“It feels like forever since we were last here,” Josh mused as he stretched, looking around at the craters marring the earth and countless trees strewn about, broken haphazardly.

“Well, this time it’ll be under better circumstances,” Aiden said with a half-smile as he appraised the three who’d joined him.

Josh was the simplest of the three. A physical fighter, through and through, with heavy durability and destructive strength. The further through the transformation of his Avatar manifestation ability, however, the more he traded defense for attack power.

His greatest weaknesses just so happened to be the three he’d come to train with. James had a level of speed that Josh couldn’t come close to keeping up with and the destructive capacity to punch through any and all defense Josh could muster.

And that was before the flecks of white lightning, a result of James’s tutelage under Arkayan, had come under his control.

Anna didn’t have the necessary strength to take down Josh in the same way James did, but the amount of nature golems and plant fury she could bring to bear to control him and whittle him down left no doubt in Aiden’s mind which of them needed the most help.

His own abilities still remained unknown to him, but even before he’d Ascended and merged his Disciplines into Blizzard Mastery, Josh had only ever come close to competing once he mastered the fourth transformation of Asura’s Avatar.

Now?

No chance.

He wracked his brain as he looked at the three of them, but he must’ve taken long enough to gain their attention after their review of their training environment ended.

“What happened here?” Anna muttered, looking between Josh and Aiden.

“Training,” Aiden said with a grin. “I’ll be surprised if anything is left once we’re done.”

The ruined copse was deep past the boundary of Zion’s territory and far into the monstrous zones. Aiden could hear the reconstitution of the alpha hydra from here, a sickly slurping of mass coming back together to fuse and meld into the shape of the creature. The air smelled sickly sweet, but he’d passed the realm of worrying about the monsters inhabiting Midrath after sitting upon the throne and gaining the Authority.

As for others interrupting, none from Zion would dare venture this far out. The locals, namely V’Yenya and Nin’Yala, had better things to do than come looking into what mess they were making.

And Aiden hadn’t seen a hint of Avacyn since they’d first reached the mountain that Zion now occupied. As much as he’d grown, he hoped to never see the mind-assaulting madwoman ever again.

The place was perfect.

“So what first?” Anna asked.

To answer her, Josh grinned and shouted, “Asura’s Avatar, fourth form!”

His transformation was smoother than Aiden had seen yet. Josh’s rage condensed around him, suffusing the air with the intensity of his never-ending rage and pain. Bartholomew shifted, and metallic gauntlets fit his hands perfectly. His two sets of illusory arms became three sets shortly after, then his Fighting Spirit activated.

A haze of rage red erupted from him as his will became reality, a weapon to wield. His pathways glowed violently as they traced his pathways, enhancing his eyes, heart, and lungs. Then his size increased and a fourth pair of arms appeared.

Without delay, the arms condense from four pairs to two, then condensed even greater. Then again. His fists now packed a real punch.

“You haven’t been lazy with your training,” Aiden said, already preparing the most solid platform of ice he could create underneath himself. As he rose, he looked down at Josh and crossed his arms. “Now let’s see if the fifth stage is still beyond you.”

As he watched Josh, he paid attention to the black and white arcs tracing in excited sparks around James. James’s nostrils flared as the anticipation of their long awaited fight became realized, excitement clear in the way his grin showed his teeth.

Emerald magic coalesced around Anna, forming a budding seed she withdrew into. She remained there, unmoving, even as Josh and James exploded into action.

“I won’t need the fifth form if you don’t take us seriously!” Josh’s voice vibrated the air dangerously, buzzing with a rage Aiden never understood but could sympathize with. “You want to test us, but now we want to know if you’re truly worthy of testing us!”

He leaped upward, the ground leaving familiar craters beneath him. James didn’t bother moving from his spot and simply pointed a single finger at Aiden. The sky cracked, and a black streak intertwined with that of a white as it split the distance at speed almost imperceivable to Aiden.

Aiden let loose for the first time. The full force of the blizzard stored within him, mixed with his Paths, stole control of the sky and caused the temperature in the air to drop to freezing near-instantly.

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The lightning strikes were smothered by the density of the blizzard’s might, and snow began to fall. All under the domain of the blizzard, everything Aiden could see, and then some… He could sense it all.

Each snowflake had the potential to become a lethal weapon. Those inhaled by James and Josh could now be used from within. Whether to sap them of energy, erupt into ice lances or frosty destruction, or remain inert until he called on them, they were at his mercy.

And didn’t even know.

“Idiots!” Anna called as an aura of emerald encapsulating both James and Josh. She glared at them as her deep breaths huffed clouds of chilled air. “Protect yourselves or this is going to be over before we even try to put up a fight. If I hadn’t stopped him, you’d both be icicles right now!”

“What are you talking about?” Josh’s voice continued to reverberated, amusing Aiden with its tinge of confusion. “He didn’t even do anything yet.”

She facepalmed and groaned. “Seriously, how have either of you made it this far without basic magic detection?” All she did was point up at the sky. “Duh.”

