Aetheral Space

Ionir Yggdrassil considered matters.

GretchenHail was standing before it, breathing and speaking. How could this be? It was certain it had landed a fatal attack on her two years ago aboard the Child Garden. It had slapped her out of the air and turned her into a smear on the wall. It was reasonably sure humans could not recover from that level of damage.

Ionir Yggdrassil determined matters.

In the end, it didn't matter. The fact remained: GretchenHail was standing before it, breathing and speaking. She was without a doubt an enemy. She had already been an enemy when she had been using the identity of AnyaHapgrass -- all that had changed was the level of danger. The course of action was obvious.

Ionir Yggdrassil went to end matters.

Three attacks at once, to cover all angles. A swing of Ionir's tail, to smash through GretchenHail’s torso. A barrage of Wisdom-infused leaves, to slice through her front. A sharpener tendril of wrapped vine, to puncture her body from behind and skewer her heart.

The attacks were executed with perfect synchronicity, with perfect timing. However, before they could land, GretchenHail tapped a finger against her necklace…

“Bloodless Hour, Version 4.”

…and the concept of time itself became irrelevant.

The world stopped.

Okay, well it didn't stop really, but Gretchen perceived the world so quickly that everything might as well have been standing still. Leaves hovered in the air. A tail of bark had stopped, inches from her body. Doing her utmost to keep her feet in the same position, she glanced over her shoulder -- and saw the lurking tendril that had been about to stab her in the back.

Her instincts had been right, then: that had been the right moment to start her Bloodless Hour.

If true time manipulation was possible using Aether, it was something far beyond Gretchen's abilities. Simulated time manipulation, however, was another story. By accelerating both her body's movements and her brain's perception, Bloodless Hour was able to emulate a ‘time stop’ effect. As the name of the Armament suggested, she could remain in this leisurely state for up to an hour if she wanted.

There were rules, of course -- conditions she'd imposed to get this tricky Armament working. She couldn't launch an attack in this state, nor could she move her feet from their original position. If she did either, the Bloodless Hour would immediately end, and the world around her would resume its movements. In this case, her threefold death would continue coming after her.

So, in direct combat, utility was limited. That didn't mean it was useless, though. Far from it.

She'd taken such care preparing for a battle like this. It'd be a terrible shame for her to start taking hits before she could put those preparations into effect. An hour would be more than enough time to get ready.

Simple stuff first. She reached into her Ragnarok Forge, pulling out the three vials she'd commissioned from the Maker-Guild’s Concoctionist.

She gulped down the Red Concoction first, boosting her body's natural regeneration and numbing her sense of pain.

Then, the Blue Concoction. Immediately, she felt her mind sharpen into clarity, confusion and doubt fading away into nothing.

Finally, the Gold Concoction. She felt nothing from this one, but she already knew the effects. A more durable body, strong enough to take the Fell Beast’s blows this time.

The effects of the potions lasted only half an hour -- ordinarily, she'd have taken them last as a result. She'd tested these sorts of things with Bloodless Hour before, though. That time limit would only begin once she deactivated the simulated time stop.

It was very convenient.

Next, she reached over her shoulder, tapping the tiny white disc balanced between her shoulder blades. Like a button, she pushed it, feeling the Armament depressing down into her own body. A moment of pain, and then…

“Spine of Granba.”

Sixteen segmented arms skittered out from Gretchen's back, long and spindly, each boasting at least six elbows. The joints on each finger were just as gratuitous, allowing them to bend and warp in altogether inhuman ways -- but that was just fine. So long as they could do that, they could do what Gretchen needed.

In direct hand-to-hand combat, the arms produced by the Spine of Granba were far too delicate and fragile to be of use, but that too was fine. Every tool had its purpose. Gretchen just needed them to hold things.

One by one, she pulled Armaments out of her Ragnarok Forge, handing them to one of the arms protruding from her back.

Ode to Joy, a brass pistol with a wide barrel, was clutched between white fingers and pointed ahead, aiming at the rain of sharpened leaves. Quietly, she began to charge a golden shot.

Clumsy Boy, a mop dripping with soapy liquid, was held defensively in front of Gretchen's chest. The air around her took on a shimmering quality, like it had been wiped clean.

