“You don’t know where the cult is?” Zoey asked, her face folded in a frown. David was stunned too. He’d assumed they all knew. And Tara had been a large part of Galan’s operation. Yet, he couldn’t see any reason she would lie now. She betrayed Galan, which meant she didn’t have anywhere else to go. None of the other gangs in Gaora would take her after what she had done.

“Galan was a crafty old twig,” Tara murmured. “He didn’t take any of us when he convened with the other leaders. I have never seen Krak since I joined Galan.”

“But we have seen Tez,” Jeremy interjected. Even his interruption was polite and smooth.

“Tez?” Tara smiled, touching Jeremy’s face lovingly. “I forgot about him. Yes. Tez will know. Or know someone who knows where to look. He is one of the few people who knows about the undercurrents of the city. A local information peddler. He worked for Galan until he got too old to be useful.”

“Then we will go to this Tez?” Hanna asked. “What next?”

“One foot at a time, Mad Whip,” Tara said. Hanna glared at her. David winced, looking away before Hanna would pierce him with her glare too. Tara heard the name because David teased Hanna about it.

“David, you and I will go,” Tara said standing up. David nodded. He wasn’t sure how he felt about Tara after their fight. He knew she hadn’t fought him like an enemy, which meant there was much about her that he was still ignorant of. Yet, he couldn’t deny that she intrigued him. The fear was significantly less now. When she looked at him, he held her gaze. Perhaps Ignis was right when he said it was because David knew himself more now.

“ You have your third ring,” Jeremy said, nodding to David. For a moment David wondered how he could have known. Then he remembered that Galan had known somehow too. He pushed down the question, reminding himself that there was a lot he still had to know. But improving his strength was the most important thing at the moment. This world—not just Gaora—only recognized strength. Power was the real currency here.

Tara pulled Jeremy up with her, kissed him gently, and then turned to the others as they made sounds of disgust. “I will be out in thirty minutes. Be ready,” She said and then they were heading up, their shoes making soft thuds on the wooden stairs. David watched them from where he sat until vanished. Then he realized someone was staring at him.

“Really? Tara?” Hann asked. Her face was better now. There was still a hint of the black around her eyes, but colors had returned to her cheeks. Her lip was healing well. She was beautiful—hauntingly so. Like a dream monster. Alluring and deadly. Her hair had been cut short, low to the scalp. Her eyes looked bigger now, but more attentive.

“You could do better,” She added and Zoey scoffed, getting Hanna’s glare as a reward.

“What?” Do better…like you?” Zoey asked, ignoring the heat of Hanna’s gaze.

“No, druid girl. I think I can do better than your lump of a brother.” David frowned, unsure if to laugh at that or be annoyed. Zoey shrugged.

“I agree.”

They both grinned, leaving David confused for a moment. He looked down at Chloe who was severely focused on the glowing script in front of her. Zoey had told her never to test a spell where there were other people after she almost killed Claire, Hanna, and Elisha with a spell that caused a short daze of vertigo and hallucination. David had laughed about that, wishing he’d been there to see how horrified they must have been. Then he realized he would have been affected too because he wasn’t impervious to mind spells.

“You trust her?” Hanna asked abruptly, pulling David’s attention.

“Why shouldn’t you?” Claire asked. She’d been staring at David all day. Ever since the spar with Tara. She seemed suddenly curious. “She betrayed Galan for you. Lost her home, and her friends. She joined your pointless fight against a system that will ultimately crush us. Yet, you still doubt her loyalty?”

“I don’t,” David said quickly before Hanna would respond. “I trust her. But I think there are things she is hiding. And I think that’s the same for us. We should focus on what is important, Hanna.”

Hanna mulled over that for a moment and nodded.

“That thing you did,” Clair said, sparing a glance at Elisha as he lowered his voice to whisper something to Chloe from across the table. “Just before the end of your spar with Tara. I saw a spark, like Tara’s. Did you copy her skill?”

