He was very good at this.
Years of fighting had made him very good at this.
Satou was faster, individually — fast enough that Chronus's displacement couldn't always put him where the geometry suggested he should be before Satou closed the distance. But faster individually wasn't the same as having the fight. Every time Satou pressed toward the mechanism or toward any position that mattered, Chronus redirected through Seraphina — forced a split moment of decision between following Chronus toward the mechanism and supporting Seraphina against whatever the Tenth Seat was doing to her.
Three times in the first fifteen minutes, Satou chose the mechanism.
Three times, Chronus used the choice.
Seraphina paid for two of those three.
The first hit was the temporal compression at her left wing.
