Dragon Gods Reign

[Dragon peaks]

Standing inside the room they had been spending most of their time at the dragon peaks in, Darganth held Jennia's hand as she focused on implementing what he had taught her throughout the month and a bit since they returned from their meeting with Crelvic and Caedmon. For that, she was cycling mana through her body and connecting it as much with the time elements energies as she could.

At first, this led to limited results, with the dark azure glow that flickered to life around her vanishing mere fractions of a second after it appeared. But unlike how it was during the over a dozen previous attempts, each flicker lasted for a perceivable amount longer.

As such, when Jennia noticed this just as she was starting to feel frustrated again just like she had during her last tries, she managed to overcome it.

Slowly getting closer to her goal over the following minute, Jennia and Darganth were soon both completely obscured by a curtain of visible time energy. As it streamed past them, this energy took a form similar to a cocoon, with the individual strands of energy flow shifting around among each other as they moved from the point where they split apart toward the exact opposite side of this structure where they met once again.

Finally, once this state had remained fully stabilized for a few seconds, these strands snapped together like rubber bands. With it, the individual strands practically fused together, pressing together so tightly that the result looked like a single stream of time energy from the outside despite still consisting of thousands of separate strands of it.

Simultaneously, Darganth and Jennia broke through the surface of the azure green river of energy they had found themselves in. And unlike how it was in the real world, this river didn't just consist of an uncountable number of nearly fused strands but was one singular stream of time energy.

Furthermore, while this stream of energy looked like a fast-flowing river, its consistency was a strange mix of liquid and gaseous.

As it crashed into Darganth and Jennia and parted around them it felt like a liquid, though even without them pushing against the stream it didn't push them downstream one bit. Instead, it scattered to the sides and flowed past them without any disturbance on the surface, behaving closely to how a gas would while still giving the feeling of a liquid pressing against them.

Additionally, when they moved their arms or other limbs sideways the energy offered no resistance, always flowing perfectly around the limb without any disturbance on the surface. Not even the slight pressure from all sides that was reminiscent of being submerged in water changed one bit when they moved, making it seem as if the energy directly around them was moving with every motion they made.

Remaining like that for a few seconds as he experienced the foreign feeling of being in the time-stream without the full resistance to its energies he enjoyed before his death, Darganth took his time growing accustomed to it.

Rising out of the water once he did, he hovered about a meter above the surface of the time stream and turned his gaze to look downstream.

There, a river so long that it became imperceptible to Darganth's eyes despite its massive width stretched down to the horizon. Had he not known that it had to have an end in the distance, one that coincided with the birth of the universe of Ikrus, he might have even assumed it to be infinite.

Along its path, this stream often widened or narrowed, with its edges forming smooth curves whenever it did. And though some of these changes in width were massive, even the smallest areas were still so wide that Darganth wouldn't be able to see from one side to the other.

Basking in the familiar sight for a few seconds, Darganth soon turned around toward an even more imposing sight.

Upstream of where they found themselves, the river only stretched for a handful of meters before thousands of separate strands of energy. Each one looked the same as the ones that Jennia had brought into the physical world, only manifold larger.

Branching off and splitting again and again, these initial strands rapidly expanded to form a branching tree that stretched up and down for the entire width of the time stream. These branches swayed wildly among each other as the streams of energy they were made of rushed toward the river.

Watching the spectacle for some time, Darganth was brought out of his thoughts when he sensed Jennia following after him and rising out of the stream of energy.

“What was that, I've never felt such an irritating sensation before.” Jennia complained, shuddering as she rose to hover by his side.

“Contact with elemental energies tends to be like that, even if they are as diluted as here at the surface. And in the case of time energy, we still get off easily thanks to the resistance our innate affinity for it grants us. A human mage that reached the mythical rank as recently as you would've risked serious injuries if he stayed in it as long as you did.” Darganth said.

This information shocked Jennia. Abruptly turning her head toward Darganth, she stared at him with wide eyes that demanded a clarification.

