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War And Peace

Entropic Decay

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Alyssa charged through fields of wheat on Izsha’s back, fleeing from Illuna as fast as she could. The golden light of a single Kindness was still visible over her shoulder. It didn’t look like it was following her, but Alyssa wasn’t taking any chances. If it spotted her, she had a feeling that hundreds of the Astral Authority wouldn’t be far behind.

The others were still in the city. Partially to warn off people from attacking the Kindness. Partially because Brakkt hadn’t quite finished resupplying. Izsha’s bags weren’t completely full either, but there wasn’t much anyone could do about that. There was enough food for a few days. It would have to last.

Alyssa had to get out of the city before that thing found her.

Owlcroft was a full week out from Illuna. If Izsha could sprint the entire way, they might possibly be able to arrive in twenty-four hours, but Alyssa doubted that a draken could move at full speed for that long. They had already been planning on picking up the pace over what they had averaged on the way from Lyria to Illuna, so even twenty-four hours might have been optimistic.

Pulling out her spell cards, Alyssa stared down at the one Accelero spell she had managed to create. Having never tried it before, she didn’t know the exact mechanics of the spell. Given that it was a highly ranked spell, casting it might have unknown side effects. Like the difference between Lumen using an Annihilator and Alyssa doing the same. Could it get them to Owlcroft faster? Very possibly.

“What do you think? Should we even worry about getting there faster?” Unless that Kindness spotted her, it probably wasn’t necessary. Simply heading out a ways and waiting for the others would suffice. Then they could continue as normal.

Izsha, of course, did not respond. Alyssa still hadn’t found a good way to communicate with the draken that didn’t involve calling on Tenebrael’s power. After this trip. After distracting the Astral Authority with the demons of Owlcroft. After getting far enough away that they weren’t likely to turn and descend on her, she would try again. Until such a time, she had to get her advice from other sources.

Kasita, leaning forward so that her voice would be heard over the air rushing past, said, “The faster we get there, the less we’ll have to possibly deal with things like that. I don’t like it. It feels like your staff or angels or… like it shouldn’t be there, but it obviously is.”

“I think you’ve mentioned that before.”

“It’s here a lot faster this time too. It took two weeks for one to show up at Teneville. Then you killed one and nothing happened immediately, but something might have happened after a while if you hadn’t called all of them to that giant circle above the city. Even after it had disappeared, you wound up chased all around the city after using only a little bit of Tenebrael’s power. Now this one shows up twenty minutes after you do nothing particularly special? They are learning what they need to be looking for. And if they learn too much…”

“They might come after me without me even doing anything.”

“Right.”

Alyssa bit her lip. Purposefully, not because Izsha was bounding up and down as it sprinted. She had inadvertently given the Astral Authority a bead on her location. All it would take was one more accidental slip up to have them all crashing down on her.

She still wasn’t sure what she had done. Her sunglasses had melted off her face, which had happened to a different pair of sunglasses back in Lyria after making a request to Tenebrael. But this time, she hadn’t made any requests at all. All she had done was cast about half of her collection of Spectral Chains at once. That shouldn’t have had anything to do with Tenebrael. Or rather, the cards did act as prepared requests, but they weren’t the same as Alyssa’s requests at all.

Had it just been her anger at the guild? Or her fear over Fela?

Would it happen again?

Alyssa couldn’t discount the possibility. Which meant that it was probably very necessary to get to Owlcroft faster, thus removing the problem with it happening again.

“I don’t suppose you know whether or not Accelero can affect all of us at once?” When the Pharaoh had used it, the spell had affected only him. And spells tended to only do one thing. Even when Alyssa used high rank spells, it really only did a more powerful version of the same thing that everyone else got.

“You’re mistaking me for Irulon.”

“Yeah…” Looking through her deck of cards, she tried to find other things that might help them move faster. Reducing their weight might work for Izsha’s endurance. If she had more of those short-range teleport spells, she could chain them together to rapidly blink forward. As it was, ten wouldn’t get her very far. And, like when she had used them in Lyria, they were far more valuable for dodging sudden attacks than traveling.

Too many of her spells were designed for combat. She hadn’t even used a fireball spell in forever, yet she had twenty of them. Why bother wasting the time to draw them out when she could have been looking up speed enhancement abilities. It wasn’t like being able to move quickly had no usage in combat.

Alyssa had to wonder whether or not Irulon had any spells that would help. Fractal magic did nothing straightforward, so she doubted that there would be something as simple as ‘move quicker’ in her tome, but who knew what kind of strange esoteric effects there could be. She had pictures of quite a bit of Irulon’s tome in her phone, but drawing out Fractal spells took an entire afternoon for just a single card. As such, she had only the most necessary spells available.

Like Empty Mirror. Which could help with the problem of the moment, at least so long as the Astral Authority didn’t adapt to its use.

“Let’s just find a good spot to hide out. Between Fela and the other draken, the others shouldn’t have any problem finding us.”

