Ferrick looked up at the enormous sphere filling most of his vision.
He fell silent for two seconds.
This mechanical body probably wasn't going to survive either.
But neither he nor Caldren had any intention of waiting to die.
Caldren pulled a delicate miniature clock from inside his armor. The hands were still ticking normally, and its internal gears made a faint grinding sound.
He pressed a switch on the side and tossed it into the air.
Click.
The hands paused for a beat.
Everything around them stopped as well.
But this wasn't true time-stop.
The battlefield's flow of time had been forcibly chopped into a series of disconnected fragments. The colossal purple-red sphere hung motionless in the air. The rain of light arrows froze against the spatial shield, and flames from the explosions held their expanding shapes.
Then time resumed.
Every attack advanced a short distance.
On the next beat, time stopped again.
Resumed.
Stopped.
Then resumed once more.
