"And you seem to have forgotten," the princess said quietly, her voice cutting through the mayhem with unshakable calm, "who you're fighting with."
The air shifted.
Lenko didn't realize he had been holding his breath until that moment, when suddenly, it became easier to breathe. The pressure that had been coiling tight in his chest seemed to loosen, the suffocating heaviness of mana around them cracking like a thin shell.
And then he saw it.
The carpets, the same ones that had been holding the collapsing floor together, moved. They slithered with impossible grace, alive with the princess's mana. Their edges curled and coiled like serpents, then, with a violent crack, they lashed out.
One, two, three, each strike was precise and devastating.
