dirty bubble

But at that moment, a memory flashed through his mind, something Noah said to him after he lost his arm. ‘People don’t know how to fight someone with missing or prosthetic limbs. It throws them off balance, and he took advantage of that. No one expects to be kicked in the chest with a peg leg.’ He glanced at Ingram, focused entirely on the fall and keeping Roc restrained. From the look in his eyes, he was most worried about Roc’s free wing getting in the way or failing to pull away in time and crashing with him. For all of his focus, all of his determination, his guard was dropped entirely.

He pushed against the seal, using his mana to separate from his clone, but it was like he was buried in concrete. He couldn’t project his mana even a centimeter beyond his skin. It was even more difficult than performing his workout, but this was precisely what he wanted. Saimallah said that he and his fellow monks used these headbands to train their projection abilities, and there was no better way than this. As he struggled and strained, the seal began to give, ever so slightly, feeling less like concrete and more like rubber.

I left her there, naked and bleeding, and the next time I saw her, she was at the base of the west tower, having jumped to her death. Galvin told me not to concern myself with her, that she was simply a broken toy, and that I would find another. But I knew different. She wasn’t a broken toy, and though she made her choice, it wasn’t suicide; it was murder. I killed her. I hurt her, I violated her, and made her life so painful that I might as well have pushed her off that tower myself. I knew it, but I didn’t want to accept it.