William was currently standing in front of an old run-down building, that looked like it was on the verge of falling apart, it was quite large and was made of oddly sized rocks held together by heavily deteriorated concrete. Earlier today, he had received a ransom note that was brazenly put through the mansions letterbox, telling him to come to this location alone and to bring a large sum of money he was around ninety percent sure this was a trap, but Emily was far too important for him to ignore a potential lead.
William, without a care in the world, confidently entered the building, soon arriving at a large open hall. Standing before him, was a hooded figure in an oversized black cloak. Two more men, dressed in similar attire, were standing around twenty metres behind him, making a triangle-like formation.
"Welcome William Linheart, hero of the civil war, it is an honour to finally meet you."
The man at the front was extremely soft-spoken, almost to the point of whispering. However, William could easily detect the unmasked hostility in his voice. He continued to look around, assessing the cloaked men's strengths and inspecting the surrounding for any traps or magic arrays, he was surprised with his findings.
"Cut the crap, and tell me where Emily is, if you think you will be able to stop me with just you, then you're severely underestimating me."
William said coldly. He didn't know what they were playing at but it was a ridiculous notion for them to try attacking him. The hooded figure chuckled at his response.
"I'm sorry to tell you this but your princess is in another castle. So, we shall put your words to the test and see if you can really beat the three of us, in fact I don't think you'll be even able to beat me."
The cloaked man said, he then proceeded to outstretch his right arm in a thumbs up
"William Linheart its time for your reckoning."
The man said turning his hand into a thumbs down, this was apparently some sort of signal because as soon as he finished his gesture his colleagues placed their hands on the floor sending Aether into the ground, lighting up a silver magic circle with a triangle inside that expanded rapidly soon covering the entire floor of the hall.
William eyes glowed red as he felt his whole body slow down except for his thoughts that ran at a normal pace due to his trait activating. He was shocked for a brief moment he was sure that he didn't sense an array when he had scanned the room previously.
"By now you must be wondering how we could set up an array without you noticing, but don't blame your senses, even an all-powerful Rank 4 breaker would have some trouble discovering this array, it was made by the Old King after all. So how are the effects, are you enjoying them, you should feel as though time has slowed down by a factor of five, I wonder if you can even comprehend what I'm saying, probably not. My time has sped up by a factor five, meaning that to you I would appear to have sped up by a factor of twenty-five. This fight is already over."
William was calmly going through his options, he couldn't use magic, by the time he targeted the man he would have already moved, he couldn't attack the two breakers controlling the array, his attacker would be easily able to catch up to him, this held true if he wanted to escape, his blink range would not let him leave the affected area, seeing as it was made by the old king the affected area could be in the kilometres.
"I guess your frantically trying to figure out a way to survive this trial, but the Old king was perfect, without any flaws, so obviously his arrays would be the same. Now bear witness to its power."
The man finished speaking and took out a thin steel sword he previously sheathed on his face, A savage smirk spread across his face.
"Blink and you'll miss it."
The man said, disappearing into thin air. To William it seemed like he teleported behind him leaving a massive crater where he landed, his sword dripping in blood.
William looked down and saw his right arm, spinning slowly as it floated to the ground, it had been sliced clean off. Due to his body being slowed down his body hadn't even registered the pain. William saw how slowly his arm floated, and the massive imprint left in the ground had figured it out. Although array was based on the time attribute it only changed the factor of time for their bodies and not time in general. But what good would knowing that possibly do.
"I guess that's all the hero of the war amounts too, Ill take my time with you, don't worry ill be sure to savour every second of it."
The man started laughing wildly, prompting William to go on the offensive, he began lashing out wildly, sending black pulses of shadows flying in every direction, some were aimed at the man while others flew of in random directions.
The man seeing this finally knew William was desperate, he calmly dodged all of Williams attacks at the last moment, wanting to make this torture last as long as possible, driving him to the depths of despair before killing him. Even though the pulses moved at normal speed after leaving Williams body, the man could predict where they were going to go due to the large amount of time it took for William to aim and fire, coupled with his newly gained speed he could easily evade the attacks.
