Time Trial

It was night.

They had been called to Maui late the following day. Getting over there had been relatively easy, it being the closest and all, but by the time they managed it, it was night all the same. The island was scarcely populated by John’s standards. Light pollution was barely a thing. The stars provided ample silver light instead.

They met Veridion in another Natural Barrier. ‘If these are on every other island, we would have stumbled over them immediately if we had started our search anywhere else,’ John thought. ‘Funny thing to consider.’

What wasn’t as funny were the additional forces that were present with Veridion. On one side, there were more of the undead natives, forming a small army of wraiths and ghosts behind Kamehameha. Those were the Night Marchers, basically a local version of the ancestor army myth that was popular across so many different pagan faiths.

The other **** was more European in appearance. Armoured knights stood in a square formation, each of them clad in a silvery armour. The colour indicated a Mithril alloy, impressive but not out of the norm for an organization sponsored by an influential god. At their head stood a dark-haired, older man. John recognized the four-dozen knights as the elite of the Oathkeepers, Veridion’s private army. That made the scarred leader Risel, a Latebloomer with a metal-based ability. John knew little else about him. Like Veridion, he did not fight publicly much.

The Concord had a vested interest in keeping its true potential hidden. It was easier to be a peacekeeper when one was impossible to calculate for.

In addition to these new forces were all the previous ones. “You expanded my welcoming committee,” John stated bluntly. With now three days between him and the event, he felt a bit more chatty when it came to the god. “At least you know how to pay me respect, I suppose.”

“A precaution against your underhanded methods,” Veridion responded bluntly. “You are a known subversive, Gamer.”

“Yes, I’ve been such a standout among world leaders,” the Gamer drawled. “Remind me… how many wars did the Concord launch against the Purest Front and their exploitation of those who they deemed lesser? How many raids by the Dangun Clan did you prevent?”

“The Concord of War is no organization for world peace,” Veridion retorted, his haughty tone tinged by annoyance. “We exist to prevent the annihilation of the masses by the power of gods.”

“Right… and when Romulus marched on Moscow with his divine brides by his side, where were you?” John tilted his head to underline the question. For the first time, Veridion did not have an immediate response. “Seems to me that your principles stop where your abilities to win end. For this I do not fault you. Just stop judging me for not stopping when my own abilities can carry me further.”

“There is a difference, John Newman, between not fighting a doomed battle and opportunistically striking out.”

“So, you would have fought at the side of the-“

“Enough!” Kael interrupted with a loud hiss. “Veridion’s time you may waste but mine is better spent hunting. I’m here to observe vengeance given and vengeance rising, prevent it if I can. Let us move to that promised time. No more of this talk! Talk! Talk!”

John and Veridion glared at each other across the grassy, rocky land. In the end, the Gamer made a permissive gesture. Veridion appeared of half a mind not to talk at all now. An impatient stomp of Kamehameha’s foot finally put motion into it all.

“Time,” Veridion declared. “That is your trial for today. You are to move in unity with the wind and the world. You will be surrounded by a spell of the Menehune that creates your fragile path. Move too slow and you will lose. Move too fast and you will lose. Who do you choose to send on this trial?”

John considered the women with him. This was essentially a challenge in patience. He could shorten the exclusion method tremendously: it was either him or Gnome. Of the others, only Nahoa was a potential choice, and while the maidolotl may have been capable of suffering great ordeals, he wouldn’t have called her a master in timing.

If this was a trial in just timing, then John considered it best to pick himself. Since these trials were always just one person and he was not built for that, better to move himself out of the pool early before he was stuffed in a weightlifting trial.

“I will go myself,” he made the decision official.

Veridion gave a dismissive nod, then stepped away. Everyone else followed him, save for the short Menehune people. “Walk well,” Nahoa whispered a parting compliment, before she and the rest of the harem also joined the row of onlookers.

“The spell is simple,” said the leader of the Menehune, marked by a particularly ornate piece of oversized headwear. “The path before you will light up in intervals. The path behind you will crumble. As the trial continues, the light will fade, but the pathing will remain. Walk too fast and you will fall off. Hesitate for too long and you will find the road break beneath your feet. Walk with too much **** and you will shatter the spell.”

“Understood,” John said aloud, while the gears in his head turned. ‘Fairly simple pattern recognition task then, made more difficult by the presumed length of time this trial will take. As a seasoned grinder, this should be easy.’

Well, it helped that he could get the rest of his brain stimulated by doing things with his other two bodies elsewhere.

The spell of the dwarf-like locals was quickly woven, surrounding John in a cocoon of swirling lights. Individual threads moved around him, stirring the air around him as they did. ‘That’s what Veridion meant by the wind,’ the Gamer realized, feeling the movement of the magic in his Elemental Senses. ‘That only makes this easier.’

Blind to the outside world, John waited for the first piece of the path to appear. It formed suddenly, a scattering of motes that came together in a split second. It was an interesting mixture of differently sized hexagons and thin connective membranes, all of it forged from hard light. John took his first careful step onto it. The path gave under his step like a halfway deflated bouncy castle.

