The offer to use the specialist wagon for mage training had been rescinded by Lazarus after Talia had blown apart two of the tables and upended a shelf full of glasswork. Zaric had barely managed to hold back a peal of cackling laughter, folding over himself in barely restrained mirth.

The elven healer had not been amused.

Thus, the two mages sat in the dusty confines of one of the unused bunkhouses, whose windows Zaric had stoneshaped shut. The granite furnishings were less prone to damage in the face of Talia’s kinetic powers, which stubbornly refused her desire to lessen their potency.

“It’s all about the imagery. Magic doesn’t have a shape it naturally takes, all of that is in your mind. Focus on diminishing the power behind it, on molding the wave into something different,” Zaric explained.

Talia gritted her teeth, biting back a scathing retort. Fizzles of residual manaburn sparked down her nerves like sparks. The young mage was currently chafing her arse on the hard stone floor, legs crossed before her and arms pinned to her sides, exactly as Zaric had asked.

And all he can tell me is to sit properly and to ‘imagine gooder’. How is that supposed to make sense?

“I understand that—but how exactly am I supposed to do it? Arcanistry is all about instructions. A certain set of runes creates a certain effect and nothing more. If I want different effects, I have to incorporate a different rune array into the enchantment. So, what are the runes for magic?”

The robed man shook his head from where he lounged nonchalantly against a nearby wall, fiddling with a dwarven puzzle box.

“No idea. If magic worked that way, it would be much easier to teach. But it doesn’t. There are no formulae, no magic words, no gestures. Think of it like a drawing. Your power is the pencil, the world is the page, and you, well you’re the hand.”

Talia stared blankly at the seemingly inattentive mage.

“Huh?” she eloquently stated.

Zaric groaned, getting up and walking over to her before plopping himself down between Talia and the object of the current exercise: a poor, solitary pebble that she was to lift gently into the air.

Lift.

Not blast into smithereens or propel at top speed into the opposing wall. The siblings of the mage’s unwitting victim lay cast about the room, often in bits and pieces.

“Say you were drawing me. How would you start?” Zaric asked.

“Probably with that pike you call a nose. Liable to poke someone’s eye out if you’re not careful,” Talia snarked.

Zaric rolled his eyes, but a smirk quirked at the edges of his lips.

“A line. You’d start with a line. And how would you draw a line on paper?”

“Well…I would drag my pencil across the page, I guess,” Talia responded, unsure where the metaphor was going.

“Right. Your brain would tell your hand to move, and the pencil would move with it, drawing what you intend. Now say instead of drawing what you intend it to, the pencil is an artefact that reproduces exactly what is in your head at the time, and all your hand needs to do is give the artefact a push for it to do so.”

“That’s not how artefacts work.”

The mage-commandrum waved his hand dismissively, exasperation on his face.

“Don’t be thick. Just suppose I created a revolutionary new artefact that did just that. And then I gave it to you asked you to draw my face. Do you think that the artefact would produce my face, or something else?”

“Er—I’m going to assume this is a trap question and go with ‘something else’,” Talia responded.

Zaric chuckled and rolled his eyes again.

“You’re no fun. But you’re right. The pencil would only ever draw what was in your mind at the time. And the mind tends to wander or fall into set patterns. All it would take is for your thoughts to wander over to say— what you had for breakfast, and suddenly, my chiseled chin turns into a bowl of delicious gruel.”

Talia jabbed her chin on a closed fist, thinking the scenario over. The first seeds of understanding bloomed behind her eyes.

“Basically, what you’re saying is that my mind is so fixated on the ‘gruel’ that it can’t imagine ‘your face’?” she asked.

“Exactly!”

“Alright…well first off, you’re shit at metaphors. Second, how do I actually get my mind off of the ‘gruel’. Knowing the problem is well and good, but how does it work?”

Zaric stood, palming his puzzle box and heading back to slouch against the wall.

“Meditation, of a sort, to begin with. Clear your mind of extraneous thoughts to focus it entirely on your kinetic ability. Once you’ve managed to change your internal image of the power, then comes practice, shaping it in different ways until it becomes second nature.”

He raised a hand a waved a finger like a conductor’s wand, and all across floor, the stone swirled into intricate patterns. Tiles rose up like a painting come to life, portraying an intricate dance between warriors and beasts. Talia watched as a short, armored and cloaked figure leapt up onto what suspiciously resembled a garbog, stabbing a sword into the wyrm’s back twice, before raising it above her head in triumph.

Then, as soundlessly as it had been born, the moving fresco smoothed itself out, returning to dull, unmoving stone. Zaric hadn’t even looked up from his puzzle box.

