nhara-tia:

The time had come… the time for Manikin Prejudice’s return…

The War Engine had made it through the protective barrier designed to keep them safe, and with power beyond what the members of the agency could handle, it marched into the house. It was there the company regrouped, made a second attempt at stopping the primal from rejoining with it’s other at the heart of their mansion.

Prejudice had taken on the form of a seawolf named Rysswulf, someone the others seemed familiar with. They cautioned anyone who engaged him, and N’hara soon found out why: Chronostasis was not a power unique to him, for Celestial Opposition was the power to halt time that the highest levels of astromancy were able to perform… and the power to stop time displayed by the seawolf, by Prejudice, was beyond even that.

The seeker burned through to nearly his limit on how long he could stop time trying to stop the primal, trying to do anything that might keep their ward engine safe, and as his allies also freed themselves from the temporal trap, so too did Prejudice unleash his last resort. Bombs were sent floating all throughout the house, the amount of aether contained within catastrophic.

With the final second he had left, N’hara halted time and saw it, saw the ward engine that protected them all, attempt to draw the aether within the explosions into itself, and it succeeded with all but one. With time resumed, the final explosion tore through the front of the house, sending bits of metal, wood, and stone flying in all directions, the agency members safe from the blast on the streets outside.

But a heavy cost was paid… N’hara had always been able to see it, his aether-sight allowing him to see the barrier that protected them, kept them safe from the monsters and the villains that tried to strike at the one place they could be safe…

And now it was gone… the barrier was gone, the reports from the linkpearl told them all the same thing… the ward engine was no more…

Featuring @astralagents, and @lynto-amariyo