Chapter 68: Blood and shattered time
The barrier imprisoning Leo and Dirk thrummed with lethal energy as the two Masters confronted each other in their transparent tomb. Outside, the surviving Academy students crouched behind stone barriers while branded figures stalked from all directions, their corrupted abilities weaving together in patterns that shattered human tactical doctrine.
Sarah clutched her bone blade, her time manipulation abilities coiled like a predator as she watched the nightmare unfold. The branded students flowed with mechanical coordination, each action calculated to maximize tactical advantage while the patterns carved into their flesh pulsed with sickly luminescence.
"Sarah," Damien hissed urgently from beside her, his air manipulation whipping a defensive barrier against approaching ice shards. "That’s Roderick. Look at his face can you see what they’ve done to him?"
The boy who had challenged her in the Academy courtyard stepped into the chamber’s spectral light, and Sarah’s breath froze in her throat. The sigil burned into Roderick’s forehead writhed with malevolent energy, but beneath the corruption, she could still recognize his features. The proud tilt of his chin, the way he favored his left side during combat details that whispered of the person he’d been before whatever entity controlled this place had claimed him.
"The brands," Professor Harold shouted between healing pulses, his voice strained from maintaining multiple restoration streams. "They’re not just controlling them they’re amplifying their abilities beyond their original classifications."
Roderick raised his hand, and ice erupted from the chamber floor in patterns Sarah had never seen him wield during their Academy duel.
Lyanna Brennan moved with noble grace despite their circumstances, her own ice manipulation clashing against Roderick’s corrupted techniques in a display of contrasting styles. "His power level has skyrocketed," she observed, creating barriers that barely held against his assault. "This isn’t the same boy who challenged Sarah in the courtyard."
But as Sarah watched the branded student’s mechanical precision, something crystallized in her mind. The corruption had enhanced his abilities, yes, but it had also stripped away his creativity, his adaptability. He fought like a machine now powerful but predictable.
"Damien, Lyanna," Sarah said quietly, her voice cutting through the battle’s chaos. "Can you keep the others busy for a few minutes?"
Both students nodded without question, their Academy training overriding any lingering social tensions. Damien’s air barriers expanded while Lyanna’s ice constructs formed a defensive perimeter around Sarah’s position.
Sarah focused on Roderick’s approaching form, her temporal abilities responding to her will with precision that would have been impossible during their first encounter. The world began to slow around her as she accelerated her personal time stream, but this wasn’t the panic-driven reaction that had torn control from her before. This was controlled, deliberate, surgical.
From Roderick’s perspective, Sarah simply vanished. One moment she stood behind the defensive barriers, the next she was gone, leaving only empty space where she’d been positioned. His enhanced ice abilities lashed out at nothing, the corrupted constructs striking empty air with mechanical precision.
But Sarah was still there, moving through time at an accelerated rate that made her effectively invisible to normal perception. She watched Roderick’s attacks unfold in slow motion, studying the patterns of his movements, the rhythm of his enhanced abilities. The corruption had made him stronger, but it had also made him predictable.
She approached from his blind side, the bone blade steady in her grip despite the emotional weight of what she was about to do. This was Roderick the boy who had issued challenges with aristocratic pride, who had believed noble blood made him inherently superior to a carpenter’s daughter.
Now he was just another weapon in the hands of whatever entity ruled this place.
’I’m sorry,’ Sarah whispered as she pressed the blade’s point against his chest, knowing he couldn’t hear her in his slowed perception of time. ’You didn’t deserve this.’
The bone weapon punched through his corrupted uniform and into his heart with surgical precision. Sarah felt the resistance of flesh and bone, the warm wetness of blood on her hands, the terrible intimacy of ending a life with her own strength.
Roderick’s enhanced perception finally caught up to her attack as she released her temporal acceleration. His eyes still human beneath the branded corruption widened with something that might have been recognition before the light faded from them completely.
The branded student collapsed, black ichor mixing with human blood as his corrupted form hit the chamber floor. The sigil carved into his forehead flickered once before dying entirely.
Sarah stepped back, the bone blade trembling in her grip as the full weight of what she’d done crashed over her. She’d killed someone. Not a monster or a dimensional beast, but a person she’d known, someone who’d sat in the same classes and walked the same halls.
