Chapter 516
Maya felt the change an instant after she entered real space. Something had captured her and… both preserved and elongated that moment. Despite moving around and acting independently, free from any restraints, she could still feel herself in that earlier snapshot. Sadly her clarity only lasted for a brief instant before it faded away like the memories of a pleasant but unimportant dream.
Rather than linger on a mystery she spread her awareness across the star system. She felt an overwhelming feeling of confusion slam into her as she looked at a perfectly normal Tier 15 battle going on in the outer system.
She’d known she was entering a ‘time loop’, but she couldn’t find the pair of Gladiators responsible for said loop. That threw her for an even larger loop than if she’d found them perfectly fine, sipping on cocktails. The latter would at least track with the zaniness of Gladiators, even if not of those Gladiators.
This was… she didn’t know what was going on anymore. How was there a timeloop without the time mages?
She’d have loved to have been warned about that oddity in the information packet she’d gotten. From her first readthrough she’d seen the gaps in the reports, but given it came from her Tier 50 she’d expected nothing less if the others were watching. She didn’t need their handholding.
Maya was a Gladiator.
Thankfully, she did have one lead. She’d been properly captured by the time loop and she’d felt it. While that was a good first step, without her targets she wasn’t sure how she needed to proceed.
Instead of rushing about, she closed her eyes and breathed while she tried to get a sense of what was happening. Of what that earlier sensation had indicated and implied. It wasn’t an illusion or any kind of reality manipulation; she was intimately familiar with both of those. Yet she couldn’t help but feel like they were related to what was going on in some inverse way.
The obvious answer was a fucking time loop was going on but understanding the how would be vital for whatever rabbit she pulled out of her hat. She’d expected to come and save a pair of Gladiators, and without them, she could only turn to information gathering.
Thankfully, she wasn’t starting from scratch. While teleporters had been pushing themselves well past exhaustion to get her here, she’d been reviewing long sealed documents about Esther and Lawrence, publicly known by their Gladiator names: Tick and Tock.
The duo’s story was hard as hard to believe as any Gladiators, but none of it easily explained what she’d felt at the start of the loop, and without the pair here she couldn’t rely on them for information.
She was in a giant puzzle room and needed to find her way out. Without any clear path forward, she decided to fall back on plan B. Let the loop play out.
Keeping herself veiled down to Tier 15, she slipped into the battlefield invisible to everyone. She didn’t touch anything, she didn’t interfere as the Tier 15s killed themselves, she didn’t judge, she just watched. A silent invisible observer trying to understand.
Then, right before the loop was slated to revert, she found an anomaly. The dwarf cannoneer who’d nearly turned the battle seemed to lock up in a pivotal moment.
She didn’t know exactly what his Talent was, but she understood it had to do with ranged combat, given the speech she’d overheard. That made him freezing up right before the end of a loop her most likely source of information. Though she struggled to see the connection to her not quite dead Gladiators.
Maya still didn’t understand until she saw the two massive bolts of energy on a collision course. It finally clicked and she spoke out loud, startling the dwarf next to her so badly he gave himself a concussion.
“A Dreamer Always Remembers.”
However her words weren’t meant for him. She’d whispered them to herself and the Realm, but most of her effort went to the latter. Not the local Realm, it was as trapped in this fuckery like she was, but the wider Realm outside this oddity.
Her law stretched out and started rewriting reality, but instead of going wide, she burrowed deep; brushing up against the edge of the loop and sending the tiniest bits of information past the barrier. Nothing passed through because she didn’t need that.
Maya was always a Dreamer. She’d always been a Dreamer. She was just reminding the Realm of that so it reminded her.
She wasn't sure her usual methods were going to work, but as she saw a battered hand reach through the explosion and turn back time, she knew she had to try.
Because if Lawrence hadn’t acted, Esther would have died only a moment later.
***
Maya froze as she recognized the lack of Gladiators needing rescue. Before she’d finished processing that oddity, information started to seep back into her mind like bubbles rising up in a flute of some particularly nice champagne.
