Data file R-6: Watershed Theorem

  [The Watershed Theorem is an assertion from Royal Scientist Gibson “Gears” Kreelek that explains the movement and behavior of time energy in respect to humans. Detailed information is unlisted, as Gears prefers to lecture allies in person...

  Note from Rasil: “Gears, if you’re not going to be helpful, stay out of the file editor!”

  Note from Gears: “Fight me.”

  Note from Railstorm/Helios: “LOL!”]

  Data file R-7: Power crystals (antigravity addendum)

  [Power crystals are mineral formations native to Aljia that provide infinite energy to anyone and anything that harnesses it. While this includes plasma energy, they can also emit fields that shift relative gravity. This antigravity effect is rarely utilized for combat, and is more often seen as the propulsion for transport systems such as gravity rail cargo trains or military dropships.

  The crystals’ unique response to biological life can occasionally be mastered to such a degree that a human holding a crystal weapon can siphon or redirect both electricity and antigravity to their whim. Personal antigravity devices use this to solve the deadly issue of inertia, and fighters using such devices on their person must learn to maintain a field of “safe” antigravity buffer around their bodies while activating the mechanism.

  Note: Terran Knight combat boots have been rated as the most efficient usage of the antigravity effect, and simultaneously hold the record for most accidental inertia misfires while in use...]

  ***

  Sophia didn’t say much at first when Gears stood before the throne and explained that he had a way to find Flameye. She looked doubtful, actually, and maybe a little upset about the earlier revelation that Flameye was immortal. “I’ll be honest, Kreelek,” she started.

  “Gears, please, Your Majesty... Sorry," Gears hastily interrupted, earning a disappointed glare from Jason.

  “Gears, I’m not very inclined to believe any hunches right now, and whatever Rasil might be doing in the practice range will probably be less than helpful as well.”

  “Ghost said she would teach Rasil electrosense, so...” Gears warned.

  “Oh, my gosh.” She slid herself so she was lying sideways along the throne’s armrests. “I take it back; give me what you have. I need good news if Rasil’s learning to see through walls. Never gonna be able to keep him out of projects...”

  Gears didn’t hesitate. “Time energy, I found, is a link between our plane of existence, and a true timeline, allowing interaction with reality’s natural code.”

  “But, I thought ‘time’ was a relative, human construct.”

  “An appealing prospect, but false. Flameye’s use of time energy and the natural behavior of chimera indicate that it comes from another astral plane, and exists in a purely energy form in that plane.”

  “So, it flows here from a literal ‘timeline’?”

  “Exactly!” Gears shouted, too eagerly. Sophia wasn’t surprised or perturbed. She just stared patiently, as if Rasil had made her numb to such behavior. Gears pretended to admire the intricacy of the floor before continuing, “Time is like water. The simplest way to explain the timeline is to say a river runs along space and time, dictating people and objects placed in the flow, having the water run around them in specific ways. Time conduits interfere with this, letting the water run through them, and controlling its flow instead of merely being in it.”

  Gears paused to let Sophia contemplate, and finished his point, “Since time acts like water, chimera, an artificial time energy siphoned from the Amulet, must act the same. It runs like liquid, but in its own plane’s rules. It flows naturally downward, but not to a physical watershed, rather to a watershed located at the nearest time conduit, the nearest object it’s ‘supposed to’ flow through.”

  Sophia stood suddenly. “It flows toward Flameye?”

  “Unfortunately, yes. That’s how he never runs out. But, it can allow us to track everything he might rig that uses chimera. I ran the data already, and the margin of error is only fourteen feet.” Gears smiled and adjusted his lens slightly. “He can’t hide from us anymore.”

  ***

  It was impressive, Flameye acknowledged. Hopelessly naive, but impressive it remained. He closed his temporal vision that had been watching that human scientist’s entire speech. “He can locate me easily? Then I’ll move so fast it won’t matter.”

  He stomped back inside the walls of his fortress, reveling in the thought of what he was about to do. Inside the shadowy domain that served as his own personal lair, he lifted a lid on an ornate chest marked with Runic symbols and reached his hand in slowly. Grasping the cold metal, he slowly lifted a shard of the Shadowbane Amulet.

