by Dante King
The golem caught the light as one of the cracks in the earth spewed forth fire. The construct creature stood only as tall as Kegohr, rather than its usual story-and-a-half height. The mottled gray stone that usually made up its flesh had been replaced by white marble that glinted in the firelight.
“It looks different,” Kegohr observed. “Smaller and shinier.”
“I took a leaf out of your book,” Mahrai said. “You talked about different stages one night over dinner, and I asked my crusty old teacher if it was possible with my own power. He was pretty pissed at the question, but he couldn’t really refuse me, so here we are.”
“So, what kind of levels are there?” I asked.
“Size is just one aspect,” Mahrai explained as the golem stomped over to stand beside her. “It’s what you do with it that matters, and I’ve learned a few little tricks of my own. I can’t fly, glow like a coal, or break mountains in half, but try hitting him with some fire.”
Vesma and I raised our hands, and Untamed Torches fired from our outstretched fingers. The golem barely twitched as the fire washed over its marble skin. We both released our techniques.
As the flames abated, Mahrai’s golem transformed in the half light. Heat boiled off its stone plates, and in seconds, the entire golem resembled a humanoid pillar of fire. It turned its blank eyes toward us, and a memory flashed through my mind.
“I’ve seen a golem like this before,” Vesma said before I could say the same thing.
“At the tournament, when Hamon went feral,” I said. “It’s not just a Greater Stone Golem anymore, is it? This is a Greater Fire Golem.”
Cinders danced away from the golem’s shoulders as it shrugged. Mahrai flicked her fingers toward a nearby boulder, and the creature lumbered toward it with heavy steps. It scooped up a nearby rock, empowered the stone with fire, and hurled it off the mountain. The flaming piece of stone vanished into the darkness like a comet, and a new flood of possibilities washed through my thoughts.
“So, you can empower a base form of your golem with other elements?” I asked excitedly. “What about water? Wood, magma, acid?”
“Slow down,” Mahrai said. “I haven’t gotten that far yet. But it’s possible. Dying Sun is a fire-based Augmentation school, so fire was the easiest element to work with. I’ll need more time working out the details.”
“It’s incredible, Mahrai,” Vesma said. “I’ve never seen an Augmenter able to summon something like this without a scroll or a ritual. You can do it as easily as breathing.”
A flush of color crept into Mahrai’s cheeks as she rolled her eyes. “I guess.”
The small smile that flitted over her face told me that she appreciated the compliment. All her life, she’d been hounded, attacked, and driven away from war-torn environments. Now, she’d found a group of friends who appreciated her for reasons other than her usefulness.
Mahrai snapped her fingers, and the golem suddenly whirled around. It brought its arms together as if to attack her. My heart jumped in my chest as I raced to free the Demure Rebirth from its harness and push water through my Physical channels, intending to use Mud Entrapment.
But I needn’t have bothered.
Mahrai’s skin shifted in a split second from pale flesh to white stone, and the golem’s blow cracked harmlessly off her head and fractured the slate around her feet. She smiled, and I figured this was her way of showing what else she could do.
Kegohr, Vesma, and I watched on as the golem hurled a series of vicious strikes at her. But she remained rooted in place, even as the flaming fists bounced off her face, arms, and stomach. The blows caused her no harm whatsoever, and her expression almost seemed bored.
Mahrai’s skin glistened again and turned back to its usual flesh before she ordered her golem to retreat with another small gesture.
“Sweet gods in heaven,” Kegohr muttered. “What the hells was that?”
“Earth-based Physical Augmentation,” I said with a grin. “Isn’t it?”
Mahrai nodded. “Turns out I’m not just a one-trick novice after all. The monks told me that anyone with any Augmentation ability can learn to Physically fortify themselves. I didn’t believe it, but there you are. It works.”
“There must be drawbacks,” Vesma commented.