“Yeah, it canceled out my ability and made everything cold. What of it?” James asked, barely glancing her way as he watched Aiden lord over them, energy coalescing in his hands as he prepared for an attack.

“How about more fighting and less yapping!” Josh leaped up out of the safety of Anna’s aura and immediately flopped forward, all energy sapped from his body and the hint of frostbite already coloring the tips of his fingers.

“I told you to protect yourselves!” Anna looked like she was about ready to beat Josh herself as she closed her eyes and pulled from deep in herself to shove the aura out even father, just barely reaching Josh’s prone form. “He’s a specialized ice mage! The snow! If you breathe it in, he can kill you!”

As Josh struggled to rise to his feet, James repositioned himself closer to Anna. “So… what do we even do if we can’t step out of your aura?”

“Think for yourself. Aren’t you the one who ran off to train with a monster when I tried to talk to you?” Biting resentment bled into each word. “Don’t expect me to help you more than I already am.”

After a long pause, James switched his unbreakable gaze from Aiden to Anna. “You don’t think he’d actually kill us, do you? He wouldn’t… right?”

Grinning, Aiden pulled on the power of the raging blizzard and wrenched. An angry storm of ice lances sped toward where they stood. “Don’t be so sure of that.”

The ball of white lightning James had been working on condensing shot upward and erupted in a brilliant domed net over their heads, suffocating Aiden’s influence over the area instantly. Impressive, he had to admit.

“That won’t buy us much time,” James said, helping Josh finally get to his feet. “We have to work together, or this is going to go very poorly for us.” He turned to Anna and sighed. “I’m sorry for being an ass before, but we need to work together now.”

“Whatever.”

Exasperated but resigned, knowing that was the best he’d get from her, James started being the leader Aiden always knew he was capable of. “I have the ability to reach him from here, and Anna can keep us protected from the influence of the blizzard. He’ll realize we’re relying on her, if he hasn’t already, so big guy,” James patted Josh’s back, “we’re relying on you to keep her safe.”

“That’s not really my specialty,” Josh grunted.

“Just punch anything that comes this way. That’s your specialty, right? Easy enough to understand?” From the way James’s jaw clenched, he was feeling the pressure of the training.

Aiden decided it was time to increase the intensity a degree and began a constant deluge of ice lances that wore down James’s temporary lightning barrier. Each lance exploded in a flurry, creating a cocoon of snow around the barrier that hung just out of range, whipping in the wind and waiting to fall on top of the trip the moment the barrier disappeared.

The attempt fared about as well as Aiden expected it to.

Barrier broke, and Josh’s concussive blows blasted the snowfall away. Anna’s barrier kept any of the ambient snow from falling as James continued to blast at Aiden with the utmost ability he could muster as Josh continued punching the falling ice lances into nothingness, not even leaving so much as icy mist.

What they were doing was admirable, however, he couldn’t let it continue. If they were to fight and prove themselves capable of standing on their own, their team effort wouldn’t be enough. All of them needed to stand against him and survive. If they could last a minute on their own without him being able to kill them, he’d find them qualified.

One thing this did show them, Aiden was a class of his own. Not that they all needed reminders, in theory, but many of them hadn’t seen his previous peak before he’d ascended, before he’d merged his Disciplines into Blizzard Mastery.

Arkayan had told Aiden he’d experience some reduction in his power, but if that was true, he’d never used what he was fully capable of before. Knowing that, he let them struggle together for an hour until he pushed his abilities further, grinning as Anna’s barrier around Josh and James dulled until dissipating entirely, pushed back to little more than a bubble around her.

Between the three of them, they were capable of achieving aura, as Anna already had, and a domain, such as the blizzard. The raw potential existed within each of them, and without being pushed to the stages where they would achieve those powers, Aiden wasn’t confident there was sufficient challenge anywhere else, that they would never further develop, handicapped by the limitations of the system’s Essence and gamification.

Even if he’d done everything within his capacity utilizing Midrath’s Authority to remove its restrictive influence, it still remained in the minds of those who had used the crutches before. The sequential, minor progressions gave linear, clear direction, when the powers they’d been introduced to held so much greater potential and rewarded creative use and opportunism.

He would push each one to that point, even if they resented him in the aftermath of what he’d put them through.

As Aiden breathed the chilled air deep and collected it within, he felt his lips numb. When he released the breath from the height of his great pillar, safe and sound as James struggled to find a way to deal with the passive domination of Aiden’s blizzard, a dense cone of razor sharp chilled winds blasted toward the trio.

“Watch out!” Anna’s reaction continued to impress Aiden and caused him to furrow his brows in frustration when two domes of twisted earth and vine shielded James and Josh. Her own aura rebuffed the attack. “I can’t keep doing this,” she said, her breathing heavy as she swayed, a moment of tiredness passing as fast as it came. “Get yourselves together!”

“We’re trying!” Josh roared back, the air around him buzzing louder as his temper grew.

“Try harder!”

“Can both of you shut up and do something useful?” James growled.