Grey Spatium 28

The aetheric paths called to me, and I stepped into them.

I appeared between them, mana pouring past me on all sides, but I didn’t release my concentration on the God Step godrune. The lightning-bolt paths opened in every direction in front of me.

Between Cecilia and me was a nearly impenetrable shell of overlapping layers of mana. So intense was her concentration of mana that it warped even the aetheric pathways, deflecting them so that they bulged out, blurred, and grew difficult to trace.

I listened. Past the hum of mana, the shouts from Nico and Chul, the angry his of Cecilia’s breath. Through the crackle of flames and the clatter of stones. I listened, as Three Steps had taught me, to the aether’s beckoning call.

And I drove the sword forward.

The blade slipped into the pathways, disappearing just above my hand and appearing again inside the shield to slide up into and between her ribs.

Her body was moving almost before the blade appeared, and the strike missed her heart.

I pulled my sword back, prepared to thrust again, but something else came with it. I hesitated for an instant, uncertain of what I was seeing. The blade of my sword was wrapped in lavender-tinged mana. Suddenly something else was in control of the blade, and it was twisting around in my wrist to slash across my own ribs. As the mana-wrapped aether struck my armor, Cecilia’s mana exploded out of her, hammering my own weapon into me.