Chapter 38 | PoV: Aisha
Aisha threw a time bubble up around herself. She ran forward and attacked the mage, slugging a powerful fist his way.
Her fist rammed into the mage's stomach, burrowing into it.
She withdrew her fist to punch again.
She had sped time up by some laughable amount, and slowed the mage down in equal measure.
She wondered for only a brief moment if she should envelop the mage in her bubble to watch him collapse, but quickly dismissed the idea. There was such a time difference between them that any reaction to the punch or even impact was slow coming.
She swung in with another punch.
That was when the shadows descended upon her.
The air became a frozen breeze—or a breeze of death. Maybe both? Death was cold. The curtains behind Aisha fluttered due to the gust.
Then, the shadows leapt into the building like predators on a downed prey and struck.
Icy jaws clung onto Aisha's left shoulder, right elbow, and her left calf.
Aisha winced, gritting her teeth. These things should not have been moving this quickly! She was at least fifteen times faster, without a slow bubble on them! Were they blazingly fast, or did they ignore her time bubbles?
Or . . . Had they slipped into her bubble somehow?”
Aisha’s face blanched.
Shadowed teeth continued to dig into her body. Pain laced through her, but no blood escaped.
Aisha watched as the mage finally started to show signs of recoiling.
Was that a . . . smile on his face, hidden beneath the darkness of his hood? How long had he been wearing that sick grin?
She . . . She had to get out of here.
Her punch found the mage again. Then, she took both hands to her staff and began clobbering him. Her movements were more sluggish than she would have liked. It was as if the shadows had a real weight and pulled Aisha down. The sharp torment all in her body helped to slow her as well.
Swing after swing, totally trying to bash his skull in.
Her swings kept getting further in . . . Okay, it was probably done now. The metal loop at the end of her staff was soaked in blood and . . . Was that brains? To Aisha’s eyes, the mage was still intact.
Ah . . . Argh . . . The jaws continued to cling to Aisha. Were they even jaws? That was just the easiest way for her brain to describe them. They could have been anything. The shadows didn't even have cohesive shapes.
Aisha screamed out as the jaws sunk deeper into her. Another one landed on her back, and another at her neck.
She fell down to the floor, on her hands and knees.
She dropped the bubble.
The mage fell to the floor, a bleeding mess from his head.
Yep . . . Aisha had done it.
She grinned.
Even her hands and knees buckled. She fell completely to the floor.
The lighting flickered back to normal, and a warmth rushed over Aisha. The darkness flickered like a dying candle as light fought and consumed. Llumifruits illuminated the hall from above, Candles flickered in sconces on the wall. Sunlight tried to pierce through the curtains.
Aisha could see. No more weird shadow realm—much better.
She lay there, on the floor, panting.
Pain continued to dance across her body. Her limbs ached. A cold infiltrated her body from the wounds, feeling like icy patches in an otherwise boundless warmth.
Weakly, Aisha dropped her staff and took her arm to her robes sleeve, rolling it up to her shoulder.
Aisha gasped at the sight.
Her elbow was all purple. Not swollen or . . . bruised, exactly. Was this frostbite? Or something similar?
It continued to creep down and up her arm, slowly, but definite. She had an hour or two before this strange affliction consumed her whole body—probably.
Her stomach dropped.
Was this how she was going to die? Chomped on by strange shadowy wolves from an alternate reality, freezing to death in an endless crucible of heat? Gah, the absurdity . . . and the irony!
Whatever. If she was going to die. She would at least take the Prince down with her.
Now . . . where would he be? The mage had sounded like he was here somewhere.
Something was nudging at the back of Aisha's mind. What was that?
It was an incessant poking, along with the impression of a “hey!” As if trying to get her attention.
She tried to focus on it . . . What?
Aisha built [Temporal Sundering] in her mind. No . . . That wasn't it . . . She tinkered around for a moment. Whatever it was would not reveal itself.
Whatever it was slipped from her mental grasp, becoming background noise again.
Aisha shook her head and focused on the task at hand. She picked up her staff and stood.
The cold and draining pain continued to torment her.
The curtains were brushed aside behind her. Aisha turned to see a palace guard peering at her, then at the dead man bleeding out of his skull on the floor.
The guard cried out and began hustling through the open window.
Aisha could definitely defeat him and the rest of the palace guards.
