Disclaimer: See last chapter.

Palace


The hallway seemed never ending, and Whisper jumped down the stairs in one long movement. She was no Sonic or Violet, but she was quite capable of speed when she needed to be.

And right now, she needed to be. The Time Eater was probably just on her tail.

The hallway opened up to the Zerotime's plaza, the same place where the others had been time trapped. The skyline was the same vibrant purple mass that she'd seen earlier, whenever the Time Eater did it's time traveling thing. Or warping thing.

The plaza was empty, with all of the citizens being told over a speaker to head to safety. If they were in a traveled state, whatever that meant, to timeset back to localtime. Whisper understood the words, but how they stuck together...

The purple klaxons kept going as well, large lights that shone and shook the world with their sound. The alarms were still blaring.

When the wisps had argued for the geas and the vow, Whisper had honestly thought she'd seen what they could do. They were destructive in Green Hill, and they had shattered the landscape irrevocably. Sonic had said there was nothing wrong with it, and that the islanders had simply shrugged and moved on.

She learned that she was wrong. They could do a lot more than just what they suggested they could.

The Time Eater was right there, right behind her, its long purple claws reaching out for her. The Enforcer's shots, whatever it was that they were doing, was doing nothing. And then Cyan jumped in.

A cyan laser burst plowed straight into the Time Eater, shoving it into one of the nearby structures. Because of how they were built, Whisper supposed, that meant they didn't need to worry about actual destruction, before the shockwave was felt in Whisper's bones, and yet the structure didn't move or change.

It let out a roar, and most of the Enforcer's in front of Whisper shut their eyes and put their hands over their ears. Were they not used to this type of thing? With time travelers, she'd have thought that Time Eaters were common knowledge. Gray, certainly, had known about it.

A blue block shoved itself down on the Time Eater, but it must have known that Blue was planning on that as the cube phased right through it.

"I'm glad I didn't give too much for that!" Blue was shouting from the top of the Enforcer building. Cyan popped out from the top of the other building, some type of shop, looking a bit woozy as she stayed in place.

That one blast must have taken a bit out of her. The fact that a laser wisp could do that was astonishing. Light was not known for its pushing power. And it wasn't as if Cyan could move a lot of mass either.

Whisper moved through the terrified Enforcers, heading for the only biggest building in the area, the actual palace itself. Left side, fifth floor.

She was actually mostly there already, she realized as she went onto the next open street. The Time Eater let out another loud roar, and kept chasing her. This time Yellow popped out of the ground, a large size drill heading straight for the thing.

It stopped just long enough for Yellow to move past it before it smacked the drill out of the way. Yellow let out a cry, only for a much more calming coo come out as Green hovered her down to the ground lightly.

But by smacking Yellow, that also meant it was solid. And it was that solid aspect that Pink took advantage of. A wave of pink spikes shot out from the ground, from the walls, even some from a blue cube that Blue popped into existence right from the top of the Time Eater.

The Time Eater was solid, and Whisper was probably guessing it wished that it wasn't as hundreds, if not thousands of pink spikes shot through it. Some held it down, others were adding edges the more time it took before it left.

While it was held still, that's when Blue tried to drop the spiked cubes above it, crushing it against the ground. Almost as if to roar in victory, Green lifted up the ground based spikes towards it, compressing the Time Eater against the wisp powers.

It howled, before everything phased out of its reality, and it flew above the ground once more. Whisper was only two blocks away, and then she'd be in the palace...against a creature that could phase through reality.

This may have not been well thought out.

"I don't know what to do!" Lavender cried out as the wisps attacked the Time Eater yet again, a combination of their powers that Whisper had never seen. "They're...trying everything, but it's almost seemingly useless!"

"Just keep up with me then," Whisper advised as she kept running. The blocks flew under her feet, and part of her almost imagined the layout from that first Eggman decrepit force that she'd run through, what seemed like forever ago.

