The rotating sphere left Theodore's hand and crossed the platform fast and flat.
Calver raised a wall. Then, in the half-second he had, stacked a second one directly behind the first.
The sphere hit both.
The first wall cracked on impact and the second absorbed what was left — but the force pushed through both, not enough to shatter, enough to shove. Calver's feet scraped backward across the stone and he stopped himself after two steps with blood at the corner of his mouth. He pressed his lips together and the blood disappeared.
His expression had changed. The easy posture was gone.
Theodore didn't wait. He started the rotation again, hands moving in opposing circles, and this time the air didn't just gather at his palms. It expanded outward, circling his whole body in a loose orbit, a field of compressed and moving air that rippled his uniform at the edges and made the platform stone around his feet dust off in a slow spiral.
