The swap took thirty seconds. Wave Motion vanished from my active roster. Death-aspected energy settled into my consciousness like ice water spreading through my veins. It felt wrong in a way the clean, spiral power of Wave Motion never had. Wrong in a way that was fundamentally different from Sensory Hijack's subtle manipulation of perception.
This was darker. It tasted of old copper on my tongue, that metallic sharpness you get from biting your cheek hard enough to draw blood. My molars ached like they'd been filled with lead. The energy carried violence in it, not potential violence but violence as a fundamental property. It didn't want to hurt things. It wanted to end them.
I turned to face the nearest training dummy—standard humanoid target, six feet tall, covered in synthetic material that changed color when struck. The impact sensors across its torso and limbs were supposed to help students measure force and accuracy. Mine was about to get some very confusing data.
