He gave her a flat, disbelieving look, quite an accomplishment considering the form he was in lacked eyes or even a face. "Are you REALLY that magically inept? Have you learned NOTHING about ritual circles in all of your attempts? Even a quarter inch deep scrape on the floor will spell disaster in a ritual. Your rune depth means nothing to the spell, what matters is the control and flow of magic through it. By me adding these marks, the magic will flow, unchecked through them, setting up tensions and stresses inside the ritual. I put enough stress on this already nearly overstressed circle, and the ritual, which, I might add, is tied to YOU this time, will ground itself through that tie."<br/><br/>He again managed to smile as she used what was probably a copy of his Cosmic Catastrophy spell, and boosted with V'elen a tiny bit to get more time. He sighed, and tossed the balefire whips to the side, stabilizing their energy expenditure so that they would not fizzle out immediately, and rolled his right shoulder back, disengaging his balefire elemental form. A tiny orb of balefire appeared above and behind his right shoulder as he reverted to his human form, and he stepped back, bringing his right hand up, carefully keeping the balefire orb out of the way as a trio of nested rune circles appeared around his hand. His left hand was held out to the side, palm down and fingers curled like he was holding an invisible ball.<br/><br/>His right hand stayed dead center in the beam of cold energy, and just before it hit his hand, it stopped, a couple inches from him. He winced in pain, even with his cold immunity that spell HURT, but the spell was being absorbed, and put into an orb similar to the balefire orb behind him, gathering in his left hand. It was a risky move, but he would be able to store this energy for a bit if she continued to supply it, and put it in an orb behind him like the balefire one. That would give him all SORTS of nastiness to give back to her.