We were attacked a dozen more times on route, though none of the people involved posed any real risk. Reff’s arms were long-since fully occupied, and Riffa’s sand puppets were loaded up as well by the time the City’s Edge came into view; the buildings around it were cracked and broken, but the inn itself seemed to be wholly intact, built as it was as a stronghold against attack.

In front of its door however, a group of figures in dark clothes milled about as those closest tried to hammer their way past the first set of doors, which were closed. Our group came to a stop in the middle of the street, again not bothering with stealth, as Reff’s massive size made it impossible to hide.

“I guess that answers the question of whether people under the influence can work together. That looks like one of the sects from the square, right, Riffa, Toria?”

“With brief deliberation, their clothing at least does seem to match the colour scheme of one of those sects. It is also possible they were not in the city at the time of the detonation.”

“Agreed. Their leader used some sort of cloud or fog, and was killed by the Blood Marshal. I also prefer the possibility that they were outside of the city, as the idea of other groups – like the Blood Guard – working as one while also driven to violence does not seem... good.”

“It’s also what the group who ambushed us after visiting the Blood Guard were wearing.”

Darina seemed more fixated on the group ahead of us than the implications of their presence while not fighting each other.

“I don’t know if you can call it ambushing us when they stepped out, spoke and then got beat up by you, Dee.”

“It was pre-emptive.”

“Riiight. Either way, I think we can assume they’re not banging on our inn’s doors for entirely benign reasons, so who’s up for some more... pre-emptive diplomacy?”

“Attacking before they are aware of our presence is the most effective strategy... Hunter. But should we decide what we are to do with them, once defeated? We have no idea to what degree – if at all – they're in league with the Risen Throne, and so taking them in would be foolish.”

This brought me back to the same issues we had back at the Inverted Mountain; I was not really willing to kill somebody who was helpless, and being intentionally lethal against somebody when it may not not be necessary seemed to walk that same line. We could leave them outside, but then they would either die anyway, or recover on their own.

“We need some sort of jail; somewhere to keep people who may be complicit until they can stand trial.”

“With pointed urgency, perhaps this can be discussed after they are subdued. We can restrain them inside for the moment and make a decision later.”

I nodded at Riffa’s words; she definitely had a point. The group had not noticed us yet, but it was only a matter of time.

“Right then, hard and fast?”

“That’s not a plan, Hunter.”

“I know th-”

“But it will do.”

With a grin, Darina ran off towards the crowd, as did Toria, soon overtaking the healer. Rolling my eyes, I cast my mind inwards towards my reserves and could sense I was down to about a third; I had been very careful not to make too much use of my Path, as well as to not push my Focus too much. Even at what was normal usage for me, I was several steps ahead of most other Path stages in terms of useable output, so I had not dropped as low as I might have in the many short fights since our arrival.

Focusing, I dashed off to join the pair of apprentices, catching up just as the two women struck the rear of the group, instantly taking out two and sending another couple to join them soon after. Judging that the apprentices had the rear covered, I opted to go for the woman at the front, the one leading the efforts to break open the outer doors.

She had barely begun to turn when I reached her, my left fist already curled and heading for the spot under her ear. An instant before my blow landed, my view of the world shifted and I found myself smashing into another member of the sect, their body whipping end over end and around in a spiral, to lie still on the ground.

Instinctive Precognition rang a warning inside me and I found myself half-stepping to my right and turning, a fist spiking past my eyes in seeming slow motion. Knocking the hand up with my right - which was still uncomfortably sore from the recent break - I dropped my left knee and pushed off with my right to smash my right elbow into the source of the attack.

Once again, the world shifted around me, almost nauseatingly and I found myself attacking yet another hapless sect member, and yet again dodging an attack from the rear.

Not knowing what was happening, I danced away from the inn, skipping between members of the group, at least half of which were down by that point, having been taken completely by surprise by the frankly brutal attacks of my companions.

As I made space, I saw the women grinning viciously as me, arms open wide and inviting, as if daring me to attack. Eyes narrowing, I casually intercepted a sect member coming at me with a clear green dagger that dripped some sort of clear, smoking fluid. Quickstepping back and in again to avoid a thrust, I pushed the wrist holding it past and away from me, turning the wielder's entire body so that he had his back to me. Not bothering to attack directly, I Focused harder, accelerating my perception of the world and simply lifted him off his feet before turning to throw the hapless man at the smiling woman.

I watched closely to see what happened, but it made little sense to me, even from a distance away. As the human projectile closed with her, the world seemed to split and turn, altering their positions relative to each other and conserving momentum so that the woman was simply stood to one side and the man was sailing back at me. Despite the fact that what I had just seen had hurt my brain to look at, I was not so far gone that I was going to let him hit me. I was about to kick the man out of the air when my Instinctive Precognition let out another warning, and rather than kicking, I leapt up, kicking off the flying man as a wave of sickly purple smoke rolled over the position I had been stood in, as well as the surrounding area. Luckily, the cloud did not last long, and by the time I landed it had dissipated, though where it had passed the stone of the road and paths had been corroded away, and what was left was deeply pitted. The man I had thrown lay on the ground, half of his body simply gone, allowing his entrails to become extrails. He was not the only one; several of the sect lay dead or grievously injured by the smoke, including the ones I had knocked unconscious.

