Aqua slowly lifted Sheira's unconscious body and carried her to a nearby table. Her body was bruised from heavy restraints, and many puncture wounds were also visible as points of blood extraction.
The dark haze was thick enough to cut with a knife; Sheira's entire body practically oozed it.
The sheer thickness of the haze dwarfed Fang's own by orders of magnitude. Aqua now knew that this haze was produced by fragments of time.
She couldn't afford to dally; she needed to take the fragment before Sheira's mind was fully taken.
With a deep breath, she placed her hands on Sheira's body. Aqua's blazing power surged through the elven princess, searching for a thread to unravel the fragment of time.
And yet she could not find it. The fragment was so entangled in Sheira's mind that she couldn't even begin to search.
With an exhale, she looked over at Sheira once again. I need to make a small cut.
Aqua placed her hands back onto the princess, her power now channeling more and more destructive power, and yet precise enough to rival a surgical scalpel.
She needed to be careful; one wrong cut would damage Sheira's mind permanently.
Alas, before she could even attempt to make an incision, a haze coalesced. Sheira's body absorbed the miasma fully before she awoke.
With a powerful kick, she knocked Aqua through the wall, carving a large hole through the stone and sending the fiery angel tumbling across the floor.
"It's too late, goddess. Inquisitors know about you. And I am immortal. There is no escape. You can kill me, and yet I will return!" Sheira's voice was tinged with mockery, and her bruised body rapidly healed as power grew within her.
"I know I cannot kill you, but what will you do now? Your friend is no more, do you have it in your heart to kill her?" Rolan said through Sheira's mouth, his mockery trying to cut into Aqua.
Aqua slowly rose as the dust settled around her, her form not even scratched from her journey through the solid surface of a wall.
"I won't need to do anything... Fool!" Aqua shouted before slowly approaching, her stride slow and steady.
"Have you not noticed another influence in the body of Sheira?" she said mockingly, hoping to rile up the body snatcher.
Rolan stopped for a moment, realization hitting him like a truck. Sheira's mind wasn't the only obstacle to his control of the holy vessel.
No, there was something more, a primal heat that nested within Sheira's very body and soul.
Something that even Rolan couldn't take over, and yet the heat was growing with each moment.
"The moment you took over her body, she was considered dead. And I have placed a small blessing on the princess, you see." Aqua said as she approached. Sheira's body was slowly encased within the phoenix egg, yet still moving and breathing.
"If she died, she would be reborn. And you? You are considered a foreign body."
Step after step, Aqua approached now immobile Rolan. Sheira was indeed considered dead to the conditions of her spells, allowing her to not have to even lift a hand to hurt the princess.
"No, you will not eject me," Rolan howled as he attempted to struggle against the egg, and yet it was unbreakable. In a mere three hours, Rolan would be eradicated, leaving resurrected Sheira.
"You are too dangerous. I do not know your techniques. I will make sure you and that fragment are out of Sheira soon!" Aqua warned as she placed her hands on the newly created phoenix egg.
Rolan was slippery. His true mind and soul were not inside the vessels he controlled. What remained in them was more like a seed.
Aqua knew that this man could take control of any number of slaves, or who knows how many entities in this city alone had a fragment of time.
He could take control of them, no matter how small, yet why was such a massive fragment needed for Sheira?
Sheira was, by all means, weaker mentally than Laura, had no physical strength like Golden Fang, and wasn't chained to the divine either.
In all senses, it was a waste to use such a massive fragment on Sheira alone; there must have been another reason than mere body snatching to use it on the elven princess.
That did not matter at the current time. If Aqua wanted to get rid of this nuisance, she needed to find Rolan's real body and consume him; otherwise, she would have to keep burning innocent victims.
I'm on a timer. I will have to get Sheira's egg out of here before I have to burn down the entire city. Aqua muttered to herself as she took a long look over the newly formed phoenix egg. Rolan's will was being ejected from Sheira as she was encased within the primal flame of the phoenix.
It was only a matter of time before Inquisitors caught wind of her, and if they were as strong as Rolan's own power suggested, then the city would be destroyed.
And yet she did not care, so what if a city full of the most sinful of humans burned; it wasn't like she spared larger cities in the past.
Aqua placed her hands back on the egg as she channeled her power; she wouldn't let Rolan take over again. And for that purpose, she needed to get the fragment out.
With a gentle touch, the egg pulsed with power. She would make a precise cut in the threads of Sheira's mind, letting her more easily unravel the fragment.
She was transported into the mindscape, a world so chaotic that she found herself unable to know what was up and down, what was left and right. Time flowed backward before snapping forward again.
Storms seemed to be forming constantly before dissipating and beginning that cycle anew.
What looked like a city replaced the sky, and Aqua found herself walking on the vast blue landscape that was supposed to be the sky and yet was as solid as rock.
As a moment passed, Aqua regained her senses as she looked around, her confusion evident, and yet there was only one place to go, the city that loomed over this reversed world.
Aqua unfurled her wings as she flew at high speeds toward the city in the sky.
No matter how far she flew, the city remained just beyond reach.
***
"I have never seen a mindscape this chaotic. Time seems to be in a loop," Aqua said as she flew upward, resisting the fragment's attempt to trap her within a loop with her own Authority.
