We emerged from the tear in space into a warzone. Dean Gibbons had decided we were going to miss our window if we pushed it too far and we headed for the canyon. But when we got there, we found…carnage. Bodies, flames, frozen time, curses everywhere. It was a mess.
Dean Gibbons knelt to check one of the corpses. “Resentment backlash,” he said clinically. “Harper waited for them to enter and then destabilized the canyon’s aura.”
I perked up. “That’s good, right? I mean, the canyon is huge, so they must have taken heavy losses.” Of course Dean Harper would have countermeasures in place, I started to relax a bit, until I caught the Dean’s head shake.
“They knew he would do that, it was the obvious move,” he pushed the body with his foot. “This is a C-ranker. Most of the bodies are. They sent in a wave of fodder to soak up the damage.”
“How did they get enough people?” I protested. “Did they really turn this many?”
Elonwy stepped forward, kneeling next to one of the higher ranked corpses. “I don’t think so,” She said grimly. “Hey, Prof, is this who I think it is?”
“Bennet Kane,” Professor Hawkins said clinically. “Huh, thought he died at the Radiant Mountain Riot.” He squinted around. “And that looks like Sanders Quilg. I KNOW I got a death report for him after that beast tide in the Shivering Second Canyon eight years ago. I don’t know the fodder, but their high rankers are recognizable. Some of them vanished ages ago.”
Dean Gibbons grimaced. “Yes, this has clearly been in motion for quite some time. Which makes it all the more certain that they had inside help.”
I thought back to the stories about people vanishing, and how casually it had been brushed off. The Academy was safer than most places, but it wasn’t SAFE. People died here. But knowing that was coming and intercepting them before it did, all without being noticed…they would have needed someone with a deep working knowledge of the ins and outs of Frozen Moment.
Clearly, I wasn’t the only one thinking that. Dean Desmond looked grim. “That means they have someone with transport powers. And since it’s not me…”
“Wendy,” said Dean Gibbons sadly. “I had hoped it wouldn’t be one of my few friends. I can’t say I’m surprised, however. But she couldn’t have done this alone. Besides the obvious, the others haven’t shown up yet. Someone is delaying them. With the three of us here, Wendy involved, and Harper pinned down, that leaves seven of us unaccounted for. Someone should have shown up by now. If we assume the crafters might be keeping back to prepare, that leaves us with four.”
“Theodora would never,” said Dean Windermere firmly. “You know how she feels about the Void. And Corey disdains outside help in anything to an almost self destructive degree.” Theodora was Jessie’s Dean, the Overgod of Life called the Sister of the World Tree, and Corey Down was The Unrelenting Edge of the weapons department. “But if we assume they’re each tied up, then that means they’ve been waylaid by-”
“Kell and Clara,” grunted Dean Desmond. “Shit.”
That meant that of the possible traitors, most likely all three of them had turned on us. I was beginning to feel uneasy. This felt…too balanced. They had taken too much into account. Whoever made this plan, be it the Void Child or one of the Deans, had been working on it for a long time. They had accounted for every variable so far.
“We know who they’ll send to stop us then,” Dean Windermere said coldly, frost beginning to gather around her.
“Of course,” came a soft, airy voice. “Who else would it be?”
We all turned to find a small, delicate looking woman with a sad smile standing in the path. She was wearing loose, flowing clothes, and had a wide hood over her head. At first I thought the hood had shadowed her eyes completely, but a closer look told me she was wearing a deep black blindfold.
Dean Windermere’s fingers flexed slightly. “Hello Clara,” she said in a soft, dangerous voice. “Anything to say for yourself?”
The other woman shrugged. “Nothing in particular. It’s only business, you know. The stars have stagnated since we established the academy. I’d reached a bottleneck. I needed momentum, celestial disruption. The Void is good at that.”
“And now you’re riding the power surge of tracing your path in the constellations,” Dean Windermere said icily. “Do you think that’s enough to take all three of us?”
“I don’t think it needs to be,” Dean Clara Temple, the Stargazer, said warmly. “I just need to slow you down. I’ve seen how this fight goes, Sela. Every detail. My victory is written in the stars. Just wait this out with me and we can all walk away safe and sound.”
I had no clue what they were talking about, though from context it sounded like Dean Temple could see the future and had manipulated us into walking into a trap somehow? I didn’t know what her stellar Domain could do, but it was clearly effective here. It seemed like because the Overgods were just fragments, their ability to leverage the environment played a big part in their individual strengths, hence the use of projects like the Frozen Moment.
Mentally, I tried to think of what I could do. Maybe if I pushed Kronos to the peak of A-rank I could disrupt the timestream nearby? But as soon as I had the idea I tossed it away. I wasn’t an S-ranker or a god, I couldn’t do anything here. Any tricks I pulled would be useless at this level. I glanced around desperately, looking for something, anything that I could do to help or even escape.
Nothing. Just trash, cursed artifacts, disrupted energy, and miscellaneous detritus. I even spotted a…street sign. I froze. ‘Monday Street’. I read slowly. And it was directly to the right of Dean Temple.
