IX-42 Interlinked (Patreon)

If there is one law to apply to time, it is flow. It must progress. It can't progress backward either. Not for most—but somewhat for me.

    I'll get to that later.

    As Chronomancers, you need to keep your mind stuck to that rule: flow, movement. Your entire being needs to be pointed in a common vector, and that vector better not be against the entire temporal current.

    This temporal current, meanwhile, is the second thing you need to be aware of, because temporal currents are not uniform everywhere. Some are slower, some are different, and some flow in multiple directions. It depends on your dimension. It depends even on what overarching entity you're trapped inside, because when you're inside someone else's sovereign realm, that's when things get interesting. That's when time can flow backward, because this is not generalized baseline time. This is concentrated self-imposed time under the creation and rules of a smaller but localized superpower.

    That being said, even the localized power cannot defy the lores they set upon themselves—something I'm gradually learning more about these days.

    I understand most of you don't have the Ungnostic Skill. That's fine. As long as you have some basis in Magical Theory, it can be applied. To put it simply, you need to be good at learning from first principles, and you need to be capable of attaching two points with a line, and I mean that in more ways than one.

    An essential ability for navigating the time stream, no matter how complicated, or, to that effect, deconstructing any unknown magic from the bottom up, is pattern-based understanding. Magic is an ordered thing—frankly, it took me an embarrassingly long time to understand that attunement meant attuning your environment and surroundings to your order.

    That makes faith attunement-based as well—and a greater expression of order at that, because it is an order that exerts itself upon people and souls, and the idea of totality.

    All attunements work this way. They set a new foundation over the world. It's like building a pedestal or a structure to reach a desired end. Every shaping is a small tower in its own right, and the collective magical mass allows for specific things to be triggered so long as you have the necessary supply of mana and also know the right patterning.

    And here's the thing: If you know the right patterning, then you know the wrong patterning too, and the thing about spells is that they're a lot easier to break or collapse from the inside than they are to resist or wrestle with from without…

—Tempus Edax Rerum by Shiv of Blackedge

IX-42

Interlinked

“That’s a circle!” Solizmort cheered. He spoke with all of his heads at once, even the one that was partially lobotomized. A deluge of cookie crumbs spilled down upon the gathered Pathbearers. 

A chorus of grumbled complaints rose and then died as muffled mumbles before Shiv's stare.

The two hundred and forty-nine Pathbearers—and Curtis—were gathered in the cavern once more. This assembly, however, had nothing to do with food or celebration. Rather, its main focus was on education. After a near week of experimentation and reacclimation, Shiv found his control and understanding over his own attunement cementing. It was a slow process, and there were still gaps, points where his intuition clashed with the rationality of his mind and the common consensus laid by uncountable magi-scholars across eons and dimensions.

Beyond those few points of contention, the primary limits to the Lore of the Endless were marked and understood by now, at least broadly.

“Circle,” Shiv repeated as he gestured toward the flame-forged mirage hovering behind him. He even had it spin to impose the image of a revolution, a cycle, a symbolic resurrection, as it were—repetition in its purest shaping. “Exactly right, Solizmort. Every one of my spells falls under this rule. It has to be a cycle. It has to bend. It has to curve, and more than that, it has to fold in on itself. It has to repeat.”

“I am smart.” Solizmort giggled. The hydra then decided to reward itself with another cookie for its cunning analysis.

“But there's a reason why it has to be this shape,” Shiv continued on. He watched as the Chronomancers in his audience were rapt with attention, and the magical theorists struggled to follow along, since a great many aspects of his lore made little sense at all to those who couldn't wield it themselves.

Mana was something that ran out. It couldn't be restored. The System mended. What was lost to your field after a certain time, or the catalysts you were exposed to, caused the field to regenerate. There were many theories, but ultimately mana was a resource of passing scarcity, so to say. It could be used up in an instant, but it would be restored unless someone suffered a specific Curse or they were mana-deficient in some way. Both cases were exceedingly rare and required structural damage applied to one’s soul.

Shiv’s mana, however, skipped the restoration process altogether. It was self-reinforcing, and more importantly, it was self-resetting. It returned to a point of origination, reaching its total capacity as if nothing had been lost if a cycle was to repeat. Yet additional mana could not be added to a single spell, even when two spells could be commingled. Effectively, the loop was, well, a loop. It could be collinear with other loops or other shapings to create a more complicated spell, but ultimately, each spell, unto itself, had to be a closed loop. There couldn't be any openings. There couldn't be any endings. That was the critical part: no end. Such was his mythology in the burgeoning, and this rule applied to his spell-shaping as well.

