“That’s the spirit,” Emily says, a shoulder to help Ange keep the weight off her injured leg. “Let’s head to the droch, I want easy access to the outside so I observe the storm while I work.”

  “So that’s how you got out ahead of us,” Anton says in realisation, shaking his head and turning away. “I’ll leave you to help her and go monitor the situation from the bridge. We’ll sound the horn if we see anything out of the ordinary.”

  “Good luck,” Emily says as he walks off, pulling Ange along and heading for the drone room.

  When they ehe room, they find the hatch still hanging open, with a light haze of sand filling the air. Emily quickly casts a basid barrier, severing the e with the air outside and causing all of the particute filling the room to drop to the floor as it loses the force holding it up.

  “Nifty trick,” Ange says, taking her arm off Emily’s shoulder and limping forward to peer over the edge into the swirling sands below. “ you hold it for long?”

  “Yeah, should be able to keep this barrier up for a while. It’s really weak,” Emily replies, pulling some cushions out of her belt and ying them down. “Now, please lie down here for me.”

  “Do you have everything in that belt?” Ange asks with a fused stare at the cushions.

  Emily doesn’t respond as she settles down and instead pulls out a spider and drops it out of the hatch, watg it vanish. It hits the floor quickly, so she has it unfurl and dig its legs into the ground, running its dete spell and sending the full results back to her. She sets two of her threads to the task of unravelling the cluttered feedbad turtention back to her patient.

  “Hold still and try to rex,” she says, moving to sit beside her and pg a palm oomach. “This won’t take long.”

  Ange grunts out a response as Emily releases a stream of maa intut. Thanks to her testing on Podrick, the s goes quickly without her having to adjust her teique at all.

  Iing. A few of the differences between me and Pod were gender-based, but some look to be the result of my assions. They both share a few ans I don’t have. Hmm, I think I need some ss of more awakened mages . I wonder if my ges will match theirs.

  Drawing her focus out of the new diagrams in her notes on the human body, Emily withdraws her maa and finally takes her hand off Ahe woman shivers slightly as the unpleasant buzzing finally subsides, looking at the white runes f around Emily’s arms with curiosity.

  “My s’s done,” Emily expins, moving both hands to hover over the healing gash on Ange’s leg. “I’m moving on to healing you now.”

  “Cool. Did you get what you needed?” Ange asks, her eyes widening slightly in surprise as a cold light pours int from Emily’s hands, soothing the wound.

  “Mostly. I’m still going to o s some more people to gather more data on structure, and preferably I want to do some stress testing on some living subjects to work out fun, but I won’t be asking you to help with those… maybe.”

  Ange ’t help the chill that runs down her spine in respoo the sinister glint in Emily’s eyes as she speaks about stress testing living subjects despite being half sure she’s joking. Slightly uled by the topic, she drops her questioning and falls silent, fog her attention on the light around her leg.

  Emily gets the message and focuses on slowly knitting flesh back together, frowning slightly at the healing spell she stole.

  I’m not sure if the spell is just terrible, or if I’m bad at using it, but there is no way it should be draining this much mana and taking this much effort for such minor wounds on an unawakened mortal. Uanding the body more has barely helped! I thought it would, sihe spell works better on myself, but I guess I’m just better at self-repair.

  Despite her frustration, Emily pushes forward while setting a few of her threads oask of rew the spell. It takes her a while, but eventually, the wound on Ange’s leg fades, leavianned skin in peak dition.

  “Woah,” Ange excims, sitting up and leaning forward to get a closer look. “That’s crazy. You barely even tell it was cut open.”

  “That’s magic,” Emily says with a sigh, sitting bad celling healing light. “That said, it seems I really am awful at healing magic. That should only have taken a few minutes for an unawakened person like you. The potion I gave you did most of the work.”

  “Damn. Does this mean you don’t want to help with the rest?” Ange asks, gesturing to the cuts on her arms.

  “Nah, I said I’d help so I will. Just give me a short break to work on a new spell and I’ll try again.”

  “Go ahead. Now that I walk,” Ange says, pushing herself off the floor and heading towards the door, “I’m gonna go che with Tony and Anton quickly. I’ll be ba a bit.”

  “Sure,” Emily says, waving her off and crossing her legs, settling into a meditative position as her primary sciousness falls into the Spellweave to tihe work her threads have started.

  As she’s in the middle of carefully blending runes, she notices a strange phenomenon in the feedback from her spider scout. Throughout the storm so far, there have been stant vibrations filling the spider’s dete range due to how disturbed the sand is. A few times while healing Ange’s leg she noticed and ignored denser clusters of motion that suggested creatures moving about despite the winds. However, the thing that actually grabs her attention and immediately draws her curiosity is the opposite.

  On the edge of the drone’s dete range, a plete dead zone of vibrations starts approag them.

  Is that another ambush predator like the shadow boa?

  Emily opens her eyes and stands up, walking over to the hatch. She pulls her scarf up to cover her mouth and steps out, dropping onto the sand beside her spider. The moment she leaves her barrier and feels the mana-charged air around her, she feels a familiar presence.

  “Oh shit,” she mutters as the dead zone reaches her. The wind suddenly stops, and sand starts falling around her. “It’s aal.”

  The ship’s horn sounds and Emily dashes forward through the eerie stillness, trying to get to the front of the ship as she starts calling on her e with lightning. She shoots out from uhe metal hulk the moment aric-blue glow fills her eyes and looks up.

  Floating in the air twenty metres away from Calypso’s eyes, the windows on the bridge, is a twisted figure of sand. It looks humanoid in form, but its proportions are distorted. The thighs are slightly too long, and its knees are bent the wrong way. Its torso is split in two at the waist, and the arms hanging at its side are long, ing bdes of violent winds and clustered sand.

