I feel the mental equivalent of his nose bumping my forehead. «Then you’ll have it.»
On instinct I brace with my power as with a powerful flap of his wings, Zan takes to the sky, which bowls over the immediate Crystal Hollow contingent behind us.
It will also mean anything unleashed before he starts a counterattack will go over their heads.
Now there are two targets for the Order, and Mujin will not be able to resist the chance to take down Zan—
Or so I thought. The priests’ forms don’t shift, though, which means they’re still locked on to me.
And Eraya is between us.
A wave of gold from her surges toward me, but I am so pissed at how they are using her that with a roar of rage I unleash a shockwave of pure magenta power that wipes it out before it can reach me.
Eraya reels back, and so do the priests.
They’ve never learned how to brace against a sage, because why would they need to?
But what surprises me is the brief flicker of relief on Eraya’s face, the breath she takes, and all at once I realize why.
The priests are holding her in front of them like a living shield anddraining her power at the same time. Making the priests lose their footing also broke their working.
Zan takes the opportunity to close in, his powerful tail sweeping priests off their feet and throwing them into the air.
It breaks their formation and forces them to turn their attention to him.
And that’s the moment I need.
As Eraya gets to her feet, I move into an old, old form.
A shield is, I’m sure, a kata she recognizes. She’ll have seen priests use it for defense before.
But she isn’t trained to fight for herself. So she moves into the only form she can, to let the priests use her power instead, not realizing that when I unleash my working, I’m including herinsidethe shield.
My concentration of wrath is so intense that it’s as though we’re in a world of pink haze, cut off from sight and sound outside.
Just two sages in the sphere of my power.
Where she can’t hear anyone else telling her what to think.
Where her power is her own, and she can’t give it away or have it be taken from her.
The Sage of Compassion’s eyes go wide as she spins into a different form, trying to shield herself within my domain. But it’s unpracticed and stilted, and while I appreciate the initiative and what it says about her spirit—
We have a narrow window, and I need her to hearme, so I spin into my own kata and shatter her glowing light as soon as it burgeons. She gasps at the hit.
She’s not a combat sage, but I very much am.
“Eraya,” I say urgently. “What they have done to you isnot right. Do you hear me? Compassion is one of the most powerful forces in the universe. You should be so much stronger than this.”
The look in her eyes is one of fear and anger as she says, “I am not amonster.”
Am I? Probably.
And I think she could be, too, but that’s not something she’s prepared to hear.
“You’re asage,” I tell her. “Your compassion—it’s all from within you, isn’t it?”
“Of course it is,” Eraya says calmly as she moves into another form. “I’m a sage. I can’t expect laypeople to compare to the power of my compassion.”
