“So, where are we going next?” Elonwy said as we piled into her car. Surprisingly (or not considering what it was), the seat seemed to expand as more of us climbed in, allowing for more passengers to sit comfortably. “Are we going to pick up Dean Desmond?”
Dean Gibbons shook his head, though he didn’t seem too focused. He was looking around the inside of the car with interest. “What a fascinating conceptual model. Spatiotemporal travel using fourth dimensional temporal dynamics with a space based propulsion system. I hope you’re planning to submit this as a thesis. I’d love the chance to study it in detail.”
“Oh,” she sputtered, her urgency being overwhelmed by awe. “I mean…yeah, I was. I hadn’t submitted the proposal yet because I’m still ironing out the kinks. The-”
“Sequence oscillation is uneven,” he cut her off. “I noticed. It’s not too big of a problem though. If you boost the raydeon capacitor to fifteen cycles you can widen the frequency on the stabilizer. Should put the whole range within the stable zone. Hell, it would probably lower the escape velocity for the fourth dimensional layer by at least five lecters. You’d shave off maybe fifteen percent of the power draw.”
She froze, eyes going wide as her jaw dropped. “I…why the hell didn’t I think of that? Hold on,” she dove backwards over the console, hanging halfway out of the front seat to dig through one of the note piles. “Ah! Here! I was looking at this!” She shoved the paper at him.
He took it, nodding. “This would work too, but it’s ludicrously expensive. Overpowering the oscillations with a force buffer doubles your power requirements. You’d be at risk of a catastrophic system failure without a cooling system overhaul. Which would require a new power supply because the cooling system you would need to run this would require about twice as much output as the whole engine uses right now.”
“Look this is fascinating and also gibberish to me,” I cut in, literally shoving myself between them. “But can we do this another time when we aren’t all at risk of being murdered by an escaping Void entity?”
Dean Windermere smiled chidingly at her husband. “He’s right, love, it’s not the time. Schedule a consultation with the girl after this is over and let her get back to the drive. As for our destination, Desmond won’t be at his own campus by now. He’ll have already set off to warn the others. We’re more likely to catch him at one of those. For now though, we’re not going to be doing that. I need you to take us to these coordinates.”
She scrawled a series of strangely discordant formulas in the air with icy vapor, and I winced as my head rang like a struck bell just from trying to read them. I didn’t recognize literally any of it, but apparently Prof Hawkins did, because he literally flinched back from the writing. “That’s REAL?” he sputtered. “I thought it was an urban legend.”
“Thought what was an urban legend?” I asked with interest. His reaction was kind of fascinating.
“My husband and I have a joint research project,” Dean Windermere said matter of factly. “The frozen moment. Why did you think we gave the academy such a pretentious name?”
I shrugged. “I kind of assumed it was just normal Ascendant showboating. It’s pretty on brand.”
“Touche,” she smiled warmly. “But no. The Frozen Moment is a Cryotemporal Engine we’ve been experimenting with for a few millenia. It’s actually the secret behind those fascinating timelock rooms we use for the entrance exams. It’s a revolutionary concept, using conceptual ice to slow entropic decay on a dimensional level, theoretically infinitely expanding potential temporal pockets with zero side effects.”
Dean Gibbons cut in. “Time is fairly malleable,” he confirmed. “But there are certain laws that are agreed on by nearly everyone. The universality of temporal flow is one of those. Things move through time, or are moved by time depending on your construct. The point is that while ignoring those laws temporarily is fine, removing people from the timestream for long periods of time gets them hit with serious entropic recursion. And yes, I know I said entropy is atemporal, but this is the exception that proves the rule.”
“So the engine lets you remove things from the timestream for longer without backlash?” I asked as I grasped the core concept. “How does that help deal with the Void Child?”
“Because there are two times of temporal bubbles,” the Dean explained. “Outward facing is essentially slowed time. To give an example, if you created a chamber where one day outside is a hundred years INSIDE, that’s outward facing. The opposite is inward facing temporal bubbles. Which is when-”
I sat up straight as I followed that train of thought to its logical conclusion. “Where a hundred years outside is one day in the bubble. Slow instead of fast. So you could shove the monster into a time bubble and would essentially have an almost unlimited amount of time to deal with it.”
“Nothing quite so convenient I suspect,” he corrected. “Void entities are…slippery, when it comes to the timestream. Temporal energies don’t stick to them very well. It’ll help, but I doubt it will be enough to overcome the creature on its own.” Elonwy had pulled out again, but to my surprise, even though I forgot to close my eyes I wasn’t feeling sick or uncomfortable. I suspected she’d already instituted whatever fix the Dean had given her and it had worked.
“I don’t suppose Dean Harper has perfect his research on applying my wife’s specialized flame to the problem yet?” I asked hopefully.
Dean Gibbons snorted. “Harper? Harper isn’t a researcher. He isn’t stupid, but he tends to just smash headfirst into problems over and over again until they solve themselves. Absolutely no flexibility in his methods. It takes him exponentially longer to perform any measurable amount of meaningful research on a new topic. Which is to say…no, there is no chance of that having happened.”
