Chapter 275 – Lessons About Time

“Is that all the progress you made?” Phyllie asks as she takes back the now-floating crystal to inspect Emily’s work.

Her tone is expectant, but she already seems satisfied, so Emily casually answers her question.

“I recorded all of the runes we encountered, and could possibly reconstitute them into a basic time spell if I tried, but nothing else this concrete,” she explains. “Also, I’d like to test my connection with the element again before I dip into any related spell-creation.”

“Why?”

“I have found it difficult in the past to make any progress on spellwork until I’ve reached the basic level of manifestation in any given element.”

“Ah, you’re one of those.”

Emily raises a curious brow as Phyllie nods in understanding, but the Queen pushes herself out of her throne at the same time, so she doesn’t voice her interest.

“I’m sure you’ve heard of the term: jack of all trades, master of none. Correct?” Emily nods, and Phyllie taps the air between them, fracturing reality like a mirror and spreading light green fissures throughout the hall. “Well, I’ve met a few talented mages who share your constraints with their elemental affinities. If you have too many minor affinities, it becomes harder to channel mana into any one of them without crossover into those nearby.”

The green fractures in reality twist and grow, wrapping around Emily and Phyllie, placing their heads at the centre of their twin orbits.

“That makes so much sense,” Emily mutters, considering her One With The Elements talent.

Before the Queen can respond, the green web of fractures woven around them collapses inwards, flooding Emily’s vision and mind with a bright green flash before blinking out of existence just as quickly as it came. Emily blinks and finds Phyllie sitting back in her throne comfortably, but she doesn’t need to question what happened. She can feel through her connection to The Clock in her arm that it’s only been a few moments since she first took her seat, the hours of dismantling the time-machine in question not yet having happened.

“Well, with that cleared out of the way, why don’t you start by showing me how far you’ve come with your manifestation so far?” Phyllie asks, casually continuing their conversation as if time hadn’t just rewound around them. “I need to know where your starting point is.”

Emily nods and shuts her eyes, placing both hands in her lap with palms pointed up. To start with, she draws on Phyllie’s recent explanation, trying to picture time as a flowing stream.

The image of a flowing brook forged from stardust forms in her mind, backed by an empty expanse of void. The stream flows down a twisting, unpredictable path, with breaks and eddies splitting off to follow their own paths before rejoining at their leisure. As her mind narrows in on the picture, she’s drawn to the hard-to-grasp sense of motion deep in her gut whenever The Clock activates. The feeling is rooted deep in her bones, intimately familiar from all of her experience swimming through the cracks of time.

When she opens her eyes, she finds a perfectly formed replica of the image in her mind floating above her hands. It’s formed from soft green mana and, though there are no other elements present, space seems to bend around it.

“Wonderful. It appears you’ve already reached the boundary of manifestation,” Phyllie declares, reaching into her dress to pull out a shimmering green mana crystal and a large, crystalline flower with petals a deep blue sapphire. “In that case, we shall start by considering quite possibly the most important variables when messing with time: target selection and isolation.”

She lifts the flower on a warm current of mana, suspending it between them. Clasping the mana crystal with one hand, the other brushes against the gem’s exposed face before casting out, drawing glowing green threads and wrapping them around the flower’s stem before letting them expand out, forming a shifting magic circle.

Emily’s eyes spin as she tries to read every detail, but the circle blurs before her eyes, making it hard to make out any of the runework.

“You see, time is relative, and when it comes to spellcasting, that means perspective is a dangerous line to tread,” Phyllie begins, her tone firm and offering no chance for questioning. “When forming any spell related to time, you must always clearly define your observer and observee. In this case, we shall be taking this flower as both.”

The green web of mana suspended in the air pulses three times, and Emily watches with eyes wide as the flower at the centre changes. It’s slow at first, starting with just the long, shimmering petals shrinking back bit by bit. Then, the dark gem leaves sprouting from the stem join them, reducing in size until they blend seamlessly back into the stem at the same time as the petals curl back into a closed bulb. The stem shrinks as well, until barely anything is left, before the magic circle pulses again, and the process rapidly unwinds, returning the flower to its original state.

“You’ll notice the crystal I’m using as a casting focus has barely dimmed,” Phyllie says, drawing Emily’s attention to the still-vibrant mana crystal in her grasp. “Now, note the difference when we change the observer to the space around the flower.”

The suspended flower drops, like a puppet with its strings cut, plummeting to the floor and shattering into a few large pieces. The threads of time mana wrapped around it follow and, with a quick shift to the circle’s form, another pulse of mana ripples out along them. The instant the pulse touches the flower’s pieces, they shudder, lifting and shooting back towards each other as if magnetised, sealing back together without a single mark left and rising back up to float in place.

Emily’s eyes turn to the crystal powering the display without prompting. It’s a little dimmer than before. The difference isn’t great, but Emily can tell the second spell took twice as much mana as the first.

“It’s key to remember, because depending on the situation,” Phyllie drops the flower once again, letting it shatter. “You always need to look for the most efficient path to achieve your goal.”

