Chapter 60 - The Raid

It was just past sunset in the dark, moonless night as the six men and women of the Noga Police Special Ops team carefully made their way through the Chenmai Forest. They had started their operation under the golden hue of the setting sun, setting forth into the woods along two different trajectories.

In order to avoid detection from spiritually sensitive opponents they did not use Planar Door or any spatial distortion abilities during their approach, but approached the woodcutter’s cabin on foot in groups of three. Their eyes and ears were alert, watching for any signs of enemies or observers in the woods around the cabin.

As the night fell, they each pulled a small vial from their belt filled with an inky liquid and drank its contents. This specially concocted potion allowed them to see clearly in the complete darkness in shades of grey.

Police Chief Yang Yun walked with Officer Walt and Officer Liette. Liette was a quiet man with over a decade of experience. Officer Walt was a young, petite officer who had proved herself to be reliable and strong willed. She carried with her the relic Broken Watch, whose rusty lid was held shut by a ribbon of pure gold that had been tightly crimped. This spiritually infused strip was necessary to prevent the watch from suddenly opening, which it had a tendency to do without warning.

Chief Yun and the two officers reached their designated position in the woods. It was still quite a fair distance away from the cabin to minimize the chance of detection. Each trio found a concealed location that was out of sight as they waited for the operation to start.

At the predesignated time, Chief Yun met Officer Walt’s eyes. Out of all the members in the operation, Officer Walt’s role was both the most critical and the most dangerous. As such, Chief Yun paid special attention to her condition to make sure she was not having doubts or showing other problems.

Officer Walt carefully unwound the golden ribbon, firmly grasping the cover of the watch to keep it shut. She nodded to the Chief, her eyes serious and focused.

Chief Yun then glanced at Liette, who was one of the two officers in charge of breaking the stasis. The field that the relic created was more powerful than anything either of the two Chronicler Apprentices could create on their own. It would be impossible for Liette to nullify it completely. However he only needed to create a small anti-stasis pocket around Walt to enable her to physically shut the watch, which would then end its effects. This was within the realm of both officer’s ability.

Liette returned the Chief’s glance with a firm nod.

Satisfied, Chief Yun stood several feet away from Officer Walt and extended his fist out towards her. He closed his eyes as he reached out with his astral body towards the woodcutter’s cabin. It was easy to find - There was an incredibly dense demonic energy radiating out of it.

Focusing on a spot in the center of the cabin, Chief Yun suddenly opened his eyes wide as he splayed his fingers out towards Walt. The pupils of his eyes shone as if there was a galaxy rotating within them and the space around Officer Walt warped and suddenly tore open, sucking her in completely. As soon as her form disappeared, Chief Yun closed his hand back into a fist, mending the tear in space.

He then counted to two and repeated the gesture, targeting a location along the outside edge of the main room in the cabin. He held firmly onto Officer Liette’s shoulder and stepped forward. A crack in space formed perfectly around their bodies, closing immediately after they stepped through.

The pungent smell of blood and incense assaulted Chief Yun’s senses as he stepped directly into the cabin with Officer Liette. Chief Yun quickly scanned around the room, which was brightly lit by hundreds of candles. Their flames were frozen in time, illuminating the hastily piled furniture around the room and the hardwood floor that were all stained and corroded.

In the middle of the room was a bloody altar that looked like it had grown through the cracked floorboards. In the center of the altar was a large bone bowl filled with blackened blood. The smoke from the incense sticks around the bowl hung statically in the air. Directly above the altar over a dozen bodies hung suspended from vines as disembodied eyeballs looked down from the ends of black stalks.

Officer Walt stood frozen in time just to the side of the altar, her hands holding Broken Watch in front of her with the lid half open. In front of the altar was a young man with blond hair and sunken eyes wearing a set of maroon robes. He was kneeling, but his head was raised looking towards Walt. Hiding in the shadows behind some piled up furniture was a woman with thick braided hair that resembled vines. She had two curved blades that resembled crescents at her waist as weapons. She was frozen in the midst of standing, her eyes alert as they looked towards Walt.

The entire scene was frozen in time. Immediately after Chief Yun stepped in, two other officers immediately teleported in using their own Planar Door.

The sphere from Broken Watch had engulfed the cabin in its entirety, giving the officers complete control over the situation.

Not wasting any time, Chief Yun stepped towards the altar, relying on his spiritual intuition to locate targets. He pointed towards the boy by the altar and the woman in the shadows. He sensed that there was one more enemy hiding somewhere out of sight beneath the floorboards, but he or she had also been caught in the stasis. They wouldn’t have to be dealt with immediately - as soon as the stasis field was removed, the officers would retreat before any resistance could be put up. Since their time was limited to mere seconds there wasn’t room to waste hunting the third person down. There would be time to clean up after.

Without hesitation two of the officers stepped towards the targets. Gunshots echoed through the room as they each fired three shots at point blank at the boy and woman - two at the head and one at the heart. The bullets stopped at the exact moment of contact with the frozen figures. As soon as the field wore off, the spiritually charged bullets would penetrate at full force, leaving no room to react. Death would be instant. They wouldn’t even realize that they had died.

The third officer named Logan stepped up to the altar with Chief Yun, who took a quick glance at the altar and the bodies above.

“Break it.” Chief Yun said calmly. Logan immediately took out a telescopic steel baton and whipped his arm down towards the bowl in a powerful strike. He froze as he made contact with the vessel, his jacket still billowing from the strength of the strike.

At that moment Chief Yun considered the mission as having met its primary objective of neutralizing the ritual’s conduit and destroying the vessel. As soon as Broken Clock was deactivated, all of the actions that were frozen in time would be set back in motion with their full kinetic force.

