Part 1: Quarantine
Part 2: Odd Jobs
Part 3: Shuck
Part 4: The Old North
Part 5: Dirty Dave
Part 6: Multipliers
Part 7: Kilogold
Part 8: Analysis
Part 9: Reversal
Part 10: Miss Meta
Part 11: The Fourth Consortium
Part 12: Young Ghost
Part 13: Dungeon Diving
Part 14: Puzzles
Part 15: Calm Before the Storm
Part 16: Eventual
Part 17: Changing History
Synopsis(spoilers ahead if you want to read the story from the beginning)
Victor Meta is a time traveler who lived with his wife Janet and his young daughter Mira in a quaint timeline on the edge of obscurity. However, one day he was ambushed by soldiers of the Legion, and was forced to ally with a con artist named Shuck to save them from certain doom. By carefully manipulating time, he was barely successful, thanks to additional help surprisingly provided by his own daughter, now an adult time traveler.
But all of that pales in comparison to the revelation that Mira brings. They were not alone in being targeted. The time traveling family of Meta has been attacked throughout history. Ghost, another Gatekeeper who helped Dante Meta escape the coordinated assault, has joined the effort alongside that same Meta to find the masterminds behind the attack. And now, they all are working together to unravel the mystery of the Legion's ability to coordinate throughout time.
They now find themselves in the middle of a veritable warzone, facing contorted monsters called Vorpals. With few options left and other lives at stake, they throw in with a group of survivors to try holding back the encroaching horde.
“Victor! Time bubble, NOW!”
Shuck ran over to Mira as time froze around the three of them. Victor also ran over, shocked into silence. “Is… is she…”
Shuck propped up Mira’s head as she gasped for breath, skin slowly changing to a stone like complexion. “What… happened… I…”
Shuck yelled at her as he looked around frantically. “Don’t speak, you fool! All your energy, every last drop of gravity power you had, was sapped out in a single instant. You will go through severe energy decompression… and then die. Unless we can reverse it.”
Victor now held Mira’s head up as he struggled to decide what to do, while Shuck seemed very determined to find something nearby. Victor, holding his slowly dying daughter in his arms, searched for how to fix the impossible situation. “Shuck… what do we do? I don’t care what it costs! Anything you need, just save my daughter! I BEG YOU!”
Shuck picked up Mira’s dropped pocketwatch, dusting it off. “Hmm… here we are. Well, Victor, the simplest solution would have been NOT TO FIGHT WORLD ENDING MONSTERS HEAD ON WITH VERY LITTLE PLANNING WHEN ESCAPE WAS COMPLETELY POSSIBLE. But we are past that at this point, aren’t we?”
Shuck flipped over the pocketwatch before producing a silver tool from one of his pockets. Victor raised an eyebrow. “Then what are you doing?”
Carefully, Shuck pried open the back of the pocketwatch, exposing its inner workings. The air shuddered in protest, reality bending and warping as Victor swore. “SHUCK! Are you INSANE?!? If you break that, it will immediately kill all heirs who possess the watch!”
Shuck spoke quickly, exhibiting the signs of overclocking, as he interacted with the inner workings of the piece of infinity while also ignoring Victor’s objection. “The quantum entanglement inherent in the piece of infinity binds it to its master. It’s why the Aetherial need to do comparatively little to keep track of them… and why they can only be used by their current owner. Tweaking the properties of one using a sacred tool can induce complementary-”
“Shuck, how the rift do you know all this-”
“Shut up, SHUT UP! I’m not done. This means I can alter one to affect the other. If I change the configuration ever so slightly…”
The watch squealed with a horrendous screech as Shuck held it as far away from himself as he could. The hands on the clock spun wildly in the wrong direction, and Mira coughed and convulsed on the ground. With shaking hand and gritted teeth while under the auditory assault, Shuck managed to make the watch stop it’s unearthly screeching, and breathed shakily as he snapped the back of the watch shut.
Victor looked at Shuck in anger. “Well, that was just a fantastic idea, wasn’t it? Do you have even the slightest idea what you could have done if you messed up?”
Shuck tossed the watch to Mira, who caught it rather casually. She was completely normal, no longer in any pain. Shuck smiled at both stunned time travelers as he explained. “I turned back time. Something that you two, like so many other Metas, are too afraid to do.”
Mira stood up, inspecting her watch as if she expected it to be broken. But sure enough, the hands ticked forward as if nothing had happened. “Shuck… that’s supposed to be impossible. And even if it wasn’t, it’s against the rules! You can’t just-”
Shuck cut her off, snidely mocking her tone. “Oh, you must follow the rules! Gotta respect those rules! Wouldn’t want to get caught littering or accidentally spilling your drink on the rug! Please, Mira. Save your concerns for someone not currently trapped in an Eventual. If I followed the rules, I wouldn’t be here at all, and you would probably be dead. And we’ve still got to deal with THAT!”
Shuck pointed at the behemoth lurking outside their time bubble, frozen in place until they decided to return to the timeline. Mira quickly averted her eyes when she realized it was looking right at them. “Shuck! That… thing! It’s still looking at us!”
Shuck scoffed. “That thing has a name, Mira. It’s the Gaze. When it locks eyes with a target, it rapidly drains your energy. But obviously, it can’t do that while stuck in time like that. It’s an active effect, not a passive one. If that was it’s only power, Ghost could handle it, but the problem is it’s a Tank class Vorpal.”
