Chapter 157: Book 3: Temporality
The Seedmother screeches in response, aborting whatever change it was attempting and instead bucking forward with enough force to fling me away; He-Who-Guards is immediately against my back, supporting me and keeping me within range. A flash of what looks like a Reflex skill on the beetle's back tells me that it understands the danger it's in, but it's far too late for it to stop what I've begun.
A new form of Temporal Firmament blasts out of me, tuned to a new force: an attack on causality, on the very nature of cause and effect. A Causal Shattering.
A shockwave of pure time ripples across the Seedmother's carapace, strong enough that it lights up in my Firmament sense like blinding fireworks. I feel the skill establishing itself across the Seedmother like a network of twisted spiderwebs, spinning a storm of threads not only around but through it. It establishes almost a hundred distinct, distorted segments within the beetle that each resonate with Causal Shattering's power.
The Seedmother tries to resist. It has a scant few seconds to try: the amount of Firmament it wields is so immense that it takes that long for my skill to complete. I can feel it blasting wild bursts of power out of its shell, trying to shake the hold I've established.
Then a circuit forms across its shell—it's trying to use a skill.
"Black Hole." He-Who-Guards identifies it faster than I can. In a moment, his thrusters are fully engaged and he's there, right in the middle of that circuitry; I've tried to disrupt the Seedmother's skill circuits before, though to no avail. It's filled with too many redundancies.
But maybe Guard's figured out something I haven't, because he strikes with a blade of Firmament directly into a corner of the circuit, and the whole thing sputters out.
He's been studying the circuits too, it seems.
It tries again. A circuit forms in another part of its shell, and Guard is once again there, striking and cutting the skill out; I can't help him, because it takes all my focus and energy to keep Causal Shattering going.