But it was only a surface-level restriction if one applied any semblance of intellect to the question. “But the circle is also a lot more than a circle, and not a circle at all. The rule here is simple: The start and the end overlap. They're connected. I resurrect, and so it's fitting that my magic also holds the rules of that resurrection. Inside, however, if you're looking within what the circle supposedly encompasses, that is the void. That is the absence of context. That's the reason why my mana returns to its original state, because it forms a full cycle. Every spell I cast demands an offering from one of my towers, and that's why it occupies my towers rather than allowing me to perpetuate more of myself. Are we following right now?”

The Thief, Veronica, Maia, and Gone nodded. A good dozen others tilted their heads and gestured in acknowledgment as well, but the majority looked as if someone had just told them that slamming their knees together ten times would turn their nipples into fish.

“Okay, the chain of logic is as follows: The first thing is the circle. The circle is the perfect symbol. It's the symbol that all other symbols are built upon. This is how I'm going to circumvent Chronomancy, because the circle can't be a line in itself, but it can mimic the structure of a line like so.” Shiv expanded the illusion. He created a chain of circles, each of them looping around each other. There were points of intersection, two usually, then more if he decided to add other circles into the mix. For simplicity's sake, he simply interlinked a chain of ten circles together and drew them out in a linear line. He then enforced this idea of linearity by painting a straight line on top of the circle.

Several others caught on by that point, their eyes flashing alight and their mouths coming agape with understanding.

“Good. Some of you are getting it. The Endless has one rule, one solid and viable rule. Otherwise, it can't be the Endless. It can't end. There can't be one point and another point leading nowhere. It has to fold in on itself, which is why it's expressed through revolutions and revolutions alone, which is why it naturally curves.

“Now, this curve can be developed into several other shapings.” Shiv conjured the manifestation of a torus, and then of a strange inverted looping object that caused several Pathbearers to look away and bite back a burst of rising bile. It was a strange response incurred in those of elven descent, and he wondered if that was an evolutionary trait or not, but pushed that consideration for another day.

As of now, however, he expanded beyond the simplicity of a circle and extended to a cycle. “Circle-like,” he continued. “Circle-like, but so long as this folds in on itself, everything is fine. All other rules are negotiable and can be reconfigured. Everything else can be adapted to, and this applies to more than just time. Your thoughts are susceptible to this as well, and I do mean all of your thoughts.”

To demonstrate, Shiv immediately flickered, his body flashing red, then gold, then translucent, as he vanished before appearing behind every single Pathbearer at the same time, in rapid succession. He was as if a flashing light bulb, pulsing in the air behind them, and his materializations were rapid and intermittent, yet near-constant by way of frequency. Everyone turned in surprise as they looked at Shiv behind them. Then they looked at Shiv in front of them. His translucence left an outline, but he was still there. Every now and again, he flicked back to the start, but he was behind all of them at the same time.

“Bit of a strange spell I figured out how to shape," Shiv began, his voice distorted, like a legion of soldiers shouting out near and far at the same time—for he was technically both near and far at the same time. “This is the Overlap. You all shared the same thoughts, the same general emotions, and you all existed in each other's proximity at some point in time. And since I've interacted with every one of you, I've left anchors on you, and you've left anchors on each other. More importantly, the room is currently flooded with Endless mana—don't be surprised if you didn't notice. I've applied the proper wardings, and my tower is here, though it's flickering so fast you can't see it even if it were in front of you. Such is the frequency of this spell's revolution. But more importantly and more deviously, the tower exists inside each and every one of you. In fact, it's currently jumping across all of you at accelerated increments on a microsecond scale.”

Several of the Pathbearers flinched and looked down upon themselves in fright, expecting a massive edifice to burst from their chest and cleave them from life. Others, however, were enkindled with curiosity and examined themselves, using Analyze and Awareness Skills to see if they could divine just where Shiv had hidden his power. His words could not be a lie; they knew the Ouroboros held such things in the lowest regard, and there would be consequences even against its own user. Though they tried, and all of them did try, none could uncover where Shiv had placed his tower—all except for one, of course.

The Thief, for his part, played at being a half-attempted disciple, gladdened and fascinated by Shiv's new bent as a scholar of instructional magic. He remained silent throughout, merely sitting in the front row and nudging others along with casual but calculated suggestions.

The spells are a great success, Shiv concluded silently. If even Veronica and Maia remain ignorant, then we may have a chance to pull the wool over the eyes of Avalon itself. We do possess a measure of great asymmetry, after all—as our grasp over the lore of Chronomancy has spread and commingled with emotion and thought as well.