“Liette!” Chief Yun looked over to Officer Liette, who had fired his weapon at the blond hooded man. Officer Liette nodded and reached his hand towards Officer Walt as he began to activate a counter stasis pocket around her.

Chief Yun’s spiritual intuition triggered as he suddenly felt a formidable aura of lethal intent targeting him.

Dodge! A single thought overtook his entire body and mind as he instinctively threw himself to the side. A shrill metallic ring resonated through the cabin as a thin blade appeared out of rift in the middle of the air, striking directly through the spot where the Chief had just been standing.

The blade flew through the air towards Officer Liette. The officer reacted too late as the blade sliced directly across his eyes. He stopped casting the ability as he cried out in pain, grasping at the bloody gash across his face.

Chief Yun drew his gun, glancing over to Walt who was still frozen by the relic. It had already been nine seconds since Walt had activated the relic. They needed to break the effect now!

Seeing that Liette was crippled he yelled to Reese, “Ambush! Break the stasis!”

Officer Reese didn’t look to see what had happened to her comrade but immediately outstretched her hand towards Walt. A silver line suddenly flashed in the space in front of her body, followed by a spray of blood as her outstretched arm was instantly sliced off at the elbow.

She screamed in pain as she gripped at her arm, falling backwards into an overturned table with a crash.

Chief Yun’s eyes widened in fear as he couldn’t locate the attacker who had already taken down two members of his team. Again, he dodged to the side instinctively as his ribs were just barely grazed by a razor sharp attack that materialized out of thin air.

This time, he barely caught a glance of the weapon. The blade was thin like a dagger, but instead of a hilt the bottom of the blade was attached to a chain. The ringing sound came from the links of the chain resonating against each other.

“Liette! Reese! Get the stasis!” Chief Yun growled, scrambling to his feet.

The two officers reached out their trembling arms towards Walt when a man in earthen brown monk robes materialized out of thin air. He delivered a swift round kick to Reese’s head, flinging her entire body through the air into the wall. There was a horrendous crack from her neck and she slumped to the floor. Simultaneously the chain in his hands whipped out across the room towards Liette, wrapping around the blinded man’s arms. He yanked hard on the chain, sending Liette flying across the room towards him with tremendous strength.

The two chronomancers were the only ones who could deactivate the relic. Chief Yun had to do something to stop the stasis field and free up his two team members that were frozen. It had already been over twelve seconds as Officer Walt started to show signs of breaking down from the influence of Broken Clock.

Her frozen form had started to jerk irregularly. A section of her right shoulder displaced slightly off from its original spot, then jerked back abruptly. Her left hip flickered between being solid and missing. Various parts of her body flickered back and forth in an increasingly rapid fashion like visual static as the relic rapidly depleted her spirituality.

I have to get her out of there! Chief Yun immediately reached forward with his fingers splayed, forming a portal door in front of Liette who was being propelled in the air. Liette flew into the portal and reappeared in a rift directly next to Chief Yun. The Chief caught the officer and grabbed onto the chain, but it slipped out of his grasp and disappeared into a rift.

“Aim where I point you!” Chief Yun yelled as he jerked the blinded officer’s arms to point directly at Walt.

The girl holding the watch was now trembling violently as her face contorted in a look of agony. A soundless scream formed on her lips, as her body increasingly broke apart in space.

Liette activated the anti-stasis field where Chief Yun directed, unfreezing the girl from her spot.

Her shrill screams filled the room as she dropped the watch. In this crucial moment she failed to deactivate it - her mind had already been broken by the relic! She collapsed to the floor as her body turned black and translucent. Geometric shapes bulged out of her mass as it began filling with the twinkling of countless stars.

Having completely exhausted the spirituality of its user, the rusted watch snapped shut.

The room which had been a silent, static tableau suddenly burst into an explosion of sound and activity. The six bullets that had been aimed at the young man and woman ripped instantly through their bodies, killing them on the spot. The wall which Officer Reese had collided into suddenly exploded outward, sending planks and splinters of wood flying into the night. The mass of bodies and disembodied eyes began to sway above, their shadows long and wild from the hundreds of candles that flickered furiously.

The iron baton of Officer Logan smashed down onto the bone, cracking the vessel into pieces as the force of his blow split the vine-like altar in two. The blood in the bowl splashed violently, but rather than scatter, it congealed into a ball and rose into the air. The orange yellow light of the candles all suddenly changed into a sickly green shade.

“Retreat!” Chief Yun yelled to Officer Logan as the man’s eyes widened in surprise. From Logan’s perspective the operation had been running in a completely controlled manner, then in the blink of an eye everything had turned to chaos and blood.

Officer Logan was frozen in shock for a second as he looked at the bloody scene, his eyes falling upon his bleeding comrades and the black mass full of stars on the floor. Upon hearing Chief Yun’s order he snapped to attention. He stretched out his hand and opened a rift in space but just as he stepped into it a thick, thorny vine burst through the floor and wrapped around his leg. He cried out in pain, his hands grasping futilely at the floor boards as he was dragged down below the floor.

Chief Yun was about to open a portal when suddenly his perspective shifted. He found himself looking at his body in third person, holding onto the bleeding Liette as he was yelling. Chief Yun immediately realized that he had been forcefully pulled out of his physical body! The world around him constantly shifted with brightly saturated colours.

The spirit world?

He immediately looked over to the side where a spectral monk was standing. In the monk’s right hand was a long silver chain with a blade at the end, spinning faster than the eye could follow. His left hand was outstretched towards Chief Yun, pulling directly on the Chief’s spirit body. His eyes were a pure, shining silver.

His distinguished features, sharp nose and strong jaw sent a jolt of recognition through Chief Yun’s mind.

“Ming Ru!”