It didn’t take her long to start piecing the memories together. She’d used a similar trick many times before, though the context did surprise her. She’d fed herself memories she hadn’t experienced yet.
Memories from another loop.
A small part of her felt a glimmer of pride at the realization she had at least one method to bypass what was undoubtedly one of Tick and Tock’s best moves.
Digesting the memories one drip at a time took almost a full minute, which was noted with a touch of distaste and nearly ruined her previous cheer. She knew the duo’s power, and being stuck and unaware inside this technique for an entire minute was tantamount to a death sentence in a real fight. Some of the delay might be because she’d reduced her cultivation so much but she was sure some of the problem came from the way she’d guesstimated how the loop worked.
Granted, she was trying really hard not to break out of the temporal anomaly right now, but she still didn’t like finding herself wanting in any comparison. Those idle thoughts ended the instant the final memory returned to her, showing her the path forward.
She needed an incredibly large explosion. The question was how to go about it. She had a tried and proven method available to her by letting things play out, but that would mean wasting another twenty seven minutes.
Maya might have that much time to waste, but having seen Esther and Lawrence’s conditions, she knew that every loop counted. After all, she had no idea how many attempts it had taken her to pass the information between loops. Something about this place was strange. The way it interacted with her whispered reminder was… not how she’d expected when she’d initialized it.
Things had worked but she couldn’t have explained why from the inside and that made her feel vulnerable.
Which was exactly why she didn’t rush ahead.
She had a second option which could accelerate things, but it was far more risky. It seemed like the main component was simply making a big enough explosion. She was Tier 35 and could make a large enough detonation with a little effort, but If she was wrong and there was a timing or locational element, any change she made could disrupt the current series of events.
Which was the only one she knew had a success rate above zero.
Her gut reminded her that if she recklessly charged ahead, she might end up killing the Gladiators herself and that was unacceptable. She’d never live that down and refused to end her war career on such a loss.
Not after Aiden’s stupid trap and capture of her, which sat as a nasty black mark right at the end of an illustrious career.
Besides, she had a third method no one else could use.
A middle ground.
Maya took a step and arrived next to the active battlefield, careful to hide her presence. She had a situation right in front of her she knew worked, and if she did a little fiddling with time herself, she felt she could speed things up.
Maya was no time mage, but she was so deep in the field of reality warping that she’d tried to affect the most elusive force in the Realm long before this moment. During those first attempts she’d learned, then confirmed, she had no inherent ability to twist or manipulate time, but she’d still picked a few things up. She had no chance at copying whatever Esther and Lawrence were doing to layer things so perfectly, but she could speed an inevitable conclusion up a tad.
It helped that she’d seen things play out but that didn’t mean it would be easy. Veiling herself made things a thousand times more difficult, but her veil kept her spiritual presence light, which would make any time shenanigans easier for Lawrence. And that was a higher priority than her own comfort or ease.
She was as fresh as could be expected in a war, which was the only reason she had any confidence in this rescue at all. That was why the teleporters had burned themselves out to ensure she hadn’t needed to, and she'd known the second she got the assignment that any reprieve would only be temporary.
None of that made the knowledge of how badly her next actions were going to hurt any easier to swallow.
Maya cocked her hip and put on her best most petulant pout, as she commanded, “We’ve already seen this show. Why don’t we skip to the good part!”
With a slow and agonizing swipe of her hand, the battlefield below her accelerated. Affecting that many Tier 15’s without them noticing tore at her spirit, even as it drained her willpower, but she pressed on. It was one of the most difficult things she'd done in her life, let alone the war so far, but she managed it without a single deviation.
Through her agony, Maya almost hoped the others tried to show this moment up. Aiden may have had his splash last war but she’d most certainly cemented her name in the history books right alongside him.
Or she would if she succeeded.
Gloating would come later. It was a natural component of success on such a grand scale and one of her favorites. And Maya always succeeded at what she set her mind to. It was just how things were. A natural conclusion when she was involved.
She kept that thought firmly in her mind as she focused on every speck of dust and bone fragment. Through force of will and concentration that made her eyes bleed, she didn’t let a single deviation happen as she pushed events forward.
