Tala once again felt like the world around her slowed, even as Sole’s last words were still fading from her ears, “I don’t think I like you.”

It felt as if uncounted small things had rippled through the edge of her aura at once, prompting her to focus more minutely with her voidsight. That unique perception showed her the miniscule reality nodes of a flight of projectiles, all targeting her.

No, he wouldn’t be that foolish. Even if he’d made these indestructible, he wouldn’t believe that they’d hurt me with what he’s seen. Not if they’re just rock.

-That seems a bit arrogant, but I’ll play along. So, what was the real attack?-

I mean really hurt me, Alat. Arguing isn’t helping.

-Not dodging isn’t helping either.-

A hair behind the forest of pinprick attacks, something passed through her aura, sliding down the cliff face.

Her eyes started to widen as she realized what it was, a wall of rock more than four feet thick, broader than her expanded bubble of aura within the cells.

How the rust did he even make something like that?

-Millennia of time and an ax to grind?-

You’re being oddly unhelpful, Alat.

There was no way that Tala could jump into the tunnel before the barrier was in place, and her unit was still retreating back into the passage.

-Do what you know you should, stop complaining. We have this.-

Master Clevnis was the last one in the retreat, and he was standing directly under the falling multi-ton stone slab.

She didn’t have time for any further thought, even with her perception and mental enhancements making the world seem to crawl.

One of her defensive discs flicked backward, out of its sheath on her belt in the small of her back.

She kept the circle oriented broadside, even as she strained her aura to move it faster.

The flow of time returned to normal and three things happened so close together that it was hard to tell them apart.

First, her defensive disc slapped into Master Clevnis’s chest, bypassing his defenses because it wasn’t explicitly an attack or from a hostile.

He was thrown backward with such force that Tala heard his ribs crack around the site of the impact.

Second, the stone slab hit the ground, the impact apparently sufficient to break the effect that made it undetectable. The sound it made was a mix of a cacophonous boom and crunching squelch, the former vastly overpowering the latter.

Third, a cloud of stone needles slammed into Tala, most actually driving deeply enough through her protection to draw wells of blood.

While she’d ensured that Flow’s distributive resilience was in place, it didn’t stop the needles from pushing the iron aside at practically an atomic level.

Honestly, Tala couldn’t imagine a defense that could have stopped such points penetrating through, and that was likely a large factor in the results.

Now visible, Tala was able to see that they were each an impossible shape, bulbous masses of stone with single protrusions that lengthened and thinned to the point that even her enhanced perception couldn’t see the very tip.

Wow… That’s a lot sharper than I expected. The thought came to mind unbidden, even as she grit her teeth against the pain.

-And a lot more than I expected… Yeah, dodging wouldn’t have helped.-

Before anything else, Tala heard a man's scream of agony from beyond the multi-ton stone slab, and she felt the tension in her back loosen in relief.

Master Clevnis was hurt but alive.

With the landing of the stone—and the blood that had splattered out from under it—she had been afraid that she hadn’t been fast enough.

Mistress Vanga can see to him, now.

Sole was looking at her with narrowed eyes. “You don’t bleed red? And they say I’m not human.”

He paused, then cackled lightly.

“No, no. That was me. I said that I wasn’t human.” He giggled a bit more.

Tala’s body was pulling back together, the internal pressure and flesh pushing in on itself driving out the needles in quick succession, causing the oddly shaped things to thunk to the ground like hail.

“Well, having a companion for eternity isn’t the worst outcome, but I suspect you could get us both free with enough time and motivation.”

Tala shook her head. “Pass.”

She flicked a hand outward.

As she did so, an orb-pair seemed almost to float below her rising palm for the fraction of an instant it took for her to change the target of their gravity amplification.

There was a crack as the orbs shot forward.

They hit the edge of her aura and encountered Sole’s nullification of magic and its remnant effects.

Like before, there was a stark contrast between within her aura and outside of it.

In this case, the orbs, unaffected by magic, were a whole lot of air.

The concussive expansion blasted Sole backward, the man letting out a confused sound that came out somewhere between a yip of pain and a yelled curse.

That bought Tala a bit of time.

Good, I think I’m starting to understand how his magic works.

She immediately turned her attention to the stone slab behind her, twisting around, planting her feet and slamming her fist into the rock.

The cavernous cell resounded like a struck drum, but the stone didn’t move.

A cackling laugh came from near the far side of the space.

I didn’t think I threw him that far. She shrugged. Good for me.

“That’s a thousand tons of granite, worked with my power to be effectively invincible. You won’t… what are you doing?” The last was more spoken than shouted, but Tala still heard it.

She grinned when he expressed his pride of accomplishment, and his exclamation likely came when he saw her magic sinking into the stone before her.

Voidsight on one of her perspectives found the node that she suspected was the man running back toward her, again, much farther away than she’d expected.