  “Let’s see.” He clenched his fist tightly around the piece, using its power to scan the region of Embershard. He unintentionally picked up a responding time frequency. “So, Rasil has a shard as well? Good for him, but I have two.”

  Flameye took his second Amulet shard with his other hand. “Now, to ensure prediction of my plans won’t matter.”

  He took a deep breath, not of air, but of energy.

  “Shadowbane Amulet! You were crafted for me to wield, and I alone will know your power! Come to me now! Leave the city; your burning fury rests within!”

  A flaring glow of pink light responded from the shards, and within seconds, the chimera in him was being bolstered by time energy from elsewhere. “Yes!” he roared his triumph, his scorched, black armor reforming itself as his regeneration was amplified. His claws glistened, time energy coursing through every inch of his frame.

  He teleported to the forest outside, using barely a drop of his newly charged power. Raising a claw towards a tree, he lifted his wings, the flaps of metallic fiber on them repairing immediately, and let loose his fury.

  There was nothing left of the tree, his antimatter beams firing from six different points on each wing and converging where he commanded. He grinned with hatred, and blew apart more trees to continually test his accuracy. “Make no mistake, Rasil, I will kill you very, very soon.”

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  ***

  Rasil fired multiple blasts in a row at Alyssa. Each time a bolt approached her, she caught it with the tip of her pistol and sent the siphoned energy back at Rasil. He proceeded to, with much less grace, parry and send back siphoned blasts of his own.

  “This exercise should get you accustomed to the feeling soon," Alyssa noted, continuing her perfected movements. “Then, you can move on to developing a critical strike.”

  “You can’t teach me yours?” Rasil asked with a touch of disappointment. He was slightly envious of Alyssa’s skill at this point, and had hoped she would teach him her [Twin Rail Beam].

  “I wish I could, but my fighting style only works with my accurate, piercing pistols. Besides, my critical strike contains a crucial piece of the [Hurricane Strike].” Rasil stopped parrying the energy and dodged aside as her statement registered.

  “Slick Jones’s critical strike?”

  “Yeah, and he made me promise not to share its secrets outside of the family. It’d be like you giving me a piece of Terran Knight equipment that belonged to your ancestors.”

  “That... makes sense.”

  “I can teach you some basics for developing your own critical strike, though," she spoke as she holstered her guns and walked closer. “Honestly, it should be something built around your weapon’s unique properties.”

  Rasil opened his mouth to agree, but Helios flew into the training room without warning and shouted, “Rasil! Big problem! Get to the throne room!” He flew back into one of the vents as Rasil glanced at Alyssa.

  “Let’s go," he said.

  ***

  Sophia relayed the information from Gears tentatively, while Rasil and Alyssa tried to hide their mutual frustration. Not only was Flameye out of reach, and not only was the time energy coming to him on its own, but he was also siphoning it even faster in the past hour, as if he’d heard them planning.

  “Is that so far-fetched?” Rasil pressed. “We know him. He must have heard us with one of his new powers, so he fortified himself to mess up our plans.”

  “I agree,” Sophia said with a rapid nod as she sat back on her throne. “A direct assassination of Flameye is out of the question if he has even half of the Amulet’s power. One person couldn’t possibly—”

  Rasil raised his hand to interject, drawing Alyssa’s attention with his sudden tone change. “I can stop him, alone.” A moment of silence passed, followed by a moment of confusion.

  “Rasil...” Sophia whispered.

  “I want to face Flameye alone. I’m sure that if we split him from his army before he strikes, the rest of Embershard can face his chimera racazoids while I duel him.”

  Alyssa nodded wordlessly, too, while Helios asked, “What about his power increase?”

  “I’ll be fine. I had a good teacher," Rasil replied, winking at Alyssa.

  She squinted at him, then rolled her eyes and grinned before saying, “Survive this battle, and THEN I’ll know I taught you well.” Rasil looked at Sophia for her approval. She sighed in turn and looked at Jason. He was otherwise occupied, whispering back and forth with Gears. Jason’s calm facade had faded over time, his body starting to shimmer with a tense, heated aura, and he looked very concerned about what Gears was saying.

  “Okay, this just got worse," he said. “Tell them what you just told me, Gears.”

