The Archivist's escalation was immediate and overwhelming.
She didn't just move faster or hit harder—she transformed the fundamental nature of the engagement. Where before she had been reactive, defensive, pedagogical in her approach, now she became something else entirely: an active combatant demonstrating the vast gulf between students learning coordination and a being who had transcended normal combat limitations.
Commands manifested in rapid succession, no longer individual instructions but cascading chains of reality-warping that stacked effects in ways that defied tactical prediction:
MULTIPLY—DIVERGE—CONVERGE—COMPRESS—RELEASE
Echo Phantoms erupted into existence—perfect memory-constructs pulled from the Archivist's vast catalog. Not random creations, but deliberately chosen psychological weapons. Each phantom was someone's failure, someone's trauma, someone's moment of absolute defeat pulled from the Archivist's archive and given temporary form.