Izsha immediately angled herself off toward a large grove of trees in the distance. Illuna, despite having the deserty Plains of the Dead so close, was surprisingly lush. In fact, it was almost too alive. A river ran right past the city, but a small portion of it leaked out into a fairly wet marshlands. There were insects around, among other things. Alyssa hadn’t seen any alligators yet, but she had seen half destroyed animal bones that looked like they might have been eaten by a larger predator.

Barring magical shenanigans, she was pretty sure that Izsha was the largest predator in this ecosystem. Alyssa didn’t know what kind of monsters lived in a more marshy and wet climate, but it shouldn’t matter anyway. Illuna, despite apparently being more open to monsters than a place like Lyria, was still expected to keep monsters clear of their lands. Still, when she got back to Lyria, she decided to pester Oz into letting her peruse the guild’s bestiary.

Illuna proper was positioned on a high hill for the most part, keeping it well outside the watery land around it. Someone had tried to create roads through the land, but the water level at the moment must have been higher than average. Now that Izsha had moved beyond the fields of wheat, she could easily see that Illuna’s department of transportation needed some additional work. The vast majority of the road was underwater. The parts that weren’t were overgrown with greenery. Which might have been more a product of neglect than of a high water table.

Now that she was thinking about it, neglect was probably the actual answer. As far as she knew, the only place this particular path led to was Owlcroft. Anywhere that had once been connected to Owlcroft likely had been rerouted to keep travelers as far away as possible. Long looping roads that went northwest or southwest might be annoying, but at least there was a smaller chance of running into demons.

It took almost an hour, even at speed, to reach the forest. Part of that was the marsh. Izsha couldn’t plow through it as easily as hard land. That meant that the others would be a long while as well.

Hopping off Izsha’s back onto some soggy but mostly solid earth, Alyssa pulled out her binoculars. The golden light from the Kindness wasn’t visible anymore. She wasn’t sure if that meant it had left or if it had simply dipped out of view. Just to be sure, she scanned the skies as far as she could see in all directions, both with her binoculars and with the naked eye. There was nothing to indicate that the Astral Authority was after her.

That let her relax ever so slightly.

Now she just had to stay calm and try to figure out what had happened.

Though poor Izsha was soaked up to its belly. If Alyssa’s feet had been dangling just a few inches more, she would have been skimming the water in some places. As it was, the bottoms of her pants and boots looked like they had when she was a kid and had to walk to school on a rainy day.

Shuffling through her deck of cards, she pulled out a simple Draw Water spell. It wasn’t very highly ranked, so there wasn’t much chance of hazardous side effects. And she had used it before. Learning potion making from Tzheitza had involved the use of several low ranked utility spells like Draw Water. Applying it to her pants and boots wasn’t quite the same as using it on a bucket to extract water, but it did still work.

A globule of water floated in the air for a moment, growing larger as more water siphoned off to feed it. As soon as the spell had run its course, it dropped to the ground and splashed a little. Not enough to soak her again. Without water, her pants were stiff and crusty from whatever other dirt and grime was left clinging to her.

Hopefully no brain eating amoebas.

“You too?” she asked, looking to Izsha. “I think the brush is in Brakkt’s pack, so you’ll be left with whatever this grime is.”

Despite the warning, Izsha still nodded. A nod was a bit of a strange gesture coming from a dinosaur, but it was understandable. Holding out the cards, Alyssa carefully drew in only the surface water. Draw Water could be used on things like worms to dry them out quickly. Alyssa had never done so on something larger, but she really didn’t want to dehydrate Izsha if at all possible. It wasn’t very efficient on a living creature, so she should be able to stop in time if she noticed something strange.

Being a larger creature, Alyssa expected more water to cling to Izsha. But the glob of water was actually about the same size in the end. Scales didn’t soak, apparently. Most water just ran off them.

“Alyssa,” Kasita said, voice a hushed whisper. “I don’t mean to alarm you, but you might want to turn around.”

The warning sent a chill down Alyssa’s spine. Her hand snapped to her pistol as she pivoted.

A porcelain mask stared at her from only a few feet away. Bursting pustules of eyeballs stared as well. Hundreds of them. Each looking over her for only a moment before exploding into nothingness.

Alyssa squeezed off three bullets into the Kindness. They weren’t enhanced with Tenebrael’s power, but they still tore straight through the creature, popping eyeballs as they went. It writhed back in clear and obvious pain, but it didn’t die instantly.

A fourth shot cracked the porcelain mask, splitting it in two. The smaller chunk fell to the ground, sinking into the damp earth. The larger portion remained attached to the Kindness. But it was enough. The Kindness reeled back, taking to the skies.

With some space between it and her, Alyssa felt far more comfortable actually speaking.

“Tenebrael. Destroy this foul creature before it can call for aid, use the weapons I wield to deliver an end to our enemies. And… can we please not call down a thousand more because of this?” Alyssa pulled the trigger. The hammer drew back and slammed down on the cartridge. A beam of black-white light burst from the end of the barrel. It lanced straight through the Kindness, obliterating dozens of eyeballs as it continued into the sky.

