Ok, I think I'm pretty much with you. But if Maeve/Lily's time-dilation spell, which only slowed time down for a few seconds or a few minutes or distorted it right where they were casting, created enough feedback to echo for at least a day before the event in question, I still find it hard to believe that Merlin or Harry folding time wouldn't create any temporal disturbance at all.
And I don't think the echoes from what Maeve and Lily were doing had anything to do with Demonreach's wards, mainly because Odin's description of the temporal echoes didn't specify that it would only occur at special places or special circumstances; the echoes seemed pretty universal.
The time-dilation itself is used to attack the island at multiple times. In doing so, it sets off wards that Merlin laid across space-time. The time-dilation doesn't cause the echoes; the energy shot through the time-dilation causes the echos. If Harry/Merlin/Odin/Anyone folds time, it doesn't create energy like the attack.
You're too hung up on Odin's description. Look at what Bob says, based on what DR tells him.
Statement: “Someone hits the island with energy, Harry. But they’ve figured out how Merlin put this place together. They aren’t attacking it in three dimensions. They’re attacking in four. They’re sending power through time as well as through space.”
Analysis: Maeve and Lily hit the island with energy. They hit it in multiple times using the time distortion field.
Statement: “What the island is experiencing now is the echo of the moment that burst of energy strikes it,” Bob said. “Only instead of the echo happening after, it’s happening first.”
Analysis: The attack, which has not started at that time, is already impacting the wards at that time, due to the time-dilation.
Statement: Then I saw the dissonance appear. Bob had chosen to show it as a sullen red light that began to pulse lightly at the westernmost edges of the great design. It began as something faint, but then, like an oncoming headache, started to throb into something larger and more noticeable. Where scarlet and blue light touched, there were ugly flares of energy— flares that I had been sensing ever since I’d gotten to the island. Before long, that scarlet pulse had spread to half the island, and then, abruptly, the screen went white.
Analysis: The dissonance is the energy coming from the attack. It hits the wards across time, causing the scarlet pulses in the example, which Harry confirms are the same flares he's been sensing, and likely the others have as well.
its not just the prison you've got to consider:
- a prisons wall have to be strong enough to hold the prisoners. Some of them are likely Titans, or worse.
- the prison all has to be strong enough to contain their natures. If having someone of titan class (mother winter) on earth is enough to accidentally flatten the planet, how strong does a shield to contain that have to be?
- Merlin cast the spell that made the outer ward. I doubt he built the whole thing; for one point , DR itself is much older then the ward is.
DR is the genus loci for the island. But Bob clearly states in CD, based on the info DR gives him, that Merlin created the prison.
- “Merlin didn’t build the prison five times,” Bob said. “He built it once. In five different times. All at the same time.”
This ridiculous level of power that the upper tier supernatural creatures possess raises an interesting question.
If the various upper tier supernatural creatures have to spend large amounts on Earth and throw down with various other similarly strong entities, what effects will it have on reality and Earth? That many creatures capable of rewriting the laws of reality throwing down cannot be good for it.
Odin said it best.
- “It is the only way,” Vadderung said. “If anyone managed to
set free the things in the Well . . .”
“Seems like it would be bad,” I said.
“Not bad,” Vadderung said. “
The end.”