✴

“Let’s try and trick them,” you say, directly to ÆON’s mind. “Any ideas?”

“No,” ÆON says to you.

“You have a lot of knowledge but not much when it comes to imagination, huh,” you say. “I have an idea, I’m just…not really good enough to do it yet,” you say. Then you feel a sharp chill in your head, like connecting to a computer system, but unique.

“Imagine. I create.”

The circle waits no longer and unleashes their charged attacks, bolts of electricity, pillars of fire, spears of crystalline light, all focused directly on you. They impact ÆON’s shield and shatter, but each one weakens its wall. You see cracks begin to form. Even a seemingly powerful exopath can’t withstand this many simultaneous attacks.

Calling on your creativity, you think quickly, and pull ÆON toward you, moving yourself around it to switch places just as the shield falters, and it takes the full force of three of your enemies’ assaults. The entity collapses, the radiance around it fading away with the severe damage done to its avatar. The black circle rushes in, furious, distraught, until realizing this never happened--an æthereal echo deceived their perception.

You and ÆON meanwhile stand at some imagined distance away, sheltering behind the ruins of a building.

“Echo. Technopathy. Obfuscation. Understood,” says ÆON, standing next to you.

“Let’s get out of here before they find us!” you say.

ÆON begins opening a gateway on the side of the building.