David shook her head. “Not exactly,” He said, trying to find the right word for what happened. He was still not sure how the gauntlet’s unification of chaos helped him use Lightning Fist, but it felt less like a copy and more like he’d created a skill from Tara’s. The movement of essence had been so familiar, and not in the way it felt when he used Ignis’ martial skill. Which meant it was original, his creation. Yet, she was right, there had been a spark of lightning before the explosion on impact. What was that?

“I am not sure yet either,” David said. “But I think my gauntlet allows me to resonate with any ability with an affinity for chaos.”

“That is interesting,” Hanna said. “So you collect this to create a similar attack?”

David nodded. He put his left hand up as if expecting something to drop on it. Then he closed his eyes and imagined the gauntlet wrapping his hand, sliding effortlessly into his finger. The black of it was like a lightless night; and all-encompassing darkness that could overwhelm even a star or a host of constellations. And from it, the silver knuckles sprouted like vines, wrapping around his fingers. David squeezed his hand into a fist and then opened them to show the bright blue tongue of flame that danced atop his palm. Its base was black as the gauntlet, and the rest of it was smooth, beautiful blue. Like a newly blossomed flower.

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“I think it allows me to modify spells with chaotic properties on a different level. I'm still being ta…” he stopped, realizing he wasn’t sure he should tell anyone about chaos and the others yet. “I am still learning more and more about what I can do with it. Come, put a finger close to the flame. Imbue it with essence so it is protected.”

Claire seemed to contemplate the invitation for a moment and then she leaned over to him. David couldn’t see the essence, but he could feel it. She was miles ahead of the rest of them at the table in essence control. Her manipulation of essence was subtle. Persuasive instead of control. Chaos had taught David about it. There was no science to essence, but there was a system to it. How to become a vessel for it, not its master.

She stretched her fingers close to the flame and then hissed, pulling away from it as if her hand had been torn off. She cursed, holding her finger up, pressing the knuckle as if to hold the pain at the tip alone. Zoey snickered and Hanna laughed. David sighed, letting the gauntlet go.

His breathing was labored, but nothing close to the fatigue that wrecked him after his fight with Tara. His body shut down for a while after the duel. He tried to calm his breath; closing his eyes, he tried to imagine every breath was him floating in a cloud. The harder he breathed, the harder it was for him to stay afloat.

When he opened his eyes, he felt better. All of them were watching him. David grinned, his beard making him look more like his father than he wanted. The pants and loose shirts made him look taller. But he’d always been tall.

“I want to show you something,” David said to all of them. “You can confirm this Claire, because I think you already know what I am about to do.” He took a deep breath and sighed. He made a small prayer, hoping that this time he wouldn’t lose himself just like he did in the forest. He’d tried it again after the fight, but this time was different, he had to be careful.

“Watch me,” he said, and then as Chaos taught him, he opened himself up. It was easy now. He wasn’t completely sure what triggered most of his skills and abilities, but he understood everything about gathering and manipulating essence and structuring it. That last part was something he was still struggling with.

Essence flowed into him from every source in view and those outside. The table they sat around darkened, snapping as it dried up. Clair shifted from it. David perceived the musk of undersoil and sweet fruit. He eased on the pull when he fed the tautness of something pulling against him. A smile tugged at the edge of his lips, his hands felt heavy, and his head hurt terribly, as if something was scratching the inside of his eyes. Someone coughed.

“David,” a voice said, low and faint, a whisper. It was delicious in a way he had never experienced taste before. It felt like the thrill of knowing something profound. His heart raced, and slowly as if being dramatically reduced, the voices ebbed.

Then the thunder of footsteps assaulted his ears. Unnatural vibrations that rattled him greatly. He realized with a spark of pain, that he had lost control again. He almost let the bubble of essence go like the last time, but frantically he grappled with it, establishing control again. His eyes were wide with awe when he saw how much essence he had gathered, the amethyst sheen that told him how dense the essence was.

