Thief of Time

“Stop staring at that Trading Board already and hand it back to me,” Schwarz complained.

Dia wanted to dig her ears at those words, but she was a dignified princess after all. Therefore, she simply settled on patting her ears gently, before looking up at the evening sky. It would do for her to be poised, elegant and graceful.

Nothing more, nothing less.

“This might be the last time I see my father’s writing, so no,” Risti replied, hugging the Trading Board. “Besides, there’s nothing else sensitive on it, so don’t be such a jerk.”

“This daddy’s girl…” Schwarz shook his head. “It’s New Moon’s Eve already! We’re only a few hours away from New Moon itself! If you keep staring at that thing, you won’t be able to react properly! We’re here to help Dia deal with the Distortion — you do know that, right?”

Risti made a few sad noises, before putting the Trading Board into her clothes. “I’ll stop looking at it.”

“But you’re going to hang on to it?” Schwarz rubbed his head. “Come on. You have got to be kidding me…”

“Come now, Schwarz.” Farah stepped into the small dispute. “You two should share a drink and all, rather than squabbling over petty issues like this. It’s not like you have anything important on your Trading Board, right?”

“Well…” Schwarz sighed. “Fine. Just don’t stare at it too much. That Distortion is going to arrive in the next fifteen minutes or so, you know. We’re already supposed to be moving out too.”

“I wonder what happened,” Risti replied. “No one is giving us our marching orders.”

Dia nodded, before leaping up. Her cloak fluttered as she landed on the house made out of barriers, and she scanned the area. The temporary holding area for the people of Licencia was still as festive as ever, with performers and citizens alike dancing and putting on shows to amuse others. The sizzling of meat, the bubbling of soup, the pitterpat of Moonlit children playing with human kids…

All this was but a transient peace, however.

High above, she could already see the Moonlit troops taking up formation, while massive circles that were called sigils drifted above the city, ready to raze it at any given moment. Dia and the others had spent the past few days pumping mana into a machine, producing weapons that were now turned on Licencia.

Her senses tingled, and Dia turned to the horizon.

“New Moon,” Dia whispered.

Lightning sundered the sky as clouds began to form from nowhere. Moaning winds picked up, and a small, eerie chill caressed Dia’s face as the sky above Licencia began to physically twist. A small purple orb emerged from the twisted skies above Licencia, clinging onto the warped space like a dewdrop on a blade of grass in the early morning.

Her mind buzzed as she took in that purple sphere. Dia attempted to call out once, but her mouth and her throat had seized up, completely unwilling to move at all.

The Distortion that had forced her brother to his death was manifesting.

A single heartbeat echoed in her ears, and the purple sphere fell from the skies. As it closed in on Licencia, the purple sphere expanded rapidly, and before Dia could so much as blink, the world around her changed.

Gigantic structures filled the sky, each a match for the buildings that she had witnessed in the Celestia Ruins. Balls of fire streaked across the purple sky, generating huge spheres of light where they landed, throwing up dirt and dust that shrouded the heavens from view. The world shuddered over and over again, before something seemed to grip her spine.

A voice whispered in her head, and she wheeled around just in time to see a gigantic ball of fire bear down on her. Stars exploded in her vision a moment later, and her body smashed through a bunch of sandy structures that had risen up all around her at some point in time.

“Ugh.” Dia got up, before examining herself. “Hmm?”

That ball of fire wasn’t all that different from someone hurling a building at her, but she was, save for some bruises, not that hurt. Her pride felt more hurt than anything as she looked at the trail of destruction that had been left in the wake of that blow.

“The effect of Salvation Star, right?” Dia muttered to herself. “The skill owner has drastically increased resistance against all direct attacks and negative effects created by alien beings. The skill owner is nearly impervious against all direct attacks and negative effects created by the Moons, the Dark, the Coloured Gods and entities of the cycle. Now…which does a Distortion fall into?”

Letting out a small sigh, she looked around the place properly. The initial shower of fiery balls of doom had ended, and other than the sky-scraping structures that had been standing ten seconds ago, there were also smaller structures all around the place…or rather, the ruined city.