Even with her full concentration it still took almost half the original twenty eight minutes, but it worked. She saw a familiar but far more intact hand and she moved. She wanted to but didn’t have the strength to shout for joy this loop.
***
Lawrence had already screamed himself hoarse this timeline. He wasn’t sure how many times he’d done so anymore. More than once, he knew that, but he wasn’t confident of the number. He’d been so deep in possible futures he’d long since lost count. He could also feel that he didn’t have that many more in him. He wanted to but he knew he didn’t.
They’d never held this technique for more than a minute at a time, and by his count they’d reached the fourth. He’d love to be impressed but it was killing them. Or rather it was killing Esther.
The explosion had come out of nowhere just after they’d defeated three pinnacle elite teams, and she'd been hit directly by the blast before they’d had time to prepare or dodge.
In an effort not to die they’d reacted on instinct, each doing their part to save each other. Esther had wrapped them in a bubble of time, elongating each second as they hoped to let the explosion pass over them.
Except, that hadn’t been enough.
If the explosion had only been overwhelmingly powerful they could have handled it, but it also seemed to last forever. That forced Lawrence to start throwing out future possible timelines, making them just real enough for time to pass, then discarding that potential timeline, returning them to their previous captured moment as he searched for a way out.
He’d only found one that gave them any hope and they’d taken it.
Esther had, even wounded by the explosion, managed to accelerate their temporal bubble forward while keeping their local time halted. It was an amazing feat Lawrence would have loved to celebrate. They’d been working to pull off such dual layered workings for millennia with little progress, but he didn’t think it would be enough.
In every timeline he searched, he only found fire. Fire and death.
Normally, Esther's Talent limited how often she could stop time, but the interaction of their Talents meant she hadn’t stopped freezing their local timelines. From an outside perspective, he knew everything in their temporal bubble had slowed to a crawl, but that was far from the truth. While time was frozen, he investigated timelines, looking for the best possible outcome, letting them dodge and avoid more than most found reasonable.
It had been a powerful move that had seen them through even the most hectic battles.
Then, once they found their line through the danger, one of them would take that timeline and change it from a possible future, to the future.
Their enemies never actually saw any of that, they only experienced a fight where everything seemed to go wrong one thing at a time. Because that was all that was left. Lawrence or Esther would have already gone through every other possible timeline and ensured they were on the best one.
For them it was less fighting and more splicing the timeline they wanted into the normal flow.
All of which was a lot easier when they didn’t exist temporarily. It was why their time skips were supposed to be a perfect defense.
Yet here they were surrounded by fire. Endless waves of flames that seemed bent on their destruction.
Every timeline Lawrence could find ended in the same burning agony.
Between the two of them, they’d used his Tier 3 to restore themselves more than their normal limits, but he’d been dragging them through so many timelines he’d lost count. He didn’t understand how the explosion seemed to have no path towards survival. With Esther down, he didn’t know how many weeks or possible months they’d thrown themselves into the future, but the more he looked for a way out of the explosion, the more he understood something was wrong.
All he knew was the fire and endless deaths. Real and false meant nothing to him. Endless fire and dead ends.
The fire that licked at them.
The fire that consumed them.
Fire. It was all fire.
Then, Esther would be about to die and he’d forcefully discard all of the timelines he’d investigated and restart the process. Back at the beginning, he’d start digging only a fraction of a second further in time, looking through possible futures using Esther’s Tier 3. As he did so, he let time play out normally. Let the flames burn them. Once inside the theoretical, he started investigating, exploring, testing, trying to save his twin sister's life.
Because that was the only thing that mattered.
A path forward with both of their survival.
They may not have started life as twins or even siblings, but they’d made the necessary genetic changes after they’d gotten their hands on the Quickling Dragonfly bloodline essence. They’d shed their pasts, alongside their previous bloodlines, and forged something new. Something together.
It was how they’d been able to use their Concepts to share their very Talents. They’d been willing to discard everything once. Why would he ever be afraid to do so a second time?