The Sphere of the Stolen Future was presented in front of Gretchen's face, allowing her to look into its depths. She could see her own corpse in the crystal, crushed between the three attacks.

More and more came out, handed off to the Spine of Granba, an array of absurdist weapons spreading out from Gretchen's back like wings.

Ah… how lovely.

Ever since she'd been a child, Gretchen had adored Aether Armaments.

It had been an old videograph about the Dranell Breaches that had done it. When the topic of the documentary had shifted to the instrument of victory -- EIN SOF -- she had immediately been entranced. When she slept, she dreamt of Aether Armaments. When she was awake, she forged them. Every second was spent with Aether Armaments in her thoughts.

Tools that could bring about miracles. Magic wands of every shape and size. How could she ever grow bored of them?

There had only ever been one person who had understood her passion, one person who had given her the chance she needed to truly make those dreams into reality. It had been perfect. It had been perfect -- and these people, this thing, had taken all that away from her.

Because of them, Baltay was rotting in a prison cell, and she was alone.

She'd take out some of that frustration now.

Gretchen Hail pulled Ode to Joy’s trigger, and the Bloodless Hour ended. Having been charged for several ‘minutes’, the blast was more than hot enough to incinerate the infused leaves coming for her. At the same time, she braced herself -- and, with her real arms, blocked the incoming tail from the side. Even with her enhanced strength and durability, it took everything she had to stop the tail from pushing her across the roof.

The sharp tendril lunged at her back, but then its path went wild, careening off until it stuck itself into the surface of the roof.

Gretchen smirked. Clumsy Boy had the ability to make things ‘slippery’ upon contact. Gretchen had exploited that to create a barrier of slippery air around herself, causing precision attacks to veer off-course.

The image on the Sphere of the Stolen Future changed -- now it depicted her crushed gruesomely beneath one of Ionir Yggdrassil's elephant-like feet. She fired off a pair of Armament grappling hooks behind her -- one firing string, the other rattling chains -- and pulled herself backwards, out of the way of the stomp.

If she'd had the Sphere on the Child Garden, things would have been very different. The Abra-Facadian relic was constantly analyzing the situation and projecting the future of its user -- the image it displayed was the user's current most likely death. If one interpreted the image correctly, they could avoid any fatality coming for them.

Ionir Yggdrassil took off again, mighty leaf-wings creating gusts of vicious wind. Gretchen held the Black-Bracer in front of her, projecting a shield that blocked the worst of the air pressure, but she already knew it wouldn't be able to stand up to a real attack from the Fell Beast.

This monster was still a dangerous opponent, Gretchen knew, no matter how well she had prepared. The way it grew and shed excess matter meant that it was capable of changing its form as it pleased. Its arboreal nature meant there were limits to the sort of shapes it could pull off, but still…

…to put it simply, fighting an adept Fell Beast wasn't so different from fighting an Aether-wielding Gene Tyrant.

Ionir charged, kicking off the building behind it with such force that the roof exploded, bricks and steel raining down below as an avalanche. Gretchen had been right to be wary. The Fell Beast was moving as fast as a train, and its sheer bulk meant that it could easily reduce her to a smear once again, even with her iron body.

But she'd come equipped for that.

The Bloodless Hour.

Time stopped once again.

At some point in the clash, it had started raining, and now those raindrops hung frozen in the air like tiny twinkling stars. The draconic head of Ionir Yggdrassil hung a mere meter away from Gretchen, trapped in the moment before collision. She took a moment to catch her breath before changing her load out.

As her previous Armaments -- save for the Sphere -- vanished back into Ragnarok Forge, they were replaced by comparatively less impressive weapons. Standard-issue plasma pistols, the kind you'd find littering any battlefield or clutched in the hand of any corpse. Plain as they were, though, these were still Aether Armaments.

According to general wisdom, there were two kinds of Aether Armaments: the ‘intentional’ and the ‘incidental’.

Intentional Aether Armaments were what people like Gretchen and the Maker-Guild worked with. They were a product of active design, weapons created to exert specific abilities and powers. Often, they were commissioned by the wealthy for their own use.

Incidental Aether Armaments were actually the original variety, with the later intentional Armaments being based upon their example. They were the product of repeated and frequent infusion of a certain object. The fifteen pistols Gretchen was holding, for example: they'd been infused so often that they could now ‘snap’ back to their enhanced state with just a little Aether to activate them.

