From their exchange, Zorak could tell that Bol was a third-grade Adept warrior. He glanced at Cheryl. He hadn't worked her out yet, but she was probably an Adept warrior too, and he got a more dangerous feeling from her than from Bol. He would have to be careful.
He could also tell that both of them were holding back, afraid of making a bigger commotion in broad daylight and drawing attention. Every practitioner knew how strict the central organizations were about mystics being noticed, and what sanctions waited for anyone who was. Everyone knew of the Suppression, the system that kept mystics hidden, and of the organizations that enforced it with iron fists; practitioners caught exposing the Mystic world in public were hunted, punished, or simply erased. For the same reason, Zorak didn't go all out either.
Two Adept warriors near his own grade would be difficult, and brute force alone wouldn't win this. He had to separate them, take Bol out quickly, then turn to Cheryl. Fighting both at once is suicide. They're a team; they'll move well together. If he gave them time to synchronize, he would lose. Strength and decisiveness were his only advantages right now.
He charged into the room after Bol with a heavy punch, spiritual energy concentrated in his golden brass knuckles until they sizzled. His earlier blows should have done some damage, and landing one now might give him the edge.
A charm flashed into being in front of Bol and Cheryl, and it caught him completely off guard.
With a deep thrum, the air solidified. It didn't freeze or harden so much as lock, its particles aligning in perfect synchrony and refusing to yield. A flat, translucent plane appeared between Zorak and his targets, shimmering faintly like heat over stone.
The Phase Bastion Charm. Where the Phase Veil took its user out of physical interaction, the Bastion made interaction unavoidable. All matter existed in a state of vibration; normally air, flesh and objects kept flexible boundaries, yielding, compressing, breaking under force. The Bastion locked the local harmonic phase of matter and forced it into maximum cohesion, so that air behaved like stone, motion stopped, and any impact was spread instantly and infinitely. Reality simply stopped agreeing to move.
Zorak's fist hit the Bastion.
THOOM.
It was like punching bedrock. His knuckles stopped dead, and the energy in them flared and dissipated across the plane. Then came the reaction, Newton's third law at work: every ounce of force he had put into the blow came straight back at him. His feet left the ground, and he flew backward across the hallway and slammed into the wall. The charm crumbled into dust and ash where it had hung, one use and exhausted.
Bol and Cheryl were already back on their feet. "Together!" Bol shouted, and they darted forward.
Zorak tried to push off the wall, but Bol was already above him, and Bol's foot came down hard on his shoulder.
CRACK!
Zorak was driven into the floor. The impact rattled through his ribs.
Before he could recover, Cheryl was beside him, her small hand reaching for his head. He saw it coming, but they had timed it so well that he couldn't stop it. His instincts as a practitioner screamed that if she touched his head, it would go very badly for him. He tried to roll away while his muscles screamed, but she was simply too quick.
His eyes went wide as her hand closed on his short, close-cropped hair. She giggled, and then, with a strength that had no business in a body like hers, she ripped out a chunk of it, roots and all. Blood beaded on his scalp where it had torn free.
Zorak roared at the pain and lashed out to grab her, but she had already dropped back from the hallway into the room, out of reach, as if they had planned it.
"Do it!" Bol shouted.
Zorak, still not understanding, watched her press his hair against her porcelain doll. The doll lit up as she poured a great deal of her energy into it, and his hair sank into the porcelain and was gone.
The doll was not merely a focus; it was a resonance vessel. Porcelain was used because it was inorganic and wouldn't decay, because it took spiritual imprinting naturally, and because it could hold conflicting frequencies without shattering. When the doll absorbed biological material, hair, skin or blood, it didn't consume it physically. It extracted the resonant signature embedded in the matter. Every living being carried a unique vibrational identity, in its cells, its aura and its accumulated will, and the doll became a proxy body, a harmonic twin.
This was Cheryl's skill: Sovereign Marionette, more commonly called Puppeteer's Dominion. It rested on a principle scholars called Sympathetic Entanglement Theory, a meeting point of early quantum science and mystic resonance. Two particles, once bound, remained linked regardless of distance, and any change imposed on one was reflected in the other; distance became irrelevant, while causality remained. The Puppeteer weaponized this principle, not at the atomic level, but at the biological-spiritual threshold where identity, matter and will overlap. The body remembers itself, even when divided.
Once enough material had been absorbed, the skill unfolded in three steps. First came Resonance Lock, in which the doll synchronized with the target's biological frequency and created a permanent entanglement channel. Then came Will Insertion, in which the Puppeteer imposed her intent through the doll and overrode the target's nervous and mystic systems.
Last came Dominion Manifestation, a massive, dark, eerie energy flooding the target, not as possession but as suppression: cold, heavy, suffocating and unmistakably foreign. Observers often reported that the victim's shadow moved out of step with the body.
But control was never universal, because resistance scaled with mystic advancement. Mystics reinforced their bodies with refined aura circulation, will-hardened nerves and spiritual self-anchoring, and all of it created interference in the entanglement channel. To compensate, the Puppeteer had to strengthen the biological signal.
Joe had been easy. He had no cultivated aura, no reinforced will and no spiritual defenses, and a single trace of his spit smeared on the doll's porcelain cheek had been enough; he had never fought her, because he never had the tools to.
Zorak was different. He walked the Mystic Path, and his aura was layered, disciplined and self-referential. A drop of blood would have failed, and a strand of hair would have flickered and broken. She had needed a great deal of his hair, enough to overwhelm his self-anchoring frequency, and only then did the doll stabilize and the dark energy descend.
Zorak felt it before he saw it, a presence, cold and heavy and wrong. It began as pressure at the base of his skull and spread down his spine, into his shoulders, his arms and his legs, and his body stiffened. He tried to move, and his muscles wouldn't answer. His chest tightened and his breath came shallow.
Then he saw it, the energy, dark and massive and eerie, pouring into him like smoke and flooding his veins. His aura flared in resistance, but the energy pressed down harder, smothering it. His shadow flickered and moved out of step with his body. He was still aware, still conscious, but he was no longer in control. His hand rose without his command, his fingers curled, and his body turned, stiff and deliberate, like a marionette on strings.
Cheryl giggled. "There we go," she said softly.