Grey Spatium 11

I had an idea, but wasn’t entirely sure it would work. Regis, I need you to picture your surroundings as clearly as you can and send me that thought. As clearly as you can, all right?

‘Yeah yeah, I got it.’

I took a step back from the door and focused on the aetheric pathways again, right up to where they stopped at the closed door. When the mental picture of the Reliquary interior began to form in my mind, I connected it with the purple fractal paths I could see, forming a mental map of where I thought they continued to.

Three Steps had taught me not to just look for the paths, but to feel them and let them guide me along. This made the ability much faster and more efficient to utilize, but it also—theoretically—meant that I could use God Step to move somewhere I couldn’t directly see.

Activating the godrune, I vanished with a flash of amethyst light.

And appeared on the other side of the door, crackling with aetheric energy. Aside from the fact that it had worked—I just teleported through a solid door, I realized with delight—the more exciting sensation was how little aether the godrune had consumed. Although I hadn’t even been able to absorb enough atmospheric aether to fill my newly strengthened core yet, God Step took only a fraction of my aetheric reserves.

The thrill of using the godrune for the first time since forging the second layer of my aether core was interrupted by a tingling sensation all over my body.

Beneath my feet, the rune trap had activated and was attempting to draw out all my mana. I stepped off it, unharmed, my aether core undisturbed by the magic.