Corabelle had asked Zaramir to give her some time alone. So that’s what he did. He let her leave and he stayed. He didn’t leave the lab, except when necessary and he knew he wouldn’t cross paths with Corabelle.

  The days alone became weeks. He expected she’d visit when she was ready, but until then all he would do was wait.

  Zaramir’s life sense told him Corabelle was in the Beastroom much of the time. Though when she wasn’t, he could hear her crying in her room beneath him.

  He wanted to check in on her, to help in some way, but he knew his presence wasn’t what she needed. So he allowed the days to carry on alone. He ignored the sobbing.

  As painful as it was, he left her alone as she wished. Instead he focused on his only viable distraction; work.

  Though, it was hardly a good distraction.

  He knew a fallout was coming. It was only a matter of time before Ailan’s death was traced to him and, subsequently, her. The punishment would be nothing like he’d ever experienced. He only hoped much of their anger would be directed toward him alone. He could handle their punishments. Though, this punishment… it would be beyond the scope of anything he could imagine, he knew that much. But so long as it was only directed toward him, he didn’t care.

  So, he worked. While not ideal, it kept him busy and muffled the gut wrenching sounds of her sobs from the room below.

  He retrieved the amulet from his travel pack and got to work.

  The Elemental turned out to be far more useful than he had initially expected.

  When fueled by his roses, they caused a fascinating temporal pseudo-stability.

  While the roses were useful security, they provided a greater purpose to his realm. They maintained the timelessness within on a large scale. In the Fae Realm, their natural habitat, they were little more than pretty little security fences. The burns were bad and would keep the Lesser Fae out of the High Fae districts, but they weren’t unhealable wounds as they were in this world. They were just roses, burning roses, but just roses.

  From what Zaramir had gathered. The reasoning, the source of a lot of his problems, was the way time functioned within the Fae Realm. Here, it was linear. It could be stopped, started, and perhaps, in theory, reversed given enough research and power.

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

  Though, within the Fae Realm, there were pockets of time that existed in tandem with itself in complex layers like the strata of sediment. High Fae were functionally immortal, living within the greater pockets of this time fluctuation. Courts consisted of generations of High Fae all living together, unaging, unable to get sick or injured. Injuries and sickness were healed before they even occurred in the mess of time the High Fae basked in. While the Lesser Fae lived more similarly to humans, aging and dying, though in considerably slower time compared to this realm.

  Which always left Zaramir wondering; What would the High Fae possibly need this world for?

  Zaramir’s own maze was as close as he’d come to replicating the Fae Realm phenomena.

  While stopping time within a limited area wasn’t at all technically close to the layering of time that existed for the High Fae, it was a good starting point for research. It always may experiment to behave far more closely to how they would in the Fae Realm.

  From what he gleamed, Elementals did not exist within their world. Elementals wouldn’t be able to develop fully without proper linear time. That was what initially drew his curiosity to the Fire Elemental, the most unpredictable Elemental type. Perhaps an Air elemental would have worked too, but the volatility of Fire always made its magic stronger, hence a better candidate for rigorous testing.

  Though, after little experimentation, he found his hypothesis was wildly incorrect. He had anticipated the elementals to be weakened by the strange temporal properties of the rose, perhaps even go fully dormant. Though, when this fully formed Elemental was fueled by a Firerose, he found he was wildly incorrect.

  It took on a semi-physical form, hardening from plasma into a near liquid metallic state, a figure like a mirage. It didn’t behave as a non-tangible-form Elemental should. It also no longer had a will of its own, as elementals, particularly Fire Elementals, tended to have. It was moveable, posable, but didn’t take orders nor take initiative to move when not instructed to. It became more akin to a poorly enchanted clay golem.

  When it touched plants, they bloomed but froze. They never produced fruit nor did they wither. When it touched animals, they simply perished. They didn’t suffer, just simply dropped dead, though the spark didn’t evaporate from them, nor did the bodies rot.

  When he had touched it, albeit by accident, his own physical form became translucent, revealing his raw Spark; the glowing blue body of his actual form inside the human disguise his kind were wrapped in.

  Inside the Elementals was cool, nearly cold, now and had the distinct feeling of temporal shifts. The pressure inside fluctuated aggressively, like waves hitting a coast.

  This should be exciting, This was the greatest breakthrough he’d had in a very long time, if ever. But instead this realization chilled him to his core.

  Whatever change had happened within the Elemental, it had become the closest he’d come to his final mission.

  Soon the Fae would be able to enter this world. Soon his mission would be over. Soon his use to the Fae would run out.