The magic circle shifts before pulsing three times. The shattered petals and leaves shrink, and after a few seconds, the stem follows them. The detached fragments fade away to nothing, and when Phyllie lifts the plant’s remains, it’s just a stem a finger long.

Another pulse, and the plant rapidly grows from the stem, back to a perfect state.

“Especially when we’re looking at spells on a much larger scale, such as your Clock. If we don’t get the balance right when dealing with forces so great…”

The flower re-shatters in place, silently splitting along the same faultlines that formed when it hit the floor.

“Well, the results aren’t pretty.”

Phyllie waves her hand, and the flower fuses back into one perfect piece.

“What can you tell me of your Clock’s functions?” The Queen questions, drawing the flower back into her hand and vanishing it into the folds of her dress. She keeps hold of the mana crystal, rolling it idly between her fingers. “Have you identified the bounds it sets in place?”

“The subject, or observee, as you chose to put it, is my memories alone.” Emily begins, ignoring the faint reluctance pulling on the back of her mind and watching for recognition in her teacher’s expression. “There is a hard limit on how far back it will allow me to send them, and there are several safeties in place to prevent me from rewinding past any major event that would create a possible incompatibility between the sender and the recipient. I wasn’t, however, able to identify any limits on the observer.”

“Exactly!” Phyllie beams, crushing the crystal in her hand and absorbing the fragments before it can explode, sending shining green streaks running down her pale arm. “Therin lies the problem that led to me finding you so quickly. The universe itself is acting as a passive observer, which is both a massive weakness, and a major strength.”

“How am I meant to hide myself if it has such a massive effect?” Emily half mutters to herself.

“You tell me. I’ll give you a little hint:” Phyllie waves her hand, conjuring the same image of a cosmic timestream as before. “Every time you activate your Clock, it’s essentially creating a splinter timeline.”

A thick strand of mana, several fists across, pulls away from the main stream.

“Your memories of said timeline are sent to you at the point of fracture, then the timeline itself is dissolved and reabsorbed into the main timestream.” The strand crawls along for several inches before folding back on itself and shrinking, part of its mass rejoining the main stream, creating a closed loop, while the rest fades away into pale green mist that orbits the timestream. A visible ripple grows as the mist spreads across the entire stream. “That process leaves a very obvious, very traceable mark.”

“Okay.” Emily nods in understanding, already having reached much the same conclusion herself. “Then start by making that ripple as small as possible.”

“Oh?” Phyllie raises a brow, wordlessly urging her to elaborate.

“The fractured timeline,” Emily explains, pointing towards the tapered loop at the edge of the illusory diagram. “It’s not the same size as the universe’s main timeline for a reason, right? I believe it only covers any variables that are affected by me during that loop because, theoretically, my actions on one side of the universe shouldn’t affect those on the other side within such a short span of time. So, what if I limit that even further? I could create a closed space without any external access, and any rewind within should barely create a splash in the outside world.”

“Very good. That method would also largely work without any further time magic, so long as your aptitude with space is sufficient.” Phyllie nods, dismissing her illusion with a wave of her hand, producing several runic sequences instead as examples. “But, while that would help conceal basic use, it’s a very limiting solution. Stop thinking in three dimensions. What else?”

“Well…” Emily’s metal fingers drum against the armrest of her seat as she chews on the end of her flesh thumb. “If the massive transmission of data is the problem, don’t try to reduce size by cutting useful data: encode to cut the dead space instead! Why limit the space I loop within, when I can limit the time?”

“There you go. And how would you go about achieving that?”

“Well, it’s a multistep problem. First, we need to know if each subsequent loop is creating a new timeline, or if all of them are bundled within a single false reality.”

“And what would that change in your approach?”

“Well, if The Clock is already linking loops together to create less of an impact, that means there’s already a runic sequence written somewhere in there that we can use in the binding array. If not, making it is our first priority. Then, we just need to work on an array to initiate that single closed loop, which I can use before ever activating The Clock…”

“Forcing the size of the fractured timeline to fit the bounds of your personal line from the moment of creation. Smart. Well, I’ll make it easier for you then: your Clock is already converging all sequential activations by binding itself to your personal time signature. I have the sequence separated already.”

“Perfect.” Emily smiles with genuine glee as Phyllie traces out a complex geometric sequence interlaced with runes that she barely understands at first glance. “In that case, I’m essentially setting a marker to record my own time-signature’s path. I’ll need to calculate an inverse to scrub any residual personal markers from the nearby timestream when The Clock is done to offset my intervention…”

Emily uses a splash of light mana to project tens of screens, absorbing the sequence Phyllie presented and displaying her many concurrent calculations and linked thought processes for the woman to observe.

“If I can work out the rune combination used to signal a point of no return for The Clock, I should be able to set the exact start point of the loop easily enough…”

“You should remember to have a first layer of protections activated even before meddling with your time-signature,” Phyllie smoothly cuts in. “I’ll make you a simple temporal barrier template, which you can have at no cost if you find the activation sequence before I finish. If not… well, I’m quite interested in the process you used to create your children.”