  Is it sand or wind? Maybe dual?

  In a rge radius around the elemental, the air is pletely still. However, gng around, Emily sees the sting on, barely held at bay.

  Without wasting a sed, Emily leaps up into the air, p out flowing lightning and f it into the magic circle for sky step, adding a hint of normal wind mana to plete the spell. The crag magic circle forms ptforms of sparks beh her feet as she rises up to meet the approag creature.

  It worked! I cast runic spells using my elemental maion for extra power. Though it looks like it’s overp the wind mana in the spell pletely. I ’t pletely get rid of the discharge with each ptform like I normally . I only adjust it.

  Wreathed in greaves of lightning, Emily freezes in the air a few metres in front of the elemental, waiting to see how it reacts.

  Maybe I get another boost in intelligence. My cultivation has slowed down siderably since leaving The Gde.

  The sandy figure shudders as she gets close, twisting in pce as the swirling winds that form its body start to speed up and its surface bubbles. A haunting, scraping howl emanates from the quivering creature, like violent winds tearing out of a narrow yon, and Emily takes a few steps back, her hopes for a boon decreasing.

  Well, maybe I use its core after killing it instead.

  The elemental fires into motion, both its legs kig out with twe bursts of wind that send waves through the surrounding storm as its body flies towards Emily. A wild grin stretches her lips as her legs twitch, ung her up and out of the way of the violent charge, narrowly dodging aended arm-bde.

  “A speed type that uses arm bdes!” Emily shouts with glee, flipping upside down aending both her arms with her Cws at full extension. “Ha!”

  Emily sms into a ptform of sparks, bending her legs to full pression and p out charge before releasiension and rocketing forward. The ptform bursts behind her, sending arcs of lightning out into the storm. She sails past the elemental, cutting at it and narrowly catg the edge of its torso as it shunts itself sideways with a burst of wind to dodge her attack.

  Her bde slides through the swirling air without meeting aance, causing Emily to click her tongue as the blunt burst of wind knocks her sideways. She kicks off aform almost instantly, flying off at an ued aowards the floor to dodge a bde of wind sailing after her back.

  Emily twists, getting her legs beh herself, and kicks off again as she sms into the sand. She g the elemental as she flies past, firming her worry when she sees no damage left by her attack.

  I’m slightly faster than it is, but I’ll only be able to hurt it by attag its core.

  Emily kicks off aform, trying to build more charge before attag again. However, the elemental also seems to realise their gap in speed as it doesn’t bother chasing her. Instead, it locks itself in pd shudders, making the winds in its upper to crazy. The torso, along with the roiling arm bdes ected to it, starts to rotate, and each time the bdes pass in front of it, a new, arg bde of wind is flung towards Emily.

  Emily twists, pivoting on a crag ptform to push herself out of the way of the first ued projectile. Aform allows her to leap over the sed, and a third allows her to cut all of her momentum a a bde miss on its own.

  The fourth and fifth bdes e at almost the same time as the creature reaches full speed, its rapidly spinning bdes pulling the calm air around them inting tornado. Emily charges her bdes with maa and lightning before cutting dowwo ining projectiles, getting knocked back but taking no damage.

  Her eyes narrow at the living storm pulling in a stream of sand with its twisting vortex, and through the distortions in the air and the dusty particles flying about, she spots a glowing green light.

  The core! It looks to be ihe spinning torso, but that vortex will rip me to shreds if I charge into it.

  Emily is forced to break eye tact with the core as more bdes of wind shoot towards her. She bobs and weaves in the air, dang between the bdes and slowly cirg the elemental, building up the power in her legs to a hissing cresdo and leaving behind sizable ptforms of sparks floating in her wake.

  If I want to hit the core, I’ll o create an opening. I’ll run out of mana before it stops spinning at this rate.

  With a quick s over the battlefield, taking in the floating lightning waiting for her and and the maelstrom of wind ing in the tre, Emily quickly formutes an atta. Dodging another projectile, this one resembling a spinning, sandy saw bde, Emily tinues moving.

  She flies around, pg ptform after ptform of crag sparks, filling the space as if they’re stars in the night sky. A few of the bundles of energy are ripped apart by stray bdes of wind, but the number grows quickly with each sudden movement from Emily, soon surrounding the elemental on all sides.

  With her armour covered in small gashes, left by narrow escapes, and a thin trail of blood running down her forehead, leaking into her mouth and dyeing her lips a crimson hue, Emily finally decides she’s prepared enough. She suddenly drops to the floor and unches herself underh the ship she has been avoiding throughout the e.

  The elemental sends a bde after her, but it bursts against the ship’s hull, shaking Calypso and cutting a deep groove but not peing its armour. Emily clicks her fingers, her mouth stretched into a bloody grin, as one of the ptforms on the opposite side of the elemental bursts, sending a single bolt of lightning towards the creature. Its screeg howl sounds again, and the moment it diverts its focus from her to respond to the attack, Emily unches herself over the ship.

  She steps off the air repeatedly, driving herself up as fast as she until she es to a stop high in the air directly above the tre of the twisting winds. She turns, angling herself for a kick towards the ground with her whole body, before calling upon her scattered power.

  Every single crag ptform of sparks seems to e alive, suddenly growing in size and ferocity before ung a beam of psma into the sky. Each beam ects with Emily’s fully-charged leg as she swings it down, elling the force. A harsh thundercrack sounds, like the roar of a raging lion, as a devastating pilr of charge tears through the air, eg the ground to Emily’s leg in a burning fsh of scorched air.

  KeroKeron