Grey Spatium 26

My sword, conjured of pure aether and held together by my will alone, plunged into the interwoven threads of aether around me.

Revealed by the God Step godrune, the network of amethyst paths connected every point to every other point around me—through the aetheric realm, I had learned from the last djinn projection. The godrune had changed when I made that realization, and the knowledge had sat dormant in the back of my mind ever since, a deepening of insight but without a clear use.

Until the moment of necessity when I had no choice but to translate knowledge into action.

My senses flowed through the aether, the paths, the in-between space that connected everything together.

I saw Cecilia, the final vestiges of her last attack still burning the atmosphere between us, the many-armed silhouette of mana wrapped around the body she’d taken from Tessia. And Nico beside her, his uncertain gaze drifting between us, his hand reaching for her shoulder but not daring to touch her.

The aether blade plunged deeper into the lightning-bolt network of aether.

I saw Draneeve, his unconscious form curled up beneath a chunk of fallen stone from the roof, his shattered mask in the rubble at his side, and Mawar, the inky shield clinging to her flesh not able to hide the steady flow of blood from her hips, and Melzri in front of her, her bloodshot, blood-colored eyes slicing through the air like her blades as she moved focus from me to Sylvie’s back.

The pathways drew my strike into themselves, guiding it through space itself.

I saw the collection of mana particles shrouding the figure in the shadows of the twisted and broken ceiling, the threads of mana under her control spilling across the chamber and down on Sylvie and Chul like probing fingers in their brains.

The blade struck home, and a scream rent the air.

Each point, connecting each other point. The connective tissue of this world, the aetheric realm. A strike delivered from one space but falling in another.

A beam of violet light hovered for an instant in the air. Shadows rippled, and Viessa formed around it, the blade sprouting out of her sternum. She coiled in on herself like a spider, her scream cutting out just as sharply as it had sounded, but her mouth remained open, her silent cry somehow even worse than the banshee wail. As she writhed, waves of purple hair rose up around her face like a ghostly nimbus.

I pulled the blade free, and it retracted back through the aetheric paths, sliding out of her body so that she plummeted to the ground.

Cecilia and Nico had both glanced toward the source of the scream. Mezlri was frozen in place, horrified and transfixed as she watched the other Scythe bounce off the crumbling tiles. The only noise for a handful of heartbeats was the crackling of phoenix fire.