A Timely Encounter

There is something to be said about time. People view it in such bizarre ways. Time can be both precious and wasteful, depending on the value attached to it.

I have no time for that. Time is of the essence. Right this moment.

I’ve got time to waste. Killing the day away. Slow down and enjoy the moment.

People are full of discrepancies when it comes to how they treat time. It is one of the mysteries of life.

But for Roze Campanella, she was thinking that her time was likely up.

“We’ve got you now, Time Witch!”

A mercenary raised his sword, signaling two men to advance upon a girl in a cloak. No longer finding the disguise useful, Roze cast it off before brandishing a small wand. Reaching into a bag clipped to her belt, she quickly threw a handful of beads forward.

“Accelerare!”

The beads shot forward, faster than the eye could see, punching holes into whatever they went through. The two men next to the mercenary clutched their stomachs, where they had been essentially shot by high-speed pellets.

Clicking his tongue, the mercenary carefully eyed her next movements, waiting for her to toss the next batch to predict where the next shots would land. Experience was on his side, as the girl before him looked barely an adult. He had been scouting her movements, noticing a lack of battle readiness, confirming her situation as a normal towngirl.

She wore a dark-colored garb, preferring to keep hidden and blending with the crowd. Unless one knew to target her, she was simply another commoner floating around, perhaps dabbling in magic but hardly an expert. Her possession of the dangerous Time magic instantly set a measure of caution, however. It didn’t belong in the current world which valued raw magic potential of the elements rather than cheap tricks.

At least, that was what his client said. For a non-magic user, he could care less about the politics. What sold him was the fat stacks that were offered. A single girl’s capture meant a year’s worth of drinking for his entire crew. He could overlook a slight injustice for that.

The mercenary’s feet kicked off, rolling to the right as the beads hammered the ground where he stood. He pounced after the roll, shooting forward with the blade extended to cut the hand holding the wand.

“Tardus!”

The moment those words left Roze’s lips, the man felt his limbs slow to a crawl. It was like moving underwater, the air pressure pushing back against him as the girl easily sidestepped and lashed out with her wand.

Like an angry child, she whipped him several times out of spite, but seeing how little that did to a rugged fighter, she pulled out a single bead and pressed it against his chest.

Sweat beaded down the man’s cheek, a collection of panic and anticipation of what he knew was to come.

“Accelerare.”

The man coughed out blood from the small hole that formed in his chest. It was nothing life-threatening, but he would need healing immediately. It gave Roze enough time to make her escape.

The man let go of his sword, presumably retiring from the fight, but his now-empty hand grabbed Roze by the wrist instead. A sneer crept onto his face.

With a roar from his bloody lips, several men rushed from the nearby windows and rooftops. No less than twenty men hopped down from hiding, surrounding Roze on all sides.

With Roze’s hand restrained, she couldn’t grab anything to throw and accelerate. Her scant repertoire of spells was not varied enough to handle close quarter combat. Neither was she built for fighting to begin with.

One of the mercenaries tossed her captor a potion, which he poured over his wound. Moments later, it started to seal up, stifling the gush of blood into a trickle.

“Lucky, lucky me. Time mages are supposed to be these super scary, touch-of-death legends, aren’t they? Looks like I found myself one too young to have reached that point. An easy payday for all of us, right?!”

She didn’t have such powers. She could not roll forward time to decay a person into nothing at a single touch. She could not create precious gems from the extreme passage of time required to do so. The sun and moon weren’t at her beck and call, and seasons didn’t change. All she possessed was a remnant of the greatness of those before her.

All she could do was stare at the blades surrounding her, threats to take a piece of her as their trophy, one way or another.

A year’s worth of drinking for so many men. Whoever footed Roze’s bounty certainly wanted her rid of. Not her specifically, but those with an affinity for Time magic. She stared in the eyes of her captor, dauntless and resolute at her fate. She had long settled that something like this would happen. It didn’t seem like she had a choice of when to die.

