I once again found myself up before the sun, standing outside of my door and staring up at the slowly brightening sky. There was something so peaceful about this time between the sun’s climb and the night’s retreat. Like the whole world was put on pause for this beautiful moment where night and day mixed. Where beginning and end bled together and time seemed to lose all meaning.

Of course the moment passed, as all moments do, and the sun's rays soon split through the sky, signaling its triumph over night once more. I walked along the cliff to the clearing, feeling much better than when the nightmares had woken me up earlier.

The clearing looked as nice as always, the morning sun glinting off the water and sparkling in the spray of the waterfall. I could hear the soothing chimes of the crystal berry bushes I had grown yesterday as I walked towards them through the damp grass. One of them was full of the berries I had grown yesterday while the others looked like they had started to bud on their own.

I ate my fill of berries, savoring the refreshing taste of each one as they burst in my mouth, before I walked down to the river for a drink and a quick dip. The water was as cool as always as I took my first steps into the river and dug my toes into the soft sandy bottom.

When I looked down at the surface I was met with a reflection that was notably different from the one I saw just days ago. I was still pale and thin, though my skin may have gained a hint of color and I was no longer as skeletal looking. What had really changed was the addition of silvery scars along mainly my chest and left arm.

The claw marks across my chest and stomach and the bite mark on my shoulder were the most blatant. There were also tiny silver cuts scattered along my left arm from the shattered bones and the beast’s teeth. Looking past my reflection in the water’s surface I could see the ring of ragged silver around my right ankle where my foot had been torn off.

It would be simple to smooth them away with a touch of flesh sorcery, but I didn’t plan to do that. Originally I just didn’t care about them, I mean why should I care about some silver marks on my skin? But, as I saw them now, I thought they would be a good reminder of why I needed to become strong. Strong enough that I can explore where I want without fear. Strong enough that I won't be scared of some dumb beast stalking me in the dark.

With that settled and my motivation running high I quickly finished bathing and strode back to the clearing. It was time to practice my air sorcery.

First I thought over how I had used air sorcery previously. The first time was to slow my fall when I jumped from the cliff ledge, and while it worked well enough that I survived I did still break both of my legs. Part of that was due to running out of mana, but the reason I ran out was because I couldn’t slow myself down enough without pumping all my mana into it.

I also used air sorcery to fight against the beast by blasting it with bursts of air. This worked well enough to keep me alive, but it only worked to shift its leaps to the side and wasn’t strong enough to knock it around or do damage. The beast even managed to lash out and hit me after I had knocked it to the side, so the blast hadn’t even been strong enough to shift its leaps that far. I would have to see how I could change the blasts to make them more effective.

I had also used it to switch out the bad air in my room yesterday, but I don’t know what else I could do with that. Though maybe I could try to figure out how the air got bad in the first place.

Anyways, with my basis set I could move on to working on improvements. I did not have any convenient ways of climbing up the cliff just so I could jump off it and practice my slowfall technique as I’d decided to call it. It was a very accurate name because I was slowing down my fall. I should start naming things more, since I’m so good at it!

I had already come up with the crystal berry bushes, which was another perfect name. What else was there? I could name my earth sorcery techniques! I could go simple and just call my defensive techniques stone wall and dirt wall, since that's what they were. But what should I call my attack? Stone launcher? Oh, or maybe rock throw because it was like I was throwing a rock at them.

I realized that I might have gotten a little distracted from my practice so I put the names on hold and got back to it. Instead of climbing the cliff, I made a large stone ramp that I could walk up and jump off of to work on improving my slowfall technique. My first attempts consisted of grabbing the air below me and pushing up on my body with it to slow me down. And while this worked somewhat I thought that I could do better, no I knew I could do better.

I continued to slowly improve my technique’s ability to slow down my fall while I also tried to reduce the amount of mana I was using to do it. At one point I even tried to condense the air I was using, just like I did for the stone and dirt when I made the walls. This worked well at first, but at one point I condensed the air too much and not only did it take a lot of mana but it also completely stopped my fall.

I was so surprised by this that I lost my hold on the air and fell flat on my face. Quickly popping back up on my feet I ran around and up the ramp. This time I tried to condense the air underneath my foot as I took a step off the top. And it worked! I could stand on the air!

