The space before Patrick twisted, and a cross-shaped spatial rift opened. The long-dried remains of a desert scorpion appeared before him.
Judging by the scorpion's wound, a soldier from the camp had likely driven a sword into its head, killing it instantly. Apart from that single cut, its body bore no other wounds, but in this environment of swirling yellow sand, the desert scorpion had long since become a dried husk.
Patrick tentatively wrapped spatial energy around the scorpion's remains, creating an isolated experimental environment. The spatial energy was like a giant test tube, ready for a "reagent" to be dripped into it at any moment.
The Time Runes activated, granting Patrick Aman'Thul's ability to control time. Patrick began making fine adjustments to the time within the test tube.
His mind guided the energy, and the magical effects manifested in reality were an expression of his mind. Patrick began adjusting time for the scorpion's remains.
Time flowed like sand through an hourglass. Patrick made the sand inside that hourglass flow backward, and the scorpion's desiccated remains slowly grew plump again. The cut on its head remained, however, with the severed layers of flesh clearly visible.
Patrick had no experience adjusting time and was still feeling his way forward. His precise control over temporal power was lacking, and, unsurprisingly, the scorpion's remains were ruined. He had poured in too much arcane energy, and his control over the spatial and temporal energies was uneven, leaving every part of the scorpion's body at a different point in time.
Patrick was not discouraged. Failure was the mother of success, and a three-dimensional, fourfold composite arcane sequence like this could not succeed on the first attempt. The people of this other world were not stupid. Many mages had spent thousands of years researching before Quel'Thalas