Aric gradually awoke as the first soft rays of dawn began filtering through the forest canopy overhead. Looking around the campsite, he found Elara was already up and fully dressed, sitting atop a fallen tree trunk. She seemed to be gazing pensively out into the misty woods, oblivious to the sounds of Aric stirring awake behind her.
After splashing some cool water from his waterskin onto his face to banish the last stubborn cobwebs of sleep, Aric made his way over to where the elven woman sat. He cautiously lowered himself down beside her, painfully aware of the lingering awkward tension that had surrounded them since the previous day.
For several uneasy moments, the only sounds that filled the silence between the pair were that of the forest itself beginning to wake up - birds calling out cheerful morning greetings, leaves rustling as squirrels leapt from branch to branch harvesting nuts, the babbling of the nearby stream they had camped alongside.
As the sounds of waking wildlife began to surround them, Aric knew he could put it off no longer. Taking a deep, bracing breath, he began to speak, letting out everything that had been building up.
"I'm... I'm sorry for how I reacted yesterday after you confessed your desires to me," he started, staring at his hands, hoping to avoid meeting Elara's piercing emerald gaze. "The way relationships and intimacy tend to work where I'm from is just very different. A lot more...exclusive, I suppose you could say. So, the idea of openly embracing more than one partner is unfamiliar to me."
He snuck a quick glance up at her profile, but Elara, blessedly, continued looking straight ahead into the trees, her expression carefully neutral. She gave no indication she had even heard him speak, but Aric knew her senses were far too acute to miss his words.
After an uneasy pause, Aric pressed on, the words now tumbling out of him in a rush, his normal reserved demeanor cracking under the strain. "And I didn't handle you being open with me about your feelings very well at all," he admitted. "Especially after that dream I had with Amy. I know she shares senses with me, but I still felt like I was betraying your trust, and panicked when I realized that it wasn't just a dream. But I never wanted to upset you."
Pausing to try and collect himself, he took a soothing breath before finishing earnestly, "I'm willing to try and make this work, if that's what you want." Aric finished earnestly. "I don't want to lose you, Elara. You've been helping me ever since I arrived in this new realm, supporting me while I tried to get my bearings."
He finally ran out of steam, emotions warring within him - regret over his poor reaction, fear of irreparably damaging the growing bond between them, but at an even deeper level, a profound sense of confusion over how to reconcile all of this with his own deeply ingrained beliefs about fidelity and romance.
Throughout his entire rambling confession, Elara simply sat and listened quietly, giving no visible reaction until the end. But as Aric hazarded a glance down at the beautiful elven woman sitting beside him, he thought he could see the faintest hint of a smile across her lips.
"Thank you for telling me all of that," she said at last, her melodic voice gentle. "I know that must have been difficult for you to admit. Just remember, we'll figure things out together in time. For now, let's focus on the present, and we can take things one day at a time." She reached over without another word and gently grasped his hand in her own, giving it a soft, reassuring squeeze.
Leaning in slowly, Elara tilted her head up and planted a light, tender kiss on Aric's already flushed cheek. Warmth bloomed in his chest, as the knots of anxiety he had felt ever since her confession finally began unwinding. Together, they would find a way forward.
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After breaking camp and gathering their supplies, the pair set off once more down the winding forest road, the tension between them once again diminished. As they walked at an easy pace, Elara's scholarly instincts took hold, and she took the opportunity to share a new theory with Aric about the unique nature of his magical gifts.
"Based on what you've described about your difficulties consistently accessing and sustaining your power within yourself, I suspect that rather than a single core as is typical, you may have multiple energy sources that you draw from," she explained. "We refer to them as 'cores' - the wells of inner power that mages channel from."
She went on to elaborate, "Though I cannot say for certain, it's possible that the very nature of your cores themselves influences your aether. Where one is naturally predisposed to external casting, twisting the energy into that. This split reserve could be why you have issues holding the energy properly. "
Aric nodded slowly as he turned over her hypothesis in his mind. Assuming there was some underlying property to the core that contributed to your natural elemental affinity, then it was reasonable to assume that the core itself may be what determines your overall attunement.
Surely there has to be studies out there somewhere that have looked into this. Have you ever heard of anything like that, Amy? Aric thought towards his perpetual passenger. Only silence answered his thoughts.
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Brushing off the dual core theory for the moment, Aric once more began working through his manifestation exercises. Elara had said that cores functioned similarly to muscles after all. The overall density and depth to your core was largely dependent on how much you pushed yourself.
This time, rather than simply being satisfied with summoning the little black orb of energy, he experimented with mentally separating his thread of connection to it. While it had slowly gotten easier to hold in that form, Elara had warned him that unless he lost control, the energy had a tendency to go right back to his core, meaning he wasn't properly expending and rebuilding his aether stores.
