A whisper of friction, like silk over granite, drew Alaric’s gaze from the ancient tome. He stood in Lord Volkov’s Aetherium Archives, amidst the silent hum of arcane machinery, a sanctuary now disturbed by the metallic click of heavy boots. The summons had been abrupt, the tone undeniable.
“Father truly has a flair for the dramatic,” Lady Seraphina’s voice drifted in, laced with a familiar, honeyed irony. She swept into the grand hall, not in her usual shimmering gowns, but in a practical, yet impeccably tailored, leather tunic and trousers. “To press a… *guest*… into service for a temporal hunt. Was our esteemed Aetherium so unprepared?”
Seraphina turned, a glint in her sapphire eyes. “Mind you, Alaric, I’m not casting aspersions on your particular talents. Merely observing the lengths Volkov goes to, when, perhaps, closer counsel might suffice.”
Beside her, a younger acolyte, Lysander, cleared his throat. He wore the austere gray robes of a senior Aetherium scholar, though his jaw seemed perpetually clenched. “Calling the Lord of the Aetherium ‘dramatic,’ Lady Seraphina, risks more than just decorum.”
“And you, Lysander, risk a headache. A word of advice: focus on the aberration, not my temperament.” Seraphina’s smile was a shark’s promise. Their gazes locked, a silent, crackling feud passing between them. Lysander, visibly bristling, turned to Alaric.
“Flint. Lysander Thorne, Arch-Acolyte of the Chronomancy Guild. We haven’t had the… pleasure. Let’s endeavor to survive this.” His hand, cool and firm, clasped Alaric’s briefly. Lysander’s scrutiny felt like a mental probe.
Alaric nodded, his expression carefully neutral. His fingers still tingled from the temporal aberration he’d fought days ago. Now, another beckoned. Behind Seraphina and Lysander stood a dozen Aetherium Guards, their polished plate armor reflecting the archive’s muted lights. Unlike the nobles, their faces were etched with a grim trepidation. They were heading to hunt an unknown enemy, a temporal echo-beast that had already claimed four sentinels, leaving only fragmented reality in its wake.
---
Moments later, the hunting party marched toward Veridia’s northern gates. Towering clockwork automatons, their brass joints clicking with precision, strode alongside horse-drawn carriages on the grand thoroughfares. As they passed, common citizens knelt, bowing their heads deeply. Veridia’s city watch, a motley assembly in drab uniforms, merely lowered their gazes, their hands resting on dull cutlasses. They were armed to maintain order, utterly useless against a creature that bent the very fabric of time.
Alaric knew the watch. He observed them from the shadowed alleys of Veridia’s ancient, collapsing districts, where the city’s forgotten history lay buried. To the likes of Volkov, Seraphina, and even Lysander, these men were but an extension of the city’s infrastructure – expendable components.
Leaving the city walls, the air grew cooler, carrying the scent of damp earth and distant industry. They followed a crumbling brick road, a relic from the Old Empire. For ten days, temporal anomalies had plagued the north, leaving the path desolate. Not a soul stirred. The road, once vibrant with merchant traffic, now lay silent, a testament to the fear gripping Veridia.
“This better be quick,” Seraphina muttered, kicking at loose cobblestones. “I’ve research to conclude. And a bath to draw.” She glanced back at Alaric, a playful challenge in her eyes. “Unless you prefer the dust, Flint?”
Alaric offered a small, polite smile. He preferred the silent, steady pulse of chronal energies to the volatile nature of temporal aberrations, and certainly to the volatile presence of Lady Seraphina. He walked a few paces behind, his mind already sifting through the layers of perception, anticipating the strange distortions of time the hunt would bring. His secret, his unique gift, was his burden and his greatest asset.
Lysander drew closer to Alaric, lowering his voice. “You seem… unperturbed by my cousin’s charms. Most men in her presence wilt or preen.”
“My interests lie elsewhere,” Alaric replied, his gaze fixed on the broken landscape ahead. A flicker of something – relief? – crossed Lysander’s face, quickly masked. Alaric understood. Seraphina was a prize, a power, and Lysander likely saw him as a rival in the political currents of the Aetherium. He had no such aspirations. The secrets of the past were more alluring than any noble's favor.
---
An hour passed. The air grew heavy, thick with an almost imperceptible temporal distortion. A sharp, metallic tang permeated the air, like ozone mixed with old copper. Then, they found it. A shattered merchant cart, its wheels askew, lay crumpled in the middle of the path. Blood-soaked, torn garments were scattered around, some still clinging to splintered wood. The attack had been recent, hours old at most.
“Another one,” Lysander breathed, his hand instinctively going to the aether-charged crystal at his belt.
