"Are the alarms difficult to make?" Wolfe asked.
"No, we can make them in a few hours, the problem would be that we need to get them everywhere." The Fae replied.
"In that case, it's not a problem. We are about to change the whole nature of trade within the Territories. We just need to remove a few bad actors first. The real issue will be the stationing of troops with rapid movement capability. None of us exactly have a standing army, or at least we don't anymore.
My people can supply the gear and helicopters, but we need a way to train the soldiers to respond as a team." Wolfe explained.
"Just hire the demons. If you give wrath demon mercenaries helicopters and machine guns, I bet that they will do it for less than half price." The Advisor laughed.
Wolfe thought back to the last time that he had given wrath demons machine guns and thought that charging half price might be their version of trying to drive a hard bargain. They loved the machine guns in a way that was slightly concerning.
"Alright. The costs will have to be sorted out later, but I can have the people of Forest Grove work on a plan to get mercenaries in place for rapid response to attacks until we have an actual army of our own. It won't be cheap to have them stationed in enough places that it makes a difference to response times, but there should be something that we can do.
I have met the Queen of the Wrath Demon nation within the Demon Realms, and she seemed rather agreeable, so I will contact her later to arrange something." Wolfe agreed.
The list of things to do just kept getting longer, and this one would make it even more extreme. The problem was, that they could appear anywhere. Not just in the territories under his command, but anywhere in the world.
But he didn't know why it was targeting this world, and he didn't have any influence outside his own territory, except with a few of the Continental Representatives. That meant bringing them together for another meeting so soon after the last one, and with another aspect of trouble with these strange humans.
Wolfe knew that they were still trying to teach their people the ways of these human magicians, the same as the people of Forest Grove were, so there might be some opportunities here, but it seemed unlikely that they would be able to pull prisoners out of a time loop spell designed to protect them.
"Is there anything that we can do to keep our people safe in the short term?" Reiko asked.
"Not much. Those of us with more power should be able to sense the spell activating if we're not distracted, so I will ask the Guardians to keep an eye out for similar spells, but that's about it.
The mages that were in the group I found today weren't particularly powerful, Rank Five at the most, but I don't know how their growth speed is going to be. We might have some time before they can actually threaten larger towns, but the smaller ones, and anywhere without a protector, would be at risk." Wolfe explained.
"Alright. If there isn't anything that we can do but keep our eyes open and make charms, we will do exactly that. I will send the charms out with your witches when they start visiting the towns through the Forest. I will have them message you as soon as we are done." Reiko replied.
"Alright, talk to you soon."
Wolfe hung up and turned to the witch Elders who had come to visit.
"So, we've got the general idea, but how long were we under attack? The time outside doesn't match with the time in my mind, so it had to be a while." One of the old women asked.
"A few hours, I assume. I responded after I got the message that you were being attacked, since it appears that the spell didn't stop the message from getting out. But exactly how long that was, I can't say." Wolfe informed her.
"It's a strange feeling, knowing that I've forgotten something, like a whole morning, but having someone standing here that proves I forgot something important during that time. If you weren't here, most of us would have never known that anything at all happened here. It would have been just a glitch in our memory when we checked the time and date."
Wolfe smiled. "That's actually a good point. Checking the time and date against what is automatically updated from the cell phone towers is a brilliant idea. The time inside the spell is reset to the start. But if it's not a full twenty-four-hour period, as this one was not, then the time in the outside world will be hours from what everyone expects it to be.
So, comparing an analog clock against an auto-updating one should tell you if something like this happens in the future, but without the residents managing to get out an emergency call."
The town's protector made a note of the idea, but there was already a grandfather clock on the wall, so there was no need to take any action.
"Thankfully, everyone appears to be alright, and they didn't breach the armoury. I'm not certain why I didn't have my memory reset as well, but it might have been because the attack ended before they managed to breach my barriers.
My memory is fine, but those without strong magic all had their days reset.
I will look into barrier spells that defend more effectively against time magic, but I don't even know if those exist. Time magic is positively broken, and only a few types of barriers would hold against it, the ones that have an immutable aspect that is outside the flow of time."
Wolfe gave him a curious look, and the Fae continued. "Well, most things are affected by time, right? Earth, air, fire, water, nature. The passage of time changes them all in various ways. But time doesn't change gravity, and it has a limited effect on the soul, so unholy magic has some effect against it. Time also doesn't have an effect on space that I know of, so the two work well together.
You know, that might be part of the reason that my memories aren't as effected. I am a little over a thousand years old. They are humans. Perhaps the difference in the amount of time that I have lived gives me a bit of stability in time that isn't as affected by the spell."
Wolfe smiled back. "I would say it is possible. Magic is mostly down to interpretation and the will of the caster. How many humans really appreciate how long a thousand years is when you're living it?"
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