It wasn’t easy to concentrate on keeping the air solid, and it got even harder when I tried to split my attention to take another step. Not to mention the amount of mana it took to sustain the effect for any length of time. But it was so cool! I didn’t care how long it took to make it usable, air stepping was going onto my practice list.

By the time I got my air step technique to a usable level the sun had already reached its peak. But I could now walk a couple consecutive steps in the air and could even use it to step up higher into the air like I was climbing stairs. They still cost too much mana for my liking but I was sure that would improve with time.

All the practice with my air sorcery had the added benefit of allowing me to practice my mana gathering. Every time my mana started to get low I would jog and sometimes even run around the clearing while I gathered mana to improve my multitasking ability. I was making major improvements and might be able to keep it up with minimal focus soon. It would still take a lot of practice to keep gathering while I focused on other magic, but I might be able to attempt it with some of the easier magics.

The main problem with that is mana control since I need to be simultaneously bringing mana into my core while also pulling mana out and shaping it for my magic. But I was getting ahead of myself and would deal with that when I got there.

After a short break to get a drink from the river it was time for me to move on to blasting some air. Against the beast I had used the method of gathering the air around me and focusing it in one direction before releasing it to redirect my opponent’s movement and knock it away. For my practice I tried a couple of different methods including that one.

Some of them were more successful than others but I made sure to give each a shot. I could do a general burst that would catch a large area or I could focus it into a smaller jet of air that carried more power in a smaller area.

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I found that when I conjured the air from an outstretched palm I could get the most power into a jet. While I was practicing this, I shot it at the ground in front of me to see how much damage it could do and was completely unprepared to be flung back through the air. When my lungs could finally accept air again after I had landed hard on my back, I didn’t understand what had happened.

After some testing I found that when I conjured air directly from my skin and sent it jetting out I would be subject to the same force as whatever I hit and that even included the air. I wasn’t sure why it happened but I almost threw out the method before I thought of another use for it.

I stood in the middle of the clearing and stared down at my feet as I nervously clenched my toes in the grass. I tried to take some deep breaths to calm myself down. I couldn’t tell if I was more nervous or excited and my pulse was pounding in my ears. This was probably going to go terribly but I had to try it.

I took one last deep breath and sent a blast of air out from my foot which immediately sent me flying up and to the side before I spun out of control and into the ground.

“Could have gone worse,” I groaned as I rolled onto my back and wiped the dirt from my face.

After washing the pain away with a wave of healing I chuckled. This might actually work. A few more similarly disastrous attempts convinced me I needed to take it one step at a time instead of jumping to the end. So after a quick trip to the river so I could wash off the bothersome dirt and dust that covered me head to toe, I was ready to try again.

Using as little power as I could I found that it was very hard to send blasts out from both feet at once, and that one of the reasons I always shot to the side was because I had not expected and was not balanced for propulsion from one foot. Once prepared, and after a couple messy attempts, I could launch myself forward like I was making a big jump and even land on my feet.

A lot more practicing brought some improvement in control and I could manage to somewhat reliably boost my jumps with the jets of air. I had far more ideas for what I could do with it, including flying, but I could tell this was something that would take a lot of practice to get the hang of. It involved a level of coordination between my physical and magical abilities that I had not yet come across with any of my other techniques.

As much as I wanted to continue to practice until I could fly I knew it wasn’t likely to happen anytime soon and I had other things I wanted to try before it got dark. So with some reluctance I decided to move on.

I had actually originally gotten distracted while practicing blasting things so back to blasting it was. I tried to see how small I could get my blasts and found that it was hard to get it any smaller than about fist sized, which turned out to pack quite a punch. If I lengthened the width of the blast I could make it thinner so it could both pack a punch and hit a wider area.

I also attempted condensing the air at the front of the blast and was met with some surprising results! When used on the small blast it was like I had thrown a rock. It punched into the ground and blew the grass away, leaving a small crater in the dirt and me covered in dust. The thin line blast was even more surprising as it left a deep gash in the ground like some huge beast had drawn its claw through it.