“Yeah,” Mahrai admitted. “It roots me in place, and I can’t move. That’s the cost of becoming invulnerable. I’m fairly sure I could take a hit from even Kegohr’s mace with this though. Not sure I’d want to try it against your little hammer over there, Ethan, but I can take a punch for sure.”
“Little?” Choshi protested from within the Demure Rebirth.
“Next to Kegohr’s club, you are a little on the scrawny side,” Nydarth snickered.
“Cut it out,” I told them with a laugh before I moved my focus back to my friends. “That’s a damn useful skill set, Mahrai. Vesma’s right. For all your complaining about the monks, you have to admit, staying here was a good idea.”
“In some areas, sure,” Mahrai said grudgingly. “But I still hate being treated like an errant child. The condescension, the constant preaching about the light of the Wandering Path? I could do without it.”
“A small burden, all things considered,” Vesma said.
“Keep it up, guys,” I said. “Everything you’re learning is phenomenal. Hell, we’re almost ready to take on an army now.”
“You mean we haven’t before?” Mahrai asked.
“I’m talking an army of Augmenters,” I said. “Not just demons or crazy guards.”
“And what about you, Effin?” Kegohr asked. “Sure, you’ve got your Physical Augmentation, but what about this Environmental stuff?”
The others looked at me expectantly, and I shrugged. “Nothing yet.”
“What?” Vesma exclaimed. “You’re the one who’s always ahead of the curve. Why haven’t you broken through and mastered a new element or something yet?”
“As strange as this sounds,” I said, “I think it’s bad teaching. But it won’t stop me.”
“I’m sure you’ll figure it out,” Kegohr said confidently.
“We should head back,” I suggested. “No point in getting caught out here or turning up to breakfast looking like we’ve just fought a war. We’ll get some rest and keep training.”
The rosy fingers of dawn crept over the sky as we followed the track toward the monastery. Vesma joined my side, and her fingers curled in mine as she leaned in to whisper in my ear.
“I’m glad you suggested this,” she said.
“I thought you didn’t want to break the rules,” I replied.
“All I want to do is get back and train,” Vesma said. “After the way—” She caught herself mid-sentence with a grimace. “Look, I enjoyed it. Don’t tell the others though.”
A smile curled over my face. “Need to save face?”
She bumped my shoulder with hers. “Shut up. Meet me out here in two days from now. I want to teach you what flying is really like.”
“I’ve experienced something pretty similar,” I joked. “Our first time. In Master Kyu’s study.”
Blood warmed her face, and she rolled her eyes dismissively. “It’ll be better.”
Chapter Twenty-One
We snuck back into the monastery easily enough and fell into the constant routine of training once again. Tymo gave me no reason to suspect that he’d noticed our departure. I sat in my usual spot in the main hall the next day to begin, but he was nowhere to be seen. I focused on the Vigor in the world around me, just as I had before, and still couldn’t use it to fuel my techniques. After a few hours, I gazed up at the graven images of Eresin and Myrdel and pondered the story that Tymo had told me about the two great figures.
“Did you ever meet Myrdel?” I asked Nydarth.
“Of course not. She is the mother of our bloodline, but she ascended to the pantheon long before I was even thought of,” she replied. “Our Dragon Mother was powerful, and wise beyond imagining. Her understanding of the
planes, of power, and of Augmentation were utterly unmatched.”
“You seem to forget the less friendly parts of the legends,” Yono said. “She was harsh, unforgiving, and despised all who opposed her system of rule. I, too, have my bloodline that lead from her, but the dragons of the deep remained neutral in the war.”
“How powerful was she?” I asked.
“It was said that all of nature bent to her will. The smallest effort was required on her part to bring ruin to her enemies,” Nydarth said excitedly. “She became the eye of the storm, and existence itself seemed to bend to her will. A simple flick of her talon, and she could incinerate armies, draw them into the earth, or drown them in tidal waves of water.”
I grimaced. “And I can’t even light a candle with the Vigor around me.”
“You will learn, Master,” Choshi said. “I know you will.”
