A Fate Too Good For Them

In Arctera, David is approaching the “Golden District” on foot, with his little elf companion hand in hand. As one would expect, the city improves somewhat the nearer it gets to this obnoxious, gleaming paragon of luxury, but the number of guards on the street also triples. Almost no regular citizens are seen here; everyone wears fine silk, with attendants and slaves all around carrying luggage, groceries and baskets. Down a long market street of luxury shops, David spies an entrance. A ridiculously large, solid gold gate, studded in diamonds and ivory, contained within a gleaming white wall that stretches 50 feet into the air. Knights in golden armor stand at the portcullis.

He leans down and assures Sara in a sweet voice.

“I’ll be right back. Don’t go anywhere. I’ll cast some stealth magic on you. No matter what happens, scream my name as loud as you can and I’ll hear you.”

She gives a resolute affirmative nod.

David stands, staring at the gate a few blocks ahead, and takes a deep breath.

“Praecognoscere”, he says, firmly.

Time splits apart into five corridors. Each one of them has David approaching the Golden District, playing at rapid speed, slowing down at pertinent points. The one he’s paying attention to is the “stealth” one; the reconnaissance run. His cover is immediately blown when he uses teleportation magic to bypass the wall. There must be a barrier. That corridor restarts again.

He silently phases himself into the ground and walks below the earth, stepping up “stairs” until he’s standing in the courtyard. Success. In the center of the courtyard is a massive, gaudy congress building. Like an evil tribunal, the 12 slimes sit in a grand semicircle, with puny podiums and desks below for mortals to prostrate themselves.

Three of the five corridors are just blatant, all-out attacks. Surprisingly, two of them fail, and one succeeds. The successful one? A contained explosion, held by a barrier. The two failures were too slow; the slimes inside teleport away at the first sign of trouble. He re-runs them, presupposing a teleportation barrier neatly stacked outside the district. Both still fail. They have some way of nullifying obvious attempts to prevent their escape. Crafty slimes.

Just to humor himself, he runs a corridor of himself trying to negotiate his way into the room to have an audience with the slimes. He’s just repeatedly attacked by guards, before some very powerful magic blows a hole in the courtyard where he was standing, and the slimes teleport away.

He sighs, taking a moment to think things through. The corridors vanish, and he’s left with a rather concerned-looking little green-haired elf girl staring up at him.

“Stand close to me. Things are going to get really scary for a minute. I’ll protect you.”

She squeezes his leg.

He holds his hands out, imagining a bird’s eye view of this golden slime’s haven.

“Deglutire.” A purple light envelops the District.

“Demoliri.” A blinding flash of light and heat pops into existence, completely subsuming the Slime’s congress building.

“GRAND SEAL!”

In that short, split second window, this roiling ball of white-hot light smashed against the purple outer barrier David had casted, enveloping the entire District up to the walls. As soon as it hit the barrier, it began shrinking rapidly, coalescing into a pitch-black dot, approximately 10 feet in diameter.

Golden swords of mana, linked by chains, fly down from the sky and stab the dot, enveloping it in chains which pull tight with a reverberating clang. The ball spins, groaning and vibrating the air, before collapsing into a perfectly spherical ball of pitch-black emptiness. It has no reflection, it seems to absorb light.

“Kinetic Arc.”

This ball is launched directly skyward, tearing through the air with a sonic boom. Dozens of guards converge on the District and witness this object flash through the air, disappearing into the sky. They’re left dumbfounded as the palace they were guarding is now a perfectly scooped out, smoldering crater.

On a tiny magical screen, David watches the ball. “It should be enough for escape velocity. Now just a few touches.”

“Arc. Arc. Arc.”, he whispers. The ball is slightly pushed off course, spun up, and shot even farther. Now there’s no chance of it coming back, he hopes.

“Well, time to leave, Sara.” He gently takes her by the hand and walks away from the chaos behind him. He only gets a few steps before he sees someone standing at the other end of the market street, in front of him.

