Grey Skill 15

One of the flying blades hacked at my neck. I deflected with an aether blade of my own, but it shattered. The second flying sword swept across the side of my knee, while the two she held thrust at my chest and hip. Remembering Kordri’s lessons, I fell into a defensive position and used short, rapid movements of both my hands and feet to intercept or avoid each attack, conjuring several aetheric daggers one after the next, each one evaporating under the strain of her attacks.

Her bombardment was relentless, with attacks coming from several directions at once. Although I was fast enough to dodge or block most, I still felt the repeated cuts and piercing thrusts where her blows did land.

Eventually, she simply stopped, dismissed her weapons, and sat once again. I cautiously mirrored her, waiting silently for the lesson to continue. I wanted to think I had learned something, but so far her guidance had been too esoteric, too vague, to really help me understand how she conjured such powerful aether blades. While she made a fantastic sparring partner, my ability to maintain the form of a pure aether weapon hadn’t much improved.

“That is because you’re waiting for me to tell you what to do, like we were learning mana manipulation back at that academy of yours,” she said shortly. “But I cannot.”

I frowned at her. “You claim to want to teach me, but also that I should simply pull this knowledge from the air, manifesting it as if by magic.”

“Exactly,” she said, giving me a single, sharp nod. “But I can sense your frustration, and I recognize that you are not a djinn, even if you share a drop of our essence. And so I will attempt to explain this in a different way.”