Elwin awoke the next morning, trying to banish the memory of his disastrous performance the day before. At least today, they were attending Professor Thales’s class. The one thing that Elwin still had faith in was the Art of his Maht.

“The secret to the Art of Water – Mashurmastra – is Rhythm,” announced Professor Thales. “By now you should have familiarized yourself with the methods in which you can control the other three Arts. Dance for Fire, Melody for Earth, and Song for Air. For Water, it is Rhythm. Do you know from where Mashurmastra derives the Forms of today?”

Elwin shot up his hand.

“Yes, Mr. Elwin.”

“It is the Rhythm of the Moon,” he confidently declared.

A twinkle of surprise flashed across the professor’s eyes.

“Bravo! Seldom do the Fradihta know its name upon their tongue,” praised the Master of the Waters. “From where have you heard its name?”

“From a book in the library,” Elwin answered silently. At least he could demonstrate to others that what he could not excel with his body, he could make up for it in knowledge.

“Commendable curiosity,” smiled Professor Thales. “The Rhythm of the Moon, as Mr. Elwin had just recalled, belongs to what we call the Epitomic Forms. It was created by FOUNDER MANASURA thousands of years ago, but unlike the Song of the Heavens in the Ayumastra, the Rhythm of the Moon has been lost to time.”

“Would’ve it been more powerful than the Forms of the other Arts?” Lucian interjected, eager to learn something that could put the Master of Fire in her place.

“Not necessarily more or less powerful, Mr. Lucian. But it would have enabled the FOUNDER and his subjects control over a domain of reality which the other Arts could not grasp. Indeed, only the Dance of the Sun had existed when FOUNDER MANASURA brought the Rhythm of the Moon into existence, for neither Gurunmastra nor Ayumastra had been founded during his time.”

Elwin pricked up his ears. How much did Professor Thales know of the Epitomic Forms? Neither Professor Helen nor William mentioned it during their classes.

“And the Rhythm of the Moon granted us mastery over water?” questioned Lucian.

“Yes. Over water – and everything that moved with its fluidity and grace,” elucidated Professor Thales, pulling upon the surface of the lake like a graceful puppeteer, coaxing a pool’s worth of liquid out and onto that temple-hall beneath the marbled hill. The rushing mass of water encircled him like a wall and refracted the visage of his robes and white hair in shimmering spectacle to the Fradihta, before snaking like a python of great girth into the depression in the basalt floor. It was the arena where Maximus first demonstrated his power.

Memories of Maximus’s incredible performance seemed to surface from the water in Elwin’s reflection, and he found himself reminded of the motivation to become as strong as his upperclassman. He did not know whether he could master fire or earth, but surely, he could master water and beyond, and reforge the Rhythm of the Moon. If only he didn’t make a fool of himself in Professor Irina’s class the day before, he could have also felt confident in Ayumastra!

“What really is Water?” Professor Thales enunciated, pulling two sinuous streams of liquid out of the pool, circling it around himself in the shape of a sideways eight.

“It makes up more than two-thirds of our bodies, is present in every living organism, and above all, makes life possible. That which we call air and gas is too rarefied and spaced apart, that which we call solid is too dense and static, and that which we call plasma is too hot and hostile. None has just the right proportion of attributes to enable Atomionic reactions and carry nutrients as well as water. Water is able to flow like air, at the same time dense and graspable – but unlike earth which is fixed in figure, water can change shape to fit wherever it is placed. And as a medium that can carry anything within, it can also be heated or cooled to allow Atomions to combine or food to cook, just as fire does. Hence, water – liquid – shares the best traits of all the Elements while possessing very few of their drawbacks. Not too shabby, hmm?”

Katherine nodded, her lips pursed.

“Unlike solids of earth, which are often made up of mind-numbingly numerous types of unique atoms, the liquids that we encounter in everyday life are largely composed of just one thing: water. Therefore, as long as you are familiar with the tunes and behaviors of water molecules, you have no need to discern other tunes or craft melodies to control objects as you need in Gurunmastra.”

Elwin broke into a relieved smile. With the Art of his Maht, he had no need to subject himself to that arduous and torturous task of listening to the tune of each Atomion and crafting a melody like he was some sort of composer! He wouldn’t even need to dance to pull or push his energies as he needed to do with fire! His shoulders relaxed a little.

“But sir,” interrupted Katherine, “don’t many liquids have things other than water in them? What about things such as muddy water, or say, soup? How do we manipulate those?”

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“An incisive question. I am glad one of you was enterprising enough to throw it. We shall get to that now,” nodded Professor Thales. “As I’ve mentioned before, water is dense and graspable like a solid, yet flexible and mobile. There is a reason behind this, and this reason allows us a method of control where we can ignore the other materials present.”

“Imagine a carpet,” he began, clearing his throat.

“On the carpet are hundreds of balls. Imagine those balls are fixed to each other with glue. If we hit one ball, all the balls move along with it. This is the case with a solid,” he continued.

“In a liquid, those balls are constantly moving and shoving one another. When you hit a ball, the rest of the balls don’t move with it, because the ball would just slide over them. So how in the world can we get all of them to move the way we want? Do it one-by-one?”

Katherine shrugged as the professor gave his answer.

“No. Instead of grabbing the balls one-by-one, we will simply tug the carpet instead. But just once won’t be enough. We will tug it multiple times. By changing how fast and how frequently we pull the carpet, we can make the balls as a whole move in whichever way we want. This is what we mean by the principle of ‘Rhythm.’”

