Elma sat in the wet grass, the mud seeping into her fine silks, but she didn't feel the cold. Her eyes, sharp and verdant, pinned the woman where she stood.
She needed to master this force—to control her Aegis with such absolute authority that she could put this woman back in the shadows where she belonged.
Elma pushed herself up, her movements fluid despite the damp weight of her clothes.
"I still don't understand," Elma said, her voice a low rasp. "What do you mean it's all over here?"
The woman didn't argue. She simply raised a gloved hand and pointed toward a massive, gnarled tree at the far edge of the clearing.
"Move it," the woman commanded.
"Isn't it too far?" Elma asked.
"Try," the woman said.
Elma shifted her focus to the tree.
Her eyes widened. A faint resonance answered her attention—subtle, but undeniable. She felt the space the tree occupied, not its bark or leaves, but the volume it claimed in the world.
She hadn't known her reach extended this far.
She planted her feet, her jaw locking as she gripped the very heart of the tree's presence. With a violent tug of her will, the ground groaned. The massive trunk shrieked as it was ripped from the earth, roots snapping like dry bone as soil rained down in a dark curtain.
With a guttural growl and clenched teeth, Elma didn't just lift it. She hurled it.
The massive weight vanished into the distance, a crashing wake of broken branches marking its path before it disappeared into the night.
"Now try that with me," the woman offered.
The invitation was dangerously enticing. Elma's gaze sharpened, her instincts surging to the surface. "Are you sure?" she asked, making sure she hadn't misheard the challenge.
"Very sure," the woman answered, her posture relaxed, almost insulting in its stillness.
That was all the permission Elma needed. She pivoted her focus, ignoring the distant tree line and narrowing her entire focus onto the woman.
She reached out with her Aegis, seeking the "anchor" of the woman's presence, ready to hurl her into the dark sky just as she had done with the timber.
But as she reached, she felt… nothing.
Her eyes swept over the woman, but there was no weight to grab, no center to pull. It was like trying to catch a shadow with a net.
"What?" Elma whispered, her brow furrowed in genuine confusion. "Why can't I—"
"Your Aegis is extended, stretched to its thinnest limit," the woman said, stepping forward as if Elma's power were nothing more than a light breeze.
"That gives you reach, but it robs you of your teeth. It weakens the core."
The woman stopped just inches away, her cat mask looming over Elma like a nightmare.
"You need to compress it. Bring it back to your center until it is a solid wall. You must protect your own space and strengthen your internal control before you can hope to dominate another's. Do you understand now?"
Elma stood motionless, her mind retreating into the cold, analytical sanctuary of her training. She needed a plan. She didn't even know where her reach ended.
She projected her awareness outward. She felt a distant tree, then one further, and then another beyond that. To her shock, her Aegis continued to ripple outward far beyond the reach of her physical sight. It was a sprawling, invisible kingdom of sensory data.
The woman sat on a jagged rock, a silent observer in the dark. She didn't offer guidance, but she didn't interrupt either. Her silence was a tacit agreement with Elma's method.
An hour passed. Elma remained deep in the trance of the hunt, searching for the final boundaries of herself.
It was absurdly vast—a staggering reach that defied logic. Her consciousness was now three kilometers away from her physical body, and still, the hum of her Aegis continued.
Finally, at the edge of a distant ridge, the connection tapered off into nothingness.
She opened her eyes, her breath coming in shallow, ragged bursts. The woman lifted her head, the ceramic mask catching the violet flickering of the torches.
"Hold it," the woman commanded.
Elma focused, mapping the invisible perimeter in her mind. It was a circle nearly 7.5 kilometers in diameter, and her Aegis was saturated through every inch of it.
She was lost in the sheer scale of her own presence, her mind struggling to process the thousands of variables—the swaying of grass, the scuttle of insects, the rustle of leaves—all happening at once.
"Is it always... this hard?" Elma asked, a drop of sweat tracing a cold line down her temple.
"Only for someone of your caliber," the woman answered, her voice a low, distorted rasp. "Now, pull it in."
Elma reached out to the edges of her invisible kingdom and tugged.
The retraction was slow at first, like pulling in a massive, heavy net. As the 7.5-kilometer boundary began to shrink, distant trees and territories slipped out of her awareness one by one.
Yet the data itself did not lessen. Instead, it thickened.
She wasn't just aware of the trees anymore—she was beginning to feel deeper. She felt the sap crawling beneath the bark; she felt the friction of leaves rubbing together in the wind.
By the time the circle collapsed to fifty meters, Elma's world had become a claustrophobic nightmare of detail.
Every grain of sand beneath her feet felt like a mountain. A cricket's wings three yards away struck her like a thunderclap.
"Too much," she hissed, her teeth grinding so hard she feared they might shatter.
She didn't stop. She forced the Aegis smaller. Thirty meters. Twenty.
At ten meters, the density became lethal. The sheer volume of information—the weight of the air, the heat radiating from the torches, the moisture in the soil—was about to blow her consciousness apart.
"Disengage!" the woman's voice cut through the static, sharp as a physical blow.
Elma released her Aegis.
She collapsed to her knees, her forehead hitting the damp grass. Her vision failed in flashes of white and fading emerald.
The woman approached, her boots silent as ghosts on the mud. She stood over the trembling child, her presence looming.
"You don't need to feel everything within your Aegis to mend it," the woman said. She let out a small, rare sigh—a sound of weary frustration.
"You were trying to process the entire world at once. You must focus only on what is vital..." She paused, the cat mask tilting. "That is a lesson for another night. Now, you must return."
Elma didn't answer immediately. She stayed on her knees, her breath coming in ragged, shallow gulps.
But beneath the exhaustion and the lingering pain of the mental "crush," a grim satisfaction took root in her heart.
For the first time since they had met, the woman was no longer a shadow. Within that ten-meter radius, Elma had felt it.
The "weight" of the assassin.
"Right," Elma said, her voice a cold, steady rasp.
"I need to go back."