I suppose it was effectively a directed blast?

She grabbed the stone's gravity that was oriented downward and targeted it to her understanding of Sole, based on the descriptions given of him, not her own interactions and understanding. She didn’t want the working to break if she learned something new, after all.

The redirected gravity was too weak to really move the thing with any speed. It wouldn’t even overcome the coefficient of friction, given that the stone would need to slide to move toward the prisoner. It did cause the stone to begin to groan, slightly tipping.

So Tala poured power into amplifying the newly directed gravity, burning a couple of her gold rings to quicken the pace even as she dropped down among the fallen needles. She only hesitated a moment before scooping them into Kit despite the painful pin-sticks she got even through her defenses.

There was seemingly no emotional manipulation in the air, and any toxicity could be isolated and removed by Kit, herself.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Tala judged the risk to be acceptable, given those factors.

It only took a moment before the stone groaned and slid away from the cliff-face, bumping upward to slowly fall away, accelerating all the while.

Tala kicked up with all her strength as it passed fractions of an inch above her, giving it some upward movement even as it arced toward Sole in the distance.

Unfortunately, as soon as the stone fully passed out of her aura, she lost her connection with it, and Tala was unable to continue to amplify the pertinent gravity. Doubly unfortunately, the effects of her working were undone, yet again proving that his nullification went far deeper than just countering magics.

The slab boomed against the ground before it toppled over to crash down a final time.

Blessedly, the cliff that had been blocked by the stone was unbroken. Even the tunnel was no longer visible, and Tala felt herself breathe out a sigh of relief.

Master Girt had sealed the tunnel and wouldn’t open it again until it was time for her to retreat.

She could now engage the prisoner without fearing that he would go around her and escape and without worrying about her unit-mates.

As she stood, Tala pointedly ignored the massive splatter of blood, crushed bone, and viscera that had been under the slab.

Master Clevnis will be fine. Mistress Vanga has him.

They had considered simply sealing the entrance with all of them on the outside, but that would give the prisoner free rein to do as he wished with known targets and a finite objective. They had no idea what he could do, uncontested, with that setup and a couple of hours.

So, Tala was to keep him occupied.

From what she’d seen, they’d made the right call.

She used the rest of the minute or so before Sole returned to expand her aura further in other directions both in the standard fashion and with iron spikes, focusing on above the cliff.

Around the slab of stone that she’d moved aside, she did something special.

His aura… he’s not as potent as he should be.

-Agreed. I’d say he’s forcing himself to stay at an Honored level, with very little to back it up at that advancement.-

A hardened shell at the correct density with a hollow core?

-If advancement were a balloon, then yes, I would say that tracks.-

It was meant to be an analogy.

-And it failed when one realizes that advancement is not a balloon or core, or anything like that.-

Fine, but we know what I meant, so I’m going to do it.

-By all means. I think it’s a great idea.-

Tala tried not to roll her eyes as she set up her plan.

She transferred a large amount of iron into the dimensions of magic around the spikes there before pulling her authority back, keeping only the smallest connection to those few spikes most closely aligned with the approach of his reality node.

She couldn’t remove the connection entirely, not yet. That would sever her aura and shuck all the iron into the void, but she pulled the aura link into the ground to make it even harder to detect.

She was a bit curious as to why he was simply running straight at her, even if he likely believed that she couldn’t see him.

Not a tactician? That didn’t seem right. His ability seemed to require quick, decisive thinking and action. Not that kind of tactician?

-He’s good at what he does, and I don’t think roundabout tactics, at least physically, would be very useful to him. In fact, as they’d most likely be expected, they might actually hurt him under most circumstances.-

Huh… That’s interesting. I suppose it isn’t really relevant at the moment. We only get one chance at this, before he realizes that we can detect him.

Sole reached the massive stone slab and hopped up onto it, seemingly taking a moment to examine the massive rock but found nothing changed about it.

He likely hadn’t expected to, given his own magics nullified everything that she’d done.

From that seemingly crouched position, his node twitched oddly.

What? Her voidsight caught something shooting for her, and she jerked to the side, just enough to cause the thing to cut into her shoulder instead of her neck.

As it hit her, it became visible.

It was a wedge of rock that narrowed to such a sharp blade that the cutting edge was transparent near the sharp portion.

Just like the needles that had similar treatment, the unbelievably sharp edge cleaved straight through her defenses, splitting her shoulder to sternum as it passed through her before embedding into the cliff behind her.

What the rust? He didn’t become perceivable despite the attack. Her body pulled back together, using a surprisingly small amount of her stores because of just how clean the cut had been. Huh. I hadn’t actually expected his weapons to be to my benefit.

“Good reflexes. Voidsight really makes it hard to surprise you.” He flickered into her perceptions, a sword hilt in one hand.

For the barest instant, Tala thought that the weapon was missing a blade, but then she realized that, of course, it had a blade of the same type and damage nullification as the needles and rock wedge.