Cyan blocked the Time Eater's next flyover, forcing it back straight into Orange's much more physical rocket punch. Every loose item on the ground was imbued with her power as she shot it towards the Time Eater. Some even had the pink spikes on them.

The purple creature thing headed towards the ground once more as it phased out, letting all of the attacks go straight through it. A juggernaut that could go invincible at a moment's notice. Whisper thought that wasn't fair.

Then again, there wasn't much about this situation that was fair.

As it phased back, just in time to reach out an arm towards her, a green glow surrounded the Time Eater directly, this time forcing it towards the ground. Green's power, inverted.

Green could do that!?

And here she thought hover was mostly a utility tool. And now here he was, holding down the Time Eater directly as Orange, Pink, and even Blue went to town on it.

They were like a well oiled machine, really. And that was all without her telling them what to do. There were a few things that she noticed they could improve on, but really, it was stopping the Time Eater so that was enough for her.

The inside of the palace, as she finally reached it, was a wide open waste of space. Hundreds of hallways stretched off to the left and right, and only a few of them had stairs.

She chose one of them at random, finding a hallway that ended with a few rooms she didn't recognize. There was no one around, although those purple alarms were still blaring. She'd gotten used to the sound.

The Time Eater was blocking the only exit that she could find, and Whisper took a deep breath. "Lavender? Imbue me," she asked as the Time Eater soared towards her.

Instantly she felt the power of the frenzy overtake her thinking. She wanted to rip and tear and rend and maim.

But she was thinking. It wasn't as if she was surprised about the imbuement either, she recognized it for what it was; sensations of falling into an anger that wasn't hers.

And Lavender was angry. Angry all the time, but she was trying as hard as she could to overtake that part of her, to come back to being the White wisp that she had been earlier.

Claws struck the Time Eater dead on as Whisper fought back. She felt the jaws start to form, and she forced the energy to her claws instead. That way she could still run. The Frenzy overtook the Time Eater, pushing it out of the way as it phased back out.

Hopefully it was surprised that its prey could fight back. And she was nothing if not fighting back.

There were no signs in the main palace hall, and so Whisper once again took another hallway at random. This one had stairs leading to the second floor, and she could see small lights from the top, this time white and not purple.

The frenzy still forcing her thoughts, that meant that there were others up here. And where others were, could potentially be answers. She took the steps three at a time, bouncing up them in a way that would make even Tangle impressed.

Unfortunately she got up in the first room, where the lights were, only to find there was no one here. The lights were from computer holoscreens.

Maybe there's a map? A voice in her head called. Lavender, directly? That was interesting. She'd never been fully imbued while knowing she was imbued before. Did that mean that anyone who was actually imbued with a wisp could communicate with them?

Most of the time, yes.

That was good to know. She'd have to ask Sonic about that, as he was the only one that she was aware of that could be imbued.

Lavender disimbued her, something that made the intrinsic anger of a frenzy wisp leave her mind. It also had the side effect of tiring her out, leaving her breathless and running ragged. "Sorry, there's only so much I can do!"

"Don't worry," Whisper answered as she ran up to the holoscreens. The screens had that same language on it that she didn't understand, but she knew someone who would. She tapped her mask, "Cyan?" she asked.

Instantly the screens turned a deep cyan blue, and Whisper almost saw as the sigils and odd language changed instantaneously to something she could read.

It was a map, but it was a file map rather than a physical one. Cyan was probably translating things as fast as they came in, and because Cyan was in here she wasn't out there fighting the Time Eater.

Another roar came up the stairs. It hadn't lost her, but it was unused to close quarters combat, something that the wisps had in spades. She could almost feel Pink's giddiness as it was surrounded by walls.

Her hands flew over the keyboards. She was lucky, if anything, that they too were holoscreens. That allowed them to be changed by Cyan's power, allowing her to actually use them in a way she could understand.

Most of the files on the first few screens were nothing but invoices, or some kind of accounts payable options. Neat, but she was on a time limit.

