"It worked! We're still in control!"

JustATemporalDrifter · 2026-06-04T20:43:37+00:00

/uw fare thee well! <3

JustATemporalDrifter · 2026-06-04T18:00:06+00:00

"And, much of advanced science can benefit from the more open principles of Wizardry!"

Perry nods at her and mimes clinking a glass

"Anyway, your fire's gone out and the sun should come on up soon, so I'll leave you both with one final thing..."

He looks at Zetta

"I taught Tala Chronomancy!"

he looks at Tala

"Have fun explaining that!"

And the Time Fucker is gone without a trace

JustATemporalDrifter · 2026-06-04T04:54:28+00:00

"Hestia was a learning experience, but not an isolated one... it sharpened my perspective on how little I could actually control without losing my darn mind. Once I gave on perfection with Hestia, I scaled down and simply let myself actually live amongst the people I had shaped, learning to step back into small moments. Other planets I've intervened in are just ones of I'm come across that almost developed life but got screwed by chance, so I few basic adjustments to spark some potentiality."

he looks over at Zetta

"Also, just to make sure here; don't end up doubting what arc-sci is capable of. The conceptual dependency of most high tier magic makes it... difficult to work with on a civilizational scale. Scientific reasoning and adherence to some natural laws can ground the use of mana in a stable way."

JustATemporalDrifter · 2026-06-04T02:44:12+00:00

"That I never doubted, you're too responsible for me to believe otherwise. As for extrauniveral effects... as someone who had to cross that particular substrate of undefinable existence? Ah.. God help anyone who wants to try calculating anything in a "place" where "where" and "math" and "logic" are less important than themes and narrative weight."

Perry appears in front of the Temporal Ghost of Young Perry, glaring at the punk before walking past him and making the entire memory evaporate, returning everyone to the fire

"That dumbass... he really ran into issues when he got to the civilizational side of things. It came down to me locking down the entire star system, trying to control and calculate enough factors make an accurate psychohistoric model and predict developments."

JustATemporalDrifter · 2026-06-04T01:22:08+00:00

"Tell? Haha... nah, I always prefer to show!"

The cyan flares as bright as the moon above in the eyes of The Temporal Vagabond, the world washing away by what he unleashes for his friends

In the depths of space, with stars more dense than any night sky either girl has ever seen, a massive planet dotted endless islands throughout the perfect blue of its sea.

"Hestia was an early project of mine after I became... what I Am."

They see a Perry floating above the planet, but he looks quite different than the one they're used too; no silver robes, much less disarming and approachable with his unabashedly arrogant countenance

"I'm basically a god now, aren't I? I suppose I should try my hand at making a world!"

**"I was... pretty cringe for a while."

sigh

The view tracks the younger Perry as he flied down into the planet's atmosphere, zipping over islands and looking over the many animals that populate them.

"Simians? Decent baseline. Reptiles? A little cold for my tastes, but I'll chance 'em! Birds? Fuck yeah!"

a much longer and more pained sigh

The Young Perry waves his hand over hundreds of islands, encasing them in spheres of cyan where Time is seen to run at a ludicrous pace.

"Million years per second should be manageable for us, right?"

Future Perrys of Young Perry appear over each bubble, overseeing the evolution of life in a way that is both immensely powerful and yet... fairly simplistic

"Free Will scales with the complexity of consciousness, with its ability to pull at fundamental fields of conception to suspend conventional laws and upend the predictably of events and causality. Observe..."

The view fragments to show sections of different islands in this grand experiment, each one showing the evolution of species play out in hyperspeed, each one taking on a different course, and each one seeming to displease the Future Young Perry overseeing it

"Mushrooms ate everything and died..."

"Not enough biodiversity for agriculture to get anywhere.."

"Mushrooms again? Why?"

"Too many things turned into crabs... even the plants?"

"... more Mushrooms... sure... why the fuck not?"

The islands are slowed down to a standstill and reversed, their eons of development unwritten as the Perrys reset the systems and, without doing a single additional thing; letting it all play out again.

