Chapter 5 – Have More Than You Show, Speak Less Than You Know
Emryr quickened his pace toward the academy, glancing constantly over his shoulder. The persistent feeling of being followed wouldn't fade. Something wasn't right. He could feel it. He gripped his cane, the magical catalyst, tightly, ready for anything.
No guards. No patrols. Nothing.
Emryr frowned. Maybe it was coincidence. Maybe not. Virgil had written of birds flying wrong and rivers flowing backward before disaster. In the old stories, even animals sensed when the world tilted. When no dogs barked...
It meant the world had already turned.
Halfway there, Emryr paused for just a second, distracted.
Just one second was enough.
A horrible buzz tore through his mind.
Every hair on his body stood up.
Every muscle tensed.
He opened his lips to speak, but it was too late.
A massive hand flashed before his eyes, five monstrous claws aiming straight for his face.
He reacted instantly, dropping the box and rolling sharply to the left. He stood quickly, a small cut bleeding on his cheek.
It was the thing he'd seen lurking behind the stained glass windows at Albion.
A long, reptilian creature. Its dark body was covered in unnaturally thick hair. Its limbs were elongated, similar to Doe's, but twisted and unnatural. Its posture was grotesque, hunched as if its spine had been bent to breaking point. Its head... the skull of a wolf. Two bright blue eyes burned in the darkness of that empty bone.
Emryr froze momentarily. Recognizing it was even worse than seeing it for the first time.
He barely had time to blink before the creature moved again, now on all fours, its body twitching unnaturally like a broken lizard trying desperately to mimic life.
With one claw, it grabbed the box and jumped onto a rooftop.
Tssssssssss.
An awful hiss escaped from the skull, as if reality itself was being scratched from the inside.
—"Shit!" Emryr shouted, jumping to his feet, eyes wide.
The few people nearby ran off. Emryr lifted his cane quickly, chanting:
—"Predictive Analysis."
Six glowing rings formed in front of his eyes, spinning, calculating. Equations of motion rendered in glowing rings, acceleration curves, predictive paths. Every twitch of the enemy became a formula, every breath a variable.. His mind raced to keep up. A sharp pulse hit the back of his skull. Blood dripped from his nose.
Vertigo. He pushed through it.
—"Overclock." He said.
The world became clearer for a moment.
Emryr activated the formula with a word. Runes formed across his skin, fine-tuning reflexes and muscle fiber contractions. Circulatory patterns adjusted. Neural impulses rerouted. Overclock was no mere burst, it was bodily reconfiguration, frame by frame.
He jumped in a blink towards the creature.
Three meters left.
The creature turned toward him, preparing to roar
—"Force Vector!" He shouted, pointing the tip of the cane to the creature.
The rooftop trembled with backlash as the spell discharged, hurling the creature violently backwards. It crashed into a chimney with the sickening snap of breaking bones.
Emryr didn't chase.
He waited.
An angry, agonized roar echoed in response, bones cracking, claws scraping stone as the creature rose again, edging toward the roof's ledge.
It was watching him.
He took one deliberate step forward, exposed, open, vulnerable.
The creature lunged low in a flash of fury, claws flashing for his throat.
Emryr sidestepped, ducked under the first swipe, and drove his cane into its exposed ribs.
—"Transfer Circuit!"
Emryr siphoned the creature's body heat. Its flesh turned rigid, frost spreading from the point of contact as internal moisture froze solid. Bones cracked audibly under the thermal stress.
The thing shrieked, flailing violently to escape the sudden cold.
But it wasn't just pain, it was rage.
With a roar, the creature slammed its forearm into Emryr's chest like a battering ram. The impact sent him flying, crashing into a rooftop smokestack with enough force to crack the bricks behind him.
He hit the ground hard, breathless, disoriented.
Still, he forced himself up…
The creature was watching again. Waiting . Its claws flexed. Its posture shifted.
—"When… When… When will you strike..." Emryr whispered, eyes locked, staff steady despite his trembling hands.
The standoff lasted mere seconds.
Then…
Tssssssssss.
Another hiss.
The creature vanished.
A sound came from behind him.
Emryr noticed too late, not from the noise, but from his own calculations. For a moment, the world turned unpredictable.
It was right behind him, claws raised, ready to slice downward, a fatal blow.
—"Causality Paradox!" Emryr shouted desperately, biting hard into the tip of his thumb. Black blood dripped from the wound, a small price for twisting reality.
The claws fell like guillotines, stopping just a millimeter from his chest.
But the spell took effect.
His eyes glowed blue, the same blue as the creature's. Reality shuddered, as if two versions of the same moment overlapped.
For an instant, everything was wrong. Leaves fell upwards. A lit streetlamp blinked off and then reignited twice as brightly. The sound of Emryr's heartbeat moved backward through time.
Effect preceded cause, the attacker became the attacked…
Black blood splattered everywhere. The creature screamed in agony, dropping the box to desperately stop the bleeding.
—"Force Vector!" Emryr shouted again, before the monster could recover.
Again, the creature was hurled away, tearing through tiles, breaking beams, and smashing rooftops as it flew dozens of meters away.
Silence.
The box, miraculously, was intact.
Tssssssssss.
Emryr spun around.
But the creature was gone.
This time… it seemed to have fled.
He climbed down quietly via a fire escape on a nearby house, avoiding panicked civilians, carriages, and steam-powered guard vehicles that were now arriving. He wrapped cloth around his thumb, still dripping black blood, dusted off his coat, straightened his posture.
And started walking back toward the academy.
—"What the hell was that... It waited all this time," he muttered darkly.
Whatever it was, it was clearly after the package, and it was strong enough to nearly kill him in seconds.
His brush with death had been brief, but it was enough to set off every warning bell in his mind.
Something was wrong.
Very wrong.