She had been born in the wrong age, long past the heroic era when Time magic saved the world. She stood at a time when that would soon disappear from this world.

“Oh, what’s this? Having a party? Might I join in as well?”

The sarcasm in that statement hung in the air, immediately tipping off the mercenaries of an intruder. After all, what foolish man would see such a situation and think good things were about to happen.

A white-haired man tapped a set of short sticks together, drumming a sort of rhythm as if celebrating a prelude. Several men let out a chuckle as he looked hardly like someone picking a fight, his thin frame making him no different than a commoner. Not to mention, he dressed a bit formal, wearing a vest, button-up shirt, and slacks like he was the son of a merchant. A certain air of aloofness made it seem like he didn’t yet know the world. His jovial face looked more ready to attend to chicks, rather than to participate in any cock fights.

“Hey, boy! Are you paying us to let you have a turn at her?”

“My, my, the rich certainly must be bored to take interest in such hobbies!”

The boy up above cracked a smile, crouching down as a signal of him taking interest.

“With such a crowd buzzing around, she must be holding some delicious honey. Might I have a gander?”

A restrained Roze, wand robbed, arms bound, was pressed forward into the light shining down. Her jet-black hair went down to her midback, covering her face initially. As she looked upwards to see who had delayed her fate by mere moments, a smile on the young man beamed at her. It looked different from the others somehow, full of conviction and certainty.

“There’s a pretty face. Not too shabby. But you know, I have no coin for those who force themselves on a girl. Watching others do such things is not my idea of a pastime.”

“Then forget it kid. Go find some mommy’s teats to suck on instead!”

A burst of laughter echoed all around, until a sudden crackle of the wind stifled it. An invisible force struck one of the mercenaries to the ground, unconscious before he knew what hit him. Their laughter tapered into confusion as some noticed how the boy was suddenly right before them. Roze, in particular, had seen him disappear and reappear in an instant.

How did he jump down so fast?

“I think I can do far better. How about I take the girl, and we can frolic on the countryside instead?”

Several cracks sounded in the air, one after the other. In the blink of an eye, several more mercenaries crashed to the ground. Panic rippled through the crowd, unsure as to what was happening. The boy from before had simply disappeared, while more mercenaries succumbed to the unseen attacks.

It didn’t take long until the mercenary holding onto Roze was the only one left. She was stunned into silence at the scene before her, so much so that she screamed when his face blipped right in front of her.

“Woah, woah. Stop flailing! You’re free! You’re free! Dialing the volume down would be much appreciated.”

Roze looked down, seeing her hands unbound. The mercenary behind her had fallen to the ground as well. She took a spin of the scenery, where all the mercenaries had been taken out before she could digest what had happened. She spotted her wand on the ground. Leerily keeping her attention on the mysterious intruder, she inched over to her wand for some false sense of security. If he could do all that to these men, there was literally no way for her to fight him off.

“Name’s Gideon. You’re Roze, right?” he cocked his head cutely while he said it, playfully trying to be defenseless. He even tucked the sticks he had into his belt and raised his hands for surrender, as if he had any reason to.

“Who are you? How did you?”

“Ah, that? Time magic, I guess.”

“Time magic, but I-”

“Yes, I know you possess it, but I’m not one of these thugs on a witch hunt. I’ve been looking for someone that could help me. You see, I’m not like you, I come from another world. And when I woke up here, I found out that I could just stop time on command.”

Gideon held Roze’s wand in his hand, examining it up close. Roze did a double take, wondering when he had grabbed it from her. She reached for her pouch of beads, but she found it missing as well. It had disappeared as she was looking at it. Turning back to Gideon, he was now twirling the pouch around his finger.

“Ugh, you are going to be that kind of annoying, aren’t you?” Roze sighed.

“Glad that I didn’t have to steal something a bit more personal to convince you.”

The sly grin coming from him seemed to annoy her even more. However, she simply had to know who he was and why he claimed to possess an ability stemming from her lineage.