That made him look, and he was even smaller than when he’d fought Chronos.
Shit.
He turned back to Chronos and froze.
What the—?
Something was writhing beneath Chronos’s clothing. Like a snake caught inside. The fabric was rising and changing shape. Chronos himself was still sound asleep.
“Damn, he had another trick up his sleeve?”
“Afraid not,” Miseria said, sounding tense for the first time. “I think…the spell is out of his control. It’s running wild.”
“Can that happen?!”
Magic didn’t happen unless someone willed it to. There was no one to give the spell direction. Someone could carve a sigil to activate after a delay, but Chronos hadn’t had time to do that.
“There’s much we don’t know about the secret spells. If passing out makes him lose control, then perhaps the spell is activating itself. Even I’m not sure what will happen,” Miseria said. “We’d better hurry.”
She pried open Chronos’s eyes with her fingers and peered in.
“Domi______”
Miseria was flung back. Like a pebble, she flew through the air, landing several meters away.
“______!”
“Miseria!”
Chronos lurched upright, as if ignoring gravity. The cloth Rogue had used to gag him turned to dust, and the cuffs crumbled away.
“■■■■■■■■”
Spewing words of unknown origins, Chronos swiveled his head around. Black smog filled the air around him, and something snakelike was took shape in that smog. But the most uncanny aspect was his head.
Chronos’s head was rapidly aging and de-aging.
Shrinking and expanding, it was a chubby baby’s face one second, and the next, a wrinkled old man’s head, then a little boy’s, then the original young man’s. Like using the seek bar on a video, his past, present, and future faces all shifted in and out.
______Is this what happens when Control goes nuts?
“■■■■■■,” old man Chronos chanted.
His eyes lit up and released rainbow-colored light, which opened a hole in the ceiling. The light flew skyward and burst like a firework.
The aim might be wild, but the force of the blast was considerable.
Rogue ran over to Miseria, helping her up.
“You okay?”
“Technically. Bad news,” she said, leaning on his shoulder. “Dominate has failed. Control is deeply embedded in his mind. I can’t access it.”
She was white as a sheet.
“You sure you’re okay?” Rogue asked.
“This happens when someone resists a spell. First time in five centuries.”
Her confident manner put an idea in his head.
“______You have a plan, then?”
“You can’t open a door if your key doesn’t fit the keyhole. We need merely approach this situation with a different spell.”
Miseria whistled.
That unknown language echoed again, and a blizzard blew a shipping container away.
“As you can see, he’s lashing out wildly. No clue what he’s looking at. Getting close is risky. In which case, we should decide the target of his attacks for him.”
“You mean, be bait?”
“Yes. I’ll sneak around behind him, and you draw his attention to the fore.”
“Got it. Don’t die!”
“Who do you think I am? I’ve survived one thousand two hundred—”
Chronos turned his head toward them, his face coming up, turning from a fetus to the young man.
“■■■______”
“Run!”
Rogue went right, and Miseria went left. A laser shot through the space they’d vacated, scorching the ground.
“Over here, asshole!”
Rogue scooped up a piece of rubble and threw it at Chronos. It hit his face, and a jowly old man winced.
“Snap out of it! Look at me!”
Chronos’s face twisted in fury.
He’d been moving sluggishly—but now he shot toward Rogue. Time on his face ebbing and flowing, but all ages of him were glaring at Rogue.
“Shit, that worked too well!” he yelled, running away.
He heard an incantation behind him and threw himself into a forward roll. Purple fluid sprayed, passing over his head and hissing as it dissolved a container.
Rogue righted himself and regained momentum.
But Chronos was much closer to him now.
Being so small was detrimental to Rogue’s running speed. But Chronos was fully grown. It wasn’t a great matchup. Rogue was likely to die before he bought enough time.
“■■■,” Chronos chanted, and a black sphere appeared in front of him.
Rogue tried to anticipate the man’s aim. Where? Up? Left? Right?
None of the above.
Woosh. His small body floated into the air and was pulled toward the sphere—it had its own gravity. Rogue’s feet were off the ground; flailing in three dimensions, he barely managed to grab hold of the edge of a container. His fingers burned with pain.
The pull was so strong, they were damn near tearing off.
Scraps of bric-a-brac were flying past him. When they hit the sphere, they were flattened like they’d been put in a compactor.
He heard the deep groan of metal scraping. The container he was hanging on to started to move. He was getting closer and closer to Chrono’s freakish spell.
The containers near him were rolling like dice, bounding across the ground. Those things were several size the mass of a human, but they were crushed instantly, like tin cans. He wondered how much force would make that possible.
Rogue didn’t even notice the sweat on his brow.
He’d used up what little strength this child’s arms had for fighting the man—it was only a matter of time before he “fell.”
C’mon, Miseria!
Then something shot past Chronos. It touched the sphere, and the air shook. A shock wave. Rogue was blown away, like a leaf on the wind.
He bounded off the ground a few times, scraping the hell out of his arm, and finally slid to a halt.
The gravitational pull was gone.
