Swamped Chapter 172 Page 13

This bolt isn’t fading. In fact, it’s moving, and pursuing a lizard.

This has to be consciously guided. Why risk drawing attention to yourself to go after a lizard, though?

Because some lizards here talk, and repeat what they hear people saying. And if you had a conversation you didn’t want someone hearing about, you wouldn’t take chances with a lizard.

Fortunately, this is easy to thwart with time magic. It’s a simple matter of speeding up the lizard so it can stay ahead of the bolt.

But then a fireball lands in front of it. The lizard is moving so fast that it has trouble stopping.

You shift your focus upwards. You can see a figure on top of the tower, preparing another fireball. They don’t seem focused on the bolt, so there must be another wizard there casting that.

The one you can see covered themselves in a cloak, so you can’t see any identifying features, but they seem to be wearing an unusual pair of goggles with long eyepieces. Judging by the height, you’d guess they’re a grebling. No obvious tail, though, so they might be a particularly short human. Or merfolk, for that matter.

You wonder where they got those goggles. Sailor’s eyepieces are rather uncomfortable, so if those were readily available, you’d  imagine most ships would use them instead.

Regardless, you note that a black box is walking out of the building. The lizard has the attention of the mages for now, but you might need to be prepared to put your plan into action at any moment.

And indeed, the bolt chasing the lizard suddenly vanishes. You speed up your perception so you can see it as it starts to form, then speed up the ether to move it towards the silver.

The fire ether rushes past the box without setting off the pitch, and dissipates in the silver. Just as planned.

But you realize the bolt is still having ether channeled into it. This is a sustained bolt, like the one they were using on the lizard.

Which means you’ll need to come up with a new plan for dealing with it, and very quickly. You may be perceiving things faster than the world is moving, but you still don’t have that much time.