And such was Shiv's greatest edge. Such was also why the Thief layered both his mind and heart with a dense cocoon of Necromancy—a cocoon woven of mana threads so fine, so subtle that no other but Shiv sensed their presence.

“It's fine if you can't tell, more than fine, actually. In fact, I should probably apologize; I cheated a bit. Because part of my attunement was born from Skills that were never attunements before, things are going to get a little strange. Most people have emotions, at least the ones that think, and most things have thought. They carry information anyhow, an emission of consciousness, so to speak, but there's also reality to consider.” Shiv gestured around him. “There are points where it's stable, and points where it kind of loops back in on itself in a confusing way. I haven't gotten that down yet either, but it is an interlinking of behavior and specific timing for existence that I can target you across time.”

Now everyone, except for the Thief, was absolutely lost again. Shiv nodded, expecting this as well.

“To put it simply, you have all repeated a similar series of actions, and through that action, I managed to place a spell on you. In fact, when you made that action, an anchor appeared behind you. The Chronomancers among you will know this to be a temporal anchor. It is like an extension of your past that you can snap yourself back to. For those of you who are evolved or know the spellwork, you can extend some anchors into the future as well, or do other interesting things at present.

“As we understand it, Chronomancy has two major disciplines in the standard curriculum: there is Bypass, and then there is Languor. Now, those of you who've read my instruction manual on Chronomancy know what I'm going to say next. I think both these spells are mostly bullshit. I think most Chronomancers have no idea what they're doing because they're just skimming and skirting along time. Some of them manage to scoop more water or figure out how to be carried faster, but that's all they're doing. I told you before: you need to learn how to drown and not die. That's the only way to be a proper Chronomancer, and there's no easy way to learn that. Until now.”

A wide, vicious, beaming grin spread across his face. “Because I can apply a series of spells to you. Through your replicated, revolving actions that have taken place with each other within the same vicinity, anchors are formed. You want to know the primary anchor I sense in this place? The primary means by which I can reach out and attach my magics to you. I didn't do it in person. We convene at two points every day to have food. You replicate similar feelings and similar thoughts while you're eating cookies at a specific time. Take at other times. Some of you like vegetables more than you like meat, all that. However, what I prey on is consistency. What I prey on is the pattern itself, especially the places where—”

“The pattern interlinks,” Veronica whispered.

Every flickering instant of Shiv slammed back to the original version that stood at the center of the class. “Exactly!” He pointed to his grandmother and chuckled. “So, a new set of possibilities applies now. If I stand in a place in time where you've passed through more than once, then there's going to be a faint trace of you: the barest hint of an echo—a barely usable anchor. I can't use this anchor to track your original person back to where you were because several other things are missing. However, I can use it as an anchor point for myself, as this is a very real-world symbol of my magical pattern. The lore's primary demand has been fulfilled. There is a beginning and an end that meet each other within this set of replicated actions in time. But if I want to cast my magic across time, if I want to use the fabric of Integration itself to reach you, that requires a bit more. That requires a full-spectrum attuning of my mana to you. The good news is I don't need to be there in person to achieve it. The better news is that if I manage to control your habits, if I manage to get you, let's say, to have dinner and lunch at a specific time, then you will feel a general set of things that are reliably replicated at said times. After you leave, I can cast my spells upon those anchors, and those anchors are going to be a lot more solid and sturdy than before. Those anchors are going to be overlapping with each other, like a set of interlinking chains. I continue on and on and on…”

Shiv then added a set of visual aids for everyone to take in what he actually did, and what he actually performed was a feat of subtle and insidious complexity.

First off, there were two revolutions in the spell. Even at the basest level, there were two revolutions: one made by Shiv, the other existing. As a set of actions unto itself, the part that was made by Shiv overlapped the world. That revolution held a specific sphere of space where this set of interactions took place.

These sets of interactions, however, were performed by the others when the Lore of the Endless seeped over into whatever zone or area he held with his mana. Anchors appeared, and all around them, material all around the other Pathbearers materialized a series of anchors. These anchors connected to them, but it also led to another group of highlighted anchors. These ones overlapped repeatedly, with silhouettes of people looping over each other, much in the same way Shiv's circles did earlier.

