Chapter 423: Stranger Things
The world slowed to a crawl.
Amarena had grown better at pushing her senses to match her speed, and those senses told her that behind the orb’s unnerving perfection were shadowed structures in the heart of its darkness.
She couldn’t see them with her eyes but she could sense them, for they carried the same magical weight as the true soulstones that Kir had taken possession of after the battle with Kainur. Some of those had been given back to keep the demons of his dukedom healthy, but he’d still held onto the vast majority, and now it felt like all of them had been embodied into this impossible sphere.
What horrible thing have you set upon us, Kiryu?
Amarena took one experimental swing at the orb with Patience, but withdrew her blade the moment she saw the edge being eaten away. The sound of her "Tsk" drew out in the stretched moment. She hadn’t thought to expect anything different compared to the arrows, but at least she hadn’t overcommitted and lost more than a tiny bit of edge.
She saw a bright red light start to emit from the center of the orb and flitted away towards the mid-deck. It took her a few moments to realize the orb was slowly chasing her as it flew between Encke and Char, who wisely seemed to be holding their spells.
In her accelerated thoughts, Amarena pondered why the orb hadn’t tried to damage the ship, instead hovering about a measure off the ground as it flew inexorably forward. She’d just realized it might not be a weapon after all when she looked up and noticed a demon with his fists together, ready to smash his hands into the thing in what had to be both a brave and foolish gesture.
With a sigh, Amarena flickered her position next to him and pushed him out of the way before flickering back to the deck. Being unable to change the rate of her fall, the act was mana intensive, but she’d been practicing after taking Kir’s lessons about position, velocity, and acceleration to heart.
After all, if she did need to stop Kiryu, being able to teleport was probably the only way she could catch him, but her ability still only worked within her line of sight unless she had an extremely clear mental image of her surroundings. Even then the mana she used went up exponentially with distance, up to her limit of about a hundred measures, which was a huge improvement but not much.
Seeing the orb slightly rise to intercept her before slowly arcing down to its hover height confirmed her suspicion that it was after her.
Sorry everyone... she thought, before briefly letting go of her accelerated state to shout "I’ll lead it away!" Then, turning, she accelerated again to dash across the lake, making for the southern shore.