Time doesn't flow the way people think it does. Most people experience it as a river, constant and unidirectional, carrying them from past through present toward inevitable future. But I learned young that time is more like clay - malleable, shapeable, responsive to pressure if you know where to apply it.
The cost is always paid in years.
My hair has more gray in it now than it did an hour ago. I can feel it, not just see it in reflections or the way Noel keeps looking at me with increasing horror. Each manipulation costs me months, sometimes years, shaved off the end of my life and transferred to the present moment. Every time I slow Vazroth, every pocket of altered time I create to give the others advantage, I'm trading my future for their now.
I'm sixteen years old and have the hands of someone approaching thirty.
The wrinkles started appearing after the second temporal manipulation. Fine lines around my knuckles, at the corners of my eyes, subtle enough that I could pretend they weren't there. But they are there, and they're spreading, and every time I reach into the timestream I feel more of myself dissolve into the current.
Vazroth moves through the battlefield like time doesn't apply to him either, but in a different way. He's not manipulating it - he's just so old, so ancient, that linear progression has stopped meaning anything to him. Centuries collapse into moments when you've lived as long as he has. What's another year? What's another decade? I don't have decades to spare.
VTH: You're aging yourself to death.
He says it casually, between dodging Alexander's obsidian and catching Ivy's poisoned strike. Says it like he's commenting on weather, like my accelerated deterioration is just an interesting observation rather than a tragedy unfolding in real-time.
VTH: Temporal manipulation always costs more than practitioners expect. You think you're trading years, but you're trading everything those years would have contained. Experiences. Growth. The person you would have become.
MAE: Shut up.
My hands move through the patterns again, muscle memory taking over because thinking about it too long makes me hesitate, and hesitation means someone dies. The air around Vazroth ripples, stutters, time itself having a seizure as I force it to slow in localized pockets. He stumbles - actually stumbles - and Alexander's strike connects, obsidian blade opening a gash across Vazroth's shoulder.
But I feel it. Feel another year dissolve, feel my joints stiffen just slightly, feel the energy that used to come naturally now requiring conscious effort to maintain. I'm not old yet, not truly, but I'm borrowing from old age at interest rates that would make loan sharks blush.
NOL: Maeve, stop!
Noel's voice cuts through my concentration, and the temporal manipulation collapses. Vazroth's stumble corrects itself mid-stride, and he's already moving again, already adapting to the pattern I'd created.
NOL: You're killing yourself!
MAE: I'm buying time!
The irony isn't lost on me. Buying time by selling time. Trading my future for their present. It's the only advantage I have, the only ability in my arsenal that seems to affect Vazroth at all. Astra's light passes through him. Ivy's poison annoys him at best. Lisa's thorns actively help him. But time - time he has to experience, has to move through, has to acknowledge even if he's forgotten what years mean. So I use it. Keep using it. Will keep using it until there's nothing left to spend.
VTH: How old are you now? Genuinely curious. When you started this fight you were what, sixteen? Now you're pushing twenty-five, maybe thirty? How much life do you have left to trade before you're too old to fight, too frail to matter?
MAE: More than enough.
But I don't know if that's true. Don't know how much temporal manipulation a human body can sustain before it just gives up, before the cost exceeds the capacity to pay. My ability came late, manifested during puberty like most powers do, but mine came with immediate consequences. First time I'd slowed time, I'd aged six months in six seconds.
I'd learned control since then. Learned to minimize the cost, to extract maximum effect from minimum expenditure. But there's a floor to efficiency, a point below which you can't optimize further. And I'm approaching that floor fast.
Alexander creates an opening with obsidian walls that force Vazroth into a killbox. Lisa's thorns - still traitorous, still trying to help the enemy - at least create obstacles he has to navigate around. Ivy circles wide, looking for the perfect moment to strike with poison that probably won't work but might at least distract. Astra rains starlight from above, not attacking anymore but creating illumination that might let us see what we're missing.
And I stand in the back, hands already moving through patterns again, already preparing to spend more years I don't have on seconds that probably won't matter.
NOL: Please.
Noel has manifested a barrier between me and Vazroth, not to protect me from attack but to stop me from helping. I can see it in his face - the desperate need to preserve what's left of my youth, to prevent me from aging myself into irrelevance or death.
But his barrier won't stop temporal manipulation. Time passes through barriers, around them, independent of physical obstruction. I could work around it easily.
I could. But his expression stops me more effectively than any barrier ever would.
He's terrified. Not of Vazroth, not of losing this fight, but of watching me destroy myself one year at a time. Of seeing someone he cares about voluntarily accelerate toward the end of their life because it's the only weapon that seems to work.
My hands pause mid-gesture, and I feel time snap back to normal flow around me. Linear. Unidirectional. Carrying us all toward the same inevitable conclusion at the same unavoidable pace.
VTH: Interesting.
Vazroth has stopped moving, stopped fighting, stopped doing anything except watching this moment unfold. Watching me choose between helping and preserving myself. Watching Noel's barrier hold not through strength but through emotional weight.
VTH: You've realized the fundamental problem with your ability. It costs everything and saves nothing. You can slow me, inconvenience me, buy your friends precious seconds. But those seconds don't change the outcome. They just delay it. And every delay costs you years you'll never reclaim.
MAE: Those seconds matter.
VTH: Do they? Or are you just telling yourself that because the alternative - accepting that you're aging yourself to death for no tactical advantage - is too terrible to acknowledge?
I don't have an answer. Because he might be right. Every temporal manipulation has bought seconds that translated into what, exactly? Alexander landing a few more strikes that heal almost instantly? Ivy getting into position for poison that doesn't work? Astra illuminating a battlefield where we're clearly losing?
Maybe I am just trading my life for the illusion of progress.
Or maybe those seconds matter in ways I can't quantify yet. Maybe giving Johann one more moment to surface, one more opportunity to fight Vazroth's control from inside, is worth years off my life. Maybe buying time for someone to figure out the pattern, to see the weakness, to find the solution is exactly what we need.
Maybe I'm delusional and desperate and clinging to purpose because the alternative is accepting I'm useless.
My hands are shaking. Not from age, not yet. Just from exhaustion and fear and the weight of choices that have no right answer. Use my ability and age myself into irrelevance. Don't use it and watch everyone die while I stay young enough to regret surviving.
Noel's barrier flickers, and I see the question in his eyes. The plea for me to choose self-preservation over sacrifice. The desperate hope that I value my own life enough to stop spending it so freely.
But he's also seen what happens when I don't manipulate time. Seen Vazroth move unopposed, seen the others get overwhelmed, seen the battle tilt toward inevitable defeat. My ability might not win this fight, but without it we lose faster.
So what's worse? Aging myself trying to buy time we might not be able to use? Or staying young while everyone around me dies because I refused to pay the cost?
Time flows forward while I stand frozen, unable to decide, caught between futures that both feel like failure. And Vazroth watches with ancient patience, like he's seen this exact dilemma play out across centuries, like he knows how it ends regardless of what I choose.