Ylo sends it in the figure’s direction, speaking mostly with his Faith. He imagines it penetrating through the warble, lancing out against its source and piercing it right through its throat. The warble falters, screeches and dies, and the Dovesong blossoms with senescent light. It fills the circle and, somehow, precipitates, scattering drifts of particulate light to calm the pitching and the yaw.

Ylo sets his feet beneath him using slow, cautions motions, like a sailor making land, and casts a glance at the thing that spoke, watching from outside the circle. He cannot see its eyes, if, indeed, eyes it has – the thing wears a hooded cloak, which casts part of its face in shadow – but he can see the set of its jaw, and the smile the thing projects. A taste, that smile seems to say. Just a taste of what you’re in for. There was no display of force in that smile. No ride in with guns a-blazin’, no intimidation game. No final counsel to renege, and yield with his life intact. Only cold, sardonic surety of the outcome, and anticipation of the show. Ylo narrowed his eyes, studying the thing intently, searching for some sort of weakness, or anything to help prepare. We’ll see, Ylo thinks, trusting the barrier to minimize any damage he might suffer in the half a heartbeat’s idle time this takes. We shall see…

He prepares his next attack, selecting a Voice of Passion crowned in gildings of Aeth, and attunes himself with practiced (perfect, automatic) ease. He holds his hand out in a puppet-master pose and speaks with it, and with his animal lust. A mist appears before the barrier, swirling, creeping, and somehow darkening the patch of earth on which it sits, an oasis of dampness in this Philistine sun. Fangs appear inside of it. Sharp, overlapping peaks of white enveloped in a black-lipped snarl. The growl is heard, guttural, deep, and it is joined by another, then two, then five. The eyes form next, yellow and keen, followed by the ears and snout. The fur that covers the back of its neck, the strong, powerful shoulders and forelegs. It knits together the main of the body, forming it in washed-out mist, and then…nothing. Their hindquarters remain unseen, hidden in the swirling fog.

One howls. Sees the sun and opens up, piercing the air with its predator’s call. All six of them leap forward, out of the mist, and hit the shell-pocked soil running. They convalesce as they cover the distance between them and the figure, becoming solid, vivifying. As Ylo calls them with his Voices, setting them to here and now.

The figure wiggles one of its fingers and a row of brambles appears before it, sprouting from the arid soil like shot from a fowling piece. Its branches match the earth in which they are rooted: crusty, dry, and stubborn as hell. Its thorns are daggers in the sun.

The first of the wolves is already at their rows and thrusts itself upon their fury, unable to turn away. Skin and fur alike are shredded, and the thing yelps in pain as they open its flesh, spilling blood upon their vines. It struggles, hopelessly entangled, doing more and deeper damage to itself with every twist and every spasm. The others were a span away as the brambles sprang up from the ground, and Ylo still has time to save them. He attunes a Voice of Passion and, aided by his proximity to the Southern Desert, hits the hedge with belts of sunfire and burns a hole in the thing. He considers burning the lead wolf too, but decides to save his energy. Its suffering will not last long.

He could have called them back – all but one of them, anyways – and regrouped. He could have changed tactics and launched an aerial assault, over the hedge, or one with armored vehicles or beasts. But he wants to force the figure to engage, even with something as harmless as the forest wolves, and do so in a more active way than guarding with a wall of brambles.

The five remaining canines scamper through the hole in the hedge, teeth bared, lips drawn back in predatory snarls, passing within handspans of their fallen comrade, whose yelps have already started to weaken as the poison paralyzes her. The figure makes another gesture, and a cyclone of scorpions appears in the space above the wolves. It rains down on them, clinging to their coats, causing them to yelp and stagger as stingers sink into their skin. Within a span they’re off their course, and on the ground a half-span later, eyes rolled back in their heads and spittle gathered at their lips, their legs kicking feebly at nothing.

Ylo grimly watches them die. He could have saved them – some of them, at least, with precision licks of fire, killing the insects one by one, but the concentration that would have taken, and the strain it would have placed on his Voice, simply isn’t worth the effort. The wolves have served their purpose by eliciting a response, and through them Ylo has gained valuable insight into the mind of his opponent.

Funny thing you’ll realize, he thinks to himself, remembering a conversation he had had with one of his mentors many, many years ago. As you start to face stronger opponents, you must learn to read them. Not their style, or their strengths and weaknesses, or the habits they exhibit – you know how to read those well enough already. But their opinion of you is something you must also understand. Men who believe themselves stronger than you will invariably take the defensive, waiting for you to make the first move and show them something of your form. Then, once you have revealed yourself, they will try to match your style, and best you with your own devices. If they match your every form, parrying when you thrust and only using counterstrokes as their offensive, then you’ll know they have contempt for your abilities. But if you get them charging you, in their own style, attacking and defending with the forms that they know best, that is when you have them frightened.

This is from a fencing lesson, which he engaged in, without fail, twice a month from the age of ten until he passed the rites of adulthood and graduated to the Klewang sword. During this particular lesson they had finished forms a little early and focused on the psychology of the game. It feels strange, going this far back, and remembering with his natural memory, snippets from his natural life. Strange to think of the time before he learned about the Voices, before this dogged quest began, to visit those sanguine salad days when the only scars he carried were the ones he took during fights in the training yards. Strange…but somehow it feels right.

He senses the counterstrike rattle the barrier, shaking it like a physical thing, causing it to strain its moorings in the earth and at the edge of the circle, strong enough that it opaques itself for a heartbeat or two while it rebuffs. A direct attack, then, likely of air, but whether aimed at him or at the barrier he could not say. When the opaquing clears he sees a cloud of dark, ominous grey boiling towards him. It slaps into the barrier and attaches itself like a leech. He can see it press against the surface, forming a ring that roils and darkens like a live thing, and he can see it seeping into the cracks, microscopic though they are, made by the attack of air. They spiderweb around their center, sneaking, probing, prying, and buzzing, bombinating with an insectile hum as they eat away at the fibers that construct the thing. Ylo counters with a wash of rain, but it is too late; only the cloud outside the barrier is dispersed. The…whatever they are, that have already penetrated carry on their deleterious task. The strands of the spiderweb, which at first were literally the width of a strand of silk, visible only at certain at certain angles only, when they caught the light just right, expand, and a noise like water freezing crackles in Ylo’s ears. Within a few heartbeats the entire barrier is nothing but a dome of cracks, which crumbles into windborne dust and feathers away on the next of the breeze.

Ylo makes sure he’s ready.