The fragment must be wreaking havoc in Sheira's mind for it to be this chaotic... Aqua sighed, stopping her ascent.
Storms around Aqua kept forming and dissipating moments later. The entire mindscape was stuck in a time loop, and space was distorted to an almost impossible degree.
Such a mindscape was unheard of before; they always had oddities depending on the person, and yet this one was a mess in every sense of the word.
Just as Aqua began trying to find a solution, the mindscape changed again; what once was a city sky was now underneath her, and the blue sky-like ground was now above her, finally giving normalcy to this world.
And yet, storms that kept forming and disappearing never ceased; time was still a mess in this place.
If a weaker entity had dared enter this place, they would have been torn asunder by raw Temporal storms that appeared for mere moments.
Fortunately for Aqua, she wasn't defenseless against temporal storms; her Authority was certainly enough to offset the effects of a large fragment of time. Not only were the storms harmless breezes to her, but she was able to easily track the source.
Aqua landed gently onto the ground of what looked like an ancient elven city, buildings in a constant state of crumbling before repairing themselves, and a castle in the distance covered by a storm that, unlike others, did not dissipate.
"Bingo!" Aqua shouted as her eyes locked onto the castle. She did not know how long she had before the world would flip again, and with great speed, she rushed toward the shrouded castle.
The closer she got to the shrouded castle, the storm grew more powerful, thicker, and more chaotic.
What's more, creatures started to appear, beings made of storms themselves, they looked like tornadoes, and yet Aqua could see their malice seeping through their very being. They were a result of this storm, and they kept coming. In mere moments, Aqua was surrounded by Temporal Storm Elementals.
Their forms were unstable, and yet the time loop that gripped this mindscape kept them from fizzling out.
Flames gathered around her, and yet each spark would destroy countless elementals; they would still return a mere moment later, not even black fire was enough.
She had no choice. These elementals could only be defeated by using the Authority of Time.
With a deep breath, she focused, her hands closing together as a bronze clock appeared behind her, its ticking speeding up with each move of her hand.
While her normal flames would not work, the time-based attack would certainly do the trick against Temporal Storm Elementals.
As the clock made its final revolution, it stopped at Noon, with a shout, Aqua cast [Altered Time- Reversal].
A spell with a variety of uses, she would be able to make it so that the elementals never formed, as long as her Authority was higher than the shard that caused the storm itself.
A bronze shimmer washed over the entire city, temporarily breaking the loop as her Authority of Time caused all temporal elementals to dissipate.
"Thank goodness that worked. Time elementals are always tricky to deal with, even if they are merely an annoyance." Aqua let out a pleased sigh as she continued dashing toward the shrouded castle.
With the use of her Authority of Time, she was able to gain a moment outside the time loop, causing storms that until now had dissipated to fully form, shrouding the entire mindscape in a great temporal storm.
Aqua regretted using her Authority of Time the moment the entire mindscape was shrouded. "That is not good at all..."
She needed to deal with the source as fast as possible. While the loop was broken at the moment, the shard would most certainly cause it once again.
Elementals that she made disappear would not return, but it did not fix the issue of the storm; no matter how many times she would clear the skies, they would darken.
With a heavy heart, she cast another time spell. [Altered Time-Stop].
These storms might not have posed any threat to Aqua, but a raging storm would wreak havoc on Sheira's mind.
While Fang's fragment was easy to extract, it wasn't as embedded as this one. Aqua had to enter the mindscape of Sheira to even have a chance of precise extraction.
"How did Rolan even manage this...?" Aqua muttered to herself. It would have been impossible to do something like this in her old world; the Supreme Deity was far too paranoid of the Authority of Time.
The only thing that made sense was that it was another part of the Red Dawn's unique techniques.
Supreme Deity, despite his overwhelming pride, was smart not to dabble with time, and any meddling would have been punished severely.
And yet these mortals not only researched it, but they also made tools to control people using it. Aqua was not sure if she should be impressed or appalled at their hubris.
Even she avoided using [Altered Time] unless necessary, and these people used fragments of time to merely make slaves and vessels.
Perhaps the only saving grace was that the effect existed only inside the mindscape; time would still be dangerous, and yet it would be isolated inside that mindscape.
She unfurled her wings and rushed toward the castle once again, [Altered Time-Stop] holding the storm in place. With the mindscape frozen around her, the castle was finally in sight.
Buildings hung suspended in their state of collapse, the storms quieted, and the mindscape no longer flipped.
It pleased her that her Authority was enough to wrest control from the shard; she was worried, and yet it seemed the shard wasn't strong enough to resist her.
It took her a mere moment to reach the castle, its thick storm suspended in time as the rest of the mindscape was.
With a soft step, Aqua landed in front of the entrance of the castle. While the city seemed trapped in a constant state of crumbling and repairing itself, the castle remained in perfect condition, untouched by the storm.
"So this is the Eye of the Storm, I reckon. Sheira's mind is trapped together with the fragment itself." Aqua looked around as she reached a great gate. With a gentle push, the wood shattered, letting her access the inner halls.
Aqua nodded and stepped deeper into Sheira's sanctuary.
She needed to find Sheira's avatar.
Before her mind shattered.