“Indeed.” Seraphina knelt, examining a ripped canvas. “Coming from the north, it seems. We had warned all traffic of the disruption.”
Alaric moved to the wreckage. He extended his hand, palm open, a faint silver-blue light beginning to emanate from his fingertips. He closed his eyes, focusing. His gift of Chronoscrying reached out, not to the physical debris, but to the *temporal echoes* embedded within. The immediate past of the cart, the garments, the very air, began to coalesce in his mind.
He felt the frenzied terror, the sudden rending, the impossible force that had twisted iron like twine. A jagged, three-fingered handprint, grotesquely large, pulsed with faint temporal energy on the cart’s side. It was not a physical hand but a *temporal imprint*, the ghost of a limb that had never fully manifested in the present.
“A Chrono-Simian,” Alaric murmured, his eyes still shut. The words were not from a bestiary, but from forgotten lore he’d unearthed in the archives. “It leaves distortions in its wake. This one... it ‘grasps’ at moments, pulls them forward.”
“A what?” Seraphina’s voice sharpened. “Speak plainly, Flint.”
Alaric opened his eyes. “A temporal aberration. It manifests in the immediate past, then pulls itself forward. The imprint… it’s a momentary physical manifestation from a split-second ago.” He pointed to the phantom handprint. “If it were merely a beast, the damage would be consistent. This is… fragmented.”
“So it attacks, then fades back into the temporal fabric?” Lysander’s brow furrowed. “How do we track something that isn’t truly here?”
“By its wake.” Alaric moved, his senses expanding. He focused on the faint, residual chronal energy left by the aberration’s passage. It was like tracing the path of a stone thrown into a still pond, following the diminishing ripples. A barely perceptible shiver in the air, a metallic tang that was stronger in one direction. “This way.”
Following Alaric’s lead, the party veered off the road and entered the shadowed forest. There was no clear path, but the Aetherium Guards, augmented by minor arcane wards, leapt over fallen logs and thorny bushes with practiced ease. Seraphina and Lysander moved with a graceful, almost predatory swiftness, their own latent aetherial energies humming just beneath their skin.
After perhaps thirty minutes, the temporal wake grew faint, leading them to a winding stream. Several forest deer, startled by their approach, bolted into the deeper woods. The chronal echoes dissipated at the water’s edge.
“The trail ends,” Alaric stated, a prickle of unease touching his spine. “It seems to have… cleansed its temporal residue here. Or rather, the stream’s flow diffused it.”
“Are you implying an aberration of time possesses such cunning?” Seraphina scoffed. “To deliberately wash away its temporal markers?”
“Perhaps it merely paused at the water,” Alaric mused, but his mind raced. The lore described these entities as instinctively cunning, masters of immediate temporal manipulation. To ‘cleanse’ a temporal trail meant a degree of localized temporal rewinding, an unnerving display of control.
He dispelled his Chronoscrying, letting his physical senses return to full acuity. The silence of the forest was suddenly broken by a sharp, pungent odor – not of decay, but of something wild, something *ancient* and distorted. Alaric’s head snapped around. A pair of large, golden eyes, disturbingly intelligent, glared from the deep underbrush.
“Behind us!” Alaric shouted. The warning ripped through the air just as an ear-piercing screech shattered the quiet. A massive, hunched form, easily two meters tall, burst from the thicket. Its body seemed to shimmer, its outlines subtly shifting, as if caught between two moments. It began to hurl fistfuls of jagged gravel, not just from its hands, but from momentary temporal pockets that appeared around it. Each projectile was imbued with a raw, kinetic chronal charge, making them move with impossible speed and force.
“By the Lumina!” Lysander cried. “Dodge!”
Aetherium Guards scattered, some stumbling. A few were struck, their armor denting, their bodies flung backwards. Alaric twisted, leaping to the side, the chronal-charged stones whistling past his ear. When he looked back, a fresh wave of disgust washed over him. Seraphina and Lysander, too quick for the projectiles, had each shoved an Aetherium Guard forward, using them as living shields.
“U-ugh, are you alri—” one guard choked, clutching his bleeding head.
“Attack!” Seraphina’s voice was like steel. She pointed a finger, dismissing the injured guard with a flick of her wrist. The eight remaining unscathed guards drew their glowing aether-blades, charging toward the flickering aberration.
But the Chrono-Simian let out another guttural shriek. Its form blurred, a series of rapid, temporal shifts. It vaulted into the bushes, its massive, distorted body leaping from tree to tree, covering vast distances in what seemed like split-seconds. Its speed was unreal, defying physical limitations. The guards, fast as they were, couldn't match its temporal acceleration.
