novellaaa Chapter 369: Compressed air
Chapter 369: Compressed air
Ordin’s own compressed air, fired backward into the wall behind him by his own palms, the anchor points and the meeting-point stitch combining to make the burst travel in the only direction the stitch allowed.
Both palms were free—the anchor stitches’ duration having run during the palm-extension phase, the stitches dissolving as the tissue extended.
Ordin looked at the wall behind him.
At the mark the backward burst had left on the stone.
At his own palms—free, recovered from the anchor stitches, the tissue back under his control.
He looked at Sarah.
She looked at him.
Both of them at the genuine floor of what remained.
Ordin’s palms were free. His recovery debt from the Sky Splitter and the involuntary clap was real. Small Arrow Bursts available. The large techniques not.
Sarah’s reserves were at their lowest point of the fight. The threads still forming—Phantom Stitch still functional—but each thread costing more than the equivalent thread had cost in the fight’s earlier phases, the cumulative draw having reduced the availability rather than the capability.
He raised his palms—the standard separation, Arrow Burst compression.
She formed a thread—path connection, the standard redirect.
He clapped.
She stitched.
The burst redirected into the floor.
He separated his palms again.
She formed another thread.
He clapped.
She stitched.
The burst redirected into the wall.
The exchange continued—burst and stitch, clap and redirect, both of them spending reserves on the same exchange at a rate that was sustainable for neither of them indefinitely.
The question was which ran out first.
Seven exchanges.
Eight.
On the ninth exchange Sarah’s thread formed a fraction of a second late—the reserve’s thinning showing in the formation speed, the thread arriving after the burst had already traveled two feet from Ordin’s palms.
The thread caught the burst at two feet—redirected it downward into the floor between them rather than into a wall.
The floor at their feet cracked.
The force had spent against the stone—neither of them hit directly, but the floor crack sent a shockwave through the stone beneath their feet, destabilizing both stances simultaneously, the ground between them suddenly unreliable.
Ordin’s stance broke first—his feet on the side of the crack closer to the burst’s impact point, the destabilization more severe at the impact side.
He went to one knee.
Sarah’s stance broke a fraction of a second later—her feet on the other side, the shockwave arriving with slightly less force at her position but arriving nonetheless.
She caught herself with one hand on the floor rather than going to her knee.
Hand and both feet. Three contact points rather than two knees.
More stable than one knee.
She looked at Ordin on his knee.
She stitched his knee to the floor.
The connection formed—his kneeling knee connected to the stone beneath it, the thread anchoring the joint to the ground while Ordin was trying to push up from it.
He pushed against the stitch.
The thread held—his knee pulling against the anchor as his body tried to rise, the fight between his push and the stitch’s hold running for the duration of the thread’s temporary connection.
He was stronger than the stitch.
The thread snapped—the pull exceeding the connection’s strength, Ordin rising despite the anchor, his body pushing up from the floor.
He reached standing.
Sarah had used the stitch’s duration.
She stitched his right palm to his right knee—the palm he had been raising to begin the next Arrow Burst preparation, now connected to his own knee, the palm unable to rise higher than the knee’s height for the duration of the stitch.
He pulled against it.
The stitch held longer than the knee-floor stitch had held—a palm-to-knee connection running between two parts of the same body, the distance smaller and therefore the connection more compact, more difficult to exceed than a connection fighting against full leg extension.
He pulled.
The stitch held.
He pulled harder—the elastic tissue in his palm stretching against the stitch’s connection, the tissue’s extensibility working against the stitch by allowing the palm to move within the connection’s tolerance before the stitch’s actual anchor point was challenged.
The tissue stretched.
The palm moved—not far, a few inches, the tissue’s elasticity providing range that the stitch’s connection didn’t prevent.
Far enough.
His palm was six inches above his knee—the stitch connecting palm to knee still active, but the tissue’s elasticity having extended the palm to a position where the right palm and the left palm—which Sarah had not stitched—could potentially meet.
He pulled the left palm toward the right.
The two palms met at the height the stitch allowed—six inches above the right knee, both palms making contact, the compression building in the compressed space of an awkward low clap.
He clapped.
The burst fired—downward from the awkward angle, the trajectory aimed at the floor between Sarah’s feet rather than at Sarah directly, the low clap producing a ground-level detonation rather than a directed projectile.
The floor between Sarah’s feet detonated.
The shockwave from the ground-level burst traveled upward through Sarah’s legs—the floor disruption arriving from below, the force vertical rather than horizontal, her legs receiving the shockwave from beneath rather than from the side.
She went down.
Both knees—the upward shockwave having removed the floor’s stability beneath her feet, the legs unable to maintain their contact with a floor that was no longer behaving like a floor at that specific location.