That meant any timeline where she died was a dead end, even if there were theoretical paths for his own survival. Losing access to Esther’s Talent’s when she died would also mean he’d lose access to the very ability that was letting him investigate timelines, but that thought never crossed his mind.
Esther was not allowed to die.
As such, Lawrence continued to search for something, anything. Some path that took him through the fire that didn’t see them die horribly. Time seemed to blend and twist as he clawed through endless flames but he saw it.
It came out of nowhere and nearly vanished just as quickly. If Lawrence hadn’t been scouring every divot in the future, he never would have noticed the brief glimmer. Thankfully, his battered body moved on instinct before his tattered mind could process what he saw.
A point, a dot. A single instant where he could reorient them.
Lawrence pounced on the timeline without hesitation, despite it feeling miles away.
Doing so tore at his already battered spirit, but he didn’t care.
The moment his awareness breached space in the possible future, he looked down and saw a dead dwarf. Without pausing to process, he focused the last of his will on the body and used his Tier 25 Talent to investigate their history.
It wasn’t an infallible technique, but the dwarf was twenty Tiers weaker than himself and already dead. He wasn’t exactly in a position to put up much resistance.
Even as he felt time crawl forward, Lawrence watched as it reversed around him. Time flowed backwards, showing him the past few minutes of battle. However, everything he saw only brought more questions than it gave him answers.
The main thing he didn’t understand was why this dwarf, Milton, along with all of the other bodies, were Tier 15’s. What had happened to drive the Clans’ generals to send Tier 15s into a Tier 35 battlefield? He wanted to say it was a cleanup crew, but that clearly wasn’t right either.
He was watching them fight a battle with Federation troops.
Federation troops that were also Tier 15.
At that moment, Lawrence knew something had gone terribly wrong, but he was far too injured to dwell on it. Instead of wasting any more time, he traced the timeline back as far as he could manage in his battered state. Thankfully, he was able to reach back far enough to identify the moment that his and Esther's real bodies occupied in relation to this dwarf’s timeline.
He could go back farther, but he didn’t bother. That would do him no good in this situation. He knew better than anyone that the Realm only marched forward. It allowed small, temporary deviations off that course, but never backwards ones.
At least not with his and Esther's Talents, which amounted to the same thing as it being impossible.
Lawrence, the current him, pulled with everything he had. Lawrence, the previous him still frozen in Esther's timefield, used the feeling to shift their timeloops anchor from their temporal bubble to that same moment in time but in the dwarf’s space.
Then, before Esther died, he reverted time once again, discarding all of the possible timelines except the one that had given him hope. Even then, he only kept that one initial moment where he’d shifted their anchor. Nothing more. Nothing less. A single spent moment. That meant the series of events that saw their exit had gone from improbable to nearly guaranteed.
He had a plan to extend Esther's life, but he needed more time to set it up, to get the pieces into place. He’d need to continually dive into possible futures and change things in the few moments he had until he’d changed reality enough to get them out with enough time to get to a healer. The inhabited world wasn’t fully settled yet and therefore not useful, but surely there was a Tier 35 battlefield nearby.
While they needed the best healers in the realm, even a shitty healer could help them extend their lives to reach the better ones. And at this point the two of them were far too damaged to do it themselves.
Not that the forceful change to time and probability was without its costs. The strain increased so much and so fast it nearly killed him outright, but he didn’t have the time for that. He had a much more important job. With all of his might, he stopped Esther from accelerating them any further by forcefully taking control of her Talent and wrestling it away from her. The pain was beyond words, but that was fine. Their possible futures were no longer fire and flames and he had a goal.
Lawrence felt his legs and lower torso crumble as his spirit unraveled like torn cloth but he ignored it all. It was just pain. He had a mission, an objective, and nothing else mattered.
He spun up new timelines over and over, hoping for a chance, but he simply didn’t have enough time between their arrival and Esther's death. It was taking too much time and effort to find timelines that moved the exit event up sooner.
He’d worked their exit up almost a full minute by finding better potential timelines when he seemed to lose all of his progress. For reasons he didn’t understand during one of his loops all of his previous work seemed to work against them and he was forced to delay their arrival for as long as possible.