“Ooh,” mused Katherine. Professor Thales did have a certain elegance to his explanations.

“For those of you who would like a more detailed explanation,” continued Professor Thales, spying a hint of disappointment on Lucian’s face at having his comprehension insulted, “in liquid, atoms are closely packed together like those in a solid, but are free to roll and jostle over one another. They are not fixed in any pattern. Professor William would have taught you to manipulate solid earth and metal by pounding and resonating a melody within them. But if you try that with a liquid, the melody will quickly get scrambled with the chaotic movements of atoms. The melodies cannot reach all of them, nor can they tell the atoms to move in a particular direction. So instead,” he paused, waiting for the explanation to take hold, “we have to use something called ‘Rhythm’ – a repeating, recurring beat that rolls throughout the liquid and pulls and pushes the atoms in a general direction. By subjecting the liquid to these rhythmic waves, we can ‘arrest’ or ‘wring’ the liquid, so to speak. Thus, as long as something is primarily liquid, you can control it with rhythm, even if there are molecules other than water with which you are not familiar.”

Elwin smacked his head at last in understanding.

“But sir,” asked Lucian, “when we refer to the Art of Water – well, Mashurmastra – we often include things such as ice or vapor. But those aren’t technically liquids. How do you explain our control over them?”

“Ever cognizant you are, Mr. Lucian,” praised Professor Thales. “It is true that ice and vapor are classified as solid and gas, respectively, and that rhythm works best with liquid. Can you recall the last time you used ice?”

“Back a week ago,” replied Lucian.

“Why don’t you use it more frequently?”

“Because –” he halted briefly, then realized why.

“It’s more inconvenient to you than handling liquid, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“And from here we can find our answer. Because liquid shares some of its characteristics with both solid and gas – in that it’s dense and graspable, but able to flow and take any shape – the rhythm used to control it can also affect its solid and gaseous forms, albeit to only a partial degree. By showing that ice and vapor can indeed be manipulated, FOUNDER MANASURA heralded, or at least hinted, that proper ways of manipulating solids and gases in their own right could be discovered in the future. This is why Water – Mashur – came to be associated with great insight.”

“Starting today, all of you will learn how to create and sustain a basic rhythm upon the water of this pool. For this purpose, you will practice the Rhythm of the Dewdrops. It is the easiest and foremost form in the Mashurmastra.”

“Finally!” said Lucian, smacking his hands.

“Spread yourselves out on the perimeters of this arena,” instructed the Master of the Waters. “And speak, ‘MAIOR FORTIOR’!”

“MAIOR FORTIOR!” They shouted in unison, filling that cool but damp temple chamber with a flare of lights from their Quans. Elwin felt ready to take on the task.

“For those whose Maht isn’t Mashur,” Professor Thales said, “the first foray into Mashurmastra may feel unintuitive. But focus your mind upon the pool of water below you, and coax it up, up, and up. It does not matter if what you lift is small or big on the first day.”

Isaac, Katherine, and Mirai drew up the water below them in sizable rivulets, each trying to cohere them into something bigger than the size of a melon, making Elwin gasp in incredulity – their Maht wasn’t Water, but they could already pull this much on their first try?

And just as that thought invaded him, the water that his friends tried to meld broke and plummeted to the surface of the pool.

They tried again to no avail. Professor Thales noticed their plight, and declared for his Artens to hear.

“Take heart! Only a small droplet the size of a dew will remain as a sphere mid-air thanks to surface tension. Anything bigger will simply break apart if stationary!”

“How do we get them to stay together?” shouted Katherine, trying to have her voice heard over the cacophony of splashes.

“You will need to give them a rhythm of constant motion. That is the sole way to cohere them together.”

A rhythm of constant motion, huh? Elwin felt for the water below him without much thought nor conscious effort; with great confidence, he hoisted a sizable stream from the turbulent surface, stretching like a long comet to circle it around himself, completing one cycle per second. His kismets paused in recognition.

Was this what it felt like to control one’s Maht? He didn’t need to hold a rhythm in his conscious mind, because what he was doing felt as natural as he breathed. Did Katherine go through the motions of the Dance of the Sparks with the same instinct that Elwin felt with water? Did Mirai craft a melody from those pebbles with that same grace of ease? Did Isaac think the same with air?

“Not bad, Mr. Elwin!” praised Professor Thales. “I see that these exercises are comfortable to you, given your Maht is Mashur. However, I ask that you try to envision the rhythm in your consciousness – you will require conscious control as you climb the ladder of more complicated forms, such as the Rhythm of the Tides, or the Rhythm of the Torrents.”

“Yes, sir.”

It was an hour until Professor Thales called them to halt.

Elwin was somewhat surprised – and envious – that his friends learned to grasp a rhythm to the water and manipulate it almost adeptly as he did in that short time, although his own grace remained more or less equivalent.

“Now that you have dipped your toes,” declared Professor Thales, “I would like to show that rhythm can also be used to form water into shapes. For this, I need a volunteer whose Maht is Mashur.”

Elwin and Lucian’s hands shot to the sky. Lucian creaked his head to look upon Elwin with murderous intent, but Elwin looked forward, teeth gritted. Professor Thales seemed to take a moment to appraise the two.

Then he spoke.