Chronos - Chapter 10 (Patreon)

Chapter 10 – Information Review

“Really, now? The one who took down Paradoxical called himself the God of Time? Does this mean you have a description of Chronos at last?”

Skytalon sighed. “Unfortunately, not a very good one. Male, white skin, indeterminate age, wearing a black trench coat, black fedora, and a red scarf covering the lower part of his face. Useless as a description.”

Miss Mysterious nodded. “Yes, but this description does provide us with a few clues. That style of costume was popular with the ‘mystery men’ that cropped up between the wars, but especially in the 1930s and 40s. Of course, the style was popular then because the coat and hat would be considered commonplace, and the scarf could easily be hidden when you didn’t want to draw attention. It is a little more out of place, these days, but all it would take is ditching the clothes and you would have no idea that you were looking at the same person.”

“Which was probably his whole point,” I chimed in. “While anyone can appreciate the artistic flair and symbolism that goes into modern superhero costumes, and I’m sure they have extra tricks in them to help you out in a fight, but they are absolute crap at anonymity. Oh, not in the ‘what is their secret identity’ way, for those that keep one, but you ladies can’t just walk down the street in your costumes and expect to keep a low profile.”

“Yes,” Skytalon nodded. “That has been a concern in the past. However, the tradeoffs are usually worth it. When police are on the scene, and they see my wings, they don’t get jumpy and start shooting at me. Well, not usually. Still happens from time to time, with rookies.”

Miss Mysterious sighed. “But Chronos isn’t concerned with ‘friendly fire’. He doesn’t use henchmen, as far as we know, so any fire coming his way is from enemies by default. And anything he does to confuse a situation makes things more difficult on everyone.”

She shook her head. “But that’s a discussion for another time. We came to talk about the sword Chronos used. Clearly, it is a major artifact. But why reveal it for a nobody like Paradoxical? Sure, he was dangerous with his accident-causing powers, but not on the level that one would need an artifact to take him on, especially if he’d already used a curse seal to lock the man’s powers!”

“Well,” I said, “from my experience, the police arrived really quickly after the pulse of magic. Probably three to four minutes?”

“Yes, the site was only a few blocks from the nearest police station,” Skytalon nodded. “I see where you’re going with this. He wanted to end the fight quickly, so that he could get away before the cops could interfere. But why? He can literally stop time, after all.”

“Time. That’s it!” Miss Mysterious gasped. “That’s what he meant by hunting in his turf!”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Paradoxical’s powers work by manipulating time and alternate dimensions. They’re based on multiverse theory, where every possible choice or event happens in their own branching set of multiverses. He uses his power to bring forward a timeline where the desired outcome happens.”

“So, it is less about physical territory, and more about the scope of their powers?” I asked. “You think Chronos wants to be the only time-manipulator in the city?”

Skytalon grimaced. “The ability is pretty rare to begin with. Even the mad science types don’t like messing with time, as a rule. So, it could be that he doesn’t want the competition, or that Paradoxical’s powers might interfere with his own, like two radios on the same frequency.”

“No,” Miss Mysterious cut her off. “While there might be some competition between their time manipulation abilities, Chronos is far stronger overall than Paradoxical, so his manipulations would take precedence. There’s also the fact that, while their powers have similar effects, they come from different sources. No, I don’t think that Chronos was worried about Paradoxical himself, but rather what the Protectors and others would do while trying to capture him.”

“What they would do?”

I cut in before Miss Mysterious could respond to her boss. “More importantly, what they might learn. Specifically, they might learn ways to combat a time-manipulator. If you could defend against Paradoxical’s time-based attacks, then you might be able to defend against Chronos.”

“Then why not just kill Paradoxical? Why seal his powers and then leave him for the cops?”

Miss Mysterious sighed. “That is probably because of our own rules, boss. As far as we know, Chronos has not killed anyone, or committed any crimes that would be worthy of a life sentence, much less a death penalty. Even a strict judge, who put his sentences as consecutive rather than concurrent, would not be able to deny him the chance for parole, based on what he’s done. And that’s assuming that we could find a way to keep him contained that didn’t constitute cruel and unusual punishment.”

“So, leaving the bastard alive means that he just gets assault with a deadly weapon, not murder, I get it. And if he isn’t showing any kind of escalation, then there’s a limit to how much force we can bring to bear in order to take him down.” Skytalon growled, “The asshole is counting on that, isn’t he?”

“Most likely, yes,” I said, “But there is another consideration, as well.”

“What?”

“As Miss Mysterious could tell you, protecting against different attacks scales in difficulty based not just on the power of the attack, but the type, as well. The System that was imposed by the Pulse lists these things called ‘descriptors’ by people’s abilities, yes?”

“Sure,” Skytalon nodded. “Everyone knows that.”

“Well, through my own experimentation, I’ve discovered that descriptors affect how an ability is resisted. A shield designed to block Slashing damage would still stop a sword with both the ‘Slashing’ and ‘Magic’ descriptors, but would not stop a mundane sword with just the ‘Piercing’ descriptor. In the same way, a sword with Magic, Fire, and Slashing descriptors would likely not even scratch someone immune to fire damage, like that villain Pyromatic.”

“So, keeping us from developing Time defenses to fight Paradoxical means we aren’t going to find ways to easily fight Chronos?”

“Exactly,” Miss Mysterious nodded. “That brings us to a possible reason for him displaying the sword. It is a clear warning that, in order to disarm him, we will have to negate magic entirely, and, because we have no clue as to his identity or location, we’d have to blanket the whole city.”

