Crassus carried on as if he couldn’t hear her. “Please, I beg you, just lend it to me, just for one second, I need it.” He rambled on without pause, stumbling through different variations of “please” and “give it to me”.

Aster had no idea what was going on, Crassus was acting far crazier than what the stories about him had let on. The many stories never recounted anything other than killing. She reeled. Just seconds ago she’d been frightened for her life because of this man. Now he lay on his knees rambling, no begging, for something neither she nor Isaac had even the faintest clue about.

She shook herself. This was an opportunity, and an opportunity best not forsaken. If she didn’t act now she might never act again.

Discs of light bloomed outwards from her hands in rapid succession. The small explosions were not loud but the foreign sounds boomed in the eerie silence left after Crassus had butchered everyone. She hesitated. She formed a few more shockwaves away from her, first to her left side, then to her right. No reaction. She danced nervously on the tips of her feet. It was now or never.

Aster dove headfirst into a charge with reckless abandon. A shockwave blossomed out beneath her, shoving her feet hard up into the air. She gritted her teeth and strained her muscles to keep her body upright. At the precipice of her arc, about three metres in the air, she hung for a brief second rather than falling back to earth. She tilted her torso forward and let herself tip over and fall.

Her body fell forwards until she was perpendicular to the ground below, then another blast exploded from behind her and propelled her forward. Hair and clothes rippled against her body as the air around her was forced away. Right before she hit Crassus she tucked her legs in under her stomach and held her palms up aimed squarely at his back. Two balls of light exploded out from her palms, far larger than anything she had produced up until then.

Crassus’ body stood untouched, as if the light and the shockwaves went right through him. But his chainmail of keys was not so lucky. It bulged outward as if a giant soap bubble was growing underneath it. The interlocked keys strained at their breaking point for a tenth of a second. Aster strained as the bones in her arms were also brought to a breaking point as her upper torso was brought to a stop then thrown back around the other way. Her legs continued on their trajectory and once again Aster blasted a shockwave out from her feet, so huge it hid her feet from view completely. Every visible surface was bathed in light so bright it made everything appear white.

The keys broke. The sounds of something like coins pouring into a tin can filled her ears as a river of keys flooded out from his chest all over the ground and Isaac. They flowed like a stream from a faucet made for keys rather than water.

Crassus moaned in desperation and clutched at his stomach. He clawed at the keys as they fell out of him, desperately trying to catch them, but they merely flew through his hands as if they had no mass. Isaac clambered in full panic as far away from Crassus as he could muster. Which wasn’t very far as his retreat was blocked by the large piece of concrete wall he was pushing his back against.

Crassus began mopping all the keys on the ground with the flat of his forearm into a pile. Aster, still hovering after having pushed herself high into the air with the blast against Crassus’s back, let herself drop. She couldn’t really believe her stunt had worked as well as it had and found she hadn’t ever considered what she would do next if it did. She quickly discovered however that she could have spared herself the effort because Crassus soon made the choice for her. As she landed his head jerked up at the noise and he plunged his hand into the earth next to him.

In a movement so fast it blurred from one motion to the next he whipped his hand up and behind him, through the earth and rock as if it was a liquid and not a solid matter.

“Stay still!” he screamed.

Aster’s body moved on its own accord before her brain had quite registered what was happening. She felt herself drop back and the fear rise along her spine as her view filled in with sky and then the spray of rock and dirt a mere hand’s breadth away from her face. There was no way to recover from her limbo pose so she kicked off with her feet so her body was fully airborne and drew forth another shockwave beneath the soles of her feet. She launched away from Crassus and Isaac through the air.

Every instinct in her adrenaline-wrecked body told her to get away fast and get away far, far from this place and the inhuman beast that occupied it. She tried to bring her hands forward over her face but they moved unbearably slow and in a wild moment she believed Crassus must have some ability to slow down time itself. But the moment passed and she blew two small bursts behind her which whipped her body upright and she sent a blast beneath her with all her might.

Something large passed under her feet and the wind pressure knocked her off course. A panic the likes of which she had never felt before threatened to drown out her mind. Only a raw animalistic survival instinct let her manage to cling on to consciousness. She drew out every single one of her remaining feathers from her skin and hurled them down, without even bothering to take aim.

As her speed faltered the panic came surging back and she dropped a few meters before she could focus her full attention on her grip on gravity and her mass. She hovered in the air, only dropping by the length of a finger for every second. Only then did she spare the time to look down.

Crassus and Isaac were hard to make out beneath all the dust and debris flying around in the air. Isaac appeared to be clutching an arm and Crassus seemed to be working up a fury. Sweat rolled down her forehead and into her eye. She blinked. Crassus hurtled towards her. One moment he was hazy and distant on the ground, the next he was clear as day and had closed half the distance between them in one jump.

She moved to blast herself out of his path but he was already behind her. He had missed her somehow. Out of the corner of her eye she could see him raise his hand far above her but she couldn’t see if he was holding something. He made a throwing motion and she fought the instinct to close her eyes. Nothing struck her however and she turned around in the air until she had her back to the ground. Confused she waited for something to happen. Then a sudden wind battered against her. The wind blindsided her completely and for a brief second she lost her hold on gravity. She only gained a bit of speed but that was all it took, she struggled with all her might against the acceleration but it was futile. She went down hard.