They overlapped in a linear sequence, but then, at some point, when they reached the borders of the zone, they flipped in on themselves as the action was repeated the next day. It seemed that someone or something had modified the trajectory of their actions, folding or cutting off the point at the end only to add a foreign link of mana to create a sort of pseudo chain. To make things even plainer, Shiv had forged a closed loop composed of practically every other Pathbearer in the room, and it didn't matter how powerful their Magical Resistance was. It didn't matter how aware they were, for he influenced their feelings, their thoughts, their behaviors, and he now occupied that expanse of time and reality. At the final end, he severed their natural timeline, in part only to add a portion of his own, a portion that he attached as an extension of endless mana: a curving junction that made them furl back in upon themselves. Now they were in the same vicinity, occupying the same place. The anchors imbued with his mana imposed upon them another set of pre-contained spells.

“Broken Moon,” Maia cursed, flabbergasted at the nightmarish spell Shiv had just created.

“Yeah, pretty nasty, isn't it?” He laughed louder. “It's pretty much like a sort of psycho-temporal emotional landmine waiting for you to step onto it. Basically, you occupied the same general space. You passed over your former anchor, and so your former anchor slid everything into you, and it did so without any difficulty at all.”

Veronica's expression darkened somewhat. “How? How could this be? Magical resistance is meant to counteract any invasive mana.”

“That’s true,” Shiv said. And left it at that. 

Veronica’s face went slack of expression, but the glint in her eyes went beyond murderous.

In truth, Shiv barely got to her. Veronica Chandler was always on guard, always aware, always prepared for any eventuality except the most unthinkable of outcomes. Shiv didn't want to overpower her with his flood of mana, and so he had to work through more subtle means: countering Veronica's Magical Resistance, which was more than possible. Magical Resistance attuned itself in opposition to whatever mana type sought to intrude upon its user. This much was true. At the start of his experimentations, he thought it would be easy to wash through her, as his mana type was unique and melded and flowed through itself without any difficulty. Such was how everyone inside this chamber didn't suffer any loss of vitality, though they were trapped inside his sovereignty.

Yet the System was wilier than Shiv expected, and Magical Resistance did not follow the letter but the spirit of its function. It did not adapt perfectly against his mana to become like his mana, thus allowing his mana to flow freely through everyone he wanted to influence. Instead, it stayed raw, pure, and raw, without any attunement whatsoever. As he clashed against that rawness, there was resistance. Though he could force his way through, that would cause pain and reveal his manipulations, and such a failure would be a blow to both his pride and practice as an apprentice mage.

Instead, he relied on his Ungnostic of the Highest House and deductive intellect to concoct a finer, softer solution. What followed then was a specialized involution spell. It was cylindrical, as all his shapings had to be, but it was also layered. The outermost, vulgar thing, mostly gold, focused on the looping of time. Behind that, though, came another loop, one that was meant to pry at vitality and the soul contained within. With both those loops, however, was a gradual recession of mana. Shiv could pull his magic away, and the moment he did, the spell would collapse. 

Thus, as Veronica collided with one of her spell mind anchors, the outermost layer of the magics was wrenched away and shredded until there was nothing left. Then came the inner layers influencing thought and emotion. Both of those demanded a shifting of Veronica's Magical Resistance. The thing was that Veronica's Skill didn't shift in an instant, and so, some of his mana seeped in.

As it only sank in halfway, however, he was forced to break the spell before it became lodged and ground against her mana. There was still a bladed aspect to his magic, something that could cleave and carve and cut, especially from the inside out. With all the mana at his disposal, he suspected he could hew through a great many things and create a series of temporal blades that no one but the most practiced of magi could sense.

And so he dubbed this specific spell the Repetitive Pattern Mine and made a few more adjustments to finish his intrusion upon Veronica.

The resulting spell circles he forged were smaller, turned faster, and were interlinked in the fashion of chainmail. They lingered as a spherical grid, hidden within time and vitality, for Veronica to cross over the same point. When she did, the spellwork pressed upon her, spreading out to encompass and mold itself through her Magical Resistance. Certain circles were more focused upon looping time, while others were made to loop emotion, and others looped thought. This time, Veronica's Magical Resistance failed to adapt nearly quickly enough, as it needed time to adjust, and even unattuned mana held frequencies of its own; to perfectly deny Shiv's magic, her frequency needed to change, but she was a singular note trying to deny an entire, subtle symphony.

His spells slid through. Each of their edges was narrowed to such a fine point that when they sliced in, they passed without inflicting any injury, like a surgical implement slipping between points of thinnest skin and flesh rather than gutting and catching on sinew and hardened muscle.

It was a testament to Veronica's legend that she was far harder to intrude upon than Maia—who was like an unbreakable shell in terms of magic, but slow, ridiculously, absurdly slow in the ways of mana adaptation.

