Cintra assessed the problem plainly.
She was standing on broken stone with new lines attached to the edges around her—lines she couldn't see but could feel when she shifted her weight across the irregular surfaces, the slight resistance at certain edge contacts that told her where Sevon's overnight work had landed. Her footing was managed rather than stable. Her pulse range was limited by the energy loss across the broken section between her position and Sevon's intact grid. And now the intact grid's interior was layered beyond what her range-pulses could reach.
She had three options.
She could keep sending pulses at the boundary—clearing the outermost lines repeatedly, preventing Sevon from consolidating the boundary, keeping the edge open even if she couldn't reach the interior. It would cost her pulse energy and it would maintain a standoff rather than resolving it.