“I said a human would've risked injuries, as long as we don't move too far downstream, upstream, or dive too deep we could stay in there endlessly. In fact, even a newborn drake whose innate element is time could, though it would hurt a lot.”

“I'm worried when even you consider it a lot of pain as I fear that just because I can freely endure being here, that doesn't mean I won't ever experience it.” Jennia said with a grimace.

“You're right. The further one travels in either direction the stronger the pressure one has to endure becomes. And while the rate at which it does varies from universe to universe, unless the time stream ends before that there will always be a point at which even I before my death wouldn't be able to endure it anymore.”

Though expected, Darganth answer still made Jennia frown. Pain might not be foreign to her or even necessarily a good argument against something, but her contact with the time-stream had been accompanied by an indescribable feeling of discomfort that made her hesitant to experience a worse form of it, especially when even Darganth considers extremely painful.

Noticing her expression, Darganth brought an arm around her shoulder to comfort her.

“Just go at your pace then it won't be too bad.” He reassured her.

“I hope so. But for now, it doesn't matter anyways as what I'm seeing from here is already impressive enough that trips to the past can wait.”

As she spoke, Jennia finally turned more than a fleeting glance to the massive network of time strands before them.

“So this is every possible future that might await us.” She said amazed.

“Well, just nearly every event that might happen in this universe for all of eternity. Or until its destruction, should it face an assured one somewhere down the line.” Darganth said.

“Yes, these futures don't include the possibility of beings arriving from outside this universe. But I doubt Irsyr would leave them be long enough that they can leave even the slightest impact..” Jennia said, agreeing with Darganth's small correction.

“Probably, but it's good to always keep the possibility in mind. Otherwise it could lead to nasty surprises when relying too much on future knowledge.” Darganth said.

Keeping his warning in the back of her head, Jennia reached out with her magic. Focusing it on the strands of the future, she tried her hand at determining the scenario that would come to pass.

Immediately, she scanned through the strands of the time stream before her. As she did, the spell and her subconsciousness worked together to calculate the possibility of each path through a variety of methods and based on countless different variables before projecting what the resulting future looked like into Jennia's mind only a fraction of a second later.

At the same time, the spell automatically stopped searching through all other branches and instead repeated the same process with every possibility that slit from this determined future.

Through this constantly repeating cycle, Jennia saw weeks more into the future every few seconds. And though she knew that it was unlikely that her calculations were correct this far away, she watched every second of it with interest.

As she was looking over a year into the future, she saw something that made her smile for a moment. Inspired by what she saw, she quickly got multiple ideas from it that she planned to test later.

Immediately, this led to an abrupt change in the paths ahead of them. During it, thousands of branches vanished while new ones rapidly formed. And while this change was minuscule in comparison to the total number of paths, the shift in their probabilities was even more pronounced.

Noticing this change, Jennia sighed before ending her spell. With the probabilities no longer the same as when she calculated this future, it was even more unlikely that what she saw would come to pass so she saw no sense in following that future any further.

“Yeah, other time mages share the top spot for the most annoying enemies for time mages.” Darganth said.

Slightly frustrated, Jennia nodded in agreement with him as such precognition calculations couldn't include the results of another being looking at the future. The only exception to this were ascendents, and even then this only worked on those who haven't yet ascended.

Together with the inability of mortal time mages to calculate the probabilities of an ascendent taking a certain action, it made them the second and last of the common counters to the precognition ability of time mages.

“Well, for now, I would anyways advise you to mainly use your future sight mainly to glimpse a few seconds ahead in a fight. Looking further into the future is still unreliable for you so I wouldn't spend time trying to learn how to best prepare for it if it is countered, at least not right now.” Darganth said.

“Neandra mentioned that she doesn't know of any powerful time mages among either beastmen or humans, so for now that really seems unnecessary. But once we dealt with everything here I'm definitely going to spend some time on it.” Jennia said.

“We won't lack time on our hands by then, so take as long as you need.” Darganth said.

Spending a few more minutes showing Jennia a few more things about the time-stream, Darganth and her soon returned back to the physical realm to join the others in their preparations for the emperor meeting.