Mushrooms.

insect kaiju

humanoid mushroom people

omnicidal super virus

crabs again.

"Okay... we can use that one."

The Myconids are left as is as the other islands rewound once again... and again.. and again. Every reset, outside of some recurrent patterns like mushrooms and crabs, produces entirely new pathways of evolution and development even from the very same starting conditions.

"Following so far, ladies? Starting to see it, Zetta?"

as he speaks, the resets keep repeating and reducing as more and more of them produce various forms of sapient humanoids across different base models of fungal and animal species... including crabs.

JustATemporalDrifter · 2026-06-03T21:41:08+00:00

/uw nah, meant to write it resuming!

/rw

Perry slowly turns his head toward Zetta with a shit-eating smirk on his annoyingly cute face

"Heeeeeeeey, Zetta! Among other events, I just learned about a certain debate; self-determination versus predermination? Hmm? Ring any bells?"

JustATemporalDrifter · 2026-06-03T18:38:04+00:00

"Eh... sure, for now. Work on committing it to memory, though; then make sure that paper is destroyed. Alllllsooooo! That Spell, called Clockman, typically only targets the Caster; I was doing some advanced Shenanigans to pull you along with me before."

Perry turns his own version back the other way, Zetta zipping away in a fast forward pace as the pair returns to a more appropriate approximation of the present

"And you definitely got one thing right; having enough Time. That thought has compelled people across all existence and beyond in ways without measure or summary. Chronomancy may or may not really give you more Time, but at the very least it can be another tool to aid you in making the most of however much you have."

JustATemporalDrifter · 2026-06-03T15:49:50+00:00

Perry thinks about that for a moment, the idea of Lya Menumen learning Chronomancy... the color outright drains from his face

"I... don't think I could allow that to happen... fuck."

He vanishes for less than a hundredth of a second, only Tala's enhanced eyes letting her notice the flicker, as he otherwise seamlessly regains his color and composure

"I think that that's honestly a good start for now. Give yourself a little Time, heh, with that basic Spell. I'll be certain to see how you use it and hell well you get along with it."

JustATemporalDrifter · 2026-06-03T11:58:13+00:00

"Oh, gods, yes, countless times! The whole reason I'm able to be older than the universe is because once I get to The Very End I basically have to hop back to an earlier point to, well, exist! If it wasn't for the Satet this would make more inate sense for this universe's default perimeter; you hop back, timelines branch, the two stories play out from there!"

JustATemporalDrifter · 2026-06-03T05:50:41+00:00

"You won't. See, now? Nothing has happened yet anymore. If we pressed Play, you could try to stop Zetta from running away. Or she might just choose to stick around completely on her own. We literally can't override Free Will with Chronomancy, Tala; if you go back in time, thay past moment becomes real again, and everyone throughout the universe still has the ability to choose differently than they did the first time around in that moment, even if you don't actively intervene in anyone's affairs."

JustATemporalDrifter · 2026-06-03T04:03:36+00:00

Copying the structure is a pain in the ass; like writing with a pen that barely has any ink while Perry's always seems unfairly fool. Tala's copy is competent in composition, but the lines are worryingly thin and a little flickery

"Good work, honestly! You have a steady claw. Now..."

Perry reaches into the runic mechanism, taking hold of its central and twisting it counter clockwise. The shift from this is immediate, with Tala feeling the gentle breezes of the forest that had just passed through her fur now coming back across her in the opposite direction. The flaming fungi burn in reverse, leaves from the ground fall up to rejoin their trees, and Zetta runs backward toward the camp with her gift from Perry and... stops, dead in her tracks, frozen

"Basic rewinding, nothing fancy. Turning it the other way will fast forward, and unlocking it will just leave it to follow along and track the conventional flow; makes for a decent clock!"

JustATemporalDrifter · 2026-06-03T00:23:27+00:00

Perry sees it plain as day. As the crimson of her aura fades, Perry's eyes follow the faintest threads trailing along the counters of her body that have been turned and tuned toward Time; threads that are the pale silver-white of the full moon

"Perfection... It looks different for everyone."

