Talia liked the Capacity cycling exercises much more than Zaric’s crazy ideas about Will training. The explanation for the latter felt…nebulous at best. Strengthening one’s Will seemed to require either drastic mental gymnastics or pushing a mage’s mental capacities to the brink. Both of which were unpleasant, bordering on downright impossible.

Cycling, on the other hand, was the broad term for a variety of techniques such as the one that she’d picked up from Magic for the Newly Awakened. In short, cycling was a meditative exercise where a mage repeatedly contorted their mana in various ways for tangible future benefit to their Capacity.

According to both the book and Zaric, there were any number of ways for a mage to cycle.

No matter the method, every technique had one thing in common: they all increased a mage’s tangible power in a very real sense, if incrementally.

Zaric had called the technique he’d given her a ‘hybrid restrictive growth’ cycle, which, according to him, would help her gain a better grasp on how mana moved through her body, among a host of other things. Most importantly for Talia’s case, it would also help her learn to block off mana flow to her abilities and senses. In essence, restrictive cycling would allow her to build ‘locks’ in between her core and her abilities, furthering her control over them.

The locks would act as a barrier between her Core and her abilities that she could turn off at will. The more locks she opened, the more mana a given ability—such as her telepathy— would receive, and vice versa.

Unfortunately, the exercise was painful, to put it mildly.

But at least it has a clearly delineated framework that doesn’t just boil down to ‘imagine gooder’.

For Talia to understand how it worked, Zaric had needed to explain the basics of the mana circulation system. According to him, mana filtered through a mage’s lungs and pores and then into their blood, where it travelled to the heart and was drawn into their Core. That was where the physiology of magic ended.

Apparently, despite sometimes feeling like it, a mage’s Core wasn’t a physical organ, but more of an energetic construct where mana coalesced to be distributed through channels, which were similarly non-organic.

Channels were commonly held to run atop a mage’s bones and veins, suffusing the body like an ethereal network of distributed pipes. Talia knew enough basic anatomy to be astounded at the parallel between the mana circulatory system and regular old veins and arteries.

The only real differences were that channels seemed to be two-way, allowing movement both to and from the Core, with no mechanical pumping required. Otherwise, channels were also less numerous, with five or sometimes six main channels total, that split apart at the end to abut in the eyes, nose, ears and mouth as well as toes and fingers.

The tinier channels that split off seemingly at random from the larger ones to nestle into her flesh, bones and muscle were imaginatively called sub-channels. Uninspired naming conventions were apparently the norm in magical vernacular. Luckily, Zaric had said to ignore those, as they played little to no role in active abilities, and mostly served to trickle-feed passive talents.

When Talia had asked how anyone knew about the complex system, if the Core and channels were intangible and ostensibly invisible, Zaric had tilted his head and looked at her strangely.

“Why don’t you know this?” he’d asked.

As soon as he’d asked the question, Talia had realized that she did know it already. If she focused hard enough, she could feel the mana. It sluggishly crept from her chest down her arm, splitting into five sub-channels as it reached her wrist to pulse at her fingertips. In fact, the young mage could almost feel the… ‘slot’—for lack of a better word—where her two abilities drew their mana from.

One siphoned a constant, nearly unnoticeable stream from the dual channels that rose through her neck. Her telepathy and empathy, surely, sitting like a bloated tick on two arteries. The second, her kinetic affinity, connected at regular intervals from every channel except the two that rose to her head, its ‘slot’—or more accurately slots— were only visible through the lack of mana in what felt like an empty, complex array of sub-channels scattered around her arms, legs and even her chest.

The realization had drawn a gasp from her and birthed all sorts of questions about the nature of the Gift and how she hadn’t noticed the phenomenon before.

Is it a new sense? It must be. It’s obviously some kind of intrinsic ability that all mages possess. The question is whether it’s present before awakening or not. I wonder if—

As if he knew that he was on the brink of losing her to a depthless pit of questioning and rationalization, Zaric had pulled Talia out of her thoughts to explain ‘hybrid restrictive cycling’.

Gods what a mouthful.

The premise of the cycling technique was somehow less obtuse than Will training. Talia ascribed that to the fact that there were actual steps to the process but suspected that her newly discovered intrinsic knowledge of channels played no small role.

The first part of the method was to twist small loops into her channels. Talia had thought at first that Zaric was being metaphorical.

He wasn’t.

The process quite literally required that she pull all her mana from her channels back into her Core and then Will them to loop over themselves in a half-knot.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Surprisingly, that was the easiest part. Pulling her mana back into her Core barely took the time of a single breath. Nudging her channels into the proper shape was also surprisingly easy. Much easier than the Will training exercise.

Unfortunately, it was also exquisitely, agonizingly, excruciating.

Twisting her channels felt like a torturer had pushed an incandescent wire through her palm and cauterized their way to her chest while she was still breathing. It felt like living streams of cooling magma had been poured down her nerves. Like a swarm of tunnel-boring urvai had mistaken her flesh for prime burrowing material.

