Adam’s Thor Aspect monitored and recorded the progress of the nanites as they spread across Vrax. He was also aware of Adam and the various meetings and calls he was taking as Trix. As Thor had the memories of Adam as part of his makeup, he paused one night when “Trix” was invited to a party that Trix’s memories indicated she always attended. As Adam and Thor reviewed memories of those previous events they both realized that Trix gave into her carnal desires at these parties. It would be uncharacteristic for Trix not to attend so “she” did. For Adam, the event took place at its normal pace. As he’d never had the opportunity to participate in such a party as a female before, the experience was…unique.

For Thor, traveling through time as he was with his specific abilities, remaining linked to Adam in the far past was disorienting. Thor could cope with it of course. The majority of Adam’s mental processing power was with Thor after all. Adam had learned long ago to separate himself enough so that the various parts of himself could work independently. With the explosion of nanites, however, they needed to remain linked to his core and Adam had designated that core as Thor. Thor decided that while he could deal with the disorienting effect, Adam as Trix would better be served if the major portion of himself was moving at the same temporal velocity. There would still be the disorientation of that portion of himself being in the future but millions of years wouldn’t be passing for every second of Adams’ existence.

Thor reviewed the data he’d gathered and also pulled up some data from his original Cosmos. Thor decided that a rogue planet that had been ejected into intergalactic space between the Milky Way and the Andromeda Galaxy would be a perfect place to set up shop. It was very unlikely that the Vrax had discovered it. Of course, he had to adjust for the amount of time that had passed and extrapolate for the collision of the two galaxies because he was so far in the future but such as task was child’s play for him. He was also quite lucky in that the collision of the two galaxies had only a minor effect on the trajectory of the planet as it had been traveling laterally to the collision point. Even so, it took a few tries to find the planet. To anyone that might have been watching in just over 5 seconds, 1,119 portals opened within a sphere 500 light years. Thor locked onto the planet and then sent some nanites to the frozen world which was still hurling through empty space. Thor opened a portal to the world and sent some nanites through. Once the conversion of the planet was started Thor focused his attention back into his soul space.

The demon Brux had been frozen and just sitting there. Oh, it hadn’t taken long to break into his mind and figure out what he was thinking but it was so pathetically predictable that Thor hadn’t had a desire to taunt Brux. Now though he couldn’t just leave this Demon in his Soul.

“Brux,” Thor said through the nanites that filled this section of Hell, “Trix placed me in a time trap. Right now, millions, if not billions of years, are passing for us as I say this to you,” Thor finished saying then released Brux so he could respond.

“Show yourself so I can kill you! When I get my hands on you…

Thor silenced him again as he said, “You’ll silence me with your power? Beings more powerful than you have tried.” Thor said pausing for a moment as he thought before continuing, “In a few moments a portal is going to open to the location I am transferring to. When that happens, you will be released. I strongly suggest you do not try to step through that portal and continue to live within this trap Trix created until it’s removed or the spell expires.”

His conscience clear, Thor opened a portal and translocated the physical location of his soul space through the portal to the frozen planet and into the bunker that had been created by the nanites he’d sent there. The nanites were still creating a livable environment within the planet. Thor also released Brux from his stasis and watched through the nanites around Brux. Once release Brux launched himself at the portal shouting, “When I find you, I will…” Abruptly his scream was cut off as his body disintegrated as it crossed the temporal sheering threshold of the portal.

Congratulations! You had destroyed a Level 1000 Arch-Demon Brux permanently

Always honest with himself, Thor knew the Demon would try that. Though, he wished he had access to the Universal Interface so he could verify what happened. He was pretty sure that this method of destroying a soul would only work on basic souls. Then he thought about some other times and messages he’d seen in his original Universe. Yes, there had been a message once that had stated that his soul would be released and travel to the Eye if he stepped through a portal that crossed time. That implied that safety mechanisms could exist within specific cosmos that prevented souls from being shredded and that they were not active in this Cosmos. So this method of attack worked here, but it might not destroy his enemies in other places. Also, if it was a permanent method of soul destruction, why would “The System” that governed such settings within overall reality allow such a cosmic configuration? There were a few possibilities but the one that came to mind because of Brux was simply that there needed to be a way to take out the trash. Basic souls probably weren’t the target in such a case. This implied that it was very likely that advanced souls, those with a soul space, would not be protected as well as he thought they would. There was no way to know, and no way to test these ideas so he shelved them for future inquiry and focused on the planet he had stepped onto. Using his nanites he viewed the planet and the surrounding space and was stunned by the beauty of the remnants of the Milky Way and the Andromeda Galaxies as they filled the night sky. This planetoid was approximately 1 million light-years away and the light from the galaxies was at least a million years old which meant that this aspect of himself was extremely far into the future as compared to Adam. Thor anchored his soul space to the nanites here. Being this far away from the center of the events Adam was in would reduce any chance of paradox that Adam might create in the past. Now it was time to start collating all the data from the nanites that existed during this time, categorizing and getting it ready for Adam. This would allow Adam to have accurate coordinates for anywhere he had nanites. Adam/Trix might not be able to utilize his soul-space…but had Adam tried to use it? He did have that Soul Ability “Soul Storage” after all.

