The air at the edge of the ravine pressed against Varrick, a cold, airless weight attempting to strip the heat from his silver-tinted skin. He looked at his father, a vertical slit of absolute dark standing against the violet moons. Varrick braced for a roar of disappointment. He expected a blow, or perhaps erasure from the coordinate entirely as a failed experiment. In his mother's stories, the Calamity was a force of nature intolerant of weakness. Varrick felt like the weakest link in a chain forged of gods.

  "I’m sorry," Varrick whispered. His voice cracked like dry clay. "I failed the vanguard. I failed the siblings. Make it quick, Father."

  Jian didn't move. He tossed the glowing gem. The rhythmic click-clack of it hitting his palm was the only sound in the silence. He looked at Varrick. His copper eyes performed a surgical probe of the boy’s fractured spirit.

  "Shut up and follow me," Jian rasped, his voice a low rhythmic thrum.

  He stood up and walked toward the command camp. Varrick hesitated for a heartbeat before his feet moved on their own, compelled by the magnetic pull of his father’s presence. They bypassed the sentries and the flickering fires of the three-billion-man host, slipping through the shadows of the cliffside.

  They crested a jagged ridge and looked down into the lower valley. High-speed, silent skirmishes were taking place. Varrick recognized the iridescent mist of the twins phasing through the city’s outer wards, silent as ghosts. He saw the faint golden shimmer of Lyzara’s spirit-hawk diving into a garrison of mages, the air vibrating with a high-frequency wind-blade.

  "They should be resting," Varrick muttered. "The assault isn't until dawn."

  "They are doing what they can," Jian said, gaze fixed on the twins’ flickering forms. "They are testing boundaries. Feeling the rhythm of the enemy's breath. Engaging with reality." He turned his head slowly, looking directly into Varrick’s eyes. "Are you doing what you can, or are you giving up at the first sign of a rough patch?"

  Varrick looked down at his silver-scaled hands. "I cannot do it, Father. I cannot be like them. Caelum has the dragon’s fire. Lyzara has the wind. All I have is this skin that turns to metal. It’s heavy. Slow. Those thugs in the alley hit me once and I couldn't even stand up. I’m just a shield that isn't strong enough to hold."

  "You don't know that if you don't try," Jian said, voice dropping into a terrifyingly sane rasp. "Right now, you aren't even pretending to try. You’re running into the wings. Are you going to follow the script where the failed son redeems himself years later after everyone he loves is dead? Or are you going to subvert the expectation?"

  "I’m not like you!" Varrick yelled. "I can't ignore the laws of the world! I can't step through barriers! I’m just a boy born of a dwarf and a monster, and I don't know who I am!"

  Jian let out a long weary sigh carrying the weight of ten million years of structural failure. He walked over to Varrick. His presence sucked the ambient light out of the air. He reached out and lifted Varrick’s tunic, revealing the boy’s stomach. Varrick was thirty, broad and muscular, but as Jian pressed a cold scarred thumb into his navel, he felt as small as a toddler.

  "Do you know why you have this?" Jian asked, giving the boy’s belly a firm squeeze. "You have this because of the Metal-aligned energy I took from the Heavens. It is the Law of Rigidity. The anchor of the universe. It isn't just skin, Varrick. It is the foundation. Use it."

  Varrick swatted his father’s hand away and pulled his shirt down. "Father, you are so unusual! Stop touching me like that! It’s weird!"

  "Weird is a perspective," Jian muttered. "Think about the feeling. The weight in your gut. The density of your marrow."

  "What?" Varrick asked.

  Jian grabbed Varrick by the wrist. The world folded. The valley, army, and lavender sky vanished, replaced by the suffocating dark heat of a deep subterranean cave. Walls of raw unrefined iron-ore pulsed with deep heavy metal energy.

  Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  "I hate this place," Varrick gasped. "It’s too loud. It feels like I’m being buried alive."

  "Good," Jian said, eyes turning a swirling cocktail of gold and void. "Remember that feeling. You’ve been here for training since you were a child, and every time, you’ve pushed the energy away. You tried to be light like your sisters. Fast like Caelum. But you are not a bird and you are not a fire."

  Jian pointed to a solid wall of black obsidian-laced iron. "Use those feelings. Use the fact that you hate this density. Use the fact that you’re afraid of being buried."

  Varrick’s skin turned to dull matte silver instinctively. "Are you happy now?"

