The Whirlwind

On the screen Jace seemed to give up. Allowing herself to fall back into the shifting sands of the mages' magic control spell. The Falnar beetles hovering above continued their attack for a few minutes targeting the point where Jace had disappeared into the earth.

"What? …"

Even Gen XXII was confused, but then he rallied and said.

"She did that on purpose. She has a plan."

"That or she just decided to make it quick."

Alice said with some finality.

"Ha, ha, ha!"

Subrath laughed.

"What's so funny?"

The AI asked suspiciously.

"Nothing absolutely nothing. After building up so much the end was uneventful."

Explained Subrath while shaking his head.

"No, it is not over yet. Just you watch. Every pylon who survived for more than a single engagement had developed their own unique powers. I bet you we are about to witness Jace reach a new height. What if she learns to externalize the acceleration power of a pylon?"

Believing in himself only because he believed in her even more the AI refused to give up hope.

Suddenly the video cut out as the recording drone was destroyed. Evidently it had come too close to the fire fight and had been downed by an armor piercing bullet or shrapnel.

"Hold on folks, we will have a new drone at the scene in moments. Please stand by!"

The host explained calmly.

"We have to give credit to the Falnali they did discover and implement a variation on one of the strategies we developed to kill a pylon. If we …"

At the host's silent urging Alice brought up the strategy and tactics that the Falnali had employed.

_____

Jace lowered her hands from their blocking position. Then crossed her arms over her chest and fell back on the shifting sands. There was no point in fighting a loosing battle. Besides she had a trick up her sleeve. If she had been the Jace of an hour ago she would have worried it wouldn't work. But now she wasn't worried at all. Only death awaited her, either her enemies death or her death. In the end she didn't care which happened. Her only purpose was to create death. It would happen. It had to happen.

Allowing the sand to consume her to get away from the armor piercing bullets, Jace knew that her armor was already compromised. She just needed a few calmer moments to realize an old dream. If she stayed any longer she would only turn her armor into fragments at best and dust at worst. There were other purposes she could put the metal to, then waste it in some machoistic display of power.

Jace realized she was going to have to try that thing. For years she had been using her wind magic to help her deal with the constant desire to succumb to the temptations of the pylon. Moving air in a circle over and over again. Each cycle feeding into the next in a never ending rotation. The only problem was that it always failed and fast. It took so much concentration, persistence, and mental strength that it was impossible. At least at first. In the beginning she couldn't even do a full complete turn.

What at first was an annoying little game to distract her from the pleasure of giving in to the power soon became a delight all on its own. 

In the beginning she had only had to play with rotating the air for a few minutes every once in a while. Then it had become a few minutes a day. Then several times a day. Slowly, but surely she had needed the rotation game more and more consistently just to maintain a sense of herself. By the time controlling the wind into a circular rout for an hour was the only way to keep her sanity the difficulty had already reached the level of a whirlwind.

Of course it was not alive, of course it couldn't really help her in the end. She couldn't stop pushing herself, because she still wasn't powerful enough. She still needed more power to defeat her enemies and save her people. There was never enough power. But she learned to love the whirlwind. It gave her purpose and time to deal with her insecurities. Nurturing the whirlwind became her passion when everything else told her to give into the pylon scripture's promise of power.

This had built up until she had needed to work on the wind every moment she was awake. Invisible she made the air spin above her shoulder, in the air above her, behind her back, or to tease and play with people who didn't understand. When the little whirlwind had become powerful enough she had to learn to dampen and negate its effects. 

At this point in time she had had to learn how to split her attention. It became necessary to learn how to both form the tiny whirlwind, but also focus on what was going on around her.

After she had needed the whirlwind every waking moment for about a year just to preserve her sanity and prevent herself from succumbing to the temptation of becoming a pylon Jace woke up one night only to realize she had formed the cute little whirlwind in her sleep. It was cute to her because she could sense her mana flowing through it. Invisible to everyone else no one knew about the whirlwind unless they were one of her inner circle. 

From then on she forgot her hesitation and completely allowed herself to whirl the wind at all times. She kept it small which was harder, but she wouldn't stop no matter what.

And then when the wind was no longer difficult enough she had despaired. The pleasure of gathering the lightning and training herself to utilize it had become irresistible at last. That is until she tried combining her sword chi, the lightning, and her wind magic all into one.

Headache inducing, the combination of her most powerful skills had been impossible. They simply were not designed to work together.

Most people only ever focused on developing one of these techniques. If it wasn't for being in the royal family which meant access to instructors and sufficient motivation she would not have been able to arrive at the skill level she had.

The impossible nature of the game was the main thing. The frustration of it, the sheer overwhelming number of times she tried gave her some rationality in the face of her need. Her need to feel the intoxicating power accelerating her might. If she allowed herself to be consumed by the acceleration she would become a monster and she did not want to become a monster continually lusting for more and more power.