Another roar, and this time it was so close that the screens rippled with the force generated from the Time Eater.

"Cyan, imbue the wispon if you still have energy," Whisper commanded.

"I have energy for days!" Cyan commented as she popped out of a computer screen, imbuing the wispon directly. "Also, I found a route!"

Right, the ultimate hacker Cyan was. Whisper nodded. "Change of plans. Cyan, guide. Lavender, frenzy me if you can," Whisper suggested. The purple wisp nodded.

And that was when Yellow came in through the floor, spinning rapidly and according to Whisper's emotions, was having a lot of fun doing it.

She turned, and her eyes widened as she saw Whisper, and then the wolf's vision was taken up entirely by Yellow.

Spin, spin, spin around the world. Up and down, all around, spinning is so much fun! Go down a floor, go up a floor, ignore the yelling and screaming because she was having fun!

Spin, spin, all over the spin.

It was hard determining what was Yellow's thoughts, and what was her own. She couldn't see anything, only seeing the bare parts of the palace ground floors. Yellow had done the impossible. Yellow had imbued her.

Up and down she went, and there was a lightness to her thoughts, as if the weight of the world didn't matter to her now. The Time Eater? Bleh, who cared? She was having fun. Tangle? Tangle had waited for forever. She could wait a few minutes longer.

That thought made her rethink things. Could Tangle wait? Of course she could, Whisper was having fun now. But that was Yellow's thoughts, not Whisper's.

She wasn't sure if it was because Yellow was imbuing her, somehow, because by all rights that was impossible, or if it was because Yellow was so young, but it was hard to separate her thoughts from Yellow's.

Yellow was having fun. Drilling around the entire palace, going up and down and all around the Time Eater without a care in the world. Whisper was trying to decode her thoughts from the young wisp.

What she really wanted to know though was how could Yellow imbue her? The other wisps had all mentioned that it was near impossible. If someone was unable to be imbued by a wisp, that applied to all wisps.

Unless Yellow was simply too young to know the rules. You think too much, have too little fun. Have fun! That was Yellow's thoughts. Hard to hold. Bye!

What was hard to hold? Whisper found herself then flying through the air and crashing onto a bed, on a floor she didn't recognize. "Oh. Hard to hold onto me," Whisper acknowledged as she laid splayed out.

The Time Eater's roars and howls weren't far, but she was definitely a few floors up from when she had been before. But was she on the right side? Had she skipped it entirely?

She was in some kind of bedroom, full of fancy bed sheets and a nearby closet was full of dresses that looked like they had been taken from ancient times half of the time, and then some other weird times as well. The furniture looked mostly the same, with only a large holoscreen being something that screamed advanced technology.

At least the bed was soft enough to keep her from crashing onto the ground. She forced herself up, landing silently on the rug, as she ran for the door.

The hallway outside looked exactly the same as all the other hallways did, but this one had paintings on the side. Most of them were of the same person in a variety of angles, but as Whisper went she also saw they had different styles to them.

As if one person was traveling through history to get their portrait painted by both future and past masters. A bit egotistical, Whisper presumed, but it was probably the best use of time travel she'd met yet.

Her ears rotated every which way as the Time Eater roared again. She could maybe use its location to determine where Yellow had punted her out at. Unfortunately, it echoed everywhere, so she couldn't tell if she was on the right side of the palace or the left.

Or even which floor she was on. She was usually good at that. She could summon Green, and find a window and float down to the bottom. That would allow her to get her bearings right quick.

Cyan had a map in her head. So maybe she could use Cyan to find her way to the jail from here. Except that Cyan was somewhere that was not here, as was Green. Green was probably busy fighting the Time Eater.

And Pink, and Orange, and Blue...

Yellow had gone off somewhere, and they'd left Lavender behind. Which meant...she was alone.

For the first time in eons...she was alone. No wisps. No friends. Lost.