  "Not yet," Jian rasped. "Use the weight in your belly. Not just the surface of your skin. Try punching that wall."

  Varrick groaned. "I’ve tried that a thousand times. It doesn't work. The vibration just goes into my shoulder and makes me numb."

  "Try actually punching the wall," Jian commanded, voice gaining a hard metallic edge. "Stop thinking about technique. Stop thinking about Proper Form. Just hit it."

  Varrick walked up to the obsidian wall. He let out a sharp breath and drove his silver fist into the stone. Thump. A minor tremor rippled through the floor, but the wall remained unscarred. Varrick pulled his hand back with a smug expression.

  "Feel it more," Jian said, stepping closer. He took off his tattered jacket, revealing a gaunt scrawny frame. "Don't just use the arm. Feel the energy in your belly, the density of the core I gave you. Let it flow through your legs into the floor. Become the mountain that the wall is attached to."

  Varrick sighed. He closed his eyes, focusing on the heavy thrumming heat in his lower dantian. He felt the silver scales start to vibrate at a frequency matching the iron in the walls. He let out a guttural raw yell and punched again.

  BOOM.

  A deep impactful thud felt like a hammer hitting an anvil. A web of small cracks appeared around the point of impact. Varrick looked at his hand, surprised by the lack of recoil.

  "So that is your way," Jian smirked, copper eyes glowing. "Now, try thinking about those feelings from earlier. How did you feel when those thugs kicked you in the dirt? How did you feel when you realized your soldiers were dead because you weren't strong enough?"

  Varrick looked down. The memory of humiliation flooded back. Cold oily fear. Anger at his own incompetence. Rage at a world demanding he be a god when he was just a man. Powerlessness watching his father walk away for thirty years.

  Something within him snapped. A thread of silver light ignited in his gut—the raw unyielding law of Rigidity. He lunged at the wall, entire body glowing with blinding incandescent silver light. He punched with the force of his entire soul.

  The obsidian-iron shattered. A massive chunk of the cave wall was pulverized into fine metallic powder. The shockwave sent Varrick stumbling back, chest heaving, eyes wide with manic clarity.

  "I... I did that?" Varrick whispered.

  "You’re already tapping into more power than you knew you had," Jian said. "And you haven't even begun to refine the core. Your potential doesn't obey the laws of the lower world. You have the weight of a planet in your gut, and you’re using it to carry groceries."

  "Why didn't you teach me this before?" Varrick demanded. "Why haven't you been here to show me how to breathe without drowning?"

  Jian placed a hand on Varrick’s shoulder. "I have been here. I’ve been teaching you from the first day I reclaimed the track. But I couldn't teach you how to handle proper difficulties in a garden."

  Varrick tilted his head. "Difficulties?"

  "The first time you came across something your mother couldn't handle for you," Jian explained. "The first time you were truly relied upon by people who were actually going to die if you failed. I couldn't teach you that until I thrust you into the scene. This is your first true conflict. Value the pain it caused you."

  Jian leaned in. "See what you can do, Varrick. Don't be afraid to tap into that rage. It’s the only part of you that’s truly real."

  Varrick let out a choked sob and threw his arms around his father, crying with the relief of a man who finally found the exit to a maze.

  Jian stood stiffly, hands hovering over the boy’s back. "There, there," Jian muttered. "The curse of the script. The Emotional Reconciliation arc. It’s so predictable."

  Varrick pulled back, wiping his eyes. "Father, do you really think we are just a script written by someone else? Do you really believe nothing we feel is real?"

  Jian looked at his son for a long agonizing minute. He saw only the raw messy truth of his own blood.

  "We are all on someone's script, Varrick," Jian said quietly. "Sometimes we’ll never know who holds the pen. But the ink? The ink is real enough when it bleeds."

  He grabbed Varrick’s hand. The space warped, and they reappeared in Varrick’s command tent.

  "Go to sleep, boy," Jian commanded. "The assault starts at dawn, and I have a feeling the next gatekeeper is going to need a very heavy shield."

  Varrick nodded, silver scales glowing with soft confident light. Jian stepped out into the night, looking at the shadows where his children were fighting.

  The grand play was moving forward. The characters were becoming real. For the first time in ten million years, the Calamity felt like he should be looking forward to the next page. He walked back to his quarters, and for once, he slept without dreaming of a yellow eye.