Room 7

While his hand raises, segments of the hardened plastic material shielding my form erupt from my collar, interlocking and sealing until they've formed a full-cranium helmet, visage marked by the gleam of an azure glass screen. KillSwitch is withdrawing information at a cyclic rate. The Inquisitor chooses to physically throw the trio of needles, a painfully telegraphed action rendering the speed of their travel obsolete; the direct line of eyesight, the muscle contractions left visible constituting the drawback of an arm. Within a fraction of an instant, these culminate into a calculable trajectory that each needle will take, painted across the battlespace before my visor with blinking red lines.

No sooner had his declaration of combat flown from belittling lips than had my palms struck the white tile deck. Lightning has flown from the most recent heartbeat, arcs of vicious azure bled from armor-kissed fingertips to the surface cradling them. Alchemical energy enslaves its immediate environment, forming three pillars intervening along the pre-determined path of the foe's chosen weapon only an instant prior to their submerging into supersonic funnels of motion. Each impact is a destined quake, sending fragmented shards of the pillars to rain.

My pillars consume themselves with a synchronized twist, swallowed once again by the surface, bringing each needle to ground level in the formation of an exact triangle. A circular tear is now witnessed connecting to each needle, forming the symmetrical trifecta of a transmutation circle. Wordless whispers gush from this portal to the Great Static.

And the smell, like mother's cooking.

From my improvised runner's stance I take flight, translating into a full fledged sprint toward the transmutation circle.

/It's not even metal. I don't like this one./

Transmutation dawns like the bloody horizon. Advantageous is the enemy's tendency to speak. He seems like the type who needs an audience. Pride is a large target and a vital organ among the powerful.

A Crimson flash devours reality for an imperceptible amount of time; I am only aware of it because I'm sure it's coming. The space that existed between both parties involved folds in on itself. Oxygen molecules, airborne minerals, carbon based compositions constituting the tiles of the arena. The unfortunate souls caught in this dead zone betwixt Nyfe and I are lost as an enigma to the scrolls of history, perhaps lingering in the barely audible, haunted wails which drift in their wake.

The Senbons which had taken flight are too consumed with the space they inhabit. Nyfe will now find that there is no distance separating he and I. The world has been shortened, in this immediate area, a wrinkle to manipulate space. And so his reflection dawns on him; my visor has receded, the Darzan star painted in scarlet lucidity on my forehead is made fully aware to his senses. His knowledge, recollection, opinion of the star become both a tether to the physical realm and a direct link to his mind, anchoring him into my version of reality within which he can be harmed by physical means,

Just like a tinman.

Whatever means he wishes to extend his perception to control is tethered much the same. The Senbons he wishes to form with intangible presence must be brought to corporeal form, lest he shut his eyes and clear his mind, to blind himself to me and sever his self-induced connection to my Darzan star.

Surely, though, he'll have more words while my katana is brought forth from sheathe. The strike does not come yet- I know better.