The practice had gotten her though till the choosing. And the only reason why it had only worked up to this point was because combining sword chi, wind magic, and the lightning had always failed.

The first betrayal had come a week before choosing. She had been confident in herself, poised, serene. And then she had done the impossible. From one moment to the next the three competing energies had gone from being disparate mutually devastating forces to working together in a harmony so profound that she hadn't realized at first what happened. Fortunately within moments the synergy was lost. She had exhaled in relief. Maybe it was a fluke of nature, maybe it was because of an outside influence.

However, the next day the synergy had established itself again. And then again for even longer. Jace's poised mind was lost. It was at that point that she had begun searching for a worthy cause. 

'I have to find an enemy so powerful that it will be able to kill me.'

For the Athras people there were many extinction level threats. It was how things worked on an intergalactic level. Only the strong survived. But most threats were already handled by other pylons or were not worthy of a pylon's interference. Which left just one enemy, the Falnali. More specifically the hive queen. She was the only one who could kill Jace and at the same time be a worthy cause. 

So Jace had brought her legion to Jaxi and had notified her parents that she needed to perform the choosing ceremony. That was why she was here and why there had been so much drama.

There in the depth of the sand in darkness she smiled. A smile had frozen on her face, a cruel smile of absolute pleasure since the first ecstasy of her pylon strength was finally released in its fullest. However, now that disgusting smile had finally relaxed and a new smile took its place. This time is was a simple smile and only a small upturn of her lips. Externalizing her pylon's acceleration energy allowed her a measure of thought that hadn't been possible before.

She could finally show her secret. The secret she had spent years developing. Jace had found a way to combine her sword chi, lightning, and her wind magic.

Released the whirlwind was no longer as big as her thumb. Instead it towered up into the sky connecting heaven and earth.

And within the whirlwind her sword chi sharpened the lash. While her lightning had disappeared one more time. This time the lightning was not quenched within her flesh. Instead to was tempered into the wind itself.

Where before the whirlwind had been no bigger than her fist, now it howled up into the sky. And she went with it. Placing herself at the core of the whirlwind which was now more of a tornado than anything else she burst forth from her sandy grave early. Suspended within the heart of her new creation she contemplated her enemy and knew that it was not enough.

Enough and far more than enough for these few broodlings, but she now set her sights on an enemy far stronger. Looking up Jace began to lust even more for the blood of a real challenge. The one who could end her pleasure.

As soon as she even began to think this thought it was already over. Several dominoes in her mind knocked over. Why should she care about what was right and what was wrong? Why should she care about strategy and politics? Why should she even care about her old self's simple dreams?

"No!"

A single word was all she said. Before she had been a banshee. Completely consumed with the ravishing joy of a pylon. She had screamed and screamed at her enemies, but now she was silent. But it wasn't because she didn't want to scream. It wasn't because she didn't want to announce her dominance.

"No."

She no longer needed to scream. There was no need to instill more fear into the bugs. Her tornado screamed for her. It howled for her. Over every sufficiently sharp edge and spike the wind blew leaving behind sound. Like a flute player blowing air across the embouchure of an instrument. Sound screamed into the world.

Only the noise created was in no way pleasant. Every beetle's carapace, every ammo pack, every embedded metal augmentation, everything began to scream from the wind's passage as long as it had enough of an edge to it. And there were lots of edges that fit the requirement. More were made every second due to the nature of battle. Broken bits of things became her choir. She loved it.

So she didn't need to scream, her wind screamed for her and they could not escape. Her enemies could only bear it. 

Laughing she took the next step and took off her armor. Piece by piece and relinquished them to the wind.

There were many pieces of metal in her tornado already. She didn't need to add more, but the armor was deeply personal to her. Or had been and each piece had been attuned to her very flesh and blood. It had to be so personal so that it could absorb the lightning and delay her acceleration. She now used this useless function in a new way. Making the half destroyed armor her final weapon she exerted her control and forced the armor to stay within her wind. Everything else would be pitched away. Everything else would be ejected with vengeance. But her destroyed armor would be her instrument of destruction and she would keep it forever.

"No"

Filled with her lightning, covered with her sword chi, and propelled by her augmented whirlwind her enemies were shredded. Where before her armor entered the equation the tornado would have whipped her enemies with time. Now their death came much faster, much, much faster.

In seconds the strongest elements of the Falnali brood were wiped from the face of the planet and its skies.

Nothing could survive in the face of her acceleration enhanced wind. When every scrap of metal and organic substance beyond her armor became a vessel for her chi to make into a blade nothing on this world could stop her.

She scoured a path from the Falnali trap back to her legion annihilating the beetles for hundreds of meters in all directions along the meandering route she took. Incapacitating many Falnali for a thousand meters beyond that even.

When she reached her army she suddenly stopped the wind and fell from her high place. Down into the dirt made mud by the blood of the fallen she splashed.

"Come, my sister's, we have work to do."