But she knew where they were. They were close. They hadn't left her behind on purpose. She hadn't left them behind on purpose. She took a deep breath, steeling her heart, as she ran. Any direction was a direction, and a good place to start.

Besides, she doubted that the wisps could hear her whistle right now.

The hallway seemed nearly infinite, with only the paintings changing. They went from old style to somewhat of a more recent one, a style that she recognized. Then just as quick as she recognized it, the styles changed to something she didn't know. Future, perhaps?

There was a dead end in front of her, with some stairs leading up and down. She took a gamble and hopped up the stairs, using that same swiftness that she'd always had.

The upper floor didn't seem to have anything of use either, just another long hallway. This one had portraits of another person. seemingly the queen or princess, in much the same styles as the one below.

There was a flash of white, and Whisper felt her heart stop for a moment. Something unnatural was happening, somewhere, but what it was she didn't know. The Time Eater, too, let out a loud howl, not of pain or agony but of disbelief.

How it was capable of emotion that she could understand, she didn't know. It wasn't like the wisps, where she knew what they were feeling based on how she was feeling.

She stopped for only a moment, and that was to blink the white out of her eyes. She recognized that from somewhere, but what it was she didn't know. As soon as she could see again, she started running. Was she headed the right way? Was she headed in a way?

The corridor seemed like it went forever, a constant in a world of instants and moments. Her ears picked up a sound from down below; Pink's yelling, with a bit of Cyan mixed in. They were right below her.

There were no windows that she could see along the hallway, but she could probably jump out of the windows in one of the rooms.

Could she have enough time to turn around and go back down the floor from there? She'd already been running for a while, nearly a minute or two straight. One of those times she'd wished she could run as fast as Shadow or Tangle. Tangle was fairly quick when she wanted to be, the problem was getting up to that pace.

She didn't stop running though. She had to be nearing the end of this corridor. Maybe this one would have stairs that went down, and it'd be quicker than turning around.

There were stairs in the next dead end, going both up and down, exactly as she'd thought and hoped. It would make the most amount of sense, even if nothing else made sense to her.

She jumped down the stairs, only to turn and see the same corridor she'd just ran from. It wasn't the same; the portrait was different, and this one also had dozens of explosions going off in the center with both Cyan and Pink flying towards her as fast as they could go. "Run for the top!" Cyan commanded as both wisps did just that.

Whisper looked at the explosions, seeing them come closer as the Time Eater started destroying the various rooms. Its purple claws would reach in, and purple fire would emanate out. Oh. That's what it was doing.

She agreed with the wisps, and quickly started to run up the stairs she'd just jumped down. "Cyan, you memorized the map right!?" Whiper asked as soon as she could reach the pair of wisps two floors above where she'd been.

This one had to be the final floor, as it was simply a long hallway with a large wooden door right in the middle of it. The door was open, revealing that massive chasm that was the room behind it. She'd missed her turn off...somewhere.

"Kinda!? This place changes! The only thing that's set in stone is the left side, fifth floor!" Cyan answered.

"How do we get there!?" Whisper asked, taking a deep breath. That was the jail. That was the time trap. That's where her focus had to be. "Where are the others, how are they doing!?"

"Mostly okay. Yellow is coughing up a storm from where, if I heard Cyan and Lavender right, imbued you," Blue asked. "That couldn't have been easy. Orange is trying to wrangle up the others."

If Orange was doing that, it means only good things for the rest of them. She'd only start that up if there was a good chance the Time Eater wasn't going to eat them anytime soon.

"We don't! We just need to keep running until we find the path that heads there! This entire place is non-euclidian!" Cyan answered.

"One way to solve that problem!" Blue cheered, as Cyan tried to stop him. Whisper jumped back as a large and heavy cube appeared right in front of them, the cube slamming down onto the ground...and going right through it.

That's one way to get around.

The cube went down and down, before Whisper's instincts made her look up and jump out of the way. That same cube crashed down where she'd just been standing, slamming down on the floor and passing right through it again.

