waiting. She gave the spell a name—or rather, she found its name. After this, she wouldn't need to trace the air. The name alone would bring forth the mana.
“[Temporal . . . Sundering].”
She broke the world.