Sell you a Bridge chapter 356

July 13th 2016 Limitless Library, 9:00 PM EDT

"Yup."  I said matter of factly. "Definitely coming to kill us." I was staring  at the crying angel statues, of which there were now about seven. three  of them had definitely moved in the time I blinked. Not far, mind you,  because with my reflexes I blinked pretty fast, but they DID move. I  narrowed my eyes, opening my aura sight as I glared at the things, and  it took me a few minutes to process what I was getting enough to have a  rough idea of what they could do. Luckily there was twenty of us, so  some of us were able to play lookout at all times once we realized they  avoided moving when being looked at.

Artemis scoffed.  "Well that's comforting. As if the damned things weren't creepy enough."  Her eyes were fixed on one of them, trying her best not to blink.  "Don't suppose you have some way to...I don't know, STOP them from doing  that? I'd rather not have my throat ripped out by stone fingers in the  split second my eyes close during my next blink. Being able to move a  few FEET during the time it takes someone like you to blink is scary."

Wally  put a hand on her shoulder comfortingly. "Don't worry too much babe. I  blink pretty fast, same as Morgan, and you know we'll figure out some  way to deal with them. Hell, I bet we could totally fight them in terms  of speed between the two of us."

"No." I said firmly. "We  couldn't. Because they aren't using speed at all. They're temporally  unstable. Their auras are leaking time energy like a sieve. It looks  like they're literal portals to the past in solid form, at least while  we're looking at them. I'm also getting lots of hunger vibes. Pretty  sure they eat people and digest their timelines. No clue how something  like would affect us, but I don't think punching it would do much."

Mickey  sighed. "Ah. That was all I needed. Weeping Angels." Most of us looked  at him, though not me because I was staring down the statues, but the  others did. "Temporal Assassins. They shunt their victims back in time  and consume their temporal potential. They're timelocked when under  observation, hence the statues." He sounded impressed. "That was a  really close guess to how they work, haha. Pretty impressive."

"Thanks."  I said with a smile. "But I think it would be more impressive to have  some way to stop them. Don't suppose you know of a way to get rid of  them? Like...can't we just smash the rock?" Despite the powerful auras I  was seeing, they WERE still just statues. I could break statues.

He  shook his head, something easily caught in my peripheral vision because  of his big ass ears. "No. The statues aren't the angels. They're more  like...footprints. Impressions they leave. When you destroy the statue  the footprint is destroyed, which makes them unobserved, and a new one  pops up nearby. Like a cicada shedding its skin."

I  grimaced at that. "Zee, you did some training with Aerith in time magic,  and you have a pretty thorough basis in void magic even if it's not as  deep as mine. Any ideas on how to handle this based on what Mickey  said?" The angels DID touch the void, but they did it in an asymmetrical  way I hadn't seen before. I'd played with plenty of dimensions, but  most of my work with the void was in the first three and a few of the  higher planes. Fourth dimensional shenanigans didn't have much to do  with the kind of constructs I'd been working on creating.

Zee  made an affirmative sound and pulled Mickey, John, Sindella, and Jim  aside, starting to consult with them as I held the things at bay. I  chimed in from where I was standing now and then, tossing out  suggestions based on my knowledge of the void, but the temporal stuff  was a bit over my head in a few places, and only Mickey, Zee, and  surprisingly Jim seemed to be able to follow it.

"Alright."  Said Zee stepping up beside me. "We THINK we have a solution. I've  gotten decent enough at Haste to have a theoretical grasp on the Stop  spell. I've even been playing around with it a bit in my spare time. If  we can use that and then you can open a portal, it should keep them in  the lock until after they pass through, binding the temporal anomaly to  the statue for a short period of time. Once they're gone they won't be  able to get back. They move in time rather than space and considering  where we are..."

I nodded. "Sounds good. The question is  how long can your stop spell hold them. If it isn't long this might be  tight. My void knowledge and bloodline have massively improved my short  range teleportation, and I can do long range easy enough too. But long  range I need to jump to places I've BEEN before, and I doubt we want to  send a bunch of time eating monsters to my mom's penthouse."

There  was the Dark Multiverse, but I wanted to avoid tossing a bunch of  temporal super monsters to Barbatos if possible. The same reason I  didn't want Rana using the corridors on them. He was enough of a threat  without access to the angels. Artemis was the one who spoke up this  time. "I mean, we know one place you could send them." I made an  inquiring sound, resisting the urge to shoot her a quizzical look. "The  bug mound on New Genesis. Those things were rabid assholes. Plus that  place is stupid far from anywhere decent if you don't have New Gods  transporting you."

