Power of Yore 1: Spell Breaker

Prologue 2

Vipli was just getting ready to jump in when things changed. In the old timeline, Enith only survived because of the enforcer who was hiding and decided to step in when the young girl's hair had started to turn white.

This time her hair was still black when the process started to turn on its caster. It was also the reason the young girl knew there was someone watching all this from the shadows. She wanted to fight, but the person in the ball had told her she couldn't win, only buy time.

Her little eyes roved the darkness at the entrance of the cave until she saw confirmation of the voice's words.

"Help...me..." she ground out right before the darkness consumed her.

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Vipli was paralysed for an instance. For a too long instance, wondering what in the afterlife she'd just walked into.

"Help you?!" the old woman cackled. "No one can help you, child. You are estranged from your family. You have no friends in the village. It will take at least two months for people to notice you've gone missing. That's how much thought I put into this plan."

The little girl, clearly just barely able to understand even after her eyes started to loll like those of a beast whose neck had been cut, whimpered. Vipli decided she'd heard and seen enough.

"So this is the secret to your longevity, witch?" Vipli asked even as she stepped into the light.

"Ahh!" the witch lost concentration, the ritual lost cohesion. "An enforcer?! Look what you made me do. I have to start over now. Why don't you be a good little doggie and get."

The witch used her hands in a shooing gesture, dismissing Vipli as nothing more than a nuisance.

"It should have been obvious from the beginning. No nonevolved human could live as long as you. Unless they were taking part in such sacrilegious acts, of course."

"You call it sacrilege, we call it survival. None of this would be necessary if you dogs of the society shared with the rest of us your enlightenment. Instead you horde your knowledge, and dare to make rules for the rest of us." She spat in Vipli's direction.

"I've found my own way to immortality! I used my own knowledge, my own resources to research this. To combine blood magic and time magic to come up with something beautiful, me. This world still needs my knowledge—"

"Did you say you found an application for time magic?" Vipli sounded impressed.

"Yes, the ever elusive time. I will give you my knowledge if you let me finish my ritual. What do you say?"

"I would have said yes, if it wasn't detestable what you are doing. Besides, it's obvious now that I think about it. You fed the girl elixirs brewed with your own mana for over three years. You wanted to do it for a lot longer, to wait for her mana capacity to explode before you consumed her essence.

"And since your mana will be very similar, you're hoping to confuse your body into thinking her life force is yours. Hence you'll steal her time, perhaps even peer into her future. A rather crude application of time, if I say so myself. I suppose you came up with it after failing to use the familiar bonding rituals."

"That is because you don't understand, stupid girl! Confusing my body? What the hell is that?! That is just guess work and you know it! I use time magic to stabilise everything, to revert my body into its appearance when my life force was that strong—"

"Yeah. On second thought, I'm really not interested in your story. How's about I just kill you and get out of here."

"Insolent pu—" the rest of what she was about to say was cut short with a cry.