Grey Spatium 35/ Aether Blades 16

My eyes opened, and I dropped back down to the stone roughly; I had been hovering several inches above it without realizing. I stood atop the rock for several minutes, motionless. Restless tension built in me until it was like a ripple across the surface of every thought at once. I took in a deep breath and let it out as a sigh. I needed to move—to do something.

Focusing on my core, I began conjuring swords of pure aether. First two, then four, then six. I stopped at eight as the bright violet blades floated around me.

With the conjured weapons in place, I activated Realmheart, bringing the thick haze of mana particles into view. Their greens, blues, reds, and yellows painted the beach like the brush strokes of some clumsy artist. I felt my hair rise from my scalp as the hidden runes across my body burned with aetheric light.

Next, I pushed aether into God Step, bringing the connections between every point clearly into view as well.

Aroa’s Requiem activated next, glowing warmly against my back with the other godrunes. Its purpose in this exercise was primarily to add mental weight, making the use of the other godrunes more difficult.

Additional partitions of my conscious mind broke off to guide each blade, to calculate each trajectory, and to control each godrune.

Using the ability to see the interplay of mana and aether through Realmheart, I formed eight aetheric bubbles, which dipped into the ocean and filled with water before floating back into the air. These targets spread out in front of me, at different heights and distances.

Starting with only one at a time, I launched an orb away from myself, then thrust a sword into the aetheric pathways. The blade appeared from a different point to pierce the orb, allowing the water within to splash back down into the sea. Two more flew in different directions, and I repeated the exercise. Within a couple of rounds, all eight were being launched like sling bullets with one part of my mind, while another part attempted to strike them all simultaneously. Each time, I reconjured and filled the orbs.

The Relictombs were the key. The djinn’s knowledge of aether and how to utilize it on a large scale was written into the bones of the structure. Emptying the aetheric void safely without destroying our world would be impossible without that knowledge.

My conjurations faded away, but I kept channeling aether into all of my godrunes. My feet lifted off the ground, and I hung in the air like a marionette. I imagined my core as the aetheric realm and began absorbing more aether from the atmosphere. Curious about something, I captured a cluster of mana particles within some of that aether.