“How?” I asked. “Everything I’ve ever learned has been based around me using—”
I froze in place, and an idea crept into my mind. I stilled my thoughts, blocked out the voices of the Immense Blades, and slowed my breathing until I averaged a single breath a minute. My heart thudded dully in my chest, and blood rushed past my inert channels and pathways. “The eye of the storm,” Nydarth had said.
How could I use that?
What did it take for a storm to begin?
Knowledge from my old life flitted through my mind. A small area of lower pressure stood in the middle, and higher pressure built up around it until winds started to move. The Vigor was all around me. It pushed, pulled, ebbed, and flowed. I reached out and tried to force it through my pathways, as I had done before. But my determined will simply wasn’t sufficient to control the raw elemental energy.
But what if I wasn’t the eye of the storm? What if my techniques were?
I lifted a hand and pushed the smallest amount of Untamed Torch from my fingertips and fed it with my own internal power. A marble-sized fireball whispered from my hand and soared over the polished black floor toward the altar.
A simple manifestation of my own personal power. A tiny still area of power within a raging inferno of raw Vigor that formed the existence of everything around me. I let my focus detach from my own pathways, narrowed my eyes at the tiny flare of magic, and re-focused my senses on the Untamed Torch just before it hit the altar.
The tiny fireball flared outward, fed on the raw Vigor around it, and grew to the size of a basketball before it crashed into the altar. Orange flame washed over the front of the altar, melted a few of the candles into liquid wax, and fizzled out after a second. An excited grin stretched across my face as I checked my pool of Vigor. I’d taken practically nothing away from my own personal store, but I’d managed, for just a second, to dip into the environment around me and use it to increase the effectiveness of my technique.
“What are you doing, Disciple?” Tymo asked coldly. I hadn’t noticed him arrive.
I glanced over my shoulder at him. “I think I’ve figured it out.”
“You have not. All you’ve achieved is ignorance of my instructions. The environment must power your Augmentation.”
“It’s impossible to power techniques from raw Vigor on its own,” I said. “How does that work with the cultivation of channels? My bout against Xilarion showed me that you can certainly draw power from your environment, but every time he used it, he was channeling a technique. This is the same principle.”
Tymo's eyes narrowed. “Are you questioning my instructions, Swordslinger?”
I could have argued and risked expulsion from the monastery. Or I could let Tymo have his way and train this new discovery in secret. I decided on the latter and simply shook my head. The ancient Archpriest took up his position beside me, and I returned to the futile activity of trying to fill my pool of Vigor from the environment around me.
“This new method must be trained carefully,” Yono said inside my mind. “Its destructive potential is immense. The Vigor of the world is great, Master, but even it has a limit. You must flow from source to source and choose your places carefully.”
“Don’t worry, Yono,” I said silently. “I’ll be careful.”
Tymo asked me to enact the same forms that led to the same failures before he released me to dinner. I didn’t discuss my new findings with my friends just yet for fear the monks might overhear me.
I woke very early the next day for my meeting with Vesma. Mahrai had dropped a wineskin by my door the night before with a wink. I buckled on my Immense Blades and stepped silently into the corridor. Vesma was already up, and she gave me a subtle wave from the end of the hallway. I joined her side, and together, we crossed through the main hall, pushed wordlessly out of the front doors, and headed into the Vigorous Zone again.
I studied her as we strolled through fire-spewing cairns, graves of ancient monks, and rocky slopes of slate. She looked incredible. Her hair was tied up in a messy bun, but the freezing air of the early morning gave her heart-shaped face a gentle flush, and her eyes sparkled cheerfully as she cast her gaze around the mountain path. We took a different route and found a quiet place on a small plateau facing the valley.
Vesma sat on the edge of the cliff and gestured for me to join her. I took out the wineskin, sipped at the heady liquor, and handed it to her. She drank a good dose before giving it back to me with an appreciative sigh.
“I’ve missed you,” she said finally.
