Chapter 586
Kaelen’s initial burst of energy and speed was noticeably flagging. His figure, previously a swift blur, was becoming slower, his movements more labored. His very form seemed to be falling apart with each energy expenditure, bits of his outer casing flaking away, internal components sparking visibly. Yet, Vorenza herself was nothing short of a nightmare. Pieces of her skin and clothing hung precariously, her silver-threaded repairs struggling to keep pace with the damage. Only her enraged roar at Kaelen’s retreating figure spoke of her fading power and rising desperation.
She was truly desperate. What had begun as a mere inconvenience, a few seconds of suppressed movement, had now escalated into a full-blown minute of being actively hampered by Lyra’s curse. The more she was attacked, the weaker she became, and agonizingly, the stronger the curse’s grip on her grew.
Vorenza shattered through the latest stillness imposed by the curse, her eyes locking onto Kaelen’s retreating form. She saw it then—the subtle falter in his movements, the diminishing shimmer of energy around him. He wasn’t attacking anymore, wasn’t even attempting to deploy another spear. He was just running, a desperate, fading shadow, buying time for the curse to do its work.
A grim smile, more a baring of teeth than genuine amusement, stretched across Vorenza’s bloodied face. This was it. Her internal clock was screaming, the "bomb" of Lyra’s curse threatening to detonate and tear her apart from the inside out. But Kaelen was also at his limit, a broken machine running on fumes. She had one last chance.
Vorenza decided to take a gamble.
Vorenza’s eyes, though wild with desperation, held a flicker of cold, strategic cunning. Kaelen was retreating, his energy all but spent. An energy blast, a simple concussive force, would be wasted. He was a machine, yes, but one that could endure direct damage. She needed something more insidious, something that would strip him of his last, vital resource: motion.
"You think to hide in the sky, machine?" she rasped, a new, chilling resolve hardening her voice.
She began to weave. No grand, flashy display this time, but a series of interconnected, almost imperceptible manipulations of the Laws around her. First, a subtle distortion of the Law of Buoyancy. Not to make Kaelen fall, but to subtly negate his ability to maintain his airborne position, causing an almost imperceptible drag, a whisper of a pull downwards. On top of this, she wove a concentrated application of the Law of Friction, not against his body, but against the very air particles around him, making his movements exponentially more difficult, as if he were trying to swim through treacle.
Then came the final, brutal layer. As Kaelen, now visibly struggling against the invisible resistance, fought to maintain his altitude, Vorenza imposed a localized Law of Inertia. She didn’t increase his mass, but rather, made it exponentially harder for him to change his state of motion. Every twitch of a limb, every attempted correction, became a titanic effort, draining what little energy he had left. It was like trying to stop a charging bull with a single thread, yet magnified to the scale of his entire being.
Kaelen, already running on empty, felt it immediately. The air turned thick, cloying, then impossibly heavy. His internal gyros shrieked, struggling against an unseen force that pressed down on him, dragging him, holding him. He tried to ascend, but his thrusters flared uselessly against the overwhelming, invisible resistance. He tried to move laterally, but it was like attempting to push through solid stone. His systems, already critically low on mana, spiked into the red, then flatlined. The curse’s grip was the final, deciding factor, preventing Vorenza from being able to maintain this complex weave for long, but she held it just long enough.