Three still found her — grazing the crystalline edge of her wing with low, sepulchral hisses that left thin scoring lines the Void-Ice had to immediately re-knit. She climbed. They climbed with her. She broke left. They curved as one, twelve dark trails bending through the crimson air on a single shared instinct, each one describing a perfect, predatory arc that hooked toward her new position as though the projectiles themselves could see.
Eira's expression cracked — as if she had been outmaneuvered by something that, by every law she understood, should not have possessed a mind of its own.
Phei laughed as he watched his new toys chase the one being in this entire frozen cathedral who had once believed she could still torture him and get away with it.
The bullets pursued her higher, faster, turning with her every desperate feint until he finally, lazily, willed them back.