“Yes,” I said. “And, as we talked about in our last meeting, that’s not tenable for a variety of reasons. Actually, I would not be surprised if Chronos is looking for some way to expand his repertoire even further.”

“What do you mean by that?” Skytalon frowned. “Doesn’t he have enough power already?”

“’Sun Tzu said: The good fighters of old first put themselves beyond the possibility of defeat, and then waited for an opportunity of defeating the enemy.’ That’s a quote from the Art of War. Its lessons are still very popular in the magical community today, since they can be applied to many modern situations.”

Miss Mysterious nodded. “Yes. In this case, branching out and finding some means of fighting or defense that is not reliant on magic would be ideal for him, because it makes it even harder for someone to protect against all his vectors of attack.”

“Hmph. Well, what about if we just do something to make ourselves immune to him? Doctor, you mentioned that you created some kind of protection that made the otherwise powerless librarian immune to Paradoxical’s attacks. Could you replicate that with Chronos?”

I took a breath, and said, “Well, it is possible, in theory, however, there are some problems with the implementation.”

Miss Mysterious leaned forward. “Such as?”

“Well, for starters, Bethany was intimate with Paradoxical for a substantial duration, and had been subject to his powers many times over the time where he claimed her as his lover. As you know, that leaves a connection. But that connection, when not maintained, can wear, and fray, and eventually snap. I was just barely able to get enough of the connection to render her immune to Paradoxical’s powers, and only because they had been together and intimate for longer than they had been apart.”

The lady magician nodded. “So, it is useless, unless we come to you right after an encounter with Chronos?”

“Essentially, yes. Also, there is the nature of the ritual itself. I made sure to get several rounds of informed consent before conducting the ritual, since it was both invasive and intimate in nature.”

“What do you mean?” asked Skytalon.

“I mean that, in order to convey a permanent protection on someone, I would need to form an intimate connection during the ritual. In other words, sex. And the ritual itself would force me to transform parts of your being, and there would be a necessary sacrifice, thanks to the System’s requirements.”

The flier blushed at the idea of participating in a sex ritual, but Miss Mysterious simply nodded. Looking at her boss, she said, “Such things are common in rituals, across cultures. And they are far better, in my mind, than the ones that involve ritual scarification or the like.” Turning back to me, she frowned, “But what kind of sacrifice are we talking about?”

“The ritual cannot change a person so that they have more ‘points’ than they did before. The System won’t allow it. So, in order to make permanent changes, you have to steal from Peter to pay Paul. If you have any unspent ‘XP’, as the System calls it, that can be used, but otherwise, you need to either reduce your current abilities in some way, or take on a curse of some kind that weakens you enough to pay for the changes.”

“Like developing a sudden allergy to silver, or becoming vulnerable to fire attacks, right?”

“Yes, to name just two examples. Depending on how severe the change you want to make is, you could even make yourself blind, or mute, or force yourself to do algebra every time you wished to cast a spell. Regardless, something must be given up, in order to make a permanent change.”

Skytalon grumbled. “And there’s no way to take out a loan, I guess?”

“Well, I could set the ritual to automatically ‘recover’ the sacrificed abilities or weaknesses and channel all your future XP into paying them off until they are gone, but you would still have the problems in the present.”

“Damn,” she said. “That would have made getting back at that bastard so much easier.”

I shrugged apologetically. “Unfortunately, that is the realities of this world after the Pulse.”

“No, no,” Miss Mysterious said. “That isn’t your fault, we understand. But we’ve gotten off topic. The sword, do you think that you could identify it? Psypher from the Protectors searched Paradoxical’s memories once the formal interrogation was done. Chronos said something, before the sword appeared in his hand. ‘Awaken, Teldranath’. Does that mean anything to you?”

“Oh, dear. Please, wait here for a second. I won’t be long.”

After excusing myself from the room, I quickly went to the stacks, and pulled one of the precious tomes from the shelf. There was a reason I wanted to work in this library, and that was having access to all these rare and magical tomes. As I entered the room, Miss Mysterious’s eyes locked upon the tome, and when I put it on the table, she gasped in surprise.

“Is that an original copy of Naifeh’s Makhtutat 'Aslihat Ghamida? Where did you get that? There are only supposed to be ten of those in existence!”

“Well, there is a reason why I, one of the premier scholars in the country, if not the world, choose to work as a librarian here. There’s also a reason why this floor is so heavily warded. There are tomes in this collection that are literally irreplaceable. And you have not even seen the restricted section, where the most dangerous items are kept! I am afraid that the protections on that section are quite lethal, and I will make no apologies about it.”

Skytalon frowned. “What books could be so dangerous that they need such protection?”

“We have a grimoire that is supposedly written by the hand of the Demon Lord, Tuzadoth. The last time it was opened was during the Second World War. The Japanese were losing, and were searching for something, anything to turn the tide. They attempted a ritual in the tome. Hiroshima was destroyed to prevent the ritual from completing, but the book survived, and was brought to Nagasaki. Again, the city died, but the grimoire survived. This time, however, it was captured by a special team sent by the Americans, and was secreted back to the United States for safekeeping. Since then, it has remained protected by wards strong enough that even gods would think twice before testing them.”

“Oh.”

I took a breath, and opened the tome in front of me. “Now, let us see what Naifeh has to say about Teldranath. I recognized the name, but even I do not know all the secrets of the arcane.”