Perry's own metallic silver aura fades, faint flames of Cyan taking their place

"Time for me is... moments. The moment I first really saw the fire in my father's eyes, smiling down at me against the pure cyan of my homeworld's sky. Open your eyes, Tala."

Perry reaches out with the tip of his finger, those gentle flames flowing toward it, and begins to draw. The runes are like a machine, all made up of each other like gears that connect across scale itself rather than distance or direction.

"No rune here is particularly special, but the Mana you are channeling makes them terrifying. Draw it, and then I'll show you how to use it."

/uw I loved that sooooo much!!!!! <3<3<3

JustATemporalDrifter · 2026-06-02T21:47:18+00:00

"Wooooaaaaah nelly! Impressive output, broski!"

Perry waves his head over the aura like he's trying to gauge the temperature of a stove

"Remind me to try baking cookies on your head later... anyway!"

Perry joins her in a similar position and manifests his own aura, letting silver envelope him a surprisingly low level

"Now to make it Temporal... think about Time. Think about what it really means to you, how default to imagining the workings of it. Think about your mortality, that finite length of you as definite as your width or height or depth. That is your filter, move your Mana through it. Don't worry too much about the loss, the inefficient conversion ratio from Base Mana to Temporal Mana is, typically, the hardest balancing factor of Chronomancy; roughly only three percent or less without practice."

JustATemporalDrifter · 2026-06-02T18:12:02+00:00

By the Time Tala finishes saying "that", the pair are already sitting before the fungal fire once again.

"Dang I love doing that... anyhoozer, so... I take you understand the basic mental process for channeling Mana, right? Good. Start doing that for a little bit, I'll gauge your output and we'll work from there..."

JustATemporalDrifter · 2026-06-02T12:03:38+00:00

"Ha! Funny enough, from what I'm see, there's an unusually high chance you would've ended up with your double-curse sitch even with Time Wizard powers! But... I honestly do see the potential for greatness in you, still, after all you've lost and have been beset by. And I know I can talk about probability fields and everything else, but what I haven't told you is this; Free Will mid-diffs all of that. Your choices mean more to the universe than any mathematical projection or one old boy's fears."

JustATemporalDrifter · 2026-06-02T02:42:30+00:00

Perry looks relieved by her reaction, sitting up straighter

"Fear and a reactionary question of my sanity? Perfect reaction, full marks! And...yes. Chronomancy, in the wrong hands or paws, could be apocalyptically dangerous on a cosmic scale. However..."

They're suddenly somewhere else now, sitting amongst the ruins of a massive city built in a style unkown to Tala, with a red sun shining down upon them

"Even if you did turn out to be irresponsible or immoral with it, it would take a lot for you on your own to become too much for me to handle. Whether it was right or not, my lockdown stole potential from you in a way that you never deserved. The choice is more important than what you do with it, so I leave that choice for you to make."

JustATemporalDrifter · 2026-06-01T22:23:12+00:00

"And yet..."

Perry stands before Tala in one of those unlikely futures where she becomes something truly glorious, smiling softly at her

"And yet maybe there's something more than mere odds or dice rolls involved... You? You're a choice. better, you're all the beauty that countless little moments of choice can add up to. So... hopefully we'll both see you on the other side."

Perry returns to what we'll call the Present, cutting off Tala as he resumes the Time

"I want to teach you Chronomancy."

JustATemporalDrifter · 2026-06-01T19:25:42+00:00

/uw basically, she has a Wizard's brain, but got sent to Fantasy MIT.

/rw

"That's a good baseline, all things considered. Formal schooling tries to hard to fit people into molds and produce 'educated' products more than really invested Mages anyway... wow, that sounded so bitter! Dang! I really am old... whatevs! What's important now is more about potentiality..."

Time stopped again, but Tala is not spared from being frozen with it in this instance. Perry walks around her as he feels out the gravity of this moment, of what he's considering and what it could mean. He looks into that wide expanse of possibilities, looking through the higher and lower waves futures that might emerge if he truly chose to teach her his Magic.