“And before all of you get too offended, I'm not just messing around with you to show how powerful I am. No, there's a point to this, and the point is that our previous plans still apply. In fact, they apply even more than they ever did before. We're still going to raid Avalon, and we're going to raid Avalon in a way that Avalon can't predict. If I can manage to slip into all of you without anyone noticing, then I might even be able to replicate the same thing against Avalon. It's important to remember that Avalon is a Heaven of time. I don't have enough understanding to exactly convey what a Heaven is supposed to be, but understand that it stands more absolute than even a High God’s Domains. But it's only time, and I have a lot more than just time at my disposal now.”

He took in the entirety of the room, as their focus was fully invested in him, as their gazes and their bodies were tense, waiting for his next action. They wouldn't see it coming. They would never see it coming.

Just like both Avalon and the Thief failed to notice that he'd already slipped out from Road’s End—and without using any of the exits, no less.

“The dissertations will continue, but they are going to have a point because soon I'm going to be doing what I said I was. You're going to be piloting a series of golems. You might not be able to use the Endless yourself, but my attunement is tied to thought and emotion. You all have thought and emotion, even if you don't have magic, and I can place the right series of spells inside of them so that you guys are reeled back to where you started, no matter where you end up—and I think if we do this right, if I construct these golems right, and you guys understand what I can do even half as well as I can, then I think we can steal the steel out from inside the sword. We can bring paradise crashing down from within.”

Silence followed, but what came in its wake was avarice and a want to experience the power he possessed, the power he offered in part and parcel, at his own discretion, to their benefit. He was generous, more than any Legend and doubtless more than any Myth they'd ever met, but there was an end to this and a means. Shiv knew that if any of them were compromised, it might be used against him.

But then again, there were several points he didn't elaborate upon—complexities and spells within spells. On the surface, the Endless had one rule: it was easy to compromise. But then again, that was only the surface, and one circle could hold many, many other revolutions.

A hand went up then. Curtis swallowed as he prepared to ask a question. Shiv gestured to him, giving the Displaced a nod, and found himself actually pleased that the utterly mundane man was so enchanted by the lesson.

"I think I got most of that. You basically have to have a bookends thing going on there." Curtis began stammering as he tried to work through his nervousness. "I think we're getting a little bit ahead of ourselves, though. We still need to get out of this place, right? None of us has left the exit yet. From what you've said, stepping out might get us noticed immediately because everything outside is... Well, that's Avalon's territory, right?"

“Correct,” Shiv said. “Which is why you're not going to be doing any of the stepping out. I am. I'm going to blaze a trail. I'm going to repeat my actions. I'm going to make my own anchors, and then I'm going to place you there whenever I need you. I'm going to do this across all the paradises without Avalon noticing.”

“But how are you so certain Avalon won’t notice?” Maia asked. “It is—”

A sudden burst of cackling laughter interrupted her. Several Pathbearers flinched as the Thief threw his head back, gripping his stomach as he bellowed with laughter: joyous, mirthful laughter that grew loud and hoarse as he almost began to choke. The Thief's reaction was near maniacal, and even Veronica gave him a double-take, wondering if the old immortal had spontaneously gone mad.

Shiv sighed, disappointed that his ruse couldn't last longer than a few moments.

“I have been proud of you before, boy. I have been proud of you many times, but all my previous instances of affection have been far overshadowed by what you just achieved. What delightful treachery you've planned.” The Thief sighed as he leaned back in his chair and looked up at the glinting ceiling. “I'm going to need to take him out, then, and place him somewhere else, in one of the cells, I imagine.”

Confusion tore through the others. Shiv said nothing. He didn't feel like elaborating. The Thief would see to that soon enough. “What are you two talking about?” Maia practically hissed. Not far, though, Veronica narrowed her eyes, managing to catch on as well.

"You said repeated actions allow you to infest your mana inside of them,” she said. “You've created anchors, silhouettes. You can plant things in these anchors. That means you can move across these anchors as well, because they're cycles in reality, cycles in time. You can ride them as a set of rails, interlink with them… And the Realmrunner, he's been here, but he's been in other places as well, other places within Avalon, across Avalon…” She swallowed. “You're already outside. You’re already past Avalon’s defenses and awareness. You’ve already escaped.”

“No," Shiv said with a shake of his head. “I didn't escape, not at all. Escape means getting away. I'm going in deeper. We're all going in deeper. Avalon is not going to let this go. None of them will let this go, but I'm fine with that because I don't want to fucking let it go either. The Sword of Paradise swung on me and cut, but now I'm inside the sword, and I think I want to perform a new test: How sharp an edge does it take to split a Sword of Paradise from the inside out?”