The Great Core's Paradox

The thought-light flickered, revealing what I wished to know.

Core Skill: [Chrono Fire].

Description: The Flame That Would Consume Time Itself.

Some of it, anyway. Just as it had with [The Endless Cycle], the thought-light was less forthcoming than it usually was - as if the Skills that came with consuming a Core were something that couldn’t quite be described in a simple flash of thought-light, something wholly different from the traits and titles that could be earned with relative ease.

And if [The Endless Cycle] was anything to go by, they were.

Though the traits and titles that I had earned recently had allowed me to grow far more powerful than I used to be, none of them approached the ability to defeat death itself. None even came close.

I had hopes that [Chrono Fire], despite having come from consuming a lesser Core, would be similar - somewhere in that middle ground between my other traits or skills and the Greater ability that was [The Endless Cycle].

Even now, I could feel a new well of power within myself, something that wholly belonged to the new ability that I had gained. Whereas [The Endless Cycle] made itself obvious, even now causing my shed scale-flesh to glow with the wondrous light of the Great Core, the power that linked itself to [Chrono Fire] was something more hidden - tucked away somewhere deep within my scale-flesh.

But still, I could feel it. Waiting. Ready to be used.

Eager.

Around me, the fire-water-that-was had already cooled itself, transforming into smooth stone. Just as I had thought, it had been the creation of the lesser Core’s field, and while its disappearance didn’t cause the fire-water to vanish entirely, it cooled it in a moment’s notice.

Plunging me into darkness, barring the light of my shed scale-flesh. Far above me, the way out had already closed, the fire-water already sealed before the Core found its defeat between my jaws.

Leaving me alone with the bad-thing that dwelled in its depths.

I could hear it thrash against the stone somewhere further along, bashing its scale-flesh against its surface. The stone, brittle and cooled more quickly than was natural, began to shatter under the strain of its touch.

For a moment, I waited.

I curled inwards, there atop the remnants of the lesser Core’s pedestal, and bit down upon my tail. My scale-flesh itched as each little wound and scrape began to heal, as the singes and burns began to give way to something whole.

I waited.

In the end, with the Great Core’s power directly beside me, I had all of the time in the world.

More than enough to see what my enemy chose to do.

While I waited, listening to the discordant sounds of cracking stone somewhere below me, I turned my attention inwards. I twisted and pulled at the font of power that had come with [Chrono Fire]. It didn’t move, resisting my efforts.

Below me, stone continued to crack and shatter as the bad-thing desperately tried to turn itself back around.

It knew that something had gone wrong - and, just like I would have been, it was desperate to return to the Core that had created it.

I hid myself behind the pedestal of the lesser Core, gripping to its backside with coils of bunched scale-flesh. I wasn’t afraid of death - not anymore, not after everything that had happened - but that didn’t mean that I would let myself die easily.

Soon enough, the sounds of shattering stone disappeared, replaced by the whisper of rubbing scale-flesh as it drew ever-nearer. Soon enough, it had returned. Soon enough, it found its Core was gone - with the coils of my shed scale-flesh to mark where it had once rested.

Then, it did something that I hadn’t expected.

I should have, though.

It hissed, the susurrations of its great tongue filling my ears with a language that I could understand far more than I had ever understood my fellow disciples. There was rage. There was grief. There was despair.

There was hate.

Hate that was directed towards the only thing that it could see.

The scale-flesh that I had left behind. The air whipped as it snapped forward, and its great mouth closed around its quarry - and, due to its enormous size, around the pedestal itself.

Around me.

The mouth closed, and only the light of the Great Core that spilled from my dead scale-flesh broke the darkness.

The walls of the bad-thing’s mouth moved, the mouth-flesh pulling the pedestal - and me along with it - deeper inside. I panicked, and I spewed fire.

[Mana Fire] poured from my open mouth, warming my insides. It spilled outwards in a brilliant blue, smashing itself into the mouth-flesh walls that surrounded me. The flames bounced back, breaking against the bad-thing’s innate resistance.

And then, as [Mana Fire] continued to spill down my throat, I tried something once more.

I reached for the power of [Chrono Fire]again. I twisted the flames.

This time, it responded, and I felt a great wave of power leave me - only to rest within the brilliant blue of the [Mana Fire] that I ceaselessly released. The warmth of it wrapped around my scale-flesh, bathing me in the flames. And yet, just as before, they didn’t burn me.

Instead, they felt...comforting. Warm. Soothing.

I turned my head slightly and bathed a large area near me in the flames, all of it twisted under the power that [Chrono Fire] provided.

Around me, the bad-thing shifted as it changed positions - whether in response to my own efforts or something that had happened outside, I didn’t know. Either way, it began to raise itself higher.

The forces of the world grabbed me, pulling me downwards.

I began to fall, drifting through the blue flames that clung to the mouth-flesh around me. A moment later, I felt myself lurch as my tail began to slow. I took the chance that it provided, catching the mouth-flesh around me with my fangs. They sunk in deeply, anchoring myself to its surface before I could be pulled further in.

Despite that, the flames never stopped spilling from my mouth. I knew that the tiny remnants of my venom could do nothing against a bad-thing of this size - and while it seemed to be resistant to flame, I knew that [Chrono Fire] had to be special somehow.

The thought-light had revealed it.

The Flame That Would Consume Time Itself.

Around me, the flames only grew faster as time went by, seeming to flicker and twitch with increasing intensity. They wreathed themselves around my form even as my store of mana began to dwindle and die, covering me in their flickering tendrils.

Finally, my mana ran out.

The air began to distort, causing my vision to twist and tear. Beyond the crackling of the flames, I heard a deep and echoing boom, and what might have been the shattering of stone. It was distant and warped, just as my vision was, completely unlike the clear crackles of the fire itself.

I thought that I might have heard the battle cry of a Coreless, but that too was twisted and strange.

It didn’t matter. Stuck in the mouth of the bad-thing, I couldn’t do anything but hold on tightly and resist being swallowed. The tip of my tail felt odd and sluggish, responding slowly to my attempts to bring it back towards me. It was strange.

At the same time, it was familiar, somehow.

All the while, the flames flickered faster around me, making the world beyond them appear even slower than it was.

Because it was slow.

Finally, I recognized what was so familiar. I recognized the way that my vision twisted and tore. I recognized the way that sound broke and distorted. I recognized the way that my tail moved far slower than it should have, all but frozen in time.

My eyes shone with glee as I recognized the sacred slow-spot that the [Chrono Fire] had created, wrapped around it like a shell as it devoured time itself to fuel the flames.

I had created a field of slow-spots, just as the Great Core had always done.

There was only a brief time to appreciate that - because, soon enough, the bad-thing made a mistake. It challenged the pull of the sacred slow-spot, trying to move faster than it would allow.

And, as was only right, it lost.

Flesh ripped free from around the [Chrono Fire]-imbued flames, held steady by the fields of slowed time that surrounded them.

Even when it flinched in pain, the motion hard to follow from within my cocoon of warped time, the flesh that had ripped free hardly moved.

It fell through the air slowly - almost imperceptibly.

And it was only growing slower.