Grey Aether cancels time stop

Show me,” Kezess ordered, ignoring my jibe. “I can sense the aether around you, burning inside you, but I wish to see you use it. Prove to me this isn’t more than some parlor trick.”

I bit my tongue to keep from speaking more barbed words. I wasn’t afraid of Kezess, but I hadn’t come here just to provoke him, either. He had a purpose in summoning me, and I had a purpose in accepting.

I considered the runes at my disposal and what would cost me the least to reveal, but there was an obvious choice.

Sending aether into the godrune, I activated Realmheart. The heat of the magic brought a flush to my cheeks as it infused every cell of my body, and the air was filled with color, the godrune making visible the individual motes of mana that infused everything around us. Immediately visible as well were the borders between aether and mana, as the atmosphere here was rich with both. They seemed so obvious now that I had learned how to look properly.

I wondered if Kezess could see them.

Kezess made a short, sharp cutting motion with one hand, and aether flared outward from him, rippling through the atmosphere, causing the world itself to harden and go still. The mana particles drifting in the air were motionless, and a string of herbs, which had been slowly rotating in the subtle air currents, froze. Then the ripple rolled over me, and I felt time stopping.

My mind flashed back to a time before the Relictombs, before my draconic form, before Sylvie’s sacrifice.

I remembered sitting with Elder Rinia. I’d been suspicious about the nature of her powers, and so activated Static Void without warning. She’d used aether to counter me, freeing herself from the time-stop spell.

Reacting on pure instinct, I pushed outward against the ripple with a burst of my own aether. It clung to my skin like a thin film, repelling Kezess’s spell.

His eyes went wide, showing real surprise and even, I thought, uncertainty for the first time.

Everything else in the cottage was frozen, motionless. But my chair kept rocking slightly, and I felt one brow quirk up as my lips curled into a wry, humorless smile. “I think you’ll find my understanding of aether sufficiently worth your time.”

Kezess glanced around, frowning slightly. He bent down to inspect something, and I realized there was some kind of spider clinging to the leg of Myre’s table. Kezess pulled the spider from its perch, examining it closely. His fingers closed, and the spider’s insides stained his fingertips. He tossed the tiny corpse to the floor, then returned his attention to me.

“You have come by this knowledge within the series of dungeons known as the Relictombs,” Kezess said, an echoing dissonance resonant within his voice. “But Agrona has been sending mages into the djinn’s final redoubt for many years.” His eyes narrowed as he peered at me, time still stopped. “What made you different? How did you conquer where all others had failed?”

Experimentally, I pushed back against the time stop spell. The aether around me flexed, but I wasn’t able to expand the barrier beyond myself and the chair on which I sat. “I’m willing to give you information. But only if we can come to some kind of agreement.”