Victor raised an eyebrow. “What does that mean, exactly?”
“It means you need someone like Ghost to even have a chance of bringing it down. And Ghost is already mostly spent from previous battles. He might be able to survive the fight, but he can’t bring it down while saving our lives too. So, I’ll need to take it down. But I need both of you to help.”
Mira frowned, a sense of hopelessness bleeding from her expression into her voice. “But… what can we do? That thing… if it’s stronger than Ghost, we don’t have a chance. We can’t even look it in the eye safely!”
“Wrong. It’s a shapeshifter. It can reposition it’s eye anywhere on it’s body that you might be looking at. So you can’t look at it at all. You need to use some form of casting to detect it without the use of your eyes.”
Victor shook his head. “That might work for other types… but me and Mira are obviously gravity casters. Our ability to detect things using only energy signatures is nowhere near accurate enough for battle.”
Shuck was stunned. “Wait… even something as big as that? You can’t see that just by gravity sensing?”
Mira and Victor stared at Shuck blankly, silent. Victor spoke with a trace of sarcasm in his voice. “Do you have any idea the miniscule amount of gravity an average person emits? It’s not like body heat or neuropathic synapses. It takes tools to even demonstrate it exists empirically.”
Shuck grew visibly frustrated with the excuse. “That’s not… but you… whatever! Look, I have one final idea. If I can move fast enough, maybe I can stack enough damage to kill it before it knows what happened.”
Victor nodded, frowning. “Okay, I can drop the time bubble at any time… but how are you going to do that? As you said, locking eyes with that thing isn’t the only issue.”
“Because we aren’t going to resume time, we are going to slow time.”
Mira objected. “Shuck, you clearly don’t understand… we can stop time and restart time. We can’t slow time, and even if we could, physics are experienced very differently with a slowed time field! You will feel sluggish, and every movement will take more energy.”
Shuck pointed at his own head. “You have any idea what overclocking is? I experience time more slowly than everyone else. I just need to stack on that effect to accomplish a last ditch attack before that thing can dodge or take me out.”
Mira and Victor were silent for a moment, Victor finally breaking the moment with a drawn out sigh. “Okay… I suppose we can try. We can’t jump out of this time period, nor can we likely escape this monster. But you will only have a couple seconds in real time before my strength will almost certainly give out. Obviously, I will do it so you will be experiencing time as I do, but all of what Mira said is still true for both of us. Are you ready?”
Shuck stretched both this arms as electric arcs were already jumping along his body. “That’s all I need. Do it now!”
The time bubble border grew softer, and eventually the bubble faded away completely. Though moving slowly, Shuck ran at Gaze, electricity pulling his feet back to the ground so he could move at super speed without launching helplessly off into the air. Victor, already struggling under the strain of using time manipulation in a way it was never intended, was vaguely aware that Victor wasn’t heading in the quite the correct direction. He was running, but the course was no longer towards Gaze.
Shuck was running at Ghost, who was slowly turning as Shuck prepared his attack.
Despite having no understanding of what would persuade Shuck to betray them, or how it would benefit him, Victor had no doubt that Shuck was now using him to attack Ghost instead of Gaze. So, with more effort than he had expected, he tried to stop the slow motion effect.
The time resumed normal speed just as a surprised Ghost was hit with the full force of Shuck’s attack, the name of which he shouted as it connected.
“Psycho Art, MENTAL BLOCK!”
Ghost convulsed briefly from the electric shock before falling to the ground, completely stiff and still smoking from being fried.
Victor tried to run at Shuck, but was too weak and fell to his knee instead. “Mira! Stop him, Shuck has lost his mind!”
Mira took the air, using her gravity power to fly at Shuck. She pulled some debris to spin around her in an orbit as she began to sling them like projectiles, which Shuck effortlessly blasted with miniature lightning bolts. “Control yourself, Mira… I know what I’m doing.”
Mira landed, still clearly winded herself and not at full strength. “Shuck… why? Why would you do all of this?”
Gaze’s fist was descending right on top of them, moments away from crushing both Mira and Shuck as the double crossing electro caster drew a summoning card, the sleeve around it dissolving at his electrically charged touch. “Because we have no other option… the criteria has been fulfilled. It’s time for Panic.”
Shuck dropped the card, waiting patiently as it immediately shattered into the form of a man who stopped the descent of Gaze’s fist with a single hand outstretched above him.
He was average height. His hair was a black tinted with purple, and his eyes were a brilliant shade of purple. He was dressed in full battle armor except for his head, wearing shining silver with red and yellow trimmings. Most strikingly of all, he carried a massive gravity mallet slung over his shoulder, one which he hadn’t even deigned to use against Gaze’s attempt to crush Shuck.
The confused man looked around, looked over at Shuck, looked over at an unconscious Ghost, then looked at Mira. His eyes were wide with concern as he struggled to understand the situation.
“I’m terribly, truly sorry… but… what the rift is all this, exactly?”
Thanks for reading! If you are enjoying the story, you might also enjoy some of my other published work on Amazon! It’s set in the same fictional universe, but follows different characters.
Gatekeepers, Book One: Unquestionable Truth
Gatekeepers, Book Two: Order of Gravitas
Same post on Minds