  “Right," Gears muttered. “Listen up, all of you. I just used the Watershed Theorem data to analyze the path of Flameye’s time energy, and he’s not keeping it inside him. Instead, he seems to be moving it into a large, vertical structure, a transmitter of sorts. Given the angle and approximate shape of the tower, I’d assume he’s trying to inundate the entire planet’s atmosphere with chimera.”

  Rasil and Alyssa glanced at each other in sudden worry. Sophia was hardly doing any better, and seemed more scared than Rasil had seen her in years.

  Gears continued, “Doing so... would render every racazoid in the entire kingdom unkillable. They would breathe in chimera from the air around them, constantly repairing. What’s worse, the chimera concentration would reach toxic levels for humans within the first few days. If he launches that chimera, we’re dead, all of us.”

  When he was finished, the faces of everyone present were darkened with dread. All except for Rasil’s, whose eyes glinted with the makings of a countermeasure.

  ***

  Flameye watched this with a respectful pause. The human scientist had again predicted his moves exactly, and it was genuinely refreshing to see such a persistent opponent.

  It reminded him of crossing weapons with Rasil...

  No matter, it was too late for either side to change course, and Rasil would inevitably try to duel him in Embershard. He spread his wings and began levitating. A quick flight would get him a glance at what was going on outside of the room without wasting more chimera.

  As he approached the city’s walls, he harnessed a shroud of black mist to veil him in the shadows, an action made easier by the building clouds in the sky. “Scarab cannons, as usual," he noted with a growl. He wouldn’t be able to get past the outer wall without one of those cannons locking onto him and unleashing a river of bullets through his armor.

  Yet, something intrigued him. He could see, from above, the subtleties of the military movements. He could easily notice that they were pooling resources and fresh bodies to throw at him, no doubt in a valiant assault to destroy his chimera tower before it came online. “The perfect time to strike...” He looked back toward the mountains that hid the tower stronghold and made his decision. He would weather their assault, show them the futility of opposing him, and then kill them all.

  ***

  “He was spotted?” Rasil asked, readying his equipment.

  Gears checked his data before replying, “Yes, outside the Southwest wall. He just glanced at the city and left.”

  “There’s a powerful storm coming in. Are you sure it wasn’t a scout?”

  “It makes no difference; he’ll probably attack soon anyway.”

  “We’re relying on that, y‘know,” Helios commented. “He can’t possibly resist sieging Embershard right now.”

  “Gears, how long did you take to make these?” Alyssa asked. She had just walked in, holding a set of squad uniforms, each one having a pauldron marked with their insignias.

  “He works fast," Rasil interjected. “Besides, if you don’t like it, you can give it back when the mission’s over. No pressure.” While he spoke, he slipped on the uniform jacket and zipped it up, pulling his cape on over it. The entire jacket was made of Gears’s special brand of fireproof layering. The dull gray was initially weird, but it did contrast the red parts of his equipment nicely.

  Alyssa looked over her version of the outfit before replying, “Actually, I like it.” She slipped off her coat and put the jacket on. “Was it intentional for it to match my turquoise-gray color scheme perfectly?” Gears gave the briefest of shrugs before going back to his planning. Helios shrugged at the same time and flew to Gears’s shoulder.

  Alyssa clipped her belt over the uniform, mounting her pistols behind her uniform’s skirt, and tied a turquoise sash over it. Rasil noticed now that the uniform did perfectly match her own gear, right down to her combat boots... that were the same color... exactly... with no difference...

  Wait a minute.

  Rasil was now acutely aware that Gears was trying to bribe Alyssa to stick around after the day was done. Helios had probably supported the idea and found the weaponsmith who had made her original “Ghost” equipment. After briefly wondering why they went to that effort, Rasil shook the irrelevant thought away and holstered his gun.

  “Listen," he ordered, “This is a two-part infiltration. I’ll split off to the west and use Gears’s predictions to find the chimera tower. The rest of you will infiltrate the flank of the invading racazoids to support the wall. Shut down their mortars first, then the autocannons.”

  “What if they—” Gears started.

  “If they bring in a bruiser, enact protocol S-03 and ditch the commands. Tear those goliaths down," Rasil affirmed.

  “Good plan," Gears agreed.

  “Roger," Helios echoed.

  “Understood," Alyssa answered.

  The pieces were in place, and both sides knew what the other was planning. All that was left was for one side to triumph and the other to burn...