The elf moved again.
She swept her palm downward, and the space beneath the gray-robed man thickened, then erupted into a spiraling lattice of roots that grew from empty air.
They wrapped toward him in silent coils.
The gray-robed man's eyes narrowed.
"Die," he whispered.
Withering flowed.
The roots turned brittle before they could close. Their green sheen dulled into gray, then into powder. The air filled with dead dust again, falling in slow spirals.
But the elf did not stop.
Her fingers flicked, and the dust became spores.
Each particle flared with faint light, then multiplied, exploding outward into a swarm of microscopic seeds that flooded the air around him like a cloud of living knives.
The gray-robed man's robe snapped.
His aura expanded.
The cloud crossed into his domain and collapsed instantly, as if all the vitality inside it had been ripped away at the root. The seeds died mid-flight and fell as ash.
The gray-robed man smiled, cold and patient.