He nearly got them killed in his attempts to find an earlier safe path through the fire before he gave up and accepted the much later exit. He barely had enough time to revert the timeline before Esther died, but afterwards he was grateful for following his instincts.
Right there.
Out of near failure there was now a much earlier exit. Strangely it was still a somehow identical arrival point to his earlier one. He didn’t understand how or why such a thing was possible, only that it was the best thing he’d seen in a half dozen restarts.
He didn’t question the moment of serendipity any more than he had the first. Lawrence threw himself into the timeline, digging his way into the possible future with his bare hands, trying to get through even a moment earlier.
He almost lost control of all of his workings when he felt someone else toying with time acceleration but managed to steady himself at the last second. They were coming at things from an incredibly strange angle, illusions made manifest if he wasn’t wrong, but what shocked him was the woman herself.
Blonde, beautiful, and bombastic. He could recognize a fellow Gladiator on sight, and she was one through and through. She was also very clearly Tier 15, which was impossible by definition.
Before he could say anything she darted forward, her hand outstretched and spoke in perfect Republic common. “Gladiators never die! A moment always lasts!”
The words resonated in a way that made his head ring but it was almost pleasant rather than distracting. A lullaby he’d never heard but knew instinctively. What impressed him more was his failing body faltering in its slide to death.
He was still dying; he could feel that, but it was no longer a concern. He could be in the act of dying all he wanted, but under her words, he could no longer actually die. More questions than he could process slammed into him, but he didn’t bother with any of them.
“I need a healer.”
“No shit.” That wasn’t exactly what he’d expected, but he realized he hadn’t said anything new or informative.
Thankfully, his new companion was faster on the uptake.
“What do I need to do to bring you two back? Can I just make a fuck off big explosion right at the start of the loop to drag you two down?”
Lawrence’s mind raced as he tried to process everything, but nothing she said made any sense.
Knowing he needed more time, he tried to investigate her history. However, the moment he did he felt the timelines nearly spin out of his control and stopped his efforts. Her past wasn’t just covered or convoluted, it was fake in a way that was real. Yet somehow not real enough to easily track with his Tier 25 Talent.
If he hadn’t already identified her as a Gladiator, that would have done so without question. Few people had such robust temporal defenses and their fellow Gladiators were the only constants they’d found with such.
Instead of lingering on interesting but irrelevant thoughts, he turned his attention to the nearby battlefield, trying to find an answer there. He almost found one when he once more felt the time manipulation powers radiate out from the woman, but he still struggled to understand what was happening in the larger context of his previous battle.
Forcing his mind to work through the problems at hand, he tried to piece together the puzzle.
She’d asked about the explosion. He wished he could tell her anything with confidence but he did his best. “Likely. Probably. Maybe. It's worth a shot at the very least. The sooner you can give me an exit point, the sooner I can drag our bubble back into time. I thought I understood what was going on, but it's clear I very much don't. None of this makes any sense. I don’t even understand why I can only seem to drag us back through an explosion. We’ve never had that happen before. We’ve always been able to move through timelines without any issues but I can’t find reality any more without the explosion. So yes. Maybe.”
The woman nodded as if she understood. That at least made one of them.
“I’d love to be gentle about this, but I’m going to need your entire focus. I’m your rescue party. If you can get yourself out of whatever fucking strange explosion you are channeling, I can get you to Republic healers. But if you need something specific, you need to speak up now.”
For the first time, Lawrence looked behind himself to the stupendous blast of fire that seemed to crawl along in the slowest of slow motion.
What the fuck had they been hit by? Nothing made any sense.
He started to look to the center of the star system as he turned to the only thing that he could think of, but he didn’t understand what greeted him. Yannkin’s Cradle was a Tier 30 world with a Tier 25 star. So how were all but the outermost planets different from what he remembered from a few hours ago?
A Tier 1 star. A Tier 4 inhabited world.
Had they been hit so hard they’d teleported to another star system?
That seemed… unlikely to say the least, but the alternatives horrified him too much to consider. Not yet. Not before they were safe.