I looked at the still smiling, still waiting woman with narrowed eyes, anger bubbling up inside me; I did not know whether these people were too tied together to fight each other, but too affected to care if they harmed each other by accident, or if they were just a bunch of assholes, but I had no time or mercy for any group that would risk hurting their own like that.

With a growl, I stepped onto my path and let my lightning off its leash to lash about me, the alteration in the flow of time making up for the loss of speed letting the electricity run free cost me. Arcs of brilliant azure-violet and violet-white snapped at the air, ground and people around me as I ran in again, hoping that while I may not reach her, the energy discharges might. And they did.

As I closed the distance, a space now separating the woman from the rest of her group, my lightning locked into her, snapping and filling the air with the screeches of shredded air and the sharp, sour smell of ozone. But while her smile wobbled slightly, it seemed to have no other effect; in the absence of a physical distraction, she was able to devote all of her attention to defence, simply dismissing the coruscating ropes of power. Taking the opportunity, I moved closer, swinging one swift kick at her knee, hoping to distract her, but once more the world shifted and I hit nothing but air, though I was not attacked that time. Turning, I found her again, shifted about, away from me and still smiling.

Eye twitching, I pulled my lightning back inside me and all at once hammered as much Praxis as I could through my Focus and Exemplar, the world grinding almost to a true stop about me as I attacked again, hoping that at that relative speed she would be unable to react, but even moving at my maximum, I found the streets shifting again, reality turning me aside in a blink.

Knowing I could not stay like that for too long, my mind raced as I tried to come up with a solution; my lightning could not affect her, as she was able to devote herself to defence. I could not reach her, as whatever her ability was seemed to work passively and instantly, turning my every attack aside. I needed an energy attack that she could not see to defend against and would not trigger her ability. The only way I had found to use my time aura like that had been useless, affecting nothing it passed through. But then, in an instant I remembered something about when I had first absorbed my Exemplar, something that I had borne in mind ever since. And it gave me an idea.

Flexing my will, I pushed my aura out past my left hand, forming into a long spike, even as I allowed the flow of Praxis to calm, bringing the world back into motion; if what I had in mind worked, I would not need the additional speed.

Time still passing at a relative clip, I extended my left hand and stepped in close to the woman, not quite close enough to trigger her ability, but enough for my spike. As - from her perspective – I simply pointed at her dramatically, I saw her eyebrow quirk and then after a moment, her eyes open widen as her body convulsed and she fell to the floor.

With a wide grin, I let the spike snap back into its usual position and stepped in, stamping down on her head once, twice and finally three times, holding myself to the ground with expensive bursts of Praxis until her eyes rolled back in her head and she lay unconscious.

Turning to check for other threats, I saw that they had already been subdued by my companions, and lay either conscious or dead from the strange cloud.

Dropping my Focus and Path, I pumped my hand in the air, ecstatic that my idea had worked.

“That seems a bit much... you didn’t have to stamp on her head just because you kept missing, Hunter. And then celebrating it? Bad taste.”

“No, Darina, she had some kind of power that... moved people. I had to knock her out before she could start using it again.”

“She simply collapsed at the end, what did you do... Hunter?”

“I used my time abilities to overload her nervous system! It’s a technique I developed off-world, but I thought it was useless. But I used it to engulf her spine, so a bunch of the impulses from her brain ended up arriving all at once, and her body couldn’t handle the conflicting instructions. It happened to me, remember, Dee?”

“I remember you shaking and dropping to the floor like a leaf on a windy day. But I thought that was just you being yourself.”

“Ha ha, Dee.”

“It is an impressive technique, and seemed to be invisible.”

“Yeah; it takes a second, to get conflicting signals, at least by the look of things. And it might not be so easy on a target not just standing there like an asshole, but it’s another arrow in my quiver!”

“You don’t use a bow, Hunter. Is this more of your foolishness?”

“It is!”

I was in too good a mood to bother with the half-hearted ribbing; I really had thought my time spikes were useless, but I had simply been using them incorrectly. I wondered what else I could do with them, that I had not yet thought of, my mind racing.

Turning my mind inwards as potential uses flickered and changed, I noted that I was down to about twenty percent with a grimace, and moved to check my second energy centre reflexively; I had not made much progress on my Exemplar integration in a while, and so I was stunned to find out that I suddenly had room to fill in about sixty percent of my tiny passenger. That was an astonishing increase, given my previous ones had been in single digits. I guessed that figuring out how to affect others with it was a big part of understanding it.

Not that I really had the Praxis to spare to fill those glowing neon lines in at that point, but I would be making every effort to seize that advantage, and it gave me all the more incentive to work on and complete my even more improved channels and energy system.