Chapter 37: Nightmare
Ryan felt like he was moving through molasses, underwater, in a dream. His "Temporal Disjunction" debuff was a nightmare.
Every thought was slow. Every movement was a struggle. The eight accelerated Temporal Hounds were coming at him, looking like angry, time-traveling comets. He knew he had to move, but his body just wouldn’t listen properly.
Come on, legs! Move! he screamed in his mind. It’s a really, really bad time for a nap!
His Phase Gauntlet, a piece of advanced Precursor tech, seemed to be struggling too. It flickered weakly, as if the chaotic time energy was confusing its systems.
But it hadn’t failed completely. His unstable Phase Step skill, the one that felt like being put through a blender, seemed to actually work a little better in this chaotic environment, as if it felt right at home in the temporal mess. It was his only chance.
Two of the Hounds lunged, their forms blurring as they tried to flank him. Ryan, relying on pure instinct and the faint warnings from his Temporal Sense, forced his body to react.
He activated his Phase Gauntlet. The "Short Blink" was sluggish and delayed, teleporting him a half-second later than he wanted, but it was just enough.
He reappeared a few feet away, stumbling as the Hounds’ claws ripped through the empty air where he had been.
He didn’t have time to recover. Another Hound was already on him, its jaws, which seemed to flicker between solid and ghostly, snapping at his throat.
He brought his knife up to parry. The clang of his blade hitting its teeth echoed strangely, the sound arriving both too early and too late.
The impact jarred his arm, but he held on. He shoved the creature back and, in a desperate move, used the brief opening to kill it with a quick, messy stab to the chest. It wasn’t clean or precise like the first kill, but it worked.