Previous: Clearing the Eir, Post 2
She arrived at the frontline with a sweeping, dramatic entrance and the Ketir gathered there knelt hurriedly in deference. It was a sign of deep disrespect to avert one's gaze whilst doing so. The Ketir-Iah believe that one should always be taking the measure of any with whom they share space (enemy or ally), in order to determine their proper place in any given situation. To that end, all eyes were on Basma as she regally lifted one hand and looked over the heads of her underlings toward the Dwarven fortification. The guns on the assembled Heru immediately fell silent and the stench of burning ozone began to fade from the air.
She extended her opposite hand out, directly before her, palm facing the wall as though she were gently caressing it up close. The very air warped like ripples on a pond mere inches from the wall and the great construction yielded up its secret to the Arcanus. Great glowing runes bled slowly into vision, carved into the wall itself, as the weaker magik that hid them was wiped gently away by the sorceress' will.
Basma felt a sharp tug on her arm and a wave of nausea swept through her. At first, she thought to ignore it, attributing the feelings to even the gentlest use of her cursed blood magiks. But when her thumb blackened and the searing sensation of her flesh burning traced a jagged line of pain through her hand, she frowned deeply and reconsidered. The Curse always took a form of punishment, most often pain and physical damage, that suited the way the magik was being utilized. Since she had effectively dusted away the amateurish concealment magik on the wall, the burned hand made sense. The pulling and nausea sensations did not.
She studied her outstretched hand more closely and slowly began to perceive the weave of an enemy spell ensnaring it. "Oh, very clever," she mumbled quietly to herself. She felt no further resistance as she moved her arm around but as she focused on the spell and her eyes adjusted, she could see it gathering momentum and power. It pulsed and spiraled around her hand and down her arm toward the elbow, where it seemed to burrow tendrils of energy directly into her arm. It was difficult to ascertain exactly what the enemy magik was doing to her but she had a pretty good idea. Besides, she didn't want to waste any more energy identifying its effects, especially if the enemy spell was, in fact, siphoning her magikal energy as she thought.
If she was correct, the spell was tied to the Protection Rune on the wall. As it drained her of the ability to pierce the wall through offensive magiks, it recycled that energy to serve as further ablative layers of magikal armor. Now that she could perceive the energy clearly, she could see hundreds of the glowing tendrils snaking outward from the Runes and burying themselves in the weapons of her attack force. Made sense. Much of the Ketir armament currently used a borrowed Blue Transparent energy source called Zaubered Blue. It was friendly to magik and held deep reserves of energy within its energy matrices. With all the weapons currently at her disposal laced with magikal energies, it was no wonder the impressive complement couldn't pierce the vampiric wall.
Her hubris had trapped her. Fortunately, she could afford such arrogance.