Did she want to?
No.
Aisha ran deeper into the palace in search of the Prince.
She passed maybe halfway through the foyer when a head poked out from behind a wall.
“H-hello,” Aisha stopped and waved, as if she hadn't just shattered a window and murdered a man and probably caused a commotion. Hmm. How did time interact with that strange reality? If she was using her time bubble inside it, did it still slow everything in this, normal reality? Now wasn't the time for this.
The man gasped before ducking behind the wall. His feet could be heard tapping away.
Ah, maybe she should hurry if she didn't want the guard catching up to her?
Aisha threw up a time bubble, no time to think about the palace guard (or guards, now?) behind her. She headed across the room from the palace doors, then through an entryway and turned right, into another room.
She found the butler frozen in a run. She stood in front of him and grabbed onto him at the neck. Aisha dropped the time bubble. The room around them was some kind of panic room. There was a chair . . . and a table? Both were made of stone. The room itself was small-ish, and had a door on parallel sides. Aisha didn't care about the room.
“The Prince!” Aisha barked. “Where is the Prince?”
“I-I-I can't tell—”
Aisha gripped harder.
The butler struggled for breath.
The sound of metal sabatons on stone tiles got louder.
Aisha threw up another time bubble and changed her grip onto the butler to his wrist. He screamed out for help.
“Be quiet. Your screaming won't help you.”
She disappeared deeper into the palace with the butler dragging behind. She passed by a dining room and then kitchens, then another hallway and some servant rooms. The staff were all frozen into place cooking or carrying. The butler tried shouting at the various staff as they walked by.
“As I said, this does nothing for you.”
Thinking fast, Aisha saw a door in the hallway leading to an empty washroom.
Aisha brought the butler into it, shut the door, and dropped the bubble, back against the door. Aisha returned her grip to his neck. He shook with fear.
“Where is the Prince?”
The butler's mouth flapped open and closed uselessly.
Aisha took a strong closer. “That man—thatmonster—vegetated the king, murdered the Second Prince, and framed eight temporal mages dying on me. He also probably has a bunch of orphans in a basement somewhere. Where. Is. The Prince?”
“I-I-I—H-he . . . Huh. I don't have to tell you,” The butler said.
“I don't have time for this,” Aisha said, fingers constricting.
“Actually . . . you have . . . all the time . . . you want,” The butler smiled innocently.
“Where is the Prince?”
The butler scowled. “Go find out. Monster.”
Yeah, no, she didn't have the patience for this. Aisha thwacked the man on the side of the head with her bloodied staff.
Oops, now it looked like he bled from his skull.
No matter.
Aisha enveloped herself in yet another time bubble and exited the washroom to search the palace. Room after room, nothing gave her any hint of where the Prince might be. Well, except for the hint that he probably was not in the right wing—the servant's wing.
She was becoming increasingly frustrated. She gripped her staff hard, left hand forming into a fist. If she held it any longer like that, it might perpetually be a fist, and then they only thing it would be good for would be punching.
Once she ended up back at the foyer, she found half a dozen royal guards on the ground. Who could have—?
Ah.
She could not fail to notice the frozen man in light blue robes, hovering half a dozen paces off the ground and without half a left leg. Blood pooled around their bodies, limbs splayed out with no rhyme or reason. How many of them had Fazl murdered? Had this one act made his kill count higher than Aisha's? . . . That assumed Aisha knew Fazl's past. Maybe he had a pre-existing body count.
Aisha consumed Fazl in her generous time bubble. At this rate, she wouldn't have enough energy to channel mana, and wouldn't be able to face the Prince . . . or his retinue. Who had murdered the temporal mages? Had it been the mage she had killed, or someone else? Whatever.
“Fazl? You learned how to fly!” That was impressive! Should Aisha praise him a bit? What should she say—?
Fazl scowled at her. “Can you maybe not leave me behind like that?”
“Oh,” Aisha's expression dropped. “Sorry.”
“Did you find the Prince yet? Nice going with that mage, by the way. He had a crazy creepy staff.”
Aisha shook her head. “But I know where he isn't. Come on, let's go.” She turned and took a step towards the left side of the palace.
“Aisha?”
She spared Fazl a glance.
“Your neck is purple!”
Aisha nodded. She knew that.
She continued walking.
“Y-you're not going to talk about it? Okay.”