The car was still moving, blurs of color flashing by the windows, but it was kind of soothing now. I was enjoying the serene flow of the colorful outdoors, but sadly it couldn’t last. We pulled to a stop again, and when we climbed out of the car, we were…”Where the hell did this mountain come from?” I asked in confusion, looking around at the jagged, snow covered peak we were parked on. All around us there were other mountains, albeit much lower, and they were all covered with a thick layer of snow.
“Permafrost Peak,” Dean Windermere said serenely. “One of the most secluded and most secretive locations under the control of the ice major. I’m enforcing my will on the cold around us right now, or just being here would be enough to turn you into neverthawing statues of ice.”
I whistled (which sounded strange and echoey in the thin mountain air). “You can do that? Just take control of cold that extreme?”
“Yes,” she responded bluntly. “But I didn’t. Not exactly. Rather than control it, it’s simpler to just freeze the temperature drop at a manageable level. Cryokinetic control applied on the conceptual level is substantially more useful than one might expect. One can freeze all sorts of things beyond simple physical matter.”
I nodded with interest, but before I could respond, a voice rang in my head. “Shane,” I almost passed out from the sheer relief of hearing my wife’s voice. “I’m with Dean Desmond. I told him what happened and he’s planning to look for the other Deans. Are you with yours?”
I grinned wolfishly. “It’s Callie,” I said, holding up a hand. “She’s getting in touch through the bond. She says she’s with Desmond. He’s looking for you guys.”
“Convenient,” Dean Gibbons said approvingly. “We never had occasion to experiment with soul bonding, but I confess I haven’t seen many as concrete as yours. It seems a tab more anchored than most emotional bonds I’ve seen.”
“It’s not completely emotional,” I corrected. “It was, but it was altered when Callie became an angel. It sort of mutated into a hybrid between a god’s bond with their messenger and the partner bond we had before. But yeah the connection is deep. We can even enter each other’s Domains long distance through the soul link.”
He hummed with interest. “Fascinating,” he said with a nod. “A useful ability in many situations. Including this one. Give her these coordinates to pass to Desmond.”
This time when he listed them out he went slow and used a different notation. It was longer and more complicated, but it was something my brain could process and something I could pass to Callie. Apparently Permafrost Peak wasn’t a place Desmond had been before, which was interesting, but it didn’t matter that much. Once I finished passing over the information, there was a slight ripple and suddenly Callie was there. I breathed out a sigh of relief so visceral I was worried my lungs would implode, and I surged forward to wrap my arms around my wife. “Holy shit I’m so glad you’re ok,” I whispered into her hair.
She clung to me, squeezing back just as hard. “I’m ok,” she murmured. “It’s ok, we’re all ok. Everything will be fine. I talked to your sister and Benny. Bethy picked them up. Chelsea had an emergency scroll from Nat she used to get in touch. They’re laying low in the trait major. Bethy’s dorm is far away from the platforms.”
I let out a sigh of relief. “Thank the gods. I was worried. I’m surprised she got them scooped up so fast. Remind me to thank her.”
“I think she’ll make fun of you if you do,” she said wryly. “You know she doesn’t believe in keeping score like that. Friends help each other.” She smiled softly and squeezed my hand. “She’s had a good example for that kind of thinking. You’ve got good taste in friends, and you surround yourself with good people.”
“Started with you,” I reminded her. I turned to regard the man who brought her. I recognized him from the exam, though I didn’t know him otherwise. I gave him a respectful nod. “Thank you so much for bringing my wife back. I was worried sick.”
“You should be,” he said gravely. “We skipped through common on the way. The formation was still en route, but I don’t think it’ll be long.”
Dean Gibbons nodded. “Based on the information given, I would say we should be seeing the results right about…now.” As he finished talked, a blast of red light erupted off in the distance. Not like the thing pillars from before. This was a HUGE column of red light. My mouth went dry at the sheer magnitude of the power output. I’d seen some big lightshows, but this was next level.
“Oh,” I said faintly. “That’s…holy shit, that’s crazy. Can you guys really beat that?” My mouth was dry and my throat was hoarse. My heart was thundering in my chest, because I could feel the shadow of death in that column. This light, this spear of energy, was the most dangerous thing I had ever seen in my entire life, and it wasn’t close.
Dean Gibbons frowned at the light show. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “But I like our odds. I’m not sure which of the Deans defected, but regardless, they haven’t seen all our tricks.” He grinned nastily. “I don’t think they have any idea what’s coming for them. And they won’t until the very last second.”
I knew what he wasn't saying. This wasn’t a one on one fight. The cultists were there. Deveskane was there. This was going to be a mess on every level, and I wasn’t sure how the hell we were all going to come out of it in one piece. Looking down at my wife’s hand in mine though, I felt an overwhelming surge of certainty. We WOULD come out in one piece, and stronger for it. I wouldn’t accept any other outcome.