A weighing handful of circumstances now busied Sarah’s mind and body. 

The first and foremost of these was the aftermath of her own attack. As with just about any application of force, there came a recoil. A minute backlash, it was something Sarah would shrug with general ease, owed in part to the firmness of her stance; following through with the natural recoil of the arm out of the punching motion, she swiftly retracted her right hand back into its previous position. The second came in the immediate desire to witness the result of her actions first hand. How would the man up the road respond? Would her maneuver be enough to faze him? 

These questions were, and would have remained, imperative, if not for a sudden, unseen sensation that would distract her from what was in front of her. 

Something, a subtle something, barely glancing across the threshold of an uncommon sense as her hand reeled back in. Not the man before her; he was still too far out for that. But, comparing what she felt to what she could see, it wouldn’t surprise her if the two were related. That detail wasn’t a priority of highest concern to her. What she could see but not feel took a backseat to what she could feel but not see.

Her first response was to turn her head to her right, where the wheat field on the southern side of the road would have served perfect place from which to engage a sneak attack. This same act would inadvertently bring her attention to the threat at hand. The sextet of stone spires, had been well en route to shish kebab her backside. 

Where in the pass of the previous stone spike, the factors of time and awareness had proven themselves leaning to her favor, this round was not to forgive her as readily. Impact was inevitable. She had let her awareness of her surroundings slip too much to make a graceful evasion. The movement she would begin with was short, and covered no ground: a simple rotation initiated from the right leg, which put her right hip in the place that her back had been. 

In a simultaneous action, she generated a increased flux of power, coursing from her core, through the entirety of her torso, so far as to carry to the surface of her skin. The energy carried with it the stimuli, signaling to the affected area of the body that a defensive measure was needed. Her tissues responded in a hurried fashion. Muscles contracted; skin and bone took on a weight impressing of growing density as Sarah’s energy flowed into their fibers. She would continue this process only so long as it took for the first spire to make contact.

The purpose of it all was nothing more than to dampen and blunt the impact of first spire. Between her prep, and some added benefit from what padding was offered her by her jacket, the first contact, came such a result as stone against the trunk of a thick tree. It was painful, but the tree would persist and stand strong.

Recovering from the opening shock of the blow, Sarah laboriously freed herself from the continuing drive of the first spire. This, along with the second spire, cut passed her, and through the fabric of her jacket; the first would leave behind the souvenir of a scraped scar just above her hip. The third spike would come to pass in the wake of the second, and Sarah then set herself behind the last three as she made a turn back towards the other end of the road. 

With that danger presumably passed, she met the next one with all the more enthusiasm. Billowing from the other end of the road, the cloud of dust, filled with a dark red tint not unlike the flashes that had preceded the gaunt-looking man’s appearance, was practically upon her. Uncertain of the what the odd coloration brought, she could only predict that the cloud would bring a significant drop in visibility. 

Feeling the need to conserve herself for a protracted conflict, she tempered the inner flux, normalizing her physical state. Her sense of sight blurred, and taste all but vanished completely, as she focused stimulation to towards hearing, touch, and smell. Her ears would prove her sharpest allies amid the veil. A reborn flow of energy would form, staging just below the surface of her skin, like an inner-lining to the entirety of her body, ready to release as quickly as Sarah could react.