‘I’ve walked on weirder,’ John thought, recalling one of the many Slime Floor Dungeons he had run. It had been located inside a mega-slime and thus all corridors had their walls entirely made out of goo. He had found his favourite Sybian in that Instant Dungeon. ‘I should tie someone up on it again. Maybe Eliana? Prolonged exposure to vibrations should be something we can still do when she is far along in the pregnancy.’

John’s mind turned around such themes as he walked forwards on the slowly advancing path. Sometimes an interval of growth occurred after a few seconds of pause. Most of the time, it took over five minutes. Recognizing the build-up became progressively easier. There was a subtle pattern in the way the particles of light around him moved, creating small tunnels of moving air, that gave away how far along the channelling they were.

It really was a simple challenge, barely an inconvenience.

As stated, the light eventually began to dim, giving John a gradually better view of his new surroundings. He was no longer on solid ground. The path had taken him over a cliff and on top of a valley at some point. Nothing unusual for John, he had used magic to fly many times before. The Ambassador Double could do it at will. A fear of heights was something he had lost a while ago.

Plus, with his body, terminal velocity was very survivable.

The path went up, then down. Standing still on a slope for half an hour would have been deeply uncomfortable, had it not been for the Skittersteps. Since the Adhesive Soles allowed him to treat every angle of surface as walkable, it was barely an inconvenience.

The light had faded to scarcely present particles by the time he went through the first Swirling Point. Here, like on Hawaii, there was a network of Natural Barriers. The Swirling Points seemed to connect them like tunnels did the chambers of an ant hill. The Eternal Sanctum had worked similarly. Magnus had rediscovered how to do it for manmade Illusion Barriers as well.

‘So much of technology is just looking at nature and wondering how that even works,’ the Gamer thought.

About another hour of crawlingly slow walking later, John stepped through another Swirling Point, emerging back in the original Natural Barrier. There was no light now, not even that of the stars. It had all been swallowed up. Even the moon was gone.

A scream suddenly tore through the night. The voice of Sylph, twisted into a pained cry. John immediately reached out with his mental connection, but found them blocked. Mind and gestures pulled up the Harem Comms next. They opened up, then went dark. For the second time, something was successfully interfering with his private communications network. The contact with his other bodies also had ceased, though that was a less impressive feat.

The path advanced in another interval. Was this part of the test? Would Veridion employ means to even block the Harem Comms? Of course he would. What else could be responsible for this? The Tzitzimimeh. Judas. Devos. There really wasn’t a shortage of people who John trusted could make a strike like this with sufficient preparation.

The darkness around John blocked his Darkvision. There was only him, the glowing path, and the scream. Was he finishing the trial or was he going to abandon this path? John had made his decision before it had the chance to be replaced with anything else.

No chance, however small, that his women were in peril was worth victory in this trial.

John leapt off the platform, shattering it beneath him from the **** of his launch. The second he was in the air, he knew he had made the wrong decision. Out of the cocoon of darkness and back in contact with all of his loves, he witnessed the total normalcy among the watchers. He was close enough that he could get back to the starting area with a few teleports.

Kupuas hollered and laughed, screaming mockingly with the faces of his women. It took every ounce of willpower in John not to send Arc Lances flying through their heads. No attempt at a poker face was even made. He growled at them all, his gaze snapping to Veridion, who drily chuckled.

“So predictable,” the god of oaths remarked. “You can’t stand even a moment of pain for your women.”

“Is that supposed to be a bad thing?” John hissed back. “To protect those I love above everything else?”

“Above everything else,” Veridion repeated his words slowly. “Above justice, above adherence to the goal, above truth, above the will of others – all it takes is one scream of your women and you abandon everything else. Not even one of the women that dies easily.” He gestured at the arcvolt elemental. “Are you questioning her willingness to suffer for your goals?”

The air was roiling with emotions, spilling as manifest magic from both John and Aclysia. It was powerful enough that the hollering of the shapeshifters had stopped. All but the Night Marchers and Oathkeepers were retreating away from the now coalescing forces of Fusion. The ground was aglow with Nathalia’s might.

The air went still. All sound ceased, the waves calmed.

“You have no right to question me or my John on anything.” Sylph’s voice was uncharacteristically flat and collected. “You are mean and your words are best unheard. Unless your next words are the revelation that the true test was helping those he loves, you best say nothing at all.”

Veridion opened his mouth, only for one of Kael’s hands to suddenly wrap around his head. The god of oaths struggled against his vengeful compatriot. Inevitably, he would break free. John and his women had no need to be there when it happened. The answer had been given.

A raised hand removed them from the Natural Barrier before the remnants of their self-control could break down. “Time Trial my ass,” John grumbled and kicked a rock as he walked ahead. “Note to self: Veridion has means to suppress the Harem Comms.”

“An extension of his oath-powers,” Layla informed them. Unlike Sylph, the reforming stalker speaking with an edge to her was expected. Hers was more like a guillotine patiently biding its time, though. “You had agreed to the trial, so he had the means to assure its validity.”

“And you know this by observing his aura?” John asked.

Layla just nodded. He did not ask for further elaboration. Maybe he would later. For now, he was pissed off and it was squarely aimed at the god. Even mimicking his women in pain was a line for the Gamer that he did not want crossed by anyone for any reason. That stung him more than the loss itself.

Hawaii was important, but not that important.