Thankfully, the woman spoke, breaking him free from his waywards thoughts. “Okay. Okay. I can work with this. That means I need you to do your little time thingy again. Kick us back and I’ll buy you as much time as I can by making a fuck off big explosion as quickly as possible. After that, what do you need?”
Lawrence wanted to believe her, but without being able to investigate her history, he couldn’t be entirely sure he could trust her. Esther’s life would depend on this bet. He’d gamble with his own, but he wouldn’t, couldn’t, for hers.
“Who are you? If you really are from the Republic send me your credentials.”
“My name is Maya, and no, sorry. We don’t have the time for that.”
Lawrence felt his hackles rise. “I control time. I can hold this timeline for another few minutes. Answer me.”
The woman he now knew as Maya met his eyes and said one word. “No.”
Before he could muster what little energy he had left to erupt, she continued. “Such answers would waste more time. You don’t need to trust me, you only need to trust that saving your asses is the type of shit that gets any Gladiator in the record books. Even if I was from another Great Power, I only get that mention if I successfully save you. Besides, capture still means healing and saving your life. Do you really think the Republic Tier 50 wouldn’t pay the appropriate ransoms to get you out?”
Lawrence didn’t buy it. “Credentials would have been a lot faster than that explanation. If you really are a Gladiator, show them to me. What are you hiding? Tell me!”
“From your perspective I can understand that, however that doesn’t make it true. Explanations can come later. Pick, Lawrence. Time is ticking.”
She then clicked her tongue, making a clock sound.
Lawrence wanted to punch her in the face, but he felt his earlier sinking feeling return with a vengeance. It told him that he didn’t want to know how such a firm response, one that had nearly sparked a fight, was easier than the truth.
Because he believed her.
Maya’s gaze was clear and open. She may have been the best actor in the Realm and lying to him, but he saw no malice or deception in her gaze. Eagerness, excitement, awe, and a tiny touch of nerves held close at the very center. That final emotion wasn’t hidden, but rather the most important one. The one she held closest and cherished with all her heart.
Lawrence’s Intent didn’t let him understand everything he saw, but it was usually good enough that he could get a sense of the emotions he observed. The ability shined when he investigated timelines, but it served him well in fights just as often.
And all of that experience told him this Maya woman wasn't nervous about him; she was nervous for herself. His best guess was pride, but he was far too gone to perfectly trust his own judgment. What he did know was that her words made enough sense he could see himself saying them to someone in his place. That, combined with the efforts to keep them alive, was enough for him to take the chance.
They could escape capture eventually so long as they weren’t dead.
He just wished he could tell her exactly what about that explosion had been enough for him to find it in the timeline. There were many explosions going off on the battlefield and that made him fear there really was something about this one that let him reenter reality.
If it was only him, he’d simply cement this timeline as the main one and let time resume like normal. He was injured but he had an extra ten minutes before he died even without Maya’s Domain helping. But the chance of clawing back more of the twenty eight minutes? Minutes in which Esther wasn’t edging closer to death? That made him willing to risk it.
“I can do one more. I can do as many as you need. So long as you can save Esther. I can manage it. But you won’t remember this conversation because it will never have happened. This entire possible timeline will be discarded.”
Maya grinned at him.
“Then stop delaying. I’ve taken care to preserve these memories just as I did the last loops. It's how I knew to speed up the battle beneath us to get us to this ending, but that was a much more gentle test than what I’m going to do next. You need to be ready to move.”
The falling sensation reached Lawrence’s stomach once more, but he knew that it was a lie. He no longer had enough of his lower half intact to have such feelings any more.
No matter if this woman was a friend or foe, he had to trust her.
Lawrence brought his and Esther's Talents to bear and shredded the current timeline and all other possibilities, returning them to the beginning once again.
To the fire.
Just in case he'd bet wrong, he started preparing his own lifesaving measure to buy Esther enough time to reach a healer under his own power.
She would not be allowed to die.
***
Maya was trying to contemplate the distinct lack of her fellow Gladiators when the memories returned. They came in reverse order this time, which allowed her to start moving before they finished.