That...that was a really good idea. "I  could manage a portal to the bug mound." I said contemplatively.  "Wouldn't be much harder than anywhere else at the level I'm at now.  Being a god, and a fairly strong one at this point, access to the Sphere  is a given, and with my mastery of the void I don't need anything like  the Motherbox as a crutch." I paused. "No offense Drea." I said  awkwardly.

My goddess just giggled. "None taken. I'm not  thing but thrilled at your growth in power. The stronger you are the  safer you are. I want you to make it through this. I want all of us to  make it through this. How long will it take to make the portals though?  Since the Sphere is such a pain to access?"

I just  shrugged. "Not too long. The void here is...weird. Unstable in a way  that's hard to describe. You would expect that to make transport harder  but from what I was able to gather LEAVING here will be easy. Coming  back would be a bitch and a half though." I nodded to Zee, who closed  her eyes, accessing her Outer Body trance to attempt the Stop spell in  peak condition. She didn't use it for physical stuff like I did, but it  made her speed of learning new spells absolutely monstrous combined with  her high intelligence stat.

I watched her aura with  interest, passing off angel staring duty to Wally and Artemis for a bit  because my fucking eyes were starting to burn. I was curious if I could  see what was going on in her head, and to my amazement I found that if I  tracked it painstakingly, I could catch flashes of activity in her  aura, like compressed actions demonstrated at high speed. After a few  minutes, she opened her eyes, nodding to me with a grin. "Alright, that  should do it?"

Unlike me, who had zero chops with time  magic, Zee could haste HERSELF, which meant she was able to use my  little training montage trick any time she wanted. With a long breath I  nodded to her then turned to the statues. Focusing on the nearest one of  the bastards I pinned my gaze at its feet. Using the same mastery of  void magic I used for void step, focused through the tear in the world  that was my Hole bloodline, I was able to make a portal into the bug  mound.

I didn't actually drop the statue through it, just  wove the Hole into the void beneath it in preparation. Once ninety  percent of the work was done, I grunted. "Go." To Zee, letting her know  it was time for her part of the show.

Zee called her  keyblade with a flash, and without and hesitation barked STOP. At the  statue. A complex symbol diagram superimposed itself on the aura over  the angel, and I saw the temporal aspects of its power sort  of...implode, as the stop spell hamstrung the walking time portal and  bound it into its stone shell.

Without blinking I pushed  the Hole to completion, shifting it into the regular three dimensions  and creating a functioning portal which the angel dropped through  soundlessly. I saw the auras of the others shift slightly, even as stone  they were aware, even if they were also trapped. I grinned because they  were under surveillance and couldn't move an inch. Zee hit another with  Stop and I dropped it through, then a third, then a fourth.

We  were about to move onto the fifth when something...unfortunate  happened. The fucking LIGHTS started to flicker. This place was huge,  but the lights that kept everything visible were being emitted by blue  crystal hands holding orbs of illumination, each one extending from the  end of one of the bookcases. As the ones closest to us flickered, the  three remaining angels began to flash from one spot to the next, drawing  closer and closer.

Cursing,  I used void step to maneuver John and Namine out of the way from where  they stood closest to the angels. I actually felt one of them lay a hand  on me, but between my divinity and my armor the temporal magic just  sparked off my arm, albeit leaving behind a numbness that caused my hand  to cramp up into a claw for a second.

I  returned the attack with one of my own, snarling as Thanatos lashed out  through the invisible form of the angel. I couldn't see, but I  channeled all the speed I could through my armor, and coated the  keyblade in a whirling maelstrom of clashing void energy.

The  space around the keyblade shattered and fragmented in a storm of  tearing dimensions. I wouldn't have been able to do that in a normal  place, but the space here was so unstable all I needed to do was smash  it up a little to create the miniature void storm around my blade. The  death energy inside Thanatos howled in rage and hate as it poured into  the storm literally ripping a hole through the temporal energy.

The  flickering lights stopped, and the three angels were revealed again.  This time though, there was a marked difference. Two of them had their  backs turned and were dozens of feet away. One was lying prone on the  ground, it's misshapen face twisted in an expression of horror and  despair as it clutched stone intestines where they spilled out from its  eviscerated torso.

"Watch  those two." I ordered. "I need to check on this one and I can't have  you all looking at it. Don't worry, even if it can still move it won't  be stupid enough to attack." Everyone looked up at the fleeing angels. I  stared down at the one on the ground, then, very deliberately, blinked.  When I opened my eyes I found...nothing. Nothing had changed. The angel  was lying their, horrified, and based on its aura very much dead.  "Well." I said in surprise. "Guess that's one down. On to the other  two." Zee and I teamed up to dispose of the other two in the bug mound,  and they didn't fight, then we all stepped over the stone corpse of the  Temporal Assassin and continued on our way.