ride

Without pausing, as the reflected light of the arcing torch flickered across polished bronze, Hanno called on his aspect without so much as a whisper. Ride, he thought, and Creation echoed of it. And now the White Knight used a second refinement on the aspect he’d devised since the Red Flower Vales. Namely, that while the aspect usually helped him form Light to use this was not, strictly speaking, necessary: he could use Light already at hand. Such as the one he’d just released across the floor, snatching it up before it could fade and shaping it for swiftness. His arm extended, he rammed the forming lance of light through the weakness in the Revenant’s armour, the slight space between helmet and cuirass, and felt the Light searing its way through like a hot knife through butter.

Amaranta Viegle, long ago the Sage of the West, had spent a lifetime studying the Light.... During those decades she’d experimented with applications of the Light, and though most of what she’d set down of those studies had been lost to flame during the Scouring of Vaccei the White Knight had sat through the revelations of those years with her over long hours of mediation within his aspect. Like, for example, the evening where she had grasped that with enough concentration the initial movement ascribed to Light could still be changed when it had been set in motion. All it required was the addition of fresh Light, as for some reason beyond the comprehension of mortals even a speck added to the initial Light would be enough to turn even a pre-existing sea of the power into a completely different working by the Light’s own laws.

And so, even as the White Knight’s aspect saw Light emerging from his legs to form into a mount, he added a speck more. In the fraction of a moment that followed he seized all the Light that’d been made, and without missing a beat slammed the lot of it into the lance already in the Revenant. The upper half of the dead Named vaporized, and he formed a bladed edge along the lance’s length so he could slice through the lower half outright. He’d had only a single opening, but these days that tended to be all that Hanno needed.

- Extra Chapters: Winter IV