Basic Thaumaturgy for the Emotionally Incompetent

There was only one thing to do; Fabrisse hurled the coin-sigil upward.

The sigil stopped dead in the air as if skewered on an invisible pin. It flashed once. Runes he didn’t recognize unfolded across it in a rapid, mechanical sequence. Then the coin split.

The construct expanded into a hovering starburst of interlocking crystal frames, rotating silently against the screaming wind.

It fired. Volleys of crystal shards cut through the air, punching holes through the pressure field as if the wind itself had been perforated.

Noctyn flinched. The membranes at the edges tore as crystals punched through, embedding deep along the joints and veins. Blood misted.

It’s working!

Then Noctyn clapped its wings. Fragments shattered mid-flight as it reacted, one massive wing clap pulverizing the remaining volley, turning crystal into glittering dust that screamed past Fabrisse in sheets. The airflow reasserted itself as the column tightened around its body again—angrier now, more focused.

Oh no.

The construct was already destabilizing. Stress lines raced along the outer frames, crystal struts screaming as the wind gnawed at their tolerances. One more wing smash and it would fold like brittle glass.

It wasn’t strong enough.

But it didn’t have to be. The construct was noise. He had to add more noise into it.

Fabrisse reached into his Aetherrealm and pulled out as many insects as he could. One nymph, then another, then another.

The insects flung themselves at Noctyn, but . . . one smash, and they were gone. The pressure wave erased them.

Fabrisse’s thoughts raced, but not blindly. He’d seen out of the corner of his eye, through the chaos. Zan Ruan fired her ice not as a lance, but as platforms: flat, fast-growing discs that briefly interrupted the vertical flow, shaving the laminar column into stepped layers. Tommaso used them immediately, leaping the instant they formed, letting his Fireform stabilize him just long enough to land, then jump again.

Fabrisse’s eyes darted back to Tommaso.

The space around him was clear.

Too clear.

Where are the mini-Noctyns?

Fabrisse’s gaze dropped.

Below them, far beneath the bulwark and the screaming construct, the Grand Luminary was still fighting the column.

His aura burned dense and controlled, compressed tight around his frame. The vertical wind surged against it in relentless layers, but no longer carried him cleanly upward. Instead, the flow bent, skewed, dragged in hard-won angles. He wasn’t commanding the wind, but it seemed he’d managed to steal pieces of it.

Small vortices bloomed around him, and inside those vortices were dozens of miniature Noctyns jammed together. The Grand Luminary raised one hand in a grasp. The vortices dragged the entire hoard of mini-Noctyns along. They slammed together in a writhing mass of wings and claws, momentarily fused by pressure and momentum into something grotesque and flailing. The mass struck the chamber wall, and bodies shattered on impact. Blood splattered, carried by the vertical wind up to the ceiling above, vanishing into darkness.

Great.

Fabrisse needed to buy them time. He had nothing else, apart from his rocks. But what if he threw the stone at Noctyn and it pulverized it? He’d lose a Stupestone; non-retrievable.

Priorities, Fabrisse. Priorities.

He pulled a Stupenstone, channeled Resolve into it, and hurled it straight at the bat.