Commander Rel had not bothered to draw the staff when she had decided she did not need it for three Acolytes, and it came up now because the calculation that had told her she did not need it had just been broken by an Acolyte who had soul-cast through her defenses.
Her staff was longer than mine. It was made of a wood I did not recognize, dark, almost black, with grain that ran in patterns that hurt to look at directly.
The head of it held no crystal. There was a recessed cavity where a crystal should have been, and the cavity was empty, which meant whatever Commander Rel was channeling with this staff was something a crystal could not focus.
More likely, her attunement with this staff was now so high that she needed higher-tier Focus Crystals because her staff had already absorbed all the lesser Focus Crystals for its growth and now needed more powerful crystals. Both of these options were bad for me, but you see, at this moment, I couldn't care less.
