Unbound Divinity: The Art of Divine Inconvenience

The Residue of Sunlight

Chapter 11: The Residue of Sunlight

"Take it!" Calista shouted, her voice cracking as she forced another wave of brilliant, blazing solar divinity from her palms directly into Aether’s chest.

Instead of anchoring him, the raw holy light violently reacted with his shifting molecular state, causing his amber mist to hiss and crystallize with a sharp, glass-like crackle. Aether gasped, his semi-transparent features twisting in sudden, acute agony as jagged orange crystals formed across his collarbone before instantly shattering back into glowing dust.

"Stop—" Aether wheezed, his voice carrying the eerie, hollow resonance of a wind tunnel. "You’re making me into a wind chime. It’s a very painful aesthetic."

"Shut up and let me fix this!" Calista’s hands hovered frantically over his shoulders, terrified to touch him again yet equally terrified to pull away. Her silver divinity bled uselessly into the empty air between them, illuminating the floating, microscopic amber particles that used to be a man. "Why is it crystallizing? I’ve bound divine wounds before! This shouldn't be happening!"

"Because you're trying to staple sunlight to a ghost," a dry, mocking voice cut through the ozone-heavy gloom from the edge of the ruined ballroom.

Calista spun around instantly, her right hand dropping to the pommel of her rapier with military precision, the blade hissing half an inch out of its scabbard in a flash of cold silver.

Emerging from the jagged shadows of the collapsed vaulted ceiling, Nyxara stepped over a slab of scorched marble. The assassin’s daggers were already sheathed at her hips, her dark leathers dusted with white soot, her expression a masterclass in cynical boredom.

"Keep your little silver firecrackers in your trousers, Captain," Nyxara said, nodding toward Aether’s disintegrating form with casual indifference. "He isn't dying."

"He is literally coming apart at the seams!" Calista snarled, stepping protectively in front of Aether’s flickering silhouette, her rapier pointed straight at Nyxara’s throat. "Explain yourself right now, or I will run you through before you can take another breath."

"Put the toothpick down," Nyxara sighed, rolling her eyes and walking right up to the tip of Calista’s blade without an ounce of fear. "If you kill me, you lose the only person in this ruined palace who knows what a density shift looks like. He didn't die when the artifact blew. He just bottomed out. Shifting to a lower density. It’s what happens when a walking magic battery gets overcharged and drops the core."

Calista glanced back over her shoulder. Aether was currently staring at his right hand, which had completely vanished, leaving only an empty space where his fingers should have been.

"She’s actually right, you know," Aether’s voice drifted over, sounding faint and terribly distant, though a weak, crooked smile still hovered where his face ought to be. "Though I take mild exception to being called a battery. I prefer 'energetic masterpiece.' And honestly, Calista, your interior design choices need work. This rubble really clashes with my new, minimalist aesthetic."

Calista stared at him, her chest heaving, a fierce mixture of overwhelming relief and homicidal fury warring behind her eyes. "You think this is funny? You are half-vapor!"

"I think," Aether replied, floating an inch off the scorched floorboards before dropping back down with a clumsy stumble, "that if the Gilded Regulators don't show up in the next two minutes to arrest us for blowing up the aristocracy's favorite ballroom, we’re going to have plenty of time to discuss my new silhouette over a very stiff drink."

"He’s got a point," Nyxara said, her ears twitching as the faint, rhythmic sound of heavy boots echoing up the grand marble staircase began to pierce the lower levels of the estate. "The city guard heard that little light-show you two put on. If we don't move right now, you won't have to worry about his density dropping, because you'll both be swinging from the gallows by morning."

Calista’s jaw tightened. She sheathed her rapier with a sharp click, her solar divinity flaring once more as she grabbed Aether’s remaining solid arm to haul him upright. "Can you walk?"

"Walk? Darling, I can barely remember what having legs feels like," Aether groaned playfully, leaning heavily against her side as his left shoulder flickered into a bright cluster of orange sparks. "Fortunately, leaning on a gorgeous, highly decorated military officer has always been high on my bucket list."

"Keep talking and I'll drop you," Calista snapped, though she adjusted her grip to support his weight more securely.

"Lead the way, shadow-girl," Aether called out to Nyxara as the sound of boots grew dangerously closer down the corridor. "Try to find us a route with good lighting. I want my new transparent

phase to be properly appreciated."