Tif awoke to the crash of waves and the hum of ris on her skin, and she smiled up at the bamboo ceiling. When that wasn’t enough to fully satisfy how exceptionally good she felt, she shouted with glee and kicked her legs in excitement, the thin sheet she had used during the night flying off the side of the bed.

Stretching her left arm upward, she stared at the curving lines of blue that flowed around each other before one end inevitably turned, looping into a tight spiral. Fully rested, the ris shown, glistening like the water she could hear outside. A quick twist of her hand, and Pep stared down at her.

“Bet you never thought you’d be decorated in Tears, did you?” she asked.

Pep just looked placidly back until Tif cupped her hand to make the face frown.

“I know, I wanted Gold, too, but we couldn’t just say no to a free seal, could we? Besides, I still have room for three more, which is enough to be a knight. And when it’s time to be an arcknight, we can decide if we want to keep Death or Tears.” It would almost certainly be Death they got rid of, but the idea of losing the one she actually knew how to use didn’t sit right with her just yet, and it’s not like she needed to decide now.

Sitting up, Tif threw her legs out of the bed, her bare feet landing on the rounded wood of the floor. She had a slight headache, throbbing at the front of her skull, but what made her wince was the bamboo table, one side of it broken, hanging like a dislocated limb. Last night, after trying unsuccessfully to win Teerog back over, with absolutely no help from Plumya, Tif had partaken in perhaps a few too many additional drinks. The result was that she hadn’t realized she’d tapped into her Tears seal until she reached a nearby hostel the barkeep had recommended, and shortly after entering her room, had tripped and grabbed hold of the nearby table. Instead of helping her balance, the table shot away from her touch, crashing into the wall while she collapsed onto the floor, face first. Once she had regained her balance, Tif had tried to fix it, but in her foggy state that hadn’t amounted to much, so she went to the bed where she had been much more successful.

Looking at the poor table now in the light of day, beams cutting into the room from the slatted window, it was clear the bamboo was splintered beyond repair and the broken side was just barely hanging on. There was nothing she could do but tell the pruneish man who ran the hostel about the damage and offer to pay. He had taken her Lercel flats the other night and surely would again.

“Want to let me know how you did it?” Tif asked Pep.

She certainly hadn’t meant to do anything with the Tears yet, not when she finally had a trainer to direct her correctly from the start. However, now that she had unleashed its power once, Tif found the idea of waiting much harder. She stared at the curving blue ris, wondering how to make it start. Some seals activated so easily, like the first of Blood just requiring touch, while others were more complex, like the motion needed to create a Death Mark. From what she knew of Tears, the first seal let you store power. She had seen Udaru use the ability to great effect, both in Opa’s challenge against him, and against the spidra whose ris Tif had taken--a bare touch of Udaru’s fingernail hitting harder than any punch.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Maybe it was like the third seal of Blood ris, where pushing heat into an object let you stick to it. Of course, that only worked because heat was associated with Blood, but that wasn’t the case with Tears. So, Tif focused on the humming sensation of her left arm. She didn’t want to push the power of the ris anywhere, at least not yet, she just wanted it to increase in strength, so she tried imagining it humming more. To her delight it worked, the sensation growing ever so slightly.

Tif clapped her hands together. “Well, that wasn’t too bad.”

Next, she had to figure out what to release the charged power on, and with only a few options in the small room, her eyes soon found the forlorn table again. They were probably going to have to replace it anyway, so she doubted breaking it more would cost her any extra money.

She got up onto her feet, swaying only slightly due to her headache and missing her second seal of Blood not at all--nope, not even a little--and put her hand on the good side of the table, where the top was still upright. She was about to unleash the charge that was building, when she realized that one of the sitting stools was directly below where the section of table might fall, so she quickly scooted it out of the way with her foot. Breaking two pieces of furniture would just make her seem like a bad renter, not to mention the added cost to her purse.

That done, Tif laid her palm flat on the table, and imagined the humming in her arm passing straight into the wood.

Nothing happened.

Tif stepped back, shaking her hand out. This wasn’t the first time something like this had happened to her and, in this case, thankfully, she didn’t have stands full of people watching her whiff an attempted use of ris.

“Was it because I grabbed it?” Tif said, gripping the edge of the table in her fingers. Still, nothing happened.

The problem she was facing reminded her not so much of the challenges in Lercel, but when she hadn’t known how to cut off a Death Mark. The key for that ended up being letting it go in her mind, so she tried that tack and, right away, could tell it wasn’t the same. The Death Mark created a secondary sensation in her head, which she could either hold onto to extend the connection or push away to get rid of, but with the Tears seal there wasn’t anything extra to be found.

Even though she knew it wouldn’t work, Tif tried to tell the humming to move on, to leave her body, first in her mind and then aloud.

The truth was she was starting to get a touch worried. Her arm was visibly shaking now, causing the table to rattle, and if she didn’t get rid of the pent up power soon, it could reach a point that it could be dangerous to people near her, especially if she couldn’t control when it released.

Letting the table go, Tif took two steps, putting her in front of the door to the tiny room, which--to be safe--she gripped with her numb, Death ris hand, swinging it open. No one was on the narrow walkway outside with its low railing, and she couldn’t tell about the ones below until she took the spiral stairs at the far end of the walkway down. Even if they had been, she doubted they’d be ris users, and thus unable to help.

No, her hopes were pinned on Udaru, who had told her the day before to meet him at the base of the Chon’s tower. So, Tif shot down the walkway, planning to run nonstop until she reached the leaning monolith she could see from here. Even though it wasn’t midday yet, with luck he would already be there and she wouldn’t bump into anyone along the way.

And if the Aspects were very, very kind, they would never let her new trainer find out about any of this.

***