Now that… I want that.

-Yeah, let’s grab that if we can. The needles are going to be great, but I want that… and grab the wedge.-

Sole strolled forward across the stone, lazily spinning his weapon with the confidence of a man who was effectively invincible and who would be happy to be proven wrong.

“I’ll admit, you surprised me with whatever that air blast was. How did you do that? I’m always willing to learn from clever magicians.”

He dropped down on the near side of the four-foot-thick slab, right between three of her iron spikes with suppressed auras, in an uneven triangle around him.

His eyes began to widen as he seemingly noticed her trap.

She reacted instantly, her smile only growing as her actions took effect.

Tala flared her aura to slam into him from three sides.

At the same time, she pulled her iron from the dimensions of magic in the shape of needles, mirroring a specific part of Flow’s magics into the magic-resistant weapons.

The needles shot forward at the outside edges of her aura even as she pushed that inward. She used each needle as a relay and amplifier of her aura as well.

The swarm slowed to a crawl less than an inch from his skin as he reacted, hands lifted as if guarding against a punch to the face.

“You really are heavy for your advancement.” Strain was evident in his posture and in his voice.

This was her gamble. She didn’t actually expect to outweigh him, but she had better leverage in this position.

She was pushing straight inward, and he was having to defend from multiple directions at the same time.

More than that, reinforcing an aura against outside interference actively took power.

It wasn’t a lot, but it was infinitely more than nothing, and he had a finite supply.

Her aura and her needles ground to a halt and started crawling backwards as he positively blazed with power.

His own aura was finally revealed in full, showing as the green of a true Honored, just as she’d thought. Even so, it was still odd to her perception.

Arcane advancement had been explained to her as similar to setting benchmarks. Once one reached a certain level, it was much easier to return, but advancing further took high magical concentration, incredible dedication, or insane talent, usually all three.

Sole’s aura felt like it was barely sufficient to meet the benchmark of Honored.

Even so, his body and power wanted to remain at that level, and she could feel the zeme of the entire cell pulling inward as he drew in magic nearly as fast as he expended it.

Nearly.

Tala’s smile firmed as she threw Flow.

Flow got all the way to him, the blade extending out of her aura without the knife leaving her control fully.

The tip touched him in the center of his chest, stopping there by her power as much as his resistance.

In that instant, she saw incredulity on his features. After all, she’d already tested this exact weapon against him when he wasn’t trying to defend himself.

Flow’s dasgannach magics reached out toward the iron within the man’s blood.

There wasn’t much that it could affect. After all, the tip hadn’t pierced Sole’s skin, so the magics barely brushed the smallest amount of his blood, nearest the surface.

Even so, dasgannachs were famous for having undisputable authority over their own element, and Flow had inherited the Paragon’s share of that in the merging.

Even so, this was a true Paragon level enemy.

Honored. She would not give him the honor of being called a Paragon.

Thus, Flow only claimed a pinprick’s worth of iron.

-Nice.-

Sole’s heart beat, moving his blood through miles of arteries, veins, and capillaries.

All his blood moved, including that which Tala now had claim over.

She immediately knew that she couldn’t rip it free from him. After all, that would violate his nullification on damage to himself.

But the iron was still hers.

Her aura was now inside the prisoner, forced to remain by his own magics when it would otherwise have been rejected and ejected.

Sole’s entire aura trembled, and Tala’s own pounced, lurching inward.

Dozens of iron needles contacted Sole as Tala’s aura briefly touched the man’s skin, unable to breach his flesh.

It didn’t matter.

Each needle claimed a pinprick’s worth of iron.

Sole’s heart beat.

The prisoner screamed as his own aura—by its very nature and, indeed, the nature of magic itself—tried to reject and eject the foreign aura, the foreign matter, while his unbreakable nullification kept her iron in place.

Tala reformed the needles into a sheath of iron, coating Sole entirely, her aura pressing inward, but he was fighting back now with an animal ferocity.

Tala used the chance to clamp down on the hilt of the sword in his hand and jerk it away with a bit of iron.

Sole barely resisted, being so focused on their conflicting auras.

And just like that, the sword was hers.

I’ll figure out what to do with it later. She had more pressing things requiring her attention.

Sole was spending power at an insane rate, and at last, he couldn’t continue to prop up his own advancement.

His aura began to visibly shift, sliding toward yellow.

Her cocoon of iron solidified more than half an inch from his skin but could draw no closer.

Despite completely encasing him and, indeed, having her aura within his very flesh, she couldn’t overcome him.

But now, he was fully surrounded by iron.

He could no longer easily draw in power, and he was expending it to try to fight her back.

Her gamble had paid off.

Even so, she was coated in sweat and her mind felt like she had a dozen icepicks slowly sliding deeper with every passing moment.

This is going to be a long couple of hours…