After a while the indiscriminate attacks came to a halt. The man chuckled knowing that his opponent had finally given up. He took one last look at the man who was meant to be the hero of the civil war, the one who caused their king so much grief, the man who at this moment had nothing but anguish in his eyes.
He vanished and reappeared in front of William stabbing the sword through his stomach before he could even react.
The man's smile disappeared as he suddenly felt his Aether go into disarray, he quickly jumped back easily evading a slow kick that had come out of nowhere.
The man looked at William in shock, after a brief moment that passed by five times faster than usual, he realised what had happened. William was gripping the sword with his remaining hand, blood was spilling from both his stomach and his fingers. He had used the sword which was a piece of magic equipment with high aether conductivity, to send a pulse of highly concentrated aether into his body.
The man was shocked but soon began to chuckle.
"That was a pretty impressive for an attack made out of desperation, but in the end it's a futile effort, even if you sealed my aether temporarily, I'm still much faster than you, I can easily end your life at any time."
The man's chuckle turned into full blown maniacal laughter but he soon stopped abruptly when he noticed the expression on Williams face. The dread in his eyes had completely disappeared, replaced with a devilish grin, William let go of the sword and slowly snapped his fingers.
Instantly the entire floor lit up with a purple glow as a small magic circle lit up on top of the silver array, it grew brighter and brighter before finally activating. William and the cloaked man vanished before reappearing in mid-air twenty meters above the roof of the hall.
"I had set up a small shifting using random attacks to disguise the purpose of the others. I noticed earlier that when you landed after slicing of my arm, you landed with a lot more force then you should have, while my arm gently floated to the ground. A normal Rank 3 breaker would survive this fall, but since the time relative to your body is sped up and I sealed away your Aether, I doubt you will fare the same."
William thought to himself, knowing full well, the man couldn't hear him if he spoke, he wouldn't even have the time to finish a word and even before he finished thinking that, the man plummeted through the roof and crashing into the ground while screaming in terror, theatrically splattering into a hot mess of flesh and blood.
His two companions coughed up blood and collapsed on the floor and Williams time started to return back to normal. And he fell the remainder of the distance to the floor landing elegantly.
"So much for a perfect array without any flaws. I guess the only thing that was really slowed down, was their brains."
***
Emily was currently working up a sweat, crawling around in the cramped vents. Only a few minutes had passed since she made her escape, so it was unlikely that she had been found out. Since she had the time, Emily wanted to find another victim to authenticate the information the cloaked man had given her, one could never be too careful after all.
Soon she passed over a metal grating that gave her access to the woman's toilets, after peeking through the grating, she saw a woman wearing a black cloak with white stripes. The woman proceeded to enter one of the cubicles.
Now that she was free from the Aether supressing chains, Emily could sense that this women wasn't much of her threat, additionally the information from her previous interrogation told her that non-combatants wore plain black cloaks, whereas Rank 1 breakers wore black cloaks with white designs on them.
After making sure nobody else entered the bathroom, she silently exited the ventilation duct and silently dropped on to the floor, entering the cubicle next to the one the woman had entered.
After taking a moment to prepare herself Emily leaped over the wall, into the woman's cubicle. Caught completely off guard, the woman was no match for Emily, who quickly restrained her, covering her mouth with her hand.
The woman had light blonde hair and had already removed her pants. Apparently, she was just about to relieve herself. The woman struggled furiously and tried to shout for help but soon stopped when she felt a cold sensation on her throat, looking down, she saw a sharp dagger firmly pressed into her neck.
Emily repeated her interrogation tactics, after verifying the information, the woman was also rewarded appropriately. Before destroying the corpse with shadow magic, Emily cut off some of the women's hair, stuffing it into her own hood making it seem as if she had blonde hair, from a distance it would be impossible to tell Emily apart from her victim, due to the large hood that covered most her face.
Emily left the bathroom and headed towards the vault where her necklace was being kept. It was down the hallway from the women's bathroom so Emily only had a short distance to walk. Her journey was interrupted by the dagger in her hands starting to vibrate, the gold gem in its hilt flashing with an amber light.
Realising it was a communication rune, she placed her finger on the gem, sending a small pulse of her aether into it. After doing this, the gem glowed brightly and she heard a cold broken-up voice speak directly into her head.