He let it go slowly, in tiny portions. And as he did, he tried not to look at what he’d done to the others. They looked dried up, curved into themselves in fear or stretching to him across the table. They were all unconscious. Only Chloe beside him was alright and that was because a small barrier of translucent green light was shrouding her and Jeremy. He stared at David with worried eyes. For the first time since David met him, there was a clear emotion on his face. Fear. Chloe too. David sighed, feeling vitality return to him too as it spread back to the others and the other places he’d siphoned from.

“You could have killed them,” Tara said. Her eyes were shiny with tears as she pulled Clair up from the ground where she’d stumbled back on her chair. David looked away from the disappointment he could see on her face. “You should have known how dangerous that was.”

“I did,” David said, hating how defensive he sounded. In that instant, everything felt wrong. He stood up, almost keeled over but Jeremy caught him. The barrier was gone now and the last of the essence David pulled to himself was dispersing. David winced, shrugged Jeremy’s hands off, and whispered a thank you. The blonde man nodded and walked stiffly to where Tara held Claire. He picked the girl off Tara’s hand, stared at her face as if he was looking at Tara, and then turned away, taking the stairs slowly and soon he was gone.

The others stirred too, life returning to their faces. David waited for the anger he knew would come. But when Hanna leaped for him, he flinched. She punched his jaw, hissed as pain cramped her fingers and then she started to laugh. It was her laughter that woke Elisha. Zoey shook her head, murmuring something about how careless David had always been.

“You could have killed us, you moron,” Hanna said, still laughing. “But that was cool!”

“Too dangerous,” Zoey said. “Unless you can control it. If not, you should probably forget about it.”

“You almost killed yourself too,” Tara said, sliding into the chair beside Elisha. “When we rushed down, you were as dry as a dying tree. A few moments more and you all would have been dead. I would prefer you forget completely about that spell or skill. What is it for?”

“Gathering of essence is the first step, but imagine what I can do with that? If I can absorb it, that would boost my essence capability.”

“No,” Tara responded. “Essence can’t be stored, it can only be influenced.”

“Yes,” David said with a measured tone. “I don’t want to store it, Tara,” David said as he pulled up the sleeve of his shirt to show them his tower rings. That morning, the third tower ring had been only a faded dot. Now, it was a dash length. The second ring was a lot more defined and the first ring now had a few more dark shapes around it. Eight, David counted.

“At first we thought it was fighting and struggling that increased our essence capacity or tower rings, that is not the only way. Our direct encounter with essence helps too. Like a vessel expanding to accommodate the load.” He saw understanding light up in Zoey’s eyes first and then Tara nodded, seeing his point.

“Still, you need to learn how to control it,” Elisha said, hands wrapped around himself. His shadow was gone now, but David expected it to rise and wrap around him like the cloak of levitation.

“And what you just explained sounds like a shortcut,” Tara said, more to herself than the others. “Shortcuts will get you killed.”

David frowned, thinking about a fitting response, and then sighed. She wasn’t wrong, but she wasn’t thinking more about it. He flexed his fingers, finding that the cramps were gone. His body was slowly returning to how he was. His heart had stopped racing and his vision was clear again. He stopped up, stretched, and yawned. He was suddenly hungry, but that could wait.

“Shall we?” He asked Tara without looking at her. A tiny twinge of guilt had wrapped around his gut. She had been so scared, horrified that she’d lost Claire. David made a note to apologize to Claire later. He wasn’t sure what skill type Claire used yet, but it was strong. And he wasn’t sure how she would take what happened. Tara was still angry. She stood up and looked up the stairs where Jeremy stood watching them. He gave her a subtle now and Tara sighed.

“I didn’t mean to hurt her,” David said, ashamed now as Jeremy’s stare weighed down on him. He thought he had learned to control it. But perhaps he was still too weak; too easily pulled under, into the intoxication of all that power. He would have to practice more, and perhaps he’d have to do that alone.