Time yo

As it turned out, it was tricky, meddling with time. Playing with time Dust was much the same. It was costly, with even sizable chunks of the material potentially lasting only an instant, and the uses almost always short-lived in an absolute sense.

But sometimes, all you really needed was a little time.

Malkuth lifted his remaining hand even as the other began to regrow. Violently colored light wreathed it, bright enough that had she been relying on her normal senses, she might have had to avert her eyes. Instead, she stared at him silently, waiting without fear. Malkuth prepared to fire—

And abruptly staggered, a gleaming blade emerging from the center of his chest. Sparing it a brief glance, she trust her sword forward where it seemed to vanish into the air—consumed by time and space even as the blade that had stuck Malkuth disappeared.

Without hesitation, she rushed towards Malkuth, feeling a change come over her even as she did. She’d only experienced this once before, during the single trial run she and Jaune had managed to engineer, but it was as exhilarating as it was terrifying. Her flesh began to peel away, revealing something underneath as if it had always been there. She felt the mask come over her face, become her face, even as her clothes turned black as night, becoming something in-between armor, flesh, and skin. Her arms became vaguely wing-like, feathers sharp as steel. But more than any of that, she felt her gaze sharpen. Not her sight, but the view she had of the world, now coming into even clearer focus before her.

This was Sahasrara, if she remembered correctly. The skill Jaune used to bear his literal soul and draw power from it. It was good timing, though she wasn’t sure if that was because of the Dust or just Jaune. Either way, she’d happily take advantage of it while she could.

She approached Malkuth through another series of portals, flickering from place to place in moments and letting minute adjustments of time confuse the process. Even so, as she drew near her opponent, he once again reacted fast, gathering sickly green light in the center of his chest instead of his hands. It spilled forth as something between a whip, a laser, and a lightning bolt, carving a line of destruction straight for her—and then vanishing into another circular ripple of space. It didn’t reappear instantly, but she flicked her blade down and it reopened, the blast slipping through time to strike at Malkuth at her command.

It did nothing but splash over him—obviously, he’d known better then to dish out more than he could take while fighting a portal-user—but it was a distraction and that was all she really needed. She flicked the tip of her sword to the left and a silver portal opened to the left of Malkuth. Another twitch and it’s opposite point opened a moment later. Two portals, bridging not just separate points but separate times. Even with all her power, she could only cross a matter of moments, but…a moment was enough.

A solitary portal opened in the midst of it all, the other end of it right in front of Jaune, and he didn’t need any more of any invitation to give his best shot.

What came forth was very nearly blinding to look at. It wasn’t Longinus, the space-piercing spear bound to interfere with her portals, but instead a torrent of pure light—Lux Aeterna, most likely.

Good. That served her purposes better than Longinus would have, anyway.

Malkuth lifted his arms in defense, leaning into the blow as if anticipating it—but it was pointless. The initial strike was all but meaningless in this case, at least compared to what was to come. The light washed over him, searing his flesh and pushing him back, before reaching it’s true destination and flowing into the time portal.

The moment it did—or rather, several moments before it did—the same amount of light came streaming from the opposite portal, rushing back through the intervening space and adding onto itself. She managed to close the portal at the center just in time, before that power had a chance to splash back through, and so it continued onwards, crashing over Malkuth and flowing into the time portal yet again.

And so the process repeated. Whatever entered the first portal exited the second several moments before it entered—in this case causing Lux Aeterna to retread the same path, creating a line of still-brightening light as it overlapped with its past and future self in a strange manner. The nature of entropy saw to it that the attack itself constantly lost energy, but that was nothing compared to the energy being funneled into it through the quirk in time, and so its net energy was increased by its previous iteration with each lap it took through the connected points in time and space. And being an attack made of light…well. It should go without saying that it took many, many laps.

In a way, Lux Aeterna may have been the best possible choice for this combination—enough so that she assumed Jaune had understood the nature of her attack in the moment or so of thought he’d been allowed. From what see understood, the nature of the attack was to draw in energy, condensing further as it grew more powerful. Jaune had once described it as endothermic light, and as it devoured itself endlessly and grew further and further, it stayed neatly within the pathway allowed by her portals. And as that pathway intersected Malkuth quite nicely, he got to enjoy every moment of the process.

Against anyone else, she’d say that was enough. The power gathered in that stream of light, the power being added to it every second—it was something awesome in a literal sense. Awe-inspiring, terrifying…it was one of the reasons she didn’t use this application of her powers very often. For all the potential it held, the risks should it be unleashed or go out of control way phenomenal. Under normal circumstances, with far weaker attacks in use, it was possible to cause extreme collateral damage; added onto itself enough times, practically anything could be weaponized. A flash light, a laser pointer, or any variety of weapons…once, she’d even combined it with her secret weapon and the results had nearly been disastrous. The ‘wipe nations clean of life’ kind of disastrous—and Lux Aeterna was significantly more powerful than a laser pointer. Under normal circumstances, she’d hold it in place over the target for a second and let nature take its course.