“Save him, abandon him, save him, abandon him…”
Catherine was stomping on Chronos’s face.
She was not in her right mind.
She was clutching her head with both hands, shaking it wildly. He could hear her muttering to herself.
“Catherine…?”
“Oh, Detective!”
She spun round, like she’d just now spotted him. Her lips quivered, and a fountain of tears ran down her face.
“Detective…Detective…I’ve got to save you!”
“______Look out!” Rogue yelled.
Chronos was chanting. Light flashed at Catherine’s feet.
“Hrk!”
She staggered and clutched her throat. There was a hole in it.
Chronos rose slowly to his feet. A baby’s face stared at Catherine. She paid that no attention, staggering toward Rogue.
“Detective…I’m coming to save you…”
And then she fell.
“Catherine!”
Chronos stepped on her—like getting payback—but kept walking.
A smile on his ever-shifting face.
He likely wasn’t conscious, but the grin was ear to ear.
Anger burned through Rogue’s body.
His time was still flowing backward, and Chronos was looming over him. Rogue’s limbs were so small, he could barely remain upright.
But he put every ounce of fury he could muster into that glare. Big hands reached for him, wrapped around his neck, then lifted him off the ground—and still, he glared.
Chronos’s lips opened, chanting an unsettling phrase.
“■■■”
The chant ended, and Chronos’s eyes began to gleam with the same light that had hit Catherine. Just before the focused beam of light fired…
“Your tantrum ends here.”
…Miseria put her hand on the back of Chronos’s head.
“Reading.”
“Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo! Aaaaaaughhhhh!”
Chronos let out an earsplitting shriek. He let go, and Rogue hit the ground. The detective groaned.
“My, my, there’s nothing worthwhile stuffed in here,” Miseria said. “I’ll clean this out for you—thank me later.”
That spell again. The one she’d used on Zack Knoll. She’d used Reading on his mind, but the side effect of it scrambled his memories, shattering them.
“______Is this Control?” Miseria murmured, like she was searching for a jewel in the dark. “Hmm, fascinating.” She nodded. “I get it now.”
Rogue watched in silence. If he lost focus at all, he’d pass right out. He was already a toddler. His thoughts were confused, unrelated ideas coming and going, like watching his own past through cloudy glass. He was likely on the verge of vanishing for good.
“Relax, I’ve got you,” Miseria promised, though he hadn’t said a thing.
His lids felt heavy. Relax? Sounds good.
He tried to smile and felt his mind fading fast. Didn’t seem like he could stave it off. Just before he went under, he saw Miseria smiling. Her face alone was always beautiful. If that was the last thing he saw—well, it wasn’t the worst way to die.
When she saw Rogue fall asleep, Miseria whispered, “Forgive me, Rogue.”
She brushed his head and chanted, “■■■■■■■”
The heat on his face made his eyes open slightly. He had no clue where he was, but it soon came back to him. Things had changed a lot while Rogue was under.
A pillar of fire was blasting the ceiling. Half the containers were already alight.
This was way worse than Chronos’s trap. Had they been storing something flammable here? The fire was clearly raging out of control.
______Right, how’s my body doing?
He stretched out his arm. Nicely muscled—when he flexed, it bulged.
He looked at his legs. They did not look juvenile. They were his original legs.
Rogue was relieved. The time reversal had stopped, and he was his own age again.
But now was not the time to revel in that. He had to get caught up.
Chronos was on one knee, head down as he drooled, looking totally out of it. Catherine was behind him, unconscious, a handkerchief round her neck. Had Miseria taken care of that? But he didn’t see her anywhere. He got to his feet, looking around…
…and found her soon enough.
Miseria was sitting in the shadow of a container, legs splayed out in front of her.
“What’s going on?”
She turned her head his way.
“Chronos’s rampage must have ignited something. I finished tending to you, and before I knew it…”
“Well, thanks!” Rogue said.
“I tried to put it out. If it wasn’t for this mana limit, I might have managed it.”
“No time to grumble! We’ve gotta get through a wall and get out.”
“Mm-hmm, you do that, Rogue.”
“What, like you aren’t coming? Get up!” Rogue turned to go but did not hear her following him. “What’s wrong?”
Perhaps she wanted him to take her a hand again. Like on the first day. She had saved his life, so he couldn’t really spurn the suggestion. He turned back and reached for her, but she didn’t take his hand.
“What? Why won’t you stand?”
“It’s less that I won’t and more that I can’t. Don’t mind me, you go on.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Come on—”
But what he saw then made him stop.
The right half of Miseria’s body was gone.
Just nothing there.
No arm, no leg. Seen from the left, she was uninjured—but from the right, she was crumbling away, as if her blood were made of sand.
Hard to believe she was still alive.
“Wh-what’s going on?”
“Oh, this?” Miseria said, like she’d simply gotten her hair cut. “Blowback from the Dominate resist. Control certainly is a formidable spell. It turned me to stone!”
“N-no, why are you acting fine? How’d it get so bad?”
“I was hardly fine. It turned my organs to stone gradually. Quite hard to endure, I assure you.”