As far as prisons went, my room within the palace wasn't bad. I would have preferred Sensi's suite but they provided more than necessary. An ice box stocked with vegetables and fruit, a soft bed that served as the only bit of furniture, a few books on basic philosophy stacked in a corner, a weathered chamberpot. Judging from its size, it must have been a guest room for undistinguished servants. The metal bars along the windows served as a reminder of my situation.

After spending a week locked in with other killers at Amelie in Yellow, the solitude was appreciated.

The only other people I saw were the two guards stationed outside of my door. Once, a young servant bringing my meals tried to sneak a peek into my room as he delivered my tray, only to be shoved back by the guards.

They remained silent despite my probing them with questions about what was happening. I made no wasteful attempts to escape. Without a weapon, there was no defeating two grown men with halberds and full plate. Realistically, even with a sword and full use of my powers, they were a better match for me than someone like Barrow. At least I could trick that bastard.

Escaping would not benefit me for the moment anyways. Something would soon descend upon the city of Odena, and there was no place more safe than the inside of the Archon's palace.

One of my questions answered itself as time wore on. The city of Odena did not experience a normal day-night cycle. Sunlight streamed through the windows constantly. By my guess, the time dilation extended a day to approximately a week, so the sun would set after around three-and-a-half days. Disturbing. Despite my ability to tell time perfectly, my body refused to rest normally, even when I covered the windows with my bed linens to mute the sunlight.

On the bright side, it seemed possible for me to use time magic within the tesseract around Odena, unlike the one in Amelie in Yellow. I could only speculate on what the difference was. Archon Vasely's palace was fairly deep into the city. It was possible that if I went closer to the barrier around the city, I would begin to feel the time magic interfering with my own. I would never know until I attempted to escape the tesseract itself, but it seemed wise to take precautions, just in case.

I learned early on that the water they brought me dulled my magical power. Its slightly bitter taste and the white residue coating the bottom of my cups made it obvious, but they didn't care if I knew. My only other option was dying of thirst. The inconvenience proved to be minimal: while my powers felt weaker, they regenerated at the same, steady pace.

At this proximity the melody emanating from Vasely as he meditated shook my teeth for hours on end. Otherwise I felt nothing from him. There must be some method of shielding oneself from being detected by others' awareness. The void could accomplish such a task but I was careful to conserve my powers.

In my mind's eye, the void and time magic appeared like two small orbs hovering in the aether, white and silver respectively. Though the void came from Paimon, it seemed its qualities were derived from some characteristic native to myself. Their agonizingly slow regeneration only served to worsen my already foul mood. Discovering what enhanced their power would have to be one of my primary avenues of research.

I spent most of my waking hours in the Mental Realm. Whenever the Archon meditated I was trapped in his song, my mind tossed around like a locust caught in a hurricane. I was able to focus best when Vasely concealed himself, but attempting to stabilize myself against the tempest of his mind helped steady my own willpower. My resistance built up; though I still shook under his might, after the third day I was able to imagine my family manor even while he meditated.

The walls of my memory palace shook as I sat in my room, reading through some of the books there. While altering my own memories required an unacceptable amount of mental power, reading through what I already knew took little effort. Three new additions to the library caught my attention: Tesseract, Echoes, and Enemies. They each contained no more than a few pages.

The first book discussed what little I knew about the demonic construct: it was a four-dimensional seal of sorts, powered by an external source that would supply a colossal amount of power. Some formula were scribbled on the bottom of the second page, crossed out, attempted again. Feeble attempts at dimensionalism my subconscious mind must have tinkered with. Vasely had said if the tesseract around Odena also possessed a recursive element it would drain the power of the sun within a few months. From there, it could be possible to determine the amount of energy required to power the tesseract. I devoted a few minutes to the problem before giving up. There were far too many unknowns and, even if I knew all the variables, I had no idea where to begin.

I closed the book and opened Echoes. This one basically repeated what Sensi's lecture, and included a short mention of the dream I had about Paimon's birth. At the end was a list of known Echoes.

Barrow (deceased)

Jokul?

Sensi (deceased)

The East Wind

The Magisters of Velassa (# ?)

The South Wind

Zephyr

I swallowed a knot that formed in my throat at the second name. Returning that book to the shelf, I took up Enemies instead. A sobering thought, that I had reached a point where I had a list of people who wanted me dead. I skimmed through it, tracing the words with a finger; it paused on Jokul's entry. Most of it derived from speculation, Caedius' effusive praise, and talking about the bastard with Felix during our time in the tesseract. But one particular speculation made me clench my fists.

Jokul, the Champion of Odena

Rumored to be at least a seventh-legato blademaster, the Champion has never lost an official duel. Rumors about the man hold him to be an equal to the former North Wind, Barrow, though they refused to ever face each other in a sanctioned bout. Whether or not this includes Barrow using his divine wind magic is a matter of much debate. He wields a sword of unknown make, thought to be a gift from Archon Vasely himself. It seems likely Jokul may be an Echo.