"Sarah!" Professor Harold’s urgent voice cut through her shock. "The barrier containing Leo can your temporal abilities affect it?"
She looked up to see Leo still trapped in the deadly prison with the corrupted Dirk, his movements becoming increasingly desperate as reflected attacks turned the enclosed space into a maelstrom of deadly force. The barrier specialist’s strategy was working Leo was slowly being worn down by his own redirected techniques.
Sarah wiped the blood from her hands and approached the crystalline construct, her mind racing through possibilities. "I can try to age the barrier’s structure," she called back. "Make it brittle enough to shatter."
But the moment she stepped toward the prison, every branded student in the chamber reacted instantly. Their movements synchronized with hive-mind precision as they abandoned their individual targets and began converging on her position.
The coordinated assault that followed was unlike anything Sarah had witnessed. The branded students moved with perfect tactical discipline, their enhanced abilities weaving together to create overlapping fields of destruction. Ice barriers channeled earth spikes toward her position while corrupted wind abilities created pressure zones that would crush anything caught within them.
Sarah activated her temporal acceleration again, the world grinding to a crawl as she moved through the spaces between attacks. But even in accelerated time, she could see the tactical precision of their coordination. They weren’t just attacking where she was they were predicting where she would be based on mathematical analysis of her movement patterns.
She reached the barrier as attacks converged on her previous position, the barrier’s surface reflecting the chamber’s deadly chaos in prismatic fragments. Up close, she could see the intricate structure of Dirk’s construction not just simple crystallized energy, but a complex matrix designed to redirect and amplify force in specific patterns.
Sarah placed her hands against the barrier’s surface and began accelerating its temporal field, aging the crystalline structure at a rate that should have reduced it to powder within seconds. But the moment her ability made contact with the construct, she felt resistance not physical, but conceptual. The barrier existed partially outside normal time, protected by the same force that had corrupted its creator.
The prison began to crack under her assault, hairline fractures spreading across its surface like a spider’s web. But the process was slower than she’d hoped, and the branded students were closing in despite her temporal acceleration.
That’s when Dirk struck.
Even with time dilated around her, the corrupted professor moved with inhuman speed. His blade wreathed in the same force that protected his barriers slashed across her ribs as she tried to dodge, the weapon somehow existing in accelerated time alongside her ability.
Pain exploded across Sarah’s side as the blade carved through flesh, the wound deeper than it should have been possible given her enhanced speed. Blood flowed freely as she staggered back from the barrier, her temporal acceleration flickering from the shock.
"Temporal manipulation requires concentration," Dirk observed from within his cracking prison, his academic tone unchanged despite the violence. "Disrupt the concentration, disrupt the ability."
But his attack had accomplished more than just wounding Sarah. The barrier containing both Masters finally shattered completely, crystalline fragments raining down as the prison collapsed. More importantly, Sarah noticed something crucial the moment the barrier fell, Dirk’s personal force field also flickered and died.
Leo’s eyes blazed with predatory satisfaction as he realized what had happened. "Linked constructs," he snarled, raising his weapon as he finally had a clear shot at his corrupted colleague. "Your barriers were connected. Break one, destabilize them all."
The battle between the two Masters that erupted was nothing like the constrained duel from before. Now they faced each other on equal footing Leo’s decades of combat experience against Dirk’s corrupted enhancements and barrier mastery.
But around the chamber, the branded students continued their coordinated assault on the surviving Academy group. Without Sarah’s temporal abilities to provide tactical advantage, the mathematics of their survival were grim. ****
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Meanwhile, in the corpse-strewn battlefield in another place...
Petra Blackthorne prowled through the endless graveyard with predatory grace, her katana ready as she tracked the essence signatures Gareth’s reconnaissance had identified. Three days of coordinated hunting had taught them to work together with ruthless efficiency his clones providing intelligence and tactical support while her blade work eliminated threats too dangerous for prolonged engagement.
"Movement," Gareth’s voice carried softly through the perpetual gloom, his earth manipulation detecting vibrations from something massive approaching their position. "Multiple signatures. Coordinated pattern."
Petra’s enhanced perception caught the subtle wrongness in the air not just the presence of dimensional beasts, but something that felt familiar in a way that made her skin crawl.