"Restrain her," Bol instructed Cheryl.
Then.
Zzzst!
Bol darted. His body blurred as he closed the narrow distance between himself and Zorak, drawing a narrow blade from his jacket. It looked old, but sharp.
He aimed for the neck. Zorak wasn't important. The lady was who they were after.
Clang!
Steel met steel with a sharp clang that echoed across the hallway, as Bol's dagger met Zorak's golden iron brass knuckle.
Slash! Clang! Tang!
Bol's strikes came in rapid succession. He slashed, thrusted, feinted. Each strike flowing into the next, aiming only for the vitals.
Zorak blocked at the neck. Then the heart. Then the throat again.
The blade scraped against brass, sparks flying in the dim hallway.
Bol twisted low, aiming for the ribs. Zorak pivoted, knuckles crashing into the dagger's flat and deflecting it wide. Bol spun with the momentum, slashing upward toward Zorak's jaw.
Shhf!
Zorak leaned back, the blade missing by inches, and drove a heavy fist toward Bol's chest.
Bol sidestepped, fast, blade whipping back toward Zorak's exposed flank.
Clang.
Brass met steel again, the impact vibrating through both men's arms.
....
When the two men started fighting, Cheryl had darted to where Zuri was.
Restrain her was the order given by Bol.
Boring, she thought. Blood was what she wanted.
But for the information they needed, she needed her alive.
As Zuri saw Cheryl approach, she panicked.
As a seer mystic, although her spiritual energy granted her strength, she could not compete against warrior practitioners. She fled to her table and reached under it to collect a protection charm she had once bought in the Night Market.
Zuri stuck to the wall and threw the charm in front of her, after inserting most of her spiritual energy.
She then closed her eye. Deep in Meditation.
The air shifted.
The room dimmed. Not dark, but muted. Like the color had been drained halfway.
Particles in the air began to shimmer. They twisted and bent, flickering in and out of focus. The edges of the furniture blurred. The candles wavered without wind.
Zuri was still there. Standing against the wall. Her chest rising and falling. Her eyes closed.
But it was as if she wasn't there.
Cheryl reached out.
Her hand passed through Zuri's shoulder.
No contact. No resistance. Just air.
"Oh!" Cheryl giggled. "You even have something like this. Interesting."
She tilted her head, studying Zuri like a curious child.
"Such things appearing here," Cheryl said. "A Phase Veil Charm."
The charm worked by shifting the bearer's matter slightly out of the dominant physical frequency of the world. It didn't remove Zuri from the location. It desynchronized her interaction layer.
She still occupied the same space. She could still see and hear. She cast a faint shimmer where her body should be.
But she couldn't be touched. And she couldn't touch solid matter.
All matter vibrated at a foundational harmonic frequency. The charm altered the user's resonant phase, moving them into an adjacent harmonic layer of reality.
Two radio stations occupying the same air but never colliding.
Two dancers in the same room, moving to completely different tempos.
Because interaction required harmonic alignment, physical contact became impossible.
They were there, but not here. Their atoms sang the wrong song.
Cheryl crouched and smiled.
"There are ways around this," she said softly.
She began searching for solutions. Matching her frequency to Zuri's wasn't impossible. Just troublesome.
Everything in existence vibrated at an infinite amount of frequencies. The Veil itself was built on that principle. The Deep operated on layers of resonance. Matching the right one was the trick.
But the charm couldn't be carried on for a long time. Zuri knew that. She was betting on Zorak to finish.
Cheryl hummed to herself and closed her eyes. Her fingers twitched. Energy rippled around her, faint and erratic, as she began the process of tuning herself to Zuri's layer.
Meanwhile, Bol and Zorak continued their exchange.
A succession of rapid, technical strikes erupted between both men. Blade meeting brass in a deadly dance across the narrow hallway.
Bol shifted his weight, feinting left. Zorak didn't fall for it. He stepped into Bol's guard, brass knuckles driving toward Bol's ribs. Bol twisted, narrowly avoiding the blow, and slashed upward.
Splurt!
The blade caught Zorak's forearm. A thin line of red opened across his skin.
Zorak didn't flinch.
He grabbed Bol's wrist with his free hand, yanked him forward, and drove his knee into Bol's stomach.
Bol gasped. The air left his lungs.
Zorak spun him around, lifting him off the ground with both hands, and hurled him across the room.
Bol's body flew through the air.
He crashed into Cheryl.
Both of them hit the floor in a tangle of limbs.