The golden light dimmed as the Kindness dropped in a wide spiral. The wings beat a few times more in an attempt to keep it aloft. But, after a moment of fruitless attempts, it gave up. The kindness dropped like a stone into the swampy marsh.

Alyssa immediately grabbed hold of Kasita’s hand and dragged her onto Izsha. Without even needing a word from its rider, Izsha took off in a sprint. With them heading through firmer land, the run was much easier on Izsha. Their speed was much faster as well.

“Sorry,” Alyssa said, eying the skies for any sign of more of the Astral Authority. “No rest yet.” Their portals were visually loud with their glowing borders, so she wasn’t too worried about one opening up right in front of her. She was far more concerned that beings from the skies would drop down on her. Or that some long range bombardment would happen.

Iosefael didn’t know how the Astral Authority communicated with one another. Neither did she know how they detected Tenebrael’s magic. She suspected that it had something to do with Charities. The logistics and portal summoners, but wasn’t positive. But they couldn’t be any more omniscient than angels were, so getting away from the position of cast spells had to work.

Izsha made it another ten steps before a square portal opened high in the air. The snake-like form of a Diligence didn’t even fully emerge before the porcelain mask split in two. A golden orb of light welled up from the recesses of its throat.

Shorten Distance moved Izsha to the side just in time. The orb carved a small trench into the ground, blasting apart trees as it dug into the spot where Izsha would have been.

“Tenebrael! Did you not hear what I fucking said!” Alyssa shouted as Izsha jumped aside.

Another portal opened. The speared rod of a Patience was the first thing through. It would have bisected them all had it not been for Izsha’s quick reaction time.

The sudden movement almost made Alyssa bite off her tongue. Far more carefully, she shouted over her shoulder. “Kasita, send a message to Irulon. Let her know that I am going to try something risky.”

“What exactly do you mean by risky?”

“My companions.” Alyssa felt it. Her fingers tingled with the glory of an angel. She hadn’t even made the request yet, but she already felt like it was going to work. “Have faith. For Tenebrael will not abandon us. She gave us a mission. We are close. We will accomplish it. We simply need a little more time. And time is something that Tenebrael can provide.”

Black light tinged with white edges erupted from Alyssa’s fingertips. It spread outward, forming into a wide circle beneath them, following them even as Izsha tore through the forest. The design that filled in the interior looked familiar. Alyssa had only seen it once, but she doubted that she would forget it soon. The lines and geometry of the Enochian formed into vague depictions of gears, cogs, and springs, looking like the interior of a pocket watch.

“Halting entropic progression.”

A high pitched chime echoed over the land as the circle beneath Izsha pulsed. She couldn’t remember that chime happening last time, but then again, something could have been different this time. It might not even be the same thing that Tenebrael had done.

The pattern pulsed again. The chime rang again, but this time, it was lower pitched and drawn out. A neutral hum that vibrated against the air.

A third pulse was accompanied by… she wasn’t sure if it could be called a chime anymore. One time, she had gone to a concert with her mother. A Pink Floyd cover band. She distinctly remembered the bass guitars reverberating deep within her chest, making her almost feel as if she were having constant heart attacks.

This third chime was a single strum of a low note played over the world’s most powerful subwoofer.

Alyssa thought her heart had stopped. Placing a hand over her chest, she could still feel it. Just the opposite of being stopped, she could feel her chest thumping a mile a minute.

Izsha was still moving. Kasita as well—Alyssa could feel the mimic’s arms tighten around her waist. The mystic circle was still underfoot, still in motion like the gears of a clock. Somewhere, in the background noise of the universe, the echoes of that bass cannon were still reverberating across the world.

But outside the edges of the mystic circle, nothing moved. Leaves, knocked off the trees from wind, hung in the air without falling. A chipmunk sat atop a stone. Even with Izsha only a few feet away, it didn’t even look in their direction. It might as well have been a statue.

Alyssa snapped her head to the nearest Astral Authority. A massive portal the size of a building had the chimeric form of an Equanimity halfway through. And it wasn’t coming the rest of the way through. Like the chipmunk, it was frozen solid. Locked in time.

Two Patiences and a Kindness were high above, flying in a triangular shape with the Kindness in the rear. They weren’t moving either. Even their wings were perfectly stiff and immobile.

“It worked,” Kasita said. “I don’t know what you did, but it worked.”

“I thought it might,” Alyssa said, not taking her eyes off the Astral Authority, just in case. “A real angel would have ignored that and kept coming after us. But these aren’t real angels. People can see them. Regular mortals. And they can interact with them. So it stood to reason that the Astral Authority is a part of the real world rather than whatever metaphysical plane actual angels teeter on. Or so I guessed, anyway.”

“Should we go back for Irulon and the others?”

“No,” Alyssa said before Izsha could even start to slow down. “Keep moving. We… might not have that much time.”

Looking down, Alyssa watched the mystic circle. It vaguely looked like a clock. And, as part of being a clock, it had a pair of hands. They were large, ornate designs, but recognizable nonetheless. The shorter hour hand was just past the twelve o’clock position. The minute hand was at the two. And they were moving.

They were moving anticlockwise.

They were counting down.

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