Shortly after Motus was created, and started jumping around the surface of
the planet, a group of people came together to brainstorm ideas for the
twelfth town of Durus. Now, what could they do? Some of the towns avoided
the monsters, if at all possible. Others were built specifically to defend
the whole species against them. Each seemed to have their own special thing.
Even Astau had a unique history, even though it ended up fairly normal. The
new town’s planners didn’t want to be like that, or like any of the others.
They felt they had to do something to set them apart, even if that was a
self-imposed obligation, and one which pretty much ended with them. Either
way, there was a reason why their proposal was never attempted before. It
sounded reasonable, but it wasn’t. They wanted to use time powers to deploy
a dome over their town, which would repulse the monsters automatically. It
would hopefully extend much farther than the border, so their enemies
couldn’t even get near them. It was similar to the concept used for
Splitsville, but their towers worked by sending signals outwards that
disrupted the monster’s already fragile physical integrity. They only sent
this signal when necessary, and the machines required constant electrical
energy, because they weren’t based on mage powers at all. Now, they weren’t
the first to think of a time power version. In fact, the source mages once
believed that would be the best solution to their problems. If they had
found someone with the ability to form a protective bubble powerful enough
to keep any intruder out, they probably would have ultimately built a single
city where everyone could live.
The 2050 Mage Games gave them someone who could do it, but only on a much
smaller scale. She could raise a shield around her body, as well as those
closest to her, which would force an attacker away from them, whether
monster, human, or anything else. If she gathered enough energy for herself,
she could essentially punch a monster hundreds of meters away. The bubbles
didn’t last long, and producing them always wore her out eventually. She was
now also old, retired, and trying to live out her days in luxury. With the
help of a seer, The Diagnostician knew something about this person’s future.
Upon her death, she was fated to release a blast of energy the likes of
which Durus hadn’t seen for decades. The original plan was to apport her to
the monster portal just before her death, and let that moment destroy the
whole ring, break it apart, or at least damage it a little. The planners
begged the source mages, and the rest of the leadership, to change their
minds about it. No one knew whether her death would be able to accomplish
what they wanted. Was it powerful enough to end everything? So powerful that
it killed all the humans too? Would it even make any real impact at all? No
seer had been able to confirm these details, and the planners used that in
their argument against it. This woman’s domes were not necessarily
meant to be used as weapons. They were a defense tool, which her teachers
trained her to use as weapons of war, because personal shields weren’t
useful enough in battle. If they timed it just right, her death could
theoretically make a permanent bubble, just as they wanted. It might require
constant energy input to stay up, but the initial swell should be large
enough to be a viable option. There were plenty of people whose
responsibility it was to transfer temporal energy, so that would not be a
problem. In the end, there was no convincing the source mages that this was
better than the original idea. If they could stop the monsters from getting
to their world in the first place, a town with a defensive bubble around it
was obsolete anyway. But it didn’t matter. The shield creator was the one
with the power, so she was the one who decided what happened to her when she
died. She agreed to what the planners asked of her, and after three years of
slow construction, it was time. The town of Shieldon was born in 2082.
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