Ordin straightened—the palm-to-knee stitch having dissolved when the clap completed, his full range of motion restored, both palms free.
He raised them.
Maximum stretch—the recovery from the previous techniques’ debt having progressed during the floor-detonation exchange, the Sky Splitter still unavailable but the Vacuum Spear within range, the larger output returning as the recovery debt continued to clear.
Sarah was on both knees.
The reserves for new thread formation were at their genuine limit—she could feel it, the specific quality of an ability running close to the floor of its available output, the threads still forming but each one requiring the full effort that the early threads had required almost none of.
She formed a path-stitch.
Connecting the Vacuum Spear’s projected path to a fixed point in the floor.
Ordin clapped.
The Vacuum Spear traveled toward Sarah’s kneeling position along its projected path.
Hit the path-stitch.
The stitch redirected it downward—the burst driving into the floor between them rather than into Sarah, the same mechanism that had stopped the first Vacuum Spear.
The floor cracked.
Deeper than before—the Vacuum Spear’s drilling capability producing a more significant floor failure than the earlier redirects had produced, the crack running across the arena surface in a line between them.
Sarah’s knees were on one side of the crack.
Ordin’s feet were on the other.
The crack between them.
He looked at it.
At her kneeling position.
At the palms that had the last of the recovery debt clearing, the Vacuum Spear having been used, the recovery window for the next large technique beginning again.
He had small Arrow Bursts available.
She had threads available—fewer, the reserves genuinely low, each formation costing what the first formations of the fight hadn’t cost.
He fired an Arrow Burst.
She stitched it.
Another.
She stitched it.
A third—faster, the rapid succession.
She stitched the first two of the rapid three.
The third arrived before the third stitch could form.
It hit her right shoulder.
She absorbed it—real force, real impact, the shoulder taking it.
She stayed on her knees.
He fired again—rapid succession, the same rate, the same pressure, the same test of whether her formation speed could match his clap rate.
Three bursts.
She stitched two.
The third hit her left arm.
Four bursts.
She stitched two.
Two hit—right side, left side, the rapid succession producing more hits than the stitch formation rate could catch when the reserve was this low.
She looked at her hands.
At the threads still forming—slower than they had been, each one taking what felt like everything available.
He fired again.
She stitched one.
Two hit.
He fired again.
She stitched one.
Two hit.
The pattern was clear—at the current reserve level, her formation rate could catch approximately half of a rapid-succession barrage. Half got through. Every exchange at this rate was producing real impacts on her body, the accumulation building across the exchanges.
She changed approach.
Instead of forming individual path-stitches for individual bursts, she formed a single wide-area thread—a thread connecting a large section of space in front of her to a fixed anchor, the connection covering a wide area rather than a specific path.
Not a path-stitch.
A space-occupation stitch—the same principle as the web she had been building at the fight’s start, but applied as a single large thread covering maximum area with minimum formation effort.
He fired a rapid succession.
All four bursts hit the wide-area stitch.
All four redirected.
None hit her.
She exhaled.
The wide-area stitch had cost less than four individual path-stitches—one thread doing what four would have done, the efficiency the approach produced at low reserve levels significantly higher than the individual-stitch technique.
Ordin read the wide-area coverage.
He pulled his palms to maximum stretch.
Sky Splitter compression.
Sarah felt the air pressure drop—the large compression, both palms at maximum, the widest possible separation.
She formed a wide-area stitch—larger than the Arrow Burst version, extending the coverage to match the wider projectile the Sky Splitter would produce.
He clapped.
The Sky Splitter released—the wide devastating force, wider than the Vacuum Spear, wider than the coverage the single path-stitch had managed against the first Sky Splitter.
It hit the wide-area stitch.
The stitch held the center—the thread’s anchor catching the core of the projectile and redirecting it downward. But the Sky Splitter was wider than the thread’s coverage. The flanking sections extended beyond the stitch’s area.
She had anticipated the flanks this time.
She had formed a second thread—overlapping the first, extending the coverage past the area the single thread covered, the two threads together spanning the full width of the Sky Splitter’s projected face.
The flanks hit the second thread.
Both threads redirected their respective sections—center into the floor, flanks into the floor on either side of the center, all three sections driving into the stone rather than into Sarah.
The floor between them collapsed.
Not cracked—collapsed, the three simultaneous Vacuum Spear-equivalent impacts driving the stone downward, a significant section of the arena floor between the two fighters dropping below the surface level.
Both fighters on the edges of the collapse.
Ordin’s feet at the collapse’s far edge—stable, but the terrain between him and Sarah now a significant floor depression.
Sarah’s knees at the collapse’s near edge—her kneeling position at the rim, the drop beginning inches in front of her.