Every other person is in a full-fledged panic, running, screaming, hollering for help. This figure is standing deathly still, staring.

It’s a skeleton. Holding a giant axe, no less. Red, beady, glowing eyes. Not friendly.

David grasps Sara’s hand tightly. The skeleton lifts his foot, and in the next instant, is directly in front of them, his ice axe raised and in the process of a downswing.

He has no time to react. He thinks “HARDEN”, and lifts up his arm. Gozu’s axe slams down, taking a massive chunk out of David’s arm, causing his feet to shatter a crater in the pavement. Its icey blade sizzles from the heat and friction of the impact. Sara screams.

“POCKET!” - he shouts.

He and Sara are warped into a dimensional pocket of time and space. He lets out a painful, exasperated gasp for breath. He glances at Sara, then at his arm. Big chunk missing. He starts healing it, murmuring to himself.

This moment of peace is broken by a horrible, echoey clang. And another. And another.

“You’ve got to be kidding me. Who the hell is this guy?”, David complains, somewhat missing the point of the history-defining terrorist act he’d just pulled off. Clang. Clang. Clang.

His mind races. He never tried teleporting from a pocket before; he’d just assumed that it was a safe hiding place and that he’d be able to leave once it was safe. Wait – that’s it! Leave! He can move it, probably!

First, he visualizes the tear in space. The pocket. A neat, oblong bubble, a window, a cocoon. From the outside, this skeleton is going berserk, hitting an invisible object repeatedly, to the horror of all onlookers. Some guards rush to apprehend him in the confusion, but are quickly grabbed by their superiors for their safety.

Next… the Alcubierre drive. That sci-fi concept of a warp drive for space ships. It doesn’t move in space; space moves around it. “Up.”

The pocket slowly drifts upwards into the air. Finally, one of Gozu’s swings misses, shattering a crisp slash in the pavement, many feet deep.

The skeleton jumps up into the air, delivering a perfect vertical slash, streaking into the air. It nails the pocket again, with a resounding, ear-splitting ring.

The skeleton’s head snaps up. He can hear it.

“We’ve finally gotten some distance. Here goes nothing. Hold on tight, Sara.”

He wills the pocket to disintegrate. In a flash, David is left floating, mid air, holding the little elf, staring down at this rueful, terrifying skeleton pursuer. For the first time, he imagines an “instant teleport”. Previous attempts had just been lazily moving around the country. This one was an emergency.

Another icy slash flies through the air, but it hits wind. They escaped. Gozu cranks his head around repeatedly, trying to locate them, and slashes his axe against the street in a fit of anger. This causes houses on the other side to slump over slightly, their foundations destroyed. Gozu casts a teleport window in front of him and gingerly steps inside.

He steps out at the entrance to Slime Lord Uragas’s chambers building in Laios. Freezing, icy wind coalesces on his bones. He makes a slow, shuffling march towards the chamber door. He pushes open the black, ominous doors with a creaking groan. Icy wind pours past, before it slams shut.

Uragas isn’t there. It’s deathly silent inside. His slave girls are sitting in their usual spot, dejected, silent.

Gozu steps up to the center of the room, peering around. He can’t leave until he makes his report.

With a ghostly sigh, he collapses down onto his butt and puts his skull in his bony hands.

David and Sara snap back into existence over a vast ocean. He quickly snatches her up and carries her princess-style, and they take a moment to rest, floating in the air.

“Emergency teleport: Success! At least that’s reliable. Now, where the hell am I?”

He pulls up a magical screen. It shows his previous known nations map. His little, blinking “You are here” dot is way off in the corner of the screen. He zooms out. And zooms out some more. And even more. Eventually, he’s left with a round, black, shadowy sphere, with only the nations from before visible. He spins the globe around. Clear on the other side of the planet, there he is.

Sara can see the visible frustration and worry on his face.

“Are we far?”, she asks, meekly.

“Mmhmm.” That’s all he can manage to sigh out.