I kissed her in reply. A glowing warmth crept into Vesma’s kiss as she empowered her body with Physical Augmentation. Her tongue slipped through my teeth, brushed against mine, and the warmth from her internal heating washed over me like a hot shower. A soft growl buzzed free from my throat, and Vesma pulled away with a satisfied smile.
“I missed you too,” I said.
She sighed and laid her head on my shoulder. “Sometimes, I think back to the old days. Back when it was just you, Kegohr, and me training at Radiant Dragon. No political battles, no cultists to fight. It was all about the training and learning.”
I laid a hand on her hip and laughed. “For you, maybe.”
“You studied harder than anyone else in the classes,” Vesma reminded me. “You wanted to know everything. Tell me something, Ethan. If you had the opportunity to stay at Dying Sun and learn everything you could from the monks, would you?”
I shook my head. “No. There’s people out there that need our help. I don’t think training is useless. Far from it. But we can’t stay here forever. Sooner or later, something’s going to fuck up, and we’ll get called in to fix it.”
“You mean that you will,” Vesma said, with a playful flick of my nose.
“Us,” I insisted.
She laughed. “Please. They only let us in here because of you.”
I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, maybe I should go off on my own and try to save the world without you. I’m sure that’ll go down well.”
“Well, I’m not sure you can,” Vesma answered playfully. “We’re married, remember?”
She kissed my cheek again and hooked her leg around my foot. Her hands wrapped around my robe, and Vesma shifted her weight to throw me off the side of the cliff. I instinctively activated Flight as my gut pitched at the weightlessness of falling. I activated a burst of Untamed Torch to toss me back onto the plateau. Vesma laughed, rolled to her feet, and offered me a daring grin.
I smiled back at her. “You know, where I come from, that could be considered a murder attempt.”
“I knew you’d catch yourself. You’re too damn good not to.”
Vesma stepped lightly into the air. Streamers of fire flared around her boots, and she hovered higher until she was four or five feet above the ground. She smirked down at me and gestured for me to join her. I channeled Flight, but this time, I used the same trick I’d learned in the hall and had practiced in the quiet of my own cell. The rich Vigor of the Vigorous Zone fed my technique. I shot up, away from the ground, and caught myself before I crashed into Vesma. She stared at me in amazement.
I followed her gaze and looked down at myself. Heat haze rippled softly around my feet, and warm undercurrents of air swept up from the rocky ground to hold me in place.
“And your Vigor is almost untouched!” Choshi shouted excitedly.
“Our master has done it,” Nydarth whispered.
“The ripple has become a tidal wave,” Yono said.
“Don’t get ahead of yourselves,” I said to the dragon sprits as exhilaration took a roller-coaster ride through my nervous system.
My previous attempts at Flight before had demanded insane concentration, physical strain, and a constant switching of pathways. But using the Vigor from the environment had made me capably of full-fledged flight.
Like a goddamn superhero.
“How in all the hells are you doing that?!” Vesma demanded.
I couldn’t tear the stupid grin off my face. “Environmental Augmentation.”
“You said—”
“I figured it out. Or at least a part of it.”
Vesma stared at me as I experimented with the new technique. My wildest dreams didn’t even come close to the real thing. I still needed to focus, of course, but the mental energy was minimal. It was easier to simply stay in place or glide in a lazy arc toward the ground, but I could move through the air like it was water. I spun into a somersault, held myself upside down, and drifted closer to Vesma. The strain of keeping her own Flight technique active stood out on her face, but she wasn’t about to give up.
I kissed her mouth gently, upside down. The streamers of Flight vanished from around her boots as our lips touched, and I swooped to catch her out of the air before she could plummet to the ground. There was a little strain as I caught her in my arms, but I’d dealt with strain before.
We drifted downward in a slow spin until I landed on the ground.
Vesma pushed my chest. “Put me down, Immortal Swordslinger.”
I let her slip out of the bridal carry, and she brushed ash off her shoulder with a huff.
“And here I thought I was doing well,” she said. “Why do you always feel the need to show me up?”