There were two ways to be vulnerable. One was to be weak, to be defenseless, to be bound and gagged and rendered helpless, unable to act and so freed from the burden of action. The other, Solarel was learning, was to be hard read. No matter what thoughts existed in her head, whatever plans she had entered this battle with, whatever strength she natively possessed she was unable to wield it because her enemy had her downloaded on a level she couldn't comprehend. She struck directly into counters, she struggled directly into a lock, her tired and hungry body had spent so long in a stasis tank that it was utterly unprepared for direct battle. 

... She'd been [i]seen[/i]. She'd been so focused on what she was saying. If she'd be heard. On Speaking Not. Communication had been everything to her but that wasn't the only way to be known. Mirror had picked out parts of herself that she didn't even know she had. There was no defense. It would be easier to punch the ground.

"Thank you," she said. 

Energy burns in her, the force of explosions, of high velocity staff strikes, of kisses. She's filled with the aching positive energy brimming in her power cores demanding release. She's never fallen from this height before, never fallen like this before, never would have written a battleplan which involved her surviving a fall like this. If it was her she'd have thought it was impossible - but someone she believed in thought she was better than that.

She called on the spirits of her swords. They had always been malleable things, in her hands as God and as mortal. Their nature was to be blades but there was more they could cut than steel. Silver flowed over her back. Gold ran through her veins. The molten power within her burned and crackled. Two blades extended from her back - then four, eight, sixteen, more. A radiant pair of angel's wings, one silver and one golden, spread out behind her, each plume a sword. 

A sword does not see its potential. A weapon alone cannot live. This is her final surrender; not to wield her blade for her own will, but to become a sword in the hands of Whispered Promise. What else is there to do when the one who loves bids you to fly?