“Eventually, you’ll be able to shape it however you want, without even thinking about it. That’s when you can truly consider combat applications.”

The stone between them dipped and melted away until suddenly, a pit filled with sharp spikes had sprung up seemingly out of nowhere. Quick as it had appeared, it snapped shut, pillars of stone sprouting up from where it had been to gently push against the ceiling. Again, the veteran mage hadn’t even moved.

Gods. Wouldn’t want to be caught on one of those. Squishh—

Despite the morbid thought, a kind of giddy awe suffused the young woman. Here lay power beyond what prestige and old mysteries could provide. The power to reshape the world to her will. All Talia had to do was reached out and grab it.

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As long as she remembered that it came at a price. Manaburn flickered across her limbs. Talia winced.

“Meditating would be easier if I wasn’t also dealing with manaburn,” she complained.

Zaric was quick to respond, eyes riveted on his puzzle box.

“Let it serve as a lesson to always keep an eye on your Core then. Besides, you won’t have the luxury of always being in top shape when you have to cast. Not to mention, the only reason we can put off telepathy training is because your Core can’t even hold on to the mana adequately right now.”

Talia thought back to just a few hours ago, when she had almost certainly been leeching off of the emotions of the gathered delvers and considered how true that was. Luckily, as long as she kept a strangle hold on her already empty Core, the sense would struggle to feed itself. And if Zaric was to be believed, the lack of mana would help her regulate the potency of her kinetic affinity.

Supposedly. At least he doesn’t seem to take pleasure in my suffering like Darkclaw does.

The young woman repressed a shudder as the beastkin’s feral grin flashed through her thoughts. The bruises on her limbs had only just begun to heal, and the swelling lump on the side of her head had just begun to subside.

Taking a deep breath, Talia swept the uncomfortable sensations from her mind, ignoring the little voice in her head that whispered that she had better things she could be doing. Just because it wasn’t easy, didn’t mean she wouldn’t manage it.

I won’t let magic be another instance where I give up because the going got rough.

Focusing her intent on her power, Talia allowed a tiny trickly of mana free from her Core and into the channels than ran through her chest and out into her palms, and the pads of her fingers. In her mind, she kept up the image of a gentle cupping motion, smoothly lifting the pebble off the ground to hover at head height.

Gone the force to shatter skulls and splatter bodies into—

CRACK

The pebble popped into a puff of dust against the wall, showering Zaric with stony residue that he wicked off of himself with a wave of his hand. It compressed and coalesced above his palm until a new pebble floated over to sit in front of her, ready for her to try again.

“We’ll run out of pebbles at this pace, but hey, at least it was directional that time. No indiscriminate wave of deadly force. At this rate, maybe we’ll be able to practice in wagon seven—by the time we get to Karzurkul.”

Talia’s mild elation was immediately squashed by the mockery in Zaric’s tone. She groaned in frustration.

Patience. You can do this Tals. It’s no different than abstract runework or—ugh, who am I kidding, I have no idea what I’m doing.

“Wouldn’t it be easier to start with something larger? More weight might—” she began.

“And sit here playing dodge the deadly debris? Or, gods forbid, block the barreling boulder? I like my head the way it is, thank you very much, wonderfully bald and uncrushed.”

Talia glared at the alliterating, bald, nonchalant, unhelpful…

Bastard.

“Fine, then maybe—”

Zaric groaned in exasperation.

“No, Vestal-Angrim. There is no shortcut, no quick tip or trick to it. It’s about Will—capital W—Will. Either you control your power or allow it to control you. Whatever you imagine your kinetics to be, that’s what they are. If you can’t help but picture your Gift as a liability to yourself and those around you, then that’s what it’ll be. A liability.”

Talia gaped, frustration mixing with indignation at the implication that this was somehow her fault.

“I’m trying damnit, it’s not my fault that the stupid magic won’t listen to me.”

Zaric’s slim eyebrows arched onto his forehead, and he looked up from his puzzle box, setting the toy aside with a decisive click.

“And yet, didn’t you say yourself that when you faced the wyrm, it obeyed you implicitly? What was it you said… that it ‘all just clicked’?”

Talia stuttered, an angry flush rising into her cheeks.

“That’s different—it was life or death and I— I don’t know, ok? Like I said, it just clicked. I did what I had to. This isn’t the same!” she protested.

Zaric paused, appearing to actually consider what she’d said. He snapped his fingers as an idea seemed to come to him. Talia wasn’t sure she liked what she saw in the mage’s eyes.

“You know what? You’re right, this is different.”

