Elksia found herself leaping back and forth, repeating herself, going around in circles. But no matter what she did, the Phantai in front of her was still lying there, unmoving. No, not unmoving. Dead. Gone.
Another attempt. Elksia tried to alter the time threads around the battle. But no, every single time thread led to the same conclusion. Shimmerblade, one of the Phantai elite, an elder Decay Lord nearly as old as the Three Great Blades themselves, was dead. A Voidborn sword stuck out of Shimmerblade’s body, slicing them from neck to stomach, silver blood leaking from the vast wounds
Still nothing.
Elksia tried again. It was painful to do so, but she tried going further back. Didn’t matter. All the threads led to the same place. The same ancient Voidborn with the same dumb diamond armour and the same stupid crystal antlers, doing the same damned thing. Well, not the same damned thing every time. Doing just enough that it would evade Elksia’s alterations. As if it knew she was there. Every time thread Elksia changed, it would be undone, all the tiny slithers of time tied together, to a single, permanent, unchanging thread. A thread where Shimmerblade was lying, cleaved nearly in two, by Elksia’s feet.
Unsure what else to do, Elksia tried to reverse the injury, to make it not happen. It wasn’t going to work, the time threads… time thread, singular, didn’t allow it. Shimmerblade was long gone.
Existence slowed down further. To the point that everything was nearly frozen. Nearly. Freezing time completely was impossible, and even this low speed was a little dangerous. However, Elksia nearly freaked out and stabbed whoever it was who tried to pull her to her feet.
“The fuck? You cunt, you fucking scared me!”
Everything should have been slowed down, but standing by Elksia’s side was Elkay, the weird, ability-borrowing, adapting Decayling who also happened to be the half-brother of Elksia’s second best friend. Clearly, he was currently borrowing Elksia’s time powers, and his eyes were focused on the single time thread floating before them.
“I apologise, Elksia. I am still new to this, uh, time stuff. But I understand enough to know that you have done all you can, and this timeline cannot be changed.”
Elksia took a deep breath, then let Elkay give her a hug.
“I feel like I didn’t do enough. I did everything I could but this guy’s still dead. Like, sure, it happens, I won’t lie and say I ain’t used to death… but it’s kinda been a while since my actions led to someone’s death and I’ve feeling pretty damn sad right now.”
“You are allowed to feel sad, Elksia, but this is not your fault.”
Elksia broke free from Elkay’s embrace. She found it pretty weird that a Rethavok was willing to hold her, a Vrekan, for so long. Then again, they were both aware that Elkay had always been a rather weird Rethavok, even before they became Decaylings.
“I’m a fucking Time Drake! I can manipulate the flow of time! We can BOTH manipulate time! But this shit still happened! This cunt is still dead! And that Voidborn is still alive!”
“You have been a Time Drake for four of our old universe’s years, and I worked out how to borrow your powers like two weeks ago. If I had anything worth betting, I would bet that not even the old Whenvern could have stopped this series of events from happening.”
“You… you think?” Elksia sniffed, wiping her face.
“Yes. Some things just seem inevitable.”
Elksia sighed, then stared at the body. She was covered in blood. She was tired. She wanted to go home. But home no longer existed. It had been destroyed. As far as Elksia was aware, she was the last Vrekan to ever exist, and she didn’t even look much like a Vrekan any more. Sure, the extinction of her kind was also somewhat inevitable, but that was different. This guy was still dead. Elksia paused and wondered why she was thinking these thoughts. Maybe she needed a distraction or something.
“May I ask, Elksia, do you see everything like this all the time?” Elkay patted Elksia on the shoulder briefly in an attempt to comfort her, then began to wander around. “It is very… shiny.”
“Eh, I can turn it off and see normally when I want to. Are you… having trouble?”
Elkay shook his head. “No, for once, I actually do not have trouble letting go of someone else’s powers. Still, it is… headache-inducing.”
“You get used to it, I guess…” Elksia thought to herself for a moment, then sighed some more. “I was gonna ask you. See if you could help me try again. But I think you’re right. This was… I don’t wanna say ‘fated’, but, like, saying it was inevitable also sucks.”
“It does, as you say, suck.”
Elkay’s attention was drawn to Shimmerblade’s body. He wondered if the Phantai’s main ship and headquarters, the Shimmering Blade, was named after Shimmerblade.
“I want to make them suffer…” Elksia muttered. “All of them. All the Voidborns ever. They want us all dead, they don’t care, we’re nothing to them. I want them all to feel how we do, to feel weak and useless and to suffer. And then I want to destroy them…” Elksia trailed off, then turned to Elkay. “We need information. Elkay, can you… become a Voidborn, turn into one, take the information from them?”
“Uh…” Elkay stuttered. “I… I do not want to dive into a half-baked plan for revenge, not while I am still rather unstable. We ought to escape first, mourn, then create a real plan.”
“I guess…” Elksia glanced back at Shimmerblade’s remains. She felt awful. The Phantai weren’t even aware that they’d lost one of their oldest and most respected members yet. This wasn’t even supposed to have been a dangerous mission. It was a small training patrol, a chance for the smaller members of the Phantai and the Thantir Decaylings to fight some Voidborn grunts, to get some practice in. Well, Elksia had certainly gotten a lot of practice, even if it had ended in failure. And Elkay’s unwillingness to help her get revenge didn’t help matters.
Still, that didn’t mean she couldn’t do something right now.
“Will you… help me utterly torture this Voidborn then?” Elksia asked. “They are trying to adapt to my Time Drake stuff. But they can’t adapt fast enough. And not to both of us. We could do some… horrible, horrible things to it.”
“Hm…” Elkay thought to himself, then smiled somewhat. He raised his arm, and a long, bony blade extended from it. “Where do you want to start, dear?”
Elksia turned to the frozen Voidborn standing behind them. She then extended the blades in her own arms and smiled.
“Anywhere you like. After all, we have a lot of time on our hands…”