Reaching into my ring, I pulled out the map that I’d gotten from Professor Saunders. As soon as it emerged, I realized something had changed. The previously normal map was glowing a bright, distracting red, just like the energy from the ritual. As I stared in disbelief, the map floated out of my hands, drifting up into the air. Each of the locations marked down was circled, and as I watched, the map burst into flames, burning away to leave only the circles hanging in the air.
There was a pulse of energy as the circles arranged themselves into the shape of a constellation, then exploded up into the sky, suspending themselves over us and creating a dome of red energy around us all.
“Oh, that little BRAT,” spat Dean Temple, seemingly angered for the first time. “She SEALED the stars? And she used my own damned ritual to do it!”
“This is why she came to my department,” Dean Gibbons said with a wolfish grin. “She was wasted on stargazing. Temporal mechanics are far more flexible. So…what are you going to do now, Clara? Sealing the stars has completely severed your celestial path here. Your chances of fighting the three of us to a standstill in an open match are effectively zero.”
I shot my Professor a confused look, and he took pity. “Allegra Saunders used to be Dean Temple’s disciple. She learned divination in her department, but left for a position in Temporal Dynamics after she completed her doctorate. It was a big scandal at the time. Changing majors happens, but Dean Temple was grooming Saunders to take over as her successor. She never quite forgave my teacher for poaching her.”
“She was like a DAUGHTER to me!” she spat at him. “And he turned her against me with nonsense promises about exploring the underpinnings of reality. She had so much talent, and she threw it all away to play with equations!”
“Clearly not,” said Dean Gibbons smugly. “She hijacked part of your ritual and used it to starlock you. She used the map as a connection point to absorb the power and had the kid carry it right in here under your nose. Which means she foresaw this entire confrontation and knew EXACTLY how to block you. She’d never have come up with that when she was working for you. Face it, I’m a far better mentor than you are, Clara.”
I was blown away. Professor Saunders seemed so…flighty. To be able to outfox an Overgod, and her own ex mentor at that, not to mention she’d used US to do it. I got chills just thinking about that level of prescience.
In fact, it was more than that. This whole plan had been laid out to perfectly counter the Deans, it had been years in the making, and Professor Saunders had made the ONE perfect move she could to break the deadlock. She must have predicted this years ago, and had been steadily setting all this up ever since. It was staggering.
“Don’t think I can’t defend myself,” spat Dean Temple, her face beginning to twist with panic. “I’m still an O-” her statement never finished. The frost that had been building around Dean Windermere had been quietly condensing, getting colder and colder, twisting the space nearby so subtly I’d barely noticed it. Her hands flicked up as Dean Temple spoke, and then…the other woman was frozen.
Not in ice. Or at least not only in ice. I flinched back when I tried to use Dantalion to analyze what had happened, but I managed to catch a slight scrap of information as my eyes started to bleed. Nine Layer Permafrost Prison. Time, space, soul, body, mind, Domain, heart, and fate, all frozen solid and frozen over again in a layer of indestructible permafrost.
Dean Gibbons whistled. “Wow, you took that a little personally, love. That’s not going to thaw anytime soon.”
“Treachery is just a part of life,” said Dean Windermere coldly. “I’m less forgiving of incompetence. If you’re going to stab me in the back, at least do it properly. Otherwise you're just embarrassing both of us.”
“Very true,” Dean Gibbons said brightly. “As for this little seal…” he lifted his fingers and snapped. The red dome around us flickered and went out. “I’ll have to remember to give Allegra a contribution bonus for that. It was a flawlessly executed strategy. Now, let’s go see if it was enough to turn the tide in our favor. I have a feeling the tides haven’t turned completely just yet.”
He turned and strode off in what seemed to me like a random direction and we all followed. I shot Callie a look, reaching out to grab her hand and sending a surge of hope and cautious optimism through it. This was a good sign. There were only two traitor deans unaccounted for, and they were most likely holding off two of the others somewhere else.
That meant our three would be able to focus on helping Dean Harper suppress the Void Child, or at least Dean Desmond would. I wasn’t sure exactly how much actual attention was needed to run the Frozen Moment, especially since I didn’t know what it WAS. Dean Windermere had gone in to get it alone before we left, and we’d never gotten to see what the device actually looked like, but I supposed that would change soon enough.
As we arrived at the entrance to the chamber, we all stopped to take in the scene. Dean Harper was there, standing in front of the exit, blocking off the passage with his enormous bulk. Red energy boiled around and past him from below. Around him, Void cultists attacked, ignored for the most part. Some gods, some A-rankers.
I recognized one of them as the familiar long haired man from the station. The one I now knew was Deveskane. He hadn’t been able to reforge his Saga, and was apparently at the peak of A-rank still, but I could just tell it was him. When we stepped from the passage out of the row of trash, his eyes flicked to me, locking gazes, and I called my staff to my hand. I’d been waiting a long time for this.