Channelknight Fadran

"The... the knife is over there. Maybe we could reverse its effect?"

"Al..." Ayia jogged over, kneeling down beside the pool of blood. "Okay, um... he did this before, right?"

The aide muttered something to the officer. "I... see. Very well. Land wherever has guardrails, I suppose, unless you have a vehicle with you."

A person's first novel should be about 80k-100k words long. Mine is 115k, last I checked. It still feels too short I blame Sanderson

"Identify yourself, intruder."

Ayia snorted. "Okay." An officer glanced up from his clipboard at the monitor. "The f -"

The pacing is awful

"I gave you a big ol' whack on the back." She crossed her arms. "But I meant emotionally."

"No," Ayia replied, walking back in and closing the door. "You feeling any better?"

Ayia rolled her eyes, but did so. There was a pair of guards outside who seemed a little confused, but ultimately dismissed her as she stretched and caught her breath. "Hi," she said, "just getting some air."

Ayia stood up, brushed off her trousers, marched over to Strohger, and picked him up to be near her face. Hopefully that would do the trick.

The effects of the dagger began to wear off, leaving her to see Strohger muttering something incoherent against the back wall. Oh. ….Crapbaskets.

Right. The Perception dagger. Well at least I can't feel myself choking, I guess.

She'd held that knife exactly once - it wasn't the kind of thing that anyone could detect normally. But still, she leapt out of the way, releasing Strohger.

In response, she pulled her forearm across his throat. Maybe he could control air, but she was curious to see how he did when he was the one without it.

He was better at preparing his attacks than most. It had been almost a whole minute ago that he'd readied those air blades - he'd done it as subtly as possible, and in that regard it was quite impressive. The touch of this Tempest stuff was quite delicate. But invisible didn't mean undetectable. Controlling air meant moving air, and moving air meant changing the balance of the room. She could locate the breaths from Allera, the circulation from room to room, the slight movements around Variance's barely-tangible form - but they were uniform enough to discern. The shifts in air around Strohger were too laminar and directed to mean anything other than his preparation for that 'sharp air' or whatever it had been. The moment that flow shifted, Ayia sprang in an arc towards him. He began shifting the air around where she had just been almost simultaneously, but she'd seen the way his hands and eyes moved: incredible magic, certainly, but he was no warrior. None of his movements, reflexes, or perceptions would be remotely fine-tuned enough to even perceive her first attack, let alone counter it. There was a small part of her that did kind of want to kill him, but her better judgement spoke otherwise. There were too many reasons not to. Instants later, Ayia had swung around behind Strohger to slam her elbow deep into his back: just shy of the spine. Any closer would either have him permanently paralyzed or even killed outright - here, instead, would either knock him out cold or just throw his entire nervous system into short-term shock. There was the slight risk that eliminating his control over the air would turn it chaotic, but hopefully he'd be a bit tougher than that. At the same time, she threw her other arm to hook around his neck with her elbow. She made a point not to squeeze against his jugular, but held him with a painfully tight grip between muscles hardened from years of training.

Ayia considered that, then nodded. She turned around. "Would you like to kill me right now, doc? You don't seem like the honorable type, and I'm completely unarmed - it would be easy, right? Maybe Variance would give you trouble, and even if you tried running the people in this skybase would take you down eventually, though you seem confident enough that you could kill everyone here. "I don't have to prove myself to you, and I don't want to anyway. But you're so full of yourself that you think I do, which is why you hate me. So if you hate me, go ahead and kill me right now: all it'll prove is that you killed an unarmed person while trapped in another guy's house because you're throwing a fit."

That actually made Ayia laugh. Not much, but... well. She chuckled. "Your universe can't be invaded? If you're here and you exist, then it can. Maybe it won't, but it's not that it can't - though by the sounds of that place, it doesn't seem the sort of universe they'd really want in the first place. "But that's besides the point. The point is that you've completely lost it. You've cracked because you're afraid, and you're afraid because you don't understand what the hell is going on. So you're pinning the blame on me, and honestly? I'm okay with that. It wouldn't be the first time, it won't be the last, and I'm not petty enough to let it get to me. And I can certainly excuse any accusation or blame you can come up with, but there is one thing you absolutely should not have brought up." Ayia's eyes fell into a cold, dark stare. "Don't ever try to get to me by insulting my friends. All you're showing is your own inexperience and immaturity, and they would kill you. They would kill you quickly. And if they didn't, then I would. If you hurt one of them - or Variance, or Allera, or hell, even Shim - then I will kill you, no matter what. I don't care what magic you have: I will kill you."