”Not dead after all that, eh? Damn.”
The voidling critters she'd contended with so often during the Eclipse had been, by and large, fragile. Some had vanished as soon as they'd been exposed to sunlight, while others had simply been rendered vulnerable thereby, but in either case it had rarely taken more than a single blow to dispatch them. This experience had informed her thoughts of how battle in the realm of shadows might go... but it seemed she'd wildly underestimated them.
Still, though she hadn't managed to actually kill the Nyx-blasted thing, as she observed the cooling stone she noted no apertures or cracks. Alive it might be, but it seemed that it lacked the power to extricate itself from the mound. The Disciple might be hardy, but it had lacked a mind, or skill, or real power beyond its inexhaustible life and hunger. Such a thing would never do.
”I've used a lot of power,” Imogen admitted, ”But I need a much more credible threat than that. The unification of the spirit... it takes a level of stress and striving, of real challenge. Something I can't just keep at a distance and toy with.”
In Ecith, she'd turned to the Arbiters for the task, but this was ultimately one of the bottlenecks she'd found for obtaining new Pact Weapons. When she'd been a novice with the Covens, it had been easy to find a worthy spar. Nowadays, she'd probably need to wait until one of the Captains was free, if she wanted to try to bond a new Pact. Or else go back to Ailos and wait for the fucking Silent Fisher to make a fourth attempt on her life, she supposed.
”Well, if that didn't draw out anything bigger, I don't know what will. Maybe I should-”
Imogen's words were interrupted by a sound, except it wasn't a sound. It was a bellowing absence of sound, spreading across the grounds around the Pfenning like a wave. It wasn't just that you couldn't hear anything--there weren't that many natural noises in the Nyxus--but it hit the body like a force in and of itself. The witch felt her hair stand on end as gravity seemed to suspend itself, and little rocks and pebbles and bits of cooling lava rose a few inches from the street.
Then the wave of silence and un-gravity reversed itself, collapsing inward on a point focused on the lowest roof of the Pfenning, just over the atrium. Something like a claw seemed to tear its way out of the air, ripping first one hole, then another, then a jagged line beneath.
All around the street, the cowering shadow spawn began to deflate, their substance sublimating into shadow and whirling up along invisible siphons into the bodiless smile above the street. It began to grow increasingly distinct, until at last the Disciple had manifested a body- one much more articulate than the poor thing Imogen had trapped a moment earlier. It moved, slowly, stiffly, stepping off the rooftop and floating down towards the street like a fluttering leaf, empty eyes fixed on the witch.