“This Distortion…came from a place outside of our world?” Dia muttered to herself, before leaping upwards. She landed on a crumbling building, and then used that as a foothold to make her way towards the centre…or what she thought was the centre, anyway. She could sense something calling out to her over in a particular direction…and Dia was reasonably certain that the summons was issued by the heart of this Distortion.

Kicking off the building, Dia bounded from point to point, her eyes scanning the area all around her. Now that she had an advantageous viewpoint, she could see hundreds and thousands of dark-red spheres. Each of them was translucent, and if she took a closer look at them—

Dia came to a halt as she realised what those spheres contained.

Dropping down next to the sphere, Dia narrowed her eyes and looked at the person frozen within. There was actually someone in the sphere, and if she didn’t get it wrong, that someone was probably one of the people of Licencia, or a Moonlit soldier…

“Anyone who is knocked unconscious by that ball of fire will turn into this.” Dia paused, and then mulled over the words that had left her lips on their own. She didn’t know why, but she had a hunch that this was the correct answer.

“And there’s probably a time limit too…”

Shaking her head, she hurtled towards the city centre. Her understanding of Distortions came from the knowledge that the divinities had compiled so far. The eruption of a Distortion — that purple sphere — would engulf anyone caught in it. These people would typically be rendered unconscious and turned into a fuel of sorts for the budding core of this Distortion, which would then eventually hatch into something.

The more people this Distortion ate, the stronger the eventual result. The only way to deal with a Distortion was to enter it after its initial expansion and take it down before it could hatch.

Either that, or be like her, who had somehow resisted the incapacitation of everyone else and was making her way to the core of the Distortion. However, this did explain why the Distortion would hatch so swiftly — since it engulfed virtually the entire city, there were hundreds and thousands of lives that could be absorbed…

The main problem lay in the size of this Distortion, in other words.

Why did it expand to such an extent, when small little Distortions were the norm?

Peeling her eyes away from the unmoving, frozen person, Dia stifled the little terror in her heart and hurtled towards the city centre. If she didn’t do anything, everyone would die with her.

“…In that vision of my brother, did he see me perish here back then?” Dia muttered, pumping more mana into her legs. The surroundings flashed past her as she leapt up high once more. Kicking away from a platform of mana she had generated, she created, landed and kicked off from more platforms of mana and shot towards the city centre.

She could feel a faint pain as she surged towards the city centre. The air seemed to bite away at her directly, as if it carried some sort of poison, and the closer she got, the greater the agony.

Biting her lips, she closed in on the small circle of light, and in that instant, a swath of memories swamped her mind.

Streaks of red light falling from the skies.

Gigantic rifts that swallowed people where they stood.

A little girl, huddling against a corner as a falling star destroyed the rest of her house.

And her mother, who had pushed her into that corner right before her mother perished.

The rush of memories faded, and Dia found herself standing before a little girl, who was huddled over.

Red hair, straggly and lifeless, fell all around the little child’s face as she gazed at the corpse in silence. Tears stained her cheeks as she squatted next to a crumbly wall, her faint breathing ragged and painful. A corpse, charred and burned, lay next to the little girl.

“…What am I supposed to do?” Dia whispered to herself. Common sense dictated that she should pick up the sword and behead the little girl with it, but…

The little toddler that was on her knees and crying was not someone she could bring herself to kill easily.

This girl was the source of the Distortion. The core. If she killed it, the chances that everything would end was high. Everyone here, in this nightmare of a little girl’s making, would be saved.

All she needed to do was to kill this little girl. For all Dia knew, this girl could have been already dead, and—

“…No. That’s not wise,” Dia muttered. “Hey. How did you get here?”

The little girl, just around the size of a Moonlit toddler, looked at her tearfully, and then crawled towards the corpse. She hugged the corpse once, and then looked at Dia again.

“What do you want me to do? I don’t know how to save her—”

Dia fell silent as she caught sight of a ring on her hands. It was her storage ring, and there were lots of things inside, like skillstrips and skillsticks. Each of them was worth a small fortune, but…

“You’re paying me for this once you get out,” Dia muttered, before turning her mind to her storage ring. A bunch of skillstrips and skillsticks fell out a moment later, and Dia grabbed all of them in one hand. “This is as much as I can do. If it doesn’t work, I’m sorry.”

The various skill media in her hands shattered a moment later.