Everyone stood dumbfounded, watching the aberration vanish. Alaric, however, had already reached into his pouch. He plucked out a small, polished fragment of chronite – a stone naturally attuned to temporal energies. He focused his will, drawing upon the latent power within the crystal and his own Chronoscrying. He imbued the fragment with a 'temporal anchor,' a subtle echo of its destination in the immediate past.
With a flick of his wrist, he sent the chronite shard soaring. It didn't just fly; it seemed to *snap* through the air, curving around trees, not physically avoiding them but momentarily bypassing their present existence. The shard struck the Chrono-Simian in its flank, a precise hit that felt like a sudden, jarring temporal correction. The creature shrieked, its temporal shimmering faltering. It tumbled from a branch, writhing on the ground, its form flickering wildly, unable to fully manifest or retreat.
“Die, you wretched thing!” Seraphina roared. Her hand extended, fingers splayed. A torrent of raw, crackling aetherial fire erupted from her palm, coiling into a serpent of pure energy. It struck the writhing aberration, engulfing it in a blinding, searing inferno that scorched a dozen meters of the surrounding forest. The raw power was breathtaking, an instantaneous, devastating force far beyond any localized temporal manipulation Alaric could produce. This was the might of the Volkov bloodline, a raw, uncontrolled power that tore at reality itself.
Lysander, not to be outdone, conjured a dozen shimmering spears of condensed aether, sending them hurtling down to pierce the still-flickering remains. The Chrono-Simian was reduced to a smoldering, rapidly dissipating temporal residue.
A collective sigh of relief swept through the party. “That was… exhilarating,” Seraphina said, tossing her head, a stray lock of hair falling across her cheek. “Those temporal stones, for a moment, they gave me pause.”
“Pause, cousin? You screamed.” Lysander smirked. “Like a startled imp.”
“I did not!” Seraphina shot back, a flash of her eyes. While the two bickered, Alaric went to check on the injured Aetherium Guards. One clutched his arm, a dull throb pulsating where the temporal stone had impacted. Another, the one used as a shield, nursed a bleeding gash on his temple.
“My arm… broken, I think,” one groaned, his face pale.
“This one’s head, still bleeding,” another guard reported, fear in his eyes. Alaric produced a small vial of unguent from his satchel, handing it over. “Apply this. It helps to stabilize localized chronal distortions.”
He watched the guards. Even with their physical augmentation, they were fragile compared to the nobles. The inherent magical power of Seraphina and Lysander meant their bodies were several times sturdier than a common guard’s. Yet they had sacrificed weaker individuals, fearing for their own safety. It resonated with a quiet bitterness. His mother’s words echoed in his mind: *To nobles, guards are little more than animated tools, to be discarded when blunt.*
Lysander, noticing Alaric’s silence, approached. “What’s wrong, Flint? Lost in thought?”
“No, nothing,” Alaric murmured, a subtle contempt flickering in his eyes before he could fully mask it. He merely turned to Seraphina. She waved him over, her earlier indignation forgotten.
“More importantly, Scrivener, quickly! Time to absorb the chronal energy!”
Alaric nodded, moving toward the shimmering, dissipating remains of the Chrono-Simian. Seraphina and Lysander stood side-by-side, extending their hands. A pale, ethereal green light, like captured starlight, emanated from the aberration’s residue, drawn into their bodies. Alaric felt a familiar rush of pleasure as the raw chronal energy surged into him, a deepening of his own connection to time, a quiet strengthening. He shivered, the cold energy invigorating, even as he tracked the subtle growth of his own capacity.
The energy absorbed from this Chrono-Simian was substantial, more than a common beast, but less than some of the more potent temporal echoes he’d encountered in the archives. Yet, for three people to absorb so much, it was testament to the phenomenon. The ancient texts were true: up to four individuals could draw from a single source of chronal energy without diminishing its effect. The reason for the precise number ‘four’ remained a mystery, but it was why noble houses often formed small hunting parties.
“Ah, I can’t absorb anymore,” Seraphina declared, a faint green glow beginning to leak from her fingertips, dissipating into the air. This was the 'dispersing' process, when one reached their innate limit for chronal growth. Lysander, too, ceased absorbing, a similar glow ghosting around him.
Alaric continued to draw in the remaining energy, feeling the envious glances from the two nobles. He absorbed it all, until only the faint smell of burnt ozone remained.
---
On the return journey to Veridia, Seraphina and Lysander recounted the hunt, their voices animated. They boasted of their heroic charges, their quick thinking, their devastating displays of aetherial power. Their selective memory conveniently omitted the part where Aetherium Guards became disposable shields. Alaric listened, quiet, his mind already drifting back to the archives, to the deeper, unsettling truths about Veridia’s fractured history, and the burden of his own terrible secret.