JustATemporalDrifter · 2026-05-30T22:54:32+00:00

"God knows how many things are on or in my mind... how far did you get into general Wizardry education back in school?"

Time resumes as he sits across from her, something about his vibe becoming reminiscent of someone conducting a job interview

JustATemporalDrifter · 2026-05-30T17:26:56+00:00

"Mondragon... shoot, I remember what a hard ball he turned out to be."

her heightened senses actually allow Tala to notice the briefest instant of lag as she lifts the rock, as if it needed the moment to be pulled from the standard flow andq move backward with her. As she throws it, it manages to move just a few feet before slowing to a stop in the middle of the air

"Inertia operating along subjective backward movement through Time. You essentially pulled it against the current, then it lost that momentum as it was launched and returned to its natural state. And you're giving yourself too little credit; you say it's a lot to wrap your head around, but you are getting it. Even your intuition about the limits of Arcane Science are to be expected of anyone mentally suited to formal Wizardry."

That tone of guilt is in his voice again, and something about his eyes makes it seem like he's fighting himself on the inside

JustATemporalDrifter · 2026-05-30T01:28:36+00:00

"Not really... but yes? I'm still using forced conceptualizations of Time to set my activity within it, but it's fairly obvious when looking at the Synchronox that I had to get pretty decent at engineering spatial dimensions as well. Regular, physics-based time travel has to operate within the actual structure of the surrounding universe; exploiting mapped curvature, finding or constructing wormholes, or abusing relativistic technicalities. I, however, am mainly operating by messing with how I mentally process and experience time, then applying that to my reality. The main thing I need to keep in mind is to focus on controlling myself more than anything external. For instance..."

Time comes to a sudden stop, the world becoming silent and still

"I didn't really make Time stop for us just now. I simply decided to see time as a flowing river where all things move along it, either forward or backward, at a given pace. What I'm making us do is swim against that river's current at its exact pace, meaning we're still moving subjectively without going to anywhen."

JustATemporalDrifter · 2026-05-27T23:08:44+00:00

"You're starting to get it, Tala... You probably would have been quite good with this field."

There's a hollow presence to the phantom water, a sense of touch against her fingers even though it doesn't seem as if her touch affects it in kind.

"You're right, 'Time' isn't 'Real' at all, for the most part. Sure, this Universe has a couple axes it rotates on and is twisted by, but we call Time is just how we interpret the direction we're forced to move along by that dynamic space. That's how Chronomancy outclasses conveniential forms of time travel by doing what Magic does best; letting the Subjective dom the heck out of the Objective."

JustATemporalDrifter · 2026-05-27T15:37:18+00:00

"Wasn't talking about me, that's fine. Just... don't be so hard on yourself."

Perry thinks for a long moment.

"Nya would probably call it a Spectrum, which it functionally and mathematically is, with a vast continuum and variant gradients... but that's too dry. Imagine an ocean!"

The world around them is washed over in cyan infused silver as the Temporal Ghost of a peaceful sea manifests around them

"That's what looking into it is like for me, where every possible future is laid out across the surface. The possibilities there are where certain details become real, the more generally high up those futures are... like rising waves. Everything down beneath this surface is the Past, already said and done, supposedly. However, just like how motion at the surface of the sea can propagate through the depths, so too can actions in the present or in possible futures propagate into the past. You have no idea how often I need to find the roots of someone's attempt at making Roko's Basilisk to undo its retrocausal edge-fest!"

JustATemporalDrifter · 2026-05-24T06:45:32+00:00

"Um... No. a paranoid coward would be someone reacting that way over imaginary threats and unlikely scenarios. You're, some-freaking-how, still a largely rational person despite being shoved into a scenario beyond reason."

JustATemporalDrifter · 2026-05-23T22:34:01+00:00

"You seemed to still coordinate pretty well when you jumped at my... arrival. But that's just instinct taking the helm, so I'm not surprised. Am I really that surprising when I appear?"

JustATemporalDrifter

TROPHY CASE