Create a new version of paste:

Or at least, she had known me. So it was time to use a few tricks I’d developed since we’d parted ways.
In the past, I’d worn rings designed to store a little excess kinetic energy every time I moved my arm. Then I could let loose the saved energy all in one place to pretty devastating effect when I really needed to do it. I hadn’t had the resources I needed to make new rings, but I’d carved the same spell in my new wizard’s staff.
Seventy-seven times.
It wasn’t as handy as my layered rings had been—instead of being broken up into multiple units, the energy of the spell was all stored in one reservoir, so I only had the one shot.
But it was a doozy.
So as another white-hot sphere splashed into flame against my shield, I whirled the butt end of the staff where the energy storage spells were carved toward Ascher, focused my concentration on the shield, braced my feet, and shouted, “Arietius!”
The staff bucked in my hands like a living thing and shoved my shoes several inches across the floor as the stored energy unleashed itself and drove into the rear of my shield. For a second, I worried about the staff shattering—I had never tried it with this much stored energy before, and there was always the chance that I had exceeded the design tolerance of the spell at some point. If I had, I would be the center of my own spectacular and splintery explosion. But my work was good and the staff functioned perfectly. I held the structure of the shield together and let the energy from the staff drive it forward, toward Ascher, and suddenly a large, obdurate, and extremely solid invisible wall was rushing at her like an oncoming freight train, shedding a trail of fire in its wake.
I had never lowered the shield, and my actions had been obscured by all the fire chewing away at it—so Ascher recognized the danger a second too late, and that was where her inexperience showed. She might have real power and a gift with fire, but in a fight there’s no time to think your way through spells and counterspells. Either you’ve done your homework or you haven’t, and despite the advantage of having Lasciel in her corner, Ascher wasn’t ready for something like this. She was focused entirely on offense, not on protecting herself as well, and couldn’t come up with a counter in time.
The wall hit her with about the same force as an oncoming garbage truck, and blew her right out of the veil of purple mist that clung to her naked form. She flew back off the stage in a windmill of flailing limbs, and crashed into a display of particularly fine ecclesiastical robes and garments, most of which burst into flame as the sheath of shimmering heat around her body brushed against them.


Skin Game Chapter 378-379