The blast startled Timaeus and he was sent reeling by the physical and magical impact of the incandescent energy. Long moments of logical decomposition bounced through the demon’s mind, half-echoes building up and blowing holes in his mental defences. Never before had he felt such psychic power racking his mind, sending him crawling on his knees both physically and in his own mind.

He stood in a half-instinctive slur of motion that was indefinite and unpredictable. After a minute or two, Timaeus’ mind straightened out and he though clearly and without the pain, but his skull still shook with the aftershock of the tremendous attack. He sent back his own fusillade of fiery hatred into the dust at figures of half-shadows that cast long, wiry illusions on Timaeus’ retina.

One blast had surely hit home, and Timaeus knew it as he saw the flame dissipate to close for it to have spun into the earth-mist. Then he suddenly noticed that that his half-hidden foe may have sent some psychic, physical or magical barrier to halt the onslaught; Timaeus was sure, however, that his assailant was a psychic, and a potent one too.

Timaeus could not focus with the psychic presence of his attacker around him, like a clot of energy in his mind. He growled in frustration at the silhouettes of psychic sludge that drowned his senses and made him slow to react. He stumbled at blurred shadow-representations of the opponent, only to find himself flailing about wildly at nothing but dust and earth. The winds howled around him incongruously, thunderous in his ears and sweeping, exploring, in his clothes. This gust, this gale, this zephyr, was incongruous with the perfection about it, and it torpidly wandered off. The valley was left in unsettling quietness that seemed to suck noise out of everything.

Timaeus untwisted his warped geometry and stood at his full height, thinking he was prepared for any assault his unseen foe could muster. Jeika gleamed in the perpetual heaven-light.

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