Remembering the shape Lawrence and Esther's bodies were in, she decided against dropping her veil.
Not yet at least.
That meant it would be easier to channel rather than to create outright. A part of her was tempted to take over the Federation ship and recreate the shot herself, but that relied on the dwarf. That made it inadvisable.
Maya tapped into her spells, pushing well past what a normal Tier 15 should be able to manage, but she covered her flaws through a liberal spending of her willpower. As she flew past the Tier 1 star, she thrust a hand into its surface and gathered energy. When she’d gathered twice the energy of the explosion, she retracted her hand, clutching a miniature star and raced to the battlefield.
They were just reacting to her presence with shock and confusion, but she spared them no further thought after sending one message along with the notices from both Aoife and Virgil temporarily reclassifying this battlefield as a Tier 35 one.
“Flee.”
She didn’t know if location would matter, but she put herself slightly above the fortress world, right where the other explosions had taken place.
Taking a heartbeat to ready herself, Maya reached out and started twisting reality.
She needed big, she needed flashy.
“A star's final moment is the brightest!”
With that thought firmly in her mind, she brought her off hand down onto the miniature star she’d carried to the outer system. As her fist impacted it, she focused on the finality of this moment, trying to use that to amplify the explosion further.
It was easier than Maya had expected, and she filed that tidbit of information away for later study. She might be able to make a new technique around this working.
A big old fiery explosion to blast away stupid water mages!
Between her new idea and excitement, her working did its job a little too well. The detonation hit the fortress world hard enough to shift its orbit out of the system if left too long. That would have mattered, except everything on the world facing her was pulverized, along with most of the Federation equipment still floating in space.
She didn’t notice any extra bodies, but their inability to remove themselves from danger wouldn’t have changed her actions. She had no desire to slaughter Tier 15s but this was a population war and this was a Tier 35 battlefield for the moment.
A hand, this time slightly more intact, punched its way into reality and she was ready. She grabbed at it with both her hands and Domain, trying to give the other man something solid to orient himself around.
Reality warped around them and Maya felt as the time loop dissipated like a popping soap bubble.
In that instant she knew this was reality. It always had been. Things had just been delayed. She didn’t want to think about the issues looping an entire inhabited world would cause in relation to the rest of the Clans’ civilization, but it also wasn't her problem.
With two near corpses in her arms, Maya sprung into action as she cried out. “A dying ember cannot be extinguished when the flame of hope burns in our hearts!”
The drain on her willpower was immediate and worrying. She’d expected nothing less but it also told her exactly how badly injured the two really were.
At the same time, Lawrence grunted out, “I’ll buy us more time.”
And suddenly, both himself and Esther blurred in rhythmic pulses. They didn’t get better, but the rate at which they got worse slowed dramatically.
It was like everything was going right for them.
That didn’t mean the technique was perfect or could be relied on for long, so she didn’t hesitate. She dropped her veil and tore her way into chaotic space the second she was sure they were stable.
The instant she was out, she activated the handheld shield generator she’d been given, creating a bubble of protection around them.
It wasn’t exactly strong, but it was more than enough to keep the corrosive energies of chaotic space away from her passengers without straining her. It took Talent tech to make the package small enough to fit in her hand, but they were invaluable for times like these.
“A journey in every step means a journey can be a single step!”
Maya lowered her head and pumped her legs. At first, nothing seemed to happen, as if she was running through molasses. Slowly but surely, her legs started to move, even as the drain on her willpower spiked to dangerous levels.
As she completed that step, she grinned as she felt her calculations prove accurate to the smallest fraction. She’d have just enough willpower to avoid bottoming out.
As Maya completed her step the world shattered and she was no longer standing over Yannkin’s Cradle. That step had taken her to the border of Republic space, where there were already combat healers ready to keep Esther and Lawrence alive until the truly powerful healers made it to this world from deep Republic space.
However, before she followed them into the secure facility, she took the time to send one message in the Gladiator chat. One that would piss everyone else off. One that made all the pain worth it.
“Success!”