Unfortunately for him, exerting his will on the now free flowing aether seemed to be an exercise in futility. Every time he would release the anchor through which he controlled the initial shaping, the power would just rapidly disperse into the environment.
Elara warned me that expending aether like this would result in some kind of drain on my body, didn't she? Aric wondered to himself, after losing control of what had to be his dozenth attempt at releasing direct control.
Having once again been keeping one eye on his attempts, Elara finally let out an exasperated sigh, "Are you sure you're wrapping your will around the shape you're creating properly? This separation should be almost second nature once you've managed to manifest your aether in the first place."
Aric simply leveled a glare at her, this not having been the first time she's tried to correct him on his form today. Oh yes, he knew that she probably could provide better guidance, but Aric was feeling a little stubborn after hearing that it should be so easy to handle.
Something Elara said caught Aric's attention though, wrapping your will around the object, huh? Well, that hasn't exactly been working so far, but what if I simply wrapped and compressed the shape with a layer of aether? Aric thought, a touch smugly, thinking he had finally caught on to the trick.
To his pleasant surprise, maintaining control became noticeably easier using this technique. Before long, the glowing orb was orbiting smoothly around him, buoyed within the center of a translucent cloud of aether that he was controlling. Grinning with success, Aric attempted propelling the orb out and away from himself, curious to test the limits of his newfound control.
He was able to direct it several yards away before the strain suddenly multiplied exponentially, forcing him to recall the orb or risk losing his delicate hold over the entire process. Emboldened by his progress, Aric decided to attempt one last experiment before they moved on.
Concentrating intensely, he compressed the aether surrounding the orb, putting pressure on the initial container that he'd formed. He watched closely as the small orb compressed within the confines of the cloud. Then, with a mighty mental effort, he simultaneously tried to force the top to violently rupture while forcing the bottom to compress.
The orb detonated with a resounding boom that made Elara jump in surprise, her sensitive elven ears ringing from the concussive force. Aric felt a shockwave wash over himself like a strong gale following the eruption. They turned to share a stunned look, both at a loss for words over his display. "What did you just do?!" Elara nearly screamed, clearly still affected by the volume of the blast.
"I finally figured out the trick to controlling created shapes without continuing to funnel aether into them," Aric replied with a victorious grin. "I simply surrounded the construct with a cloud of loosely controlled aether prior to releasing my hold on it. Then I used that same cloud to manipulate it, holding the orb together with sheer willpower, just like you said!"
Elara's eyes were wider than he'd ever seen them go, so wide that he began to worry they might pop out of her head. "Oh, yea, and then I used the cloud to compress the original construct as much as I could before finally rupturing the top. Kind of like explosive decompression I think?"
"You... You mean you did that with pure aether?" Elara finally managed to stutter out. "You weren't holding it with your mind's eye? Prove it, do it again," she demanded as she pulled a small, strange device from her bag. The device kind of resembled the old voltmeters he'd seen back home, except it was absolutely covered in arcane symbols.
With a shrug, Aric proceeded to do just that, noting that it was slightly easier this time to compress and rupture the sphere.
"Dear gods... You weren't joking." Elara whispered, "The readings on this aether monitor were off the scales when you did that."
Aric stared blankly at her, not quite understanding why she was so concerned. He had only done what she had told him to do. "No new mage should have that much aether Aric, let alone enough to do that twice. Even I wouldn't be able to do that twice in a row now. Let alone to rupture a sealed construct! How are you even still standing? Your aether stores should be completely drained."
"Well, I wasn't able to separate my aether from the construct like that... I thought you may have been trying to test me to see if I could figure out the secret." He paused for a second, taking stock of himself and trying to gauge his aether levels within his core, "I feel fine though. I think my core is mostly full still as well."
Amy's cackle echoed throughout his mind, rattling off the walls of his head, "Oh, my dear champion, you truly are a monster. Now I'm starting to understand how you fought my control." Once again, her presence seemed to recede almost instantly following her comment. She seemed to be popping up like that more and more over the last few days, much to Aric's annoyance.
"Aric... I think the test may have been underestimating your potential. By a lot" Elara finally said.
Mind once again spinning from both girls' comments, Aric began muttering, "But I can't even move it that far away; that can't be good—" he stopped, Amy's words the other day about manipulating his rifle came flooding back. He couldn't stop the grin that threatened to split his face as his mind began positively overflowing with ideas.
Seeing the look taking over his face, Elara sighed in defeat while motioning for him to get moving once again. She was painfully aware that, even if she wanted to, interrupting him when he got like this would be near impossible.
At least they would make it to the village today after so many days of traveling, perhaps, even before sunset.