Raiten:

  Saegor goes hunting. Kiren starts drawing up something in one of his journals—I’m almost glad he busies himself. Gives me an excuse to avoid confronting him a bit longer. Umbrahorn gets to sleeping—the only allowed to do so, since he’s a spirit. And I?

  I just lay on a log and stare at the starry night. Thinking.

  Frogs croak. Flies buzz. Cicadas rattle. Crickets trill. Birds chirp.

  The briars smell of woody smoke from the enemy’s fires on the hill—the stink of dried meats from our packs—the earthy scent of grime and mud from our well-worn clothes.

  I breathe it all in.

  And watch the twinkling lights in the night.

  “I might die tomorrow,” I whisper. I don’t feel like I’m going to die tomorrow. Everyone always talks about this thing: this pre-battle nervousness that rots the mind. But I don’t have that right now. Maybe my nerves have been long-fried. After all, every day was a battle at the Tower. What makes this one so different? The number of enemies? Please. It’s all the same. “All you have to do is kill.”

  “Do you always whisper creepy shit like that to yourself?” Zyla asks, bending down next to me. My eye twitches.

  “No actually. I was just—”

  “Having a moment?”

  “Sure. Let’s call it that.”

  “Well you can save that moment for later. Get up.” She throws a stick at me. It bounces off my chest. I pick it up and toss it back. She lazily raises her hand and blasts the stick to pieces with Aether.

  “What for?”

  “What do you think? You just broke every rule of magicks I’ve ever known. We’re going to use that in the limited amount of time we have.”

  I raise an eyebrow. She’s actually serious about this.

  “You can’t teach me Aether in a single night.”

  “I can damn well try. Now come on. Let’s get to it.”

  …

  After Zyla blasts me with Aether for the fifth time, knocking me flat on my ass, I groan.

  “This isn’t working.”

  “You just aren’t trying hard enough—”

  “How much more can I try than this? I’m doing everything you’ve asked.”

  She sighs and starts muttering to herself about something. I’ve learned three truths in the past hour: first one being that I am a much better hand-to-hand combatant than Zyla. But that doesn’t matter because of the second truth; she can just keep me at bay with brute force use of Aether. She doesn’t even need to weave it into nets or other constructs like Hypna did.

  Last of the truths being that I can use Aether at will. Just not much.

  I raise my arm out again and try willing the blue light to my palms. They glow a faint sky-blue. The most I can summon, however, are mere outlining constructs—borders and string lines.

  “Alright, maybe you have a point,” Zyla says, offering me a hand now. I take it and she pulls me off the ground rough-like. “I was trying to draw Aether out of you like how my old teachers did it—”

  “By just beating you up?”

  “Yes. My education was… intense. But it had its benefits.” She walks around me now and points to a tree in the distance. “When they pressured me enough, my Aether exploded. Uncontrollably. Like this.” She punches the air and from her fist comes a scattering wave of Aether that roars against a dozen trees rather than just the one she pointed at. But the force is so scattered that no significant damage is done to their stumps. They only rattle as the upper branches shed some leaves.

  “What was the point then? If it was that uncontrollable, why go through with the exercise?”

  “Eh, magicks are weird. Sometimes, you have to teach people how to do something the wrong way before correcting them. It's gatekeeping information. Kind of like math—you know how they only teach you simple numbers first, before introducing to concepts like negatives and decimals and—”

  “Zyla, who do you think you’re talking to?”

  “Right.” She hesitates before tacking on a “sorry.”

  “It's fine, I get the point though. Fight or flight instinct helped you unleash the Aether. Then they taught you how to control it?”

  “Yes. Like this.” Now, she points a single finger at the tree and shoots off a concentrated ball of Aether. It thumps hard against the stump and puts a dent in it. “Right now it isn’t working with you, but maybe that’s because the danger isn’t real enough. Besides, it did work against that centipede.”

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  “Right.” I stare at my hands, turning them over and spreading my fingers. I try remembering how Hypna used Aether. “I feel like I don’t understand this element.”

  Zyla scoffs. “You and half the other scholars in the world.”

  “I mean, I’ve seen it used as a brute force wave of energy. And that can damage the exterior. But, I’ve also seen it used to shape weapons, nets, and other constructs on the fly. Hell, I’ve even heard that Aether can be used to kill burgeoning diseases.” Well, that last bit is a lie. I’ve seen that after all. And even that memory confuses me, because Hypna was attacking the interior of the body to rid me of Thrae’s disease in the dream.

  “I don’t know about that last one, but your point is that…?”

  “Exactly. What is the point of Aether?”

  “Oh. I see what you mean. Hmmm.” She takes a seat on a tree stump now, hand scratching her chin. “When Kiren and I entered the magicks academy in Catolica, do you know the first element they taught us?”