Some more practice led me to believe they might actually make for some fearsome attacks. I hadn’t expected my air sorcery to be this flexible and had thought I would need to rely on earth for most of my damage, but I was glad to be proven wrong. It made me hopeful for what else I could come up with for each of my sorceries. I hadn’t been very creative with my use of mana or flesh yet so I’d have to think on how else I could use them. I didn’t even know where to start with soul but I probably shouldn’t ignore it for too long.

With that settled I only had that bad air idea to explore, but some concentrated searching turned up nothing. I didn’t know if there was nothing to find or if I just couldn’t sense it, but there wasn’t much else I could do about it at the moment.

It was while I was washing off in the river again that I thought of another possible application for my air sorcery. Holding my breath and dunking my head under the water I grabbed at the air above and pulled a line of it down and to my lips. With a tube of air going above the water I could now breathe!

I attempted some other techniques, mainly trying to conjure air, and found that if I tried to conjure it in my mouth the pressure would force my lips open and most would escape. It was too difficult for me to both conjure and banish air in such small amounts at the same time so the best I could do was conjure it in front of my lips.

With this, I explored the bottom of the river as I swam back towards the waterfall. The light grey sand was much more prominent in the river as there were fewer rocks than the pool. There were also less plants and fish around, though there were still plenty enough to catch my curiosity.

I lost track of time as I explored the beautiful water world around me. The rays of light pierced through the water in visible beams and the sounds were all muted and distant to my ears. The fish seemed wary of me and kept their distance at first, but eventually closed the gap until they swam by like I wasn’t there at all. I even found a gorgeous rock that seemed white at first but shimmered with colors as I turned it in the light. It was about the size of my palm and ovalish in shape. I decided I was going to keep it.

When I stuck my head out of the water I realized that the sun was already well on its way down and the forest was starting to grow dark. So I swam to shore and shook myself off before I thought better of it and used magic to swirl the air around me until I was dry. That done, I started my march for home, rock in hand.

It wasn’t until I got back and placed my stone on the table that I realized I was supposed to get something to sleep on other than the stone floor. It had already been two nights and I was not going to go another like this.

Stomping back outside I looked around and thought about what I could use to sleep on. I wasn’t seeing much and eventually thought of when I had slept in the tree hollow. While it hadn’t been the most comfortable for many reasons, the wood had at least felt better than stone.

Thinking so, I marched up to the nearest tree and placed my palm upon it. Growing a chunk of wood out of the side of it took a lot more mana than I had expected which did not make the process any easier. When my mana pool was close to empty I severed the chunk from the tree and smoothed the trunk back to normal.

I gathered mana while I strained to pick up the surprisingly heavy chunk of wood and trudged back inside. Heaving it onto the ground, I caught my breath while I continued to fill up my mana pool.

Once it was full I started shaping the chunk of wood into what was basically a short table. It was long enough for me to lay down on but only came up to about knee height. I dragged it to the corner where I slept and plopped down on it. While it definitely wasn’t the most comfortable, it was an upgrade from the stone and for that I was thankful.

I was exhausted and just wanted to sleep but I had one last idea to test out. Focusing on my flesh sorcery I tried to nudge my brain into a deep relaxing sleep that would hopefully help with the nightmares.

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Startling awake, I nearly fell off my new bed before I managed to calm myself down from the nightmare. I was initially a bit disappointed since it seemed like my idea hadn’t worked out before I realized how refreshed I felt in spite of waking up from a nightmare. It seemed like my sorcery had done a good job after all, even if it couldn’t prevent the nightmares completely.

Peeking outside showed me that it was still dark out, though light was beginning to bleed into the dark sky. So not only did my magic help reduce the number of nightmares, but it also improved the quality of my sleep since I felt great even though I had still woken up before the sun.

I was smiling so wide on the way to the river that my cheeks started to hurt, but I just couldn’t help it. I hadn’t known how much those nightmares had been affecting me until now because I felt amazing. It was like the world was just a little bit more colorful and vibrant today, and the crystal berries tasted that much better than usual.

After a quick dip in the water I felt like I could take on the world. So I thought maybe I should. I had gotten a lot of practice with my magic over the last two days so I should be ready to continue my exploration of the forest.

Though, I was still a little wary of the other side of the river and the beast that may still be lurking over there. So this side of the river it was!