Chapter 18 | PoV: Aisha
Aisha froze time, at least around her. She could sense temporal mana in the air like a dense, unending cloud. Had this mana always been here, or had Aisha released it with her spell?
It felt thick, like the air turned into a viscous soup with hints of a sun-dried orange color, yet it parted for her.
The tempest around her had stopped in place, no endless chaos of wind cutting in every direction. The never-ending heat from it may have stopped, but it left an impression of heat on her body, still threatening easy sweat and a parched mouth.
Aisha turned around and stepped towards her mage assailants.
They, too, stood frozen in place, their staves mid-wave, their mouths mid-incantation.
What did she do with them? . . . Knock them out and bring them along with her, and hope to get answers later and have the law punish them? Or did she end them here and now? Well, whenever “now” was?
Mentioning which, Aisha hadn't the vaguest idea of when this spell would end. How much could she do here?
Did she have it in her to kill these mages?
Um, if they were frozen, when would Aisha know that she had knocked them out?
They had tried to kill her, even on someone's orders. Hmm. Did she know that? Maybe they acted on their own, independently?
Aisha winced, her hand went to her back. The wounds still burned. Though, with them sealed shut from the heat, what did that mean for the sand and dirt that had flown its way into them?
She would deal with that later.
It was too dangerous not knowing when these mages would wake up. It would be disastrous if they awoke on the caravan, and had easy access to a round two. Maybe they wouldn't, since they had waited until Aisha separated from the group.
How had they known she would separate?
Anyway, maybe Aisha didn't need them alive. She had a guess as to who sent these buffoons.
Very well.
Aisha stopped right in front of the aeolian mage. She dropped her staff and moved her hands to his neck.
She snapped it.
She headed to the thermal mage one pace away and did the same.
How eerie. They did not fall down. They did not close their eyes or anything like that. No cries of pain. No reaction. Just, standing like statues, necks broken in a nightmarish angle.
Aisha shuddered.
Aw, wait—she had killed two people. T-their fault for trying to kill her first? Heliux, she—
Huh, she didn't actually feel that badly. She felt nothing . . . just numb. She had toiled hard. She had almost died. Now was not the time to feel guilty for stopping the assassins.
She picked up her staff and walked in the direction of the caravan. Until she came across the wall of heat. What now?
The time mana twitched and twirled around her staff, as if being drawn to it.
If the wind was frozen, and the heat maybe as well, could she walk right on through?
Aisha pointed her staff at the tempest and channeled temporal mana. She willed the mana in the storm to break away for her. The mana arranged at the tip of her staff like a more complex time bubble, but with a core of mana missing—the one that slowed or quickened time.
How did she intuitively find a new spell? It came so easy after seeing the mana choking the air.
“[Temporal Parting],” Aisha cast.
The mana in the storm broke away in front of her, creating a tunnel through it that was free of temporal mana.
Aisha got closer to her new tunnel. Temporal mana slowly drifted back into place, filling up the empty hole.
Aisha stepped into the tunnel and walked through. She felt nothing—not a blast of heat or laceration of wind—though whether that was because of [Temporal Sundering] or [Temporal Parting], she did not know. Her spell had certainly done something.
Hey—wait! The dirt once frozen in the air along with the tempest drifted to the floor like feathers in the wind. She felt no pressure from the air—no still impression of raging air. Had she taken a chunk out of the storm?
Aisha reached the end of her tunnel and emerged into the safety bubble created by the other mages of the caravan. Although—she was at the back end of the bubble. They had, at some point, traveled some amount forward.
Aisha passed the re-solidified rock beneath the path, and followed where an opening wider than a caravan descended slowly into a canyon somewhere beyond in the frozen tempest.
In maybe half a minute—except time didn't exist here—she reached the caravan's back.
Here, too, everything stood like perfect statues.
Aisha let out a sigh of relief upon seeing the caravan. She made it out alive. She got back.
Her spell wavered. The tempest twitched to move again.
Her spell shattered apart. Her sense of all that temporal mana vanished. It felt as if someone tore a piece out of her soul. She wanted to see all that mana again . . . It had felt so right, so enlightening.
The caravan rumbled forth.
Aisha dropped to her knees. Well, at least she had survived, and had literally walked through the tempest. That had to be an accomplishment.
“Assassins,” Aisha croaked. She had no energy to say anymore, or to say it louder. It came out quiet and pathetic.
The aeolian mage, at the back of the caravan formation, heard her, at least. He turned and saw Aisha. “Wayfinder! Stop! The temporal mage is back!”
The caravan stopped. The wayfinder was too far for Aisha to hear any words clearly. He needed to get better at projecting.
The aeolian mage rushed towards Aisha. The other temporal mage followed.
“Assassins?” The aeolian mage asked. “What do you mean? Where?”
“The aeolian mage and the thermal mage . . . They tried to kill me.” Even that sentence took way too much effort. Aisha breathed like crazy, sucking in as much air as she could. Her mouth felt like the earth itself, all dry and dusty.
The aeolian mage looked genuinely shocked. Concern creased the temporal mage's face. If they were in on it too, then they were good at hiding it.
“If anyone else is here to kill me . . .” Aisha ordered. “Please tell me now.”
Her thoughts mixed together like the mana soup in the air during her magical spell. She couldn't think straight. She couldn't move her body. Her wounds caught up to her. The toll of casting such a complex spell hit her.
Smells of charred flesh and fresh blood drifted through the air.
Aisha's body gave out. She crumpled to the stone floor and blacked out.