Cracking her neck again, Gretchen pointed her array of pistols at the incoming Fell Beast --

-- and pulled the triggers.

As time shattered back into being, a volley of powered-up plasmafire slammed into the side of Ionir's head, the impact forcing him to change course and swerve out of Gretchen's way. Huge chunks of bark thudded to the ground as the Fell Beast shed the burning parts of his body, seeking to stop the flames from spreading across its vulnerable form. As it swooped up into the air, passing right over Gretchen --

The Bloodless Hour.

-- she paused matters once again.

Gretchen frowned as she looked down at the red amulet hanging from her neck. The ruby was already growing cloudy and dark. If she set the Aetheral Bonds on her wrists to support it, Bloodless Hour could probably stop time once more… maybe twice more, if she pushed her luck. Fine. The defects were meant to have been ironed out with Version 3, but she could still work with this.

Ragnarok Forge.

Gretchen’s ability, Ragnarok Forge, was designed specifically to interface with Aether Armaments -- intentional or otherwise. It was able to disassemble and reassemble them quickly, allowing her to craft new Aether Armaments on the fly with just her ability. There were all sorts of other interesting tricks she could pull with it, too.

For example…

Orange Aether crackled as Gretchen pulled all fifteen plasma-pistols back into Ragnarok Forge -- and immediately began to work. First, she separated the physical forms of the Armaments from their abilities. Fifteen power-up charges, and fifteen powerless pistols.

Then, she started modifying the physical aspect.

The fifteen pistols were pulled apart, recycled into their constituent materials -- then recombined, reforged into a new form entirely. At first, it was just a mass of incoherent metal, but then she made some more adjustments to the shape. Just a barrel, a handle, and a trigger would do. This thing wouldn’t exist long enough to need much else.

Ordinarily, she’d be much more careful with the extracted abilities of the Armaments, but these low-tier pistols weren’t worth taking the trouble. She smashed the abilities into each other, the power boost growing exponentially stronger and more unstable with each iteration. Five, ten, fifteen… by the time she was done, the nucleus of the power was damn near about to explode out of her Forge.

She set Aetheral Bonds to stabilize it as well. The last thing she needed here was self-destruction. And then… she recombined the physical form and the fused ability.

Allblast Hǫfuð!

All good Armaments had names, after all.

The cannon she’d created truly was massive: nearly twice the size of a car, it dwarfed her body as she pointed it up towards the sky, supporting its weight with the fifteen spare arms of Granba’s spine. Chaotic edges and sparking wires -- products of the hasty construction -- hung from the sides of the barrel, but that was fine. All that mattered was that this thing had the ability to point… and the ability to shoot.

Only one way to find out.

Gretchen Hail pulled the trigger, and the cannon spat fire.

The light it produced was so bright that she had to look away, but she knew straight away that she had struck her target. As time screeched into movement once more, there was a resounding bang -- the sound of the cannon’s gargantuan payload striking true. Ionir Yggdrassil’s body exploded, flaming scraps of leaf and bark and vine raining down onto the surrounding rooftops.

As she finally looked up at the scorched aurora she’d created, Gretchen let the cannon thud down onto the rooftop. It was useless to her now: the parts of the Armament that hadn’t straight up ruptured had instead sharpened into cruel glass. It was the same phenomenon as an Aether burn -- the power that had been exerted was too much for the container to handle.

Gretchen frowned.

It had only cost her some weapons from the junk pile, but still…

“I was hoping that would kill you,” she said.

The dragon had been incinerated, but she could see now that Ionir Yggdrassil persisted. It stood atop an overlooking skyscraper, looking down at her -- in a completely new form. The body was tall and thin and lithe, with a mane of autumn leaves surrounding its square-face and long sharp branches serving as claw-like fingers.

Gretchen narrowed her eyes as she looked up at it. It was much smaller than the dragon-form had been. Had Ionir fired this form out like a seed in the instant before the plasma struck? If it had the reflexes to react to a massive attack like that instantly, she’d need to continue with caution.

But caution was no problem, not for her. She hadn’t even scratched the surface of her collection yet.

“I like you better like this,” she called up to the Fell Beast, golden eyes gleaming in the smoke. “You almost look like a person.”