Unlike the Magisters of Velassa, Odena has no magical enforcers in appreciable quantity. The Four Winds presented a formidable front but the Magisters would annihilate them through sheer numbers. Though Vasely is not as authoritarian as his Velassan counterpart, it would be reasonable to assume he has some unknown force of equal strength. Of all the public warriors, Jokul seems the most likely to have received the Archon's blessing.

At Amelie in Yellow, Jokul would have murdered me, if not for the forced activation of my power to slow time.

Avoid the Champion at all costs.

My hands shook. I never really thought consciously, but of course Jokul would be an Echo. That was obvious. It was the other part that made my heart pound in my chest. The forced activation of my power to slow time. I thought back to I encountered the Champion inside Amelie in Yellow.

We had been sitting on cushions next to each other. When I voiced my insane speculation about him working with demons, he found the words sufficient cause to try to put a knife in my heart. Given the tesseract erecting itself in Amelie in Yellow that night, I had not thought much about the near-death experience as much as the rest. Now I remembered clearly how time had seemed to slow to a crawl in that moment. So much adrenaline was coursing through my body I assumed it was a trick of the mind. It was, in a sense, but if this book was correct, I had actually used my power to dilate time.

Like when I manifested my reversal ability, I first used this technique subconsciously to save my life. Hopefully understanding my magic more in the future would not require a close brush with death.

I wanted to strangle myself. How had I not realized sooner? Around that time I had received so many revelations back to back that something like this had just slipped from my notice. With that ability, how much easier would my fight have been against Zephyr? How much could I have changed?

The anger I felt toward myself built up until the memory palace fractured around me. I opened my eyes, no longer able to maintain my concentration. I wanted to leap to my feet and throw the furniture around like a child. That would just enrage the guards. Even if my time magic was available, it would be foolish to use it right below the Archon's feet unless necessary.

I settled for pummeling the bed for a while, feeling vaguely ridiculous and immensely satisfied at the same time. The guards did not hear it or did not care enough to investigate. When that stopped being satisfying I slowed my breathing and moved through the forms of the legato. Though the latter parts of the first form required a sword for proper practice, I visualized the dance well enough to make it useful exercise. My body would remember when the time came, as long as I practiced the same motions until perfection.

Moving through the bladeform always helped bring me back into a trance state. My breathing settled into the proper rhythm. Calm settled.

Slowing time...what was required to accomplish such a feat? If such a thing was possible, time must not move at a specific speed, steadily along an arrow to the future. It could be twisted. Distorted.

Once, in a moment of pique, I had asked Lyra if she experienced time the same way I did. Back then I was thinking of how my ability to reverse time made me experience a different reality than other people completely. The implications had gnawed at me for a while. An entire universe ceased to exist whenever I reversed time. Or did it simply continue on, and some part of my mind transferred into a new reality, leaving my former self still trapped in whatever situation I found myself in? The thought made me paranoid to put myself into truly awful situations, but there had still been times when I may have killed some ghost of myself through carelessness.

Time, then, and existence itself, must be relative. To me, with my pathetic mortal lifespan, the saga of my life spanned everything. To Paimon, I was an amusing distraction. Over the passage of aeons, the demon lord would cease to consider even years worthy of recognition. His purpose stretched across eternity.

And at some point in their life each person experiences that moment where everything around him seems to pause. When he realizes there is a true self to his being, and the mind stretches itself to find a solution. Is time not also relative to the observer? In all these ways, the passage of time is malleable.

As soon as I entered the second legato, I began to visualize dripping water. Each droplet collided with the calm surface of a pond, birthing a chorus of ripples. A steady, constant rhythm, one second per droplet. Tap. Tap. Tap. I knew I could slow the droplet any moment I wanted to, but that would activate my time magic and alert Archon Vasely.

I stopped ten seconds into the second legato, satisfied I had discovered the secret to my second time ability. Despite using none of my power, a deep exhaustion had settled into my bones. What I intended to be a brief nap ended up lasting six hours. A distant, shrill sound woke me up from a deep slumber. At first I had no idea what had happened and merely laid there, blinking against the wash of color through the window.

The sun had finally begun to set, a brilliant wash of orange and pink and lavender. Beautiful. One of the only good parts about this tesseract: such a lovely palette would last so much longer.

Then the sound came again. Distinct and disturbing. Almost like a distant cry, but it was not the kind of sound a human would make. Too shrill, too furious. The kind of sound a lunatic would make. It sounded both close and far, bypassing the ear, directly into some shadowy crevice of the mind.

No, certainly not a sound a human would make.

For the first time, I experienced a proper glimpse of the Archon's power. Sound surged around me, so dense it almost seemed visible. The windows and wall-mirror shattered into fragments of glass. Fortunately I had not been using my magical awareness or the sensations may have overwhelmed my mind.

An explosive thunderclap of air boomed around me as Vasely launched himself from the palace. I could make out his streaking figure flying into the city, the sky around his feet distorted from the speed of his passage. He was heading towards the source of that scream.

No, it was not a scream. It was a declaration:

We are here.