"Attention all personnel, our captive Emily Linheart has escaped, her attendant is missing and assumed dead, block of all exits while we do a sweep of the building, please note that she is possibly armed and dangerous if you see her request backup immediately and do not engage, that is all. May the bulls protect you in all your endeavours"
"Shit, they finally found me out, looks like they sent everyone to the exits like I hoped, but they're going to search the building, I don't have a lot of ti-."
Emily thoughts were interrupted as a man in a pure white cloak with white ran into her knocking her onto the ground.
"Sorry sister but you should watch where you're going, why aren't you heading towards exit A"
The man said outstretching his hand to help her up. Emily calmed herself down, a white cloak meant he was probably a Rank 2 breaker, someone she definitely couldn't mess with.
"I was heading to exit B, brother."
Emily put on a pained voice to try and hide her voice. She took the man's hand getting back up on her feet.
"Good everyone headed to the exit closest to them without thinking of the even dispersion of personnel between exits. Proactive thinking is encouraged and you will be rewarded highly for this. May the bulls be with you."
"Thank you, brother, may the bulls be with you"
Emily said without panicking, in a way the man was right she was thinking proactively, she had picked up the speech mannerisms from hearing him speak once, implementing it into her own response. The man went on his way, now that she was alone again, she started making her way to the vault.
"Seems like lady luck is on my side after all, that man should have been a guard for the vault since he came from that direction."
She thought to herself she took a golden crest of the bull which had a small purple crystal embedded in it. She had managed to take it out of the man's pocket when he helped her up just now.
"looks like some sort of key, so hopefully this one unlocks the vault."
she thought, finally reaching the vault door, which was a huge plain metal rectangle three times her height, on the door there was a small panel that contained the same crystal as the one embedded in the gold crest.
"YES."
Emily couldn't help herself from exclaiming in delight. She placed the crest on top of the panel and sent some aether into it, causing it to glow with a purple light this caused a similar reaction in the other crystal. Two loud mechanical clicks could be heard as the vault door began to slide down into the floor, revealing a well-lit room with countless wooden shelves lining the walls.
Each shelf was stacked with a wide assortment of items, after entering the room, the door began to slowly raise, closing once more.
After taking a quick look around to make sure that she was alone, Emily began to search for her necklace. After a few minutes, she finally spotted something that belonged to her, it was the little black dagger she always carried, it was placed in the far-left corner of the room, after taking it, she noticed that there was a simple silver necklace carelessly placed behind where the dagger was kept. It was the one she had got from her mysterious helper.
"You're kidding, lady luck is truly the only one for me, I've had smooth sailing so far."
Emily had already thoroughly inspected the necklace before she was kidnapped, she knew that one of the links in the chain concealed a tiny crystal, it was so well hidden that it took her a whole day until she found it. She injected the necklace with her aether and sent her message.
"Dear mysterious helper, its Emily, long time no see. I appear to have been kidnapped by some baddies and help would be appreciated, I don't know where exactly I am just that I'm in some type of abandoned warehouse that's within the capital. There are quite a few strong breakers here, so don't be shy to call reinforcements, also… please hurry."
After finishing her message, she inspected the rest of the room, eventually coming across a beautiful gold ring with a huge purple crystal on it.
"Wow, a storage ring, too bad I wouldn't be able to open it. Still Its worth hanging on to, its better than letting it collecting dust."
Emily continued to look around the vault, taking anything of value. In this fashion, ten minutes passed. Emily Suddenly heard a loud knocking on the vault door.
Taken by surprise, she hid herself in the shadows, three loud knocks sounded once again and Emily held her breath, not making a sound. At this point the person knocking must have lost their patience because the door suddenly went flying off its hinges crashing into the wall on the other side, narrowly missing Emily, who was hiding in the corner.
A woman dressed head to toe in black garments walked into the room. She was every part a stunning beauty, her raven black hair cascaded down to her waist, and her black garments accentuated her curvy figure she had cherry red lips and deep-set brown eyes. Every part of her screamed elegance and power.
"Miss Linheart, your mysterious helper has arrived."
The woman said in a soul stealing voice. Emily had come out of the shadows with her jaw wide open.
"b-b-but you're the n-night queen."
Emily exclaimed, not even believing the words that came out of her mouth.