And she seized it. She flung her feet in front of her and struck the wall and bounced off and the sword came out effortlessly. Her forward momentum transferred into a backflip. Her magic made the blade weightless because otherwise she would have no control over her lopsided body as she dropped. Ribbons spiraled for her; she swung the blade and severed them at once and held the blade in front of her as she fell. From doorways floating in midair streamed the hundred maids from earlier in a last-ditch effort to protect their queen. They fell the moment they left the portal but flung their arrows and swords at her, all of which she battered away with rapid swishes of the blade. Gravity's pull increased her velocity down the center of the conic room, into the vacuum between the minarets, at the small form of Mami Tomoe and the bodies of Cicero and Berwyn behind it. The red blot of faceless face stared up at her. Someone screamed in Sloan's head.

(Chapter 40)