  “Aether,” I guess. “But why?”

  “That confused me too. Kiren didn’t even have the affinity for Aether, nor did half the other students. Yet, our first year consisted of learning Aether principles, studying Aether mancers, and even delving into theories regarding the realm of Aether. Specialization in a specific element or field wasn’t allowed until the second year.” Zyla shakes her head and in her hands, she summons strings of Aether. They are wrapped around each finger and she stretches them out playfully, weaving them into shapes and knots. The element makes a distinct HUMMM! In the air that sounds almost soothing.

  “I realized why in our second year. Every single other element derives their shaping capabilities from Aether principles. Want to make fire into a loop? Use what you know of Aether shaping to mold that flame into what you desire. Want to make missiles of ice to spray your enemies? Same idea. To understand how to control other magicks, you must first understand Aether—even if you can’t use it. Think about it like this: Aether is the skeletal structure. Magicks are the body. Incanta and Servanta are the blood. And even deeper than that, mana is whatever’s in the blood.”

  “So it's the foundational base of shaping for other magicks,” I say, nodding now. “But is it useful on—”

  “Its own?” She smiles at me, and I realize that she doesn’t smile often. It gives her a warmer look. “I wondered about that too. Is Aether just a stepping stone? An inferior element? But… no. For one, the realm of Aether has so many mysteries that we have yet to discover. Some mancers spend their entire lives trying to uncover those secrets. But, more importantly, as much as you can use Aether principles to shape other elements and magicks, Aether itself is the most fluid of magicks. Meaning, you can create the most specific and longest-lasting constructs.”

  “Like nets.”

  “Like nets indeed. Or swords, arrows, shields. Hells, I’ve even seen some master Aether users create arms to replace lost ones or extra limbs. No other element can do that without significant energy being wasted. Aether is far easier to shape than anything else. And it also uses the least amount of innate mana to employ. So I can probably fight the longest out of all of us.”

  “I see.”

  “Do you?”

  “I mean I think so.”

  She makes another noncommittal hum before staring, all of a sudden, at my amulet sack. “I think I have an idea.”

  “Go for it.”

  “The one time you used your angel dust in front of us, I noticed that you created a sword of lightning.”

  I remember exactly when I had to do that: I used the impromptu blade to cut one of the plagued asunder before speeding off to try and kill the witch—end this war early. What a stupid decision of mine.

  “What other shaping have you done with your lightning?” she asks.

  “A lot, actually. I use it to make ropes and lines to lob at clouds. I also sometimes make daggers to quickly strike at my opponents. But none of these constructs last for more than a few seconds really—” I pause, looking at her with more understanding.

  “Exactly. Do you use a lot of energy creating these constructs?”

  She’s right. “Yes.”

  “More importantly, do you think it's unnatural?”

  I’m an idiot. How could I not have realized this? I’m always the one preaching about how the Elders don’t understand angel dust. Red lightning wants to be free, I’ve always touted. And yet, what have I been doing? I force the dust to mold into these shapes so that I can swing from clouds and create temporary weapons. And no matter how tightly I compacted the lightning into those blades, stray branches of red would always be wasted, streaking out wildly from the constructs.

  But my lightning is always best when it's used like… like lightning.

  Striking at the enemy with latticing, branching streaks. Flashing redness in the dark.

  I groan and she starts laughing. “Did I just blow your mind?”

  “Yes,” I respond through gritted teeth. “I didn’t even realize how wasteful I was being.”

  “Well, now you know at least. Look, I don’t know if it's because you didn’t understand Aether principles or it's because lightning isn’t technically an element, but when I saw you use that sword of lightning, I thought it was a bit inefficient at the time as well. I just didn’t let you know because… I hated you.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “But I tolerate you now, so let’s try and work around this issue.” She smacks her hands together, as if dusting off the Aether. “Now, you might be right. I can’t teach you Aether in one night. But I think I can teach you enough so that you can use the principles, and even some of the shaping structures of Aether itself, to help mold your lightning more naturally. That way, you spend less of your angel dust and more of your actual mana.”

  “Which will allow me to use lightning for a lot longer,” I realize.

  “And, you’ll be able to use it a lot more efficiently.” She clasps my shoulder now and gives me a mischievous smile. “We have a lot of work to do though, and only a small amount of time. So Raiten, are you ready to learn?”

  I scoff, this scene reminding me of my time in Takemeadow. To that end, I address her properly.

  “Yes, Master Zyla.”

  “For the love of the Aether realm, don’t call me that.”

  Right. She’s not Sorina.

  “Sorry.”

  “Apologize by learning how to concentrate your lightning with Aether. Then, who knows? Maybe we’ll actually win this battle.”