Chapter 19: The Ten-Second Containment
The designated time was midnight. The Aetherium Quad was silent, illuminated only by the stable glow of the crystal lamps and the towering plume of the Hydro-Mote Fountain. The water rose twenty feet into the air, held in place by a powerful, invisible stability field.
Kian was concealed behind a cluster of dark, inert granite benches, his external stabilizer humming softly. He was monitoring the local grid sensors, ready to confirm the reroute.
Lance and Opal approached the fountain base. The copper coin Tutor Maeve had given Lance felt warm and heavy in his palm—a reminder of his commitment to precision and patience.
"Thirty seconds," Kian whispered through a borrowed, crudely modified communicator. "Opal, hit the base. Lance, you get ready to catch."
Opal positioned herself, focusing her chaotic energy. She needed a quick, violent surge to interrupt the fountain's stability field, but she had to pull back instantly to let Lance stabilize the mess.
"Go!" Kian commanded.
Opal pushed. Instead of the controlled firecracker burst she intended, the pressure of the night, the stress of Dean Eris, and the sheer power of the fountain's field acted as an unexpected feedback loop.
The Catastrophic Over-Surge
Opal's Matrix didn't just surge; it violently discharged its entire collected volatile reserve into the fountain's base. It was a massive, uncontrolled blast of energy—far greater than her failure with the Volatile Orb.
The effect was instantaneous and disastrous. The invisible stability field holding the water plume shattered.
The twenty-foot column of water didn't gracefully collapse; it exploded outward in a massive, chaotic deluge. Water, stabilized by Motes, hit the ground with the force of a tidal wave, instantly flooding the entire central quad.
The fountain's copper base began to scream with a warning siren.
Kian's voice crackled through the comm: "Abort! Abort! That was a Level-4 surge! The overflow is going to trip the main system shutoff, not the reroute! We have seconds!"
Lance knew a Level-4 shutdown would seal the Clock Tower permanently, trapping the secrets inside. He had to stop the water from reaching the perimeter drainage system where the main sensors were located.
"Opal, run!" Lance yelled, dropping the copper coin and focusing his entire consciousness on the chaotic flood.
The raw power of the water was overwhelming. Lance couldn't stop the flow, but he didn't need to. He needed containment.
He visualized the energy of the flood not as moving water, but as a vast, shifting field of Mote chaos—the total opposite of his Silverwoods stillness. He extended his Matrix, pushing his precision—his hard-won 6%—past its breaking point.
He wasn't trying to dampen the entire flood; he was trying to impose a new, invisible boundary around the water inside the quad. He focused on the tiny, microscopic stabilization motes woven into the water, forcing them to lock together into a perfect, crystalline wall.
The strain was agonizing. His head felt like it was splitting in two, and his vision tunneled into a blinding white focus. He squeezed his will, demanding absolute order from the chaos.
The water, rushing outward, hit an invisible, sudden barrier just before it reached the main drainage grates. The chaotic flood instantly froze—not into ice, but into a massive, shimmering, perfectly contained wall of liquid stasis. The water stood still, defying gravity and motion, held in a delicate, momentary equilibrium imposed by Lance's sheer, focused control.
"Reroute protocol initiated!" Kian shouted over the comm. "The overflow sensor was tripped, but the containment neutralized the threat! The system is diverting power to the master valve!"
Lance held the stasis wall for the required twenty seconds until Kian gave the all-clear. When Kian confirmed the Clock Tower locks were open, Lance let his focus shatter.
The invisible barrier vanished. The massive wall of water instantly slumped into a large, contained pool in the quad, soaking the benches but not flooding the rest of the campus.
Lance fell to his knees, utterly spent, his Stabilizer Matrix dark and cold. He had pushed his precision to achieve 10% growth—a controlled containment of raw, systemic chaos. It was the first true magical feat of his life.
Kian rushed over to him, hauling him up. "Ten seconds of pure stasis containment! You stabilized a Level-4 flood! That's Master Stabilizer territory, Lance! Now move! The Clock Tower door is open for sixty seconds!"
Opal, horrified but energized by Lance's control, grabbed his arm. "We have to go. Before Dean Eris gets here."
The trio ran toward the Aethelgard Clock Tower, leaving the vast, silent pool of water—Lance's massive, physical, contained secret—behind them.