Talia sighed gratefully, thankful that she’d somehow gotten through to the infuriatingly mercurial man.

“Finally,” she said, “Thank you. If we could just try something else, then I’m sure…”

She stopped dead as an evil smile creeped its way onto the mage’s dark lips.

“Definitely. If it’s life or death you need, then why don’t we try a different method. I was hoping to avoid my old master’s techniques, but it seems no matter how bright some people are, there’re always a few that need to learn the hard way,” he explained darkly.

Bands of unyielding stone rippled their way out of the floor. Like living wyrmlings, they snaked their way around her to clamp themselves onto Talia’s ankles and wrists. Talia’s heart fluttered a panicked tattoo against her ribs.

“Zaric…this isn’t what I meant,” she said, as if speaking to an upset child. She struggled to remain calm and smooth out her breathing.

The mage-commandrum’s smile only grew.

“Up or down?” he asked.

Ishmael’s wicked cunt he’s finally cracked.

“What do you mean, up or—ahh!”

Just like Zaric’s prior demonstration, the ground rose up in a pillar about a metre in diameter. The only difference this time was that instead of crushing harmless air, once it reached the ceiling, Talia would be caught between the two unyielding forces. Even as the realization struck her, the ground beneath her shift upwards slowly, one milimetre at a time.

“Down down down, not up! Down!” she sputtered.

“Lift the damn pebble, Talia, then you can get down,” the sadist crowed.

“How do you expect me to—”

“Stop overthinking it and lift the fucking pebble!”

The pillar inched ever so slighty closer to the ceiling. Talia frantically struggled against the bands of stone holding her down, but it was no use. The earthen shackles were more secure than a dwarven vault.

“How do you expect me to imagine anything when you’re threatening to crush me against the fucking ceiling!?”

“I don’t caa-are” he sang, “just doo— itttt”

“You’re crazy!!”

Zaric laughed and picked up his puzzle box.

“That’s the least of your worries, I think.”

The ground inched upwards.

“Zaric? Let me down. Let me down right now, or I’ll scream.”

The mage was nonplussed, twisting his puzzle box this way and that, not even looking up at her. It seemed she was on her own.

Ok, Tals, you got this. Just lift the pebble. Couldn’t be simpler. You’ve got a brighter future ahead of you than being human mushroom paste.

Evening out her gasps into deep breaths, Talia closed her eyes and focused her entire being on the pebble in front of her, slowly accompanying her on her inexorable journey towards death by ceiling.

Instead of imagining a cup, she pictured parallel planes on either side of the rock, with just enough inward force to pick it up. Hopefully that would avoid sending it ricocheting into the wall.

As she let out a tiny burst of mana from her Core, hope filled her, and then pride. She’d done it.

The stone rose shakily about three centimetres. And then—

Pop

It shattered into a cloud of dust. The opposing planes of force had been too strong for the tiny rock to withstand. A replacement pebble had already taken its place at her feet.

There was no time to indulge in the groan of rage that her frustration demanded of her. Instead, she took a different tack. This time, she enveloped the stone on all sides, with each plane of force putting out equal force. The planes on the top would hold it in place, while the one on the bottom would be slightly stronger, allowing it to rise and hover.

That attempt shot straight towards the ceiling—the very close ceiling— and remained stuck there until she cut off the flow of mana to the ability.

Shit. shit shit shit—Wait

An epiphany struck with the force of…hopefully not a pillar grinding her against the stone roof.

If she could cut off the mana she gave the ability, then why couldn’t she just—reduce it until the pebble floated, as opposed to jetting upwards like it had previously?

Reforming the same imagery, this time, Talia kept the amount of mana she put into it at a bare minimum. Less than a drip, less than a trickle. She pushed a tiny, miniscule mote of the power of creation into her affinity.

Manaburn tingled painfully in her fingers, but she shoved the pain into the back of her head. Stone brushed the crown of her head as she approached the ceiling. She ignored it all. Focusing on the construct

Gently, ever so gently, Talia increased the mana she allowed the construct to burn. It rose, wobbling slightly. A centimetre, then two, then a dozen, painstakingly slow, until eventually, it floated right at eye level.

“Yes!” she cried, “I did it! Hah, take that!”

Zaric was about to reply when the door to the bunkhouse creaked open, revealing Osra, whose expression morphed at comical speeds, going from curiosity to confusion before settling on concern.

“Is this a bad time…?” the apprentice mage ventured cautiously.

The pebble dropped, crumbling against the floor far below Talia.

Zaric and the arcanist crossed eyes and simultaneously burst into laughter.

Osra’s confused face only made them laugh harder.