The hole left in the floor made Whisper's head hurt, as she saw the back of her head fifteen stories down. She looked back up, seeing that same image but in reverse. "Okay. Yeah, that's weird," Blue answered as the cube dissipated after it's third go around.

"It's all connected and yet not connected at all. I don't know how this was possible! The entire thing's seemingly out of time!" Cyan tried to explain. "It'd be really cool if it wasn't also trying to kill us!"

Whisper looked back down the hole. The Time Eater's flames weren't there, even though she knew she'd just seen it. Out of time...

"Will. Undo. All," Whisper repeated to herself as she glanced down. The words resonated in her head, and the hole below her changed. Where before it was seemingly chaotic, a near infinite repeat of what was above and below, the words forced it into alignment.

"Right, I forgot about the words..." Cyan admitted as Whisper took a moment to jump down. She'd seen the palace from the outside.

"Cyan, am I on the left or right?"

"Right side! Jump down-" Cyan started to say before things started to shift again. Whisper kept her eyes narrowed, and the words in her head.

The palace was made of fifteen floors, or fifteen sets of windows. To get from the top, where the ballroom was because all royalty wanted something like this place, to the fifth she'd have to go down ten floors.

Meaning that she'd have to wait for ten floors to pass by before she called out for Blue to try to slow her down. Instead of the blue block that she realized would probably just break her legs, although the cubes were kind of soft when they wanted to be, a green glow appeared around her.

"How about Green, rather than Blue?" Green asked from the side. "I am so lost in this place. It wasn't until suddenly a hole showed up that I found you!" Green said, coming in for a hug as he maneuvered Whisper out of the way of the hole.

Whisper held him close, and motioned for Blue and Cyan to join them a second later. "You know where Orange, Pink, Lavender and Yellow are?" Whisper asked. "And this is the fifth floor, right?"

"As far as I know! Orange wanted to grab everyone together but Pink wanted to stick it to the Time Eater some more, so he went off somewhere. Yellow is...tired, I think."

"Yellow imbued Whisper!" Cyan said with a grin. "And if she can, that means we can too!"

"I don't think that's a good idea," Whisper said, looking for only a moment before she ran off towards the other end of the corridor. Like the floors above, this one was almost needlessly long, but there was a halfway point that she could use to reorient herself.

"Why not!? That's a perfect idea!" Green said as he hovered next to her. Blue shook his head, obvious in disagreement. Or he didn't like their chances. Whisper wouldn't blame him.

It was the big open room on the first floor. She was out on the fifth, at least, five stories up, so that was something. But the left side was far over on the other side, and there weren't any stairs that cleared that area.

Also the ground was shattered. Spikes of ground had been raised up, chandeliers had fallen. It was as if the Time Eater had come here just to mess things up. Or her. Whisper wasn't sure which yet.

She glanced at the wispon, still on her back. "Cyan, Green. Imbue the wispon," Whisper asked. Both of the wisps lit up, heading into the variable wispon as it changed forms once again. "Blue, keep an eye for the Time Eater. If we fall, you'll have to catch us," Whisper said.

The blue wisp nodded, all seriousness taking over his face. Eyes. The area where they had a face.

Whisper gave that sharp whistle, the same one that all of the wisp knew very, very well. With Cyan, she was lighter than normal, and with Green, she could hover for however long he could hold it.

She shot across the chasm, the canyon made by mortals, to head to the left side, on the fifth floor.

She made it without problem, her boots slamming down onto the tiled ground with an eminent thud, as all three wisps surrounded her. A moment later, Orange and Yellow popped out of the hallway. "Whisper! Over here!" Orange shouted, her eyes splitting her attention between Yellow and Whisper. "Don't go drilling off now," Orange said to the young wisp.

The young wisp said...something. But it lifted up Whisper's spirits, and the most she could think was that she had made it.


One more step in the way.

Until Next Time!