* * *

Time to deal with that upstart, Eloise thought, as she teleported into the new head of Special Investigations’ apartment. Eloise had been working diligently for Trix for the last six years and she hadn’t been promoted once. Of course, knowing Trix’s personality and how much she “loved” to be questioned, Eloise had held her tongue. The last person that had publicly questioned Trix had never been heard from again. Who had that been, oh yeah her direct boss who answered directly to the Emperor. Eloise had to be extremely careful. Luckily she was one of the lucky within the Vrax that had abilities to facilitate such unique ways of advancement. She’d been born with two Legendary Abilities.

Multifold Magician – You are able to learn magic from all eight basic schools of magic; Air, Life, Water, Dark, Earth, Death, Fire, and Light. You start with the bolt spell for each domain of magic for free and must follow normal class and skill progression rules to learn new spells.

Eloise’s second ability was much more useful.

Annulled Trace – Indications of your passing do not occur unless you consciously allow it. Any evidence that you leave behind, physical or magical evaporates into the ether as it drops away from you. All notes of your passing are scrubbed from personal interfaces affected except yours unless you will it so. This ability can be toggled on and off.

Once Eloise understood just how powerful her second ability was she’d toggled it off and only activated it when she needed to perform a task she did not want to be caught doing, like now. Should anyone utilize any form of identifying magic on her it would fail, though if a God used their spells on her she was pretty sure they’d be able to identify her. As a precaution, she’d also utilized a metamorphosis spell to appear as Sarah Tucker, Ne’lix’s 3rd shift number one assistant. As well as an invisibility spell to keep her off camera. Her invisibility spell also protected her from thermal and motion sensors. It was an extremely advanced and useful version of the spell she’d learned from her spymaster. If invisibility failed, she’d appear as someone else and as no trave of her true identity would be present, Sarah was in a word, screwed. The other reason she was here. She’d been assigned to get as close to Trix as possible and Ne’lix, a nobody from some backwater farming world had jumped ahead of her. She calmed herself and refocused on the task at hand.

Eloise moved to the kitchen and pulled a large knife from the knife block set on the kitchen counter then she made her way to the bedroom. As she opened the door slowly she found Ne’lix sleeping alone on his bed, not a care in the world. She’d developed a special one-two combo for just such scenarios. Utilizing a spell she’d created which she’d named Force Shackles, she cast the spell and Ne’lix was immediately flipped onto his back and clamped spread eagle at each wrist and ankle. Ne’lix didn’t even wake up at the sudden movement. While that spell held him she utilized a simple telekinesis spell to take control of the knife in her hand which she moved over to the bed and then slit his throat with it. His eyes opened then and she saw his muscles tense as he tried to reach for his neck. She moved the knife down to the middle of his chest, oriented it so it floated vertically above his chest, then plunged it down burying it right into his heart until only the handle remained visible. She was far enough back that any kind of blood spatters had very little chance of landing on her.

She saw Ne’lix’s eyes flinch as the knife plunged in then the vacancy of death entered them. She wasn’t surprised that he hadn’t tried to raise his head, this attack method almost always severed the muscles necessary to do so. She sat there and watched until she was sure that he was dead, cast a Detect Life spell just to make sure he was dead, then teleported directly into her shower back at her apartment. She floated up into the air until she was about five inches off the ground then cast another spell she’d created, Cleanse Self. This spell disintegrated anything that was attached to her body, out to 3 full inches from her skin that was not part of her. She’d had designed it specifically for herself because the spell had to be able to tell the difference between her hair that was still part of her body and those hairs that had fallen out. Everything, else, clothes, sweat, dead hair that had fallen out, and foreign matter was reduced to its component atoms.

The last part of her procedure to eliminate evidence was simple. She cast a shower spell which rained down on her from above and rinsed any possible particles that had dropped off of her down the drain. Again, she’d modified this shower spell so that when it came into contact with any organic materials that were not her it would act as an acid and eat them away. The spell was almost useless in combat but it was very good as a final step to ensure that anything that had dropped off of her onto the tub floor was destroyed. Her ability allowed her to ignore the possibility of leaving her DNA evidence anywhere. What it did not do is prevent her from leaving a trail of her target’s DNA wherever she went. She’d developed this technique and perfected it. Currently, she was credited with four sanctioned assassinations of heads of state, although in each of those cases she’d had to make the deaths look like they’d occurred from natural causes.

Once the cleansing spell had finished, she lowered herself to the shower floor, turned on the shower, and began her normal morning routine. If anyone was watching her utility consumption, or if it was checked at a later date it would show that she started her shower within minutes of Ne’lix’s death. She turned the shower’s temperature up until it was almost unbearable and took a very long and hot steaming shower. It always took her a little while to relax after a successful mission. She’d finish her shower and then head through the portals along her normal route to her office. Hopefully, by the end of the day, Trix would be contacting her office for a replacement for Ne’lix. She was the next in line due to seniority within the division so expected that she’d be contacted either on her way to work or very shortly after arriving. It was going to be a fun day. What Eloise could not know, and would never have suspected was that her body had been invaded by nanites she could not detect and someone was very aware of what she’d just done and was even now taking steps to have a talk with her when she arrived at work.