And yet," Vetra countered, lunging forward to snap her jaws inches from his face, "here you stand, using every lesson I beat into your hide. You are my greatest work, Soren. You cannot kill your creator with her own tools."
The poison in her words was more effective than her claws. Soren felt the truth of it gnawing at his focus. He was using her forms, her strikes, her discipline. Even now, he was her shadow.
He pivoted as an elder Syvrak exhaled a plume of molten orange at his flank. With a flick of his wrist, Soren summoned a wall of ice twenty feet high and ten feet thick.
The collision was a violent explosion of steam, but the wall held. Without missing a beat, he sent a wave of frost snaking along the ground, catching the creature's tail and anchoring it to the floor.
Another behemoth charged, its weight shaking the foundations of the palace.
Soren didn't dodge. He waited until the last possible second, then turned the floor beneath the creature into frictionless ice.