Gahhh why does everything about magic have to fucking hurt!?!

The teary-eyed young woman consoled herself that, at the very least, the process was fast, unlike the next parts of the exercise. Predictably, those also involved pain.

Talia was beginning to notice a worrisome trend.

The pain of the second part of the technique was a stretched, bloated one. The goal was to push as much mana as possible into the now looped channel, without allowing it to escape into the ‘slots’ for her abilities, or out into the air. Not only did she have to empty her Core into receptacles not meant to hold that much mana, but she also had to continue absorbing mana from around her, to ‘really pack it in there’, as Zaric had termed it.

The result was what the mage-commandrum had called ‘channel throughput expansion’, a wordy term that essentially meant that they expanded ever so slightly, locking the loops in place.

I never thought I would find a group that loved jargon more than arcanists, but here I am.

A truly odd tendency, considering how much more esoteric magic was in comparison to arcanistry.

In any case, once the singular channel was bloated beyond what she felt it could reasonably handle, Talia held the engorged state for the span of ten breaths. She winced as the stretching sensation built and turned into something akin to the tearing of an overfull waterskin.

Finally, when she thought her right arm might burst from the pressure and sweat had begun to bead on her forehead, Talia gently eased the pressure, allowing the mana to jet backwards, toward the center of her chest. Taking care to ensure none escaped through her fingertips or flooded into her kinetic affinity, as Zaric had cautioned her.

It would hinder the effectiveness of the second part of the cycle if she did.

The third and last part of the cycling exercise consisted of allowing all the mana that had previously saturated the channel back into her Core.

While also continuing to draw on atmospheric mana.

In essence, Zaric expected her to overfill her Core just as she had her channel, gradually expanding how much mana it could hold.

The pain of this step was a slowly rising abrasive one. As if the influx of magical power was eroding the metaphorical walls of her Core. For an eternity of a dozen breaths, the grindstone in her chest tore at her until it finally peaked and subsided. Talia’s channels were bone dry, leaving her with a neat trio of loops at one of the six exits from her now slightly larger Core.

Talia was filled with elation, a firm sense of accomplishment lodging itself in her chest.

I can do this.

If she had the strength to whoop from joy, she would have. Instead, she turned to the rest of her task.

Another fifteen loops and five channels to go.

Marshalling her willpower, Talia took a deep inhale, centring herself.

The pain began anew.

The young woman liked to imagine that the never-ending list of curses she levied at Zaric in her mind made it more tolerable. Though in reality, if it made a difference, she couldn’t tell. All she knew was that once she had proven that it was possible, she couldn’t bring herself to stop before she was done.

Will training was one thing, but this?

This I can do.

----------------------------------------

Eventually, the agony blurred into one, unending, unfathomable stream of time. Talia repeated the different steps of the cycle in her mind, clinging to it like the life-giving pocket of air that it was. The structure of the exercise gave her the drive to push through. This wasn’t a case of metaphysical imagery, no, it was a procedure, not unlike laying the foundations for an enchantment.

All it took was hard work and determination. Which Talia could most certainly achieve.

At some point, the sounds and sensations of her body and the room around her had faded away until all that remained was mana, channels and Core.

Zaric’s voice echoed in her ears, muffled through what must have been thick stone.

“…stop there, finish the current cycle and you can pick up where you left off tomorrow.”

Talia ignored him, focusing on the sputtering end of her last cycle. Her nerves were shot. Her fingers tingled and her heart beat furiously in her chest.

The young mage breathed through the agony.

Until finally, it was done.

All six of her channels held triplets of tight knots and her Core was visibly larger than when she had first sat down.

Opening her bloodshot eyes, Talia smiled blearily at Zaric.

He matched her smile with his own concerned frown. His voice came out placatingly.

“It’s all right if you didn’t get it on the first try. To cycle is to play the long game, one step after another, each building on top of itself.”

It was Talia’s turn to frown. She smacked her dry lips, her tone creakier than a rusty hinge.

“What do you mean? Was I not supposed to do them all?”

Talia swore to never forget the expression on the mage’s face, until the day she died.

Zaric’s jaw quite literally dropped; his eyes widened to nearly all whites. His response was wordless. His infuriating puzzle box fell out of his limp hands.

“Err—”

Talia’s let out a chuckle that slipped into an exhausted, full-bellied laugh. She felt drunk. But accomplished. If her weakness was Will training, then clearly, from the look on Zaric’s face, cycling was her strength.

I can work with that.

“You’re the kind that enjoys whips and ropes, aren’t you?” Zaric choked out finally.

“Huh?”

“Pain, I’m saying you like pain.”

Talia laughed harder.

“No—I don’t like pain, actually the pain was the worst part.”

“Then why? It took me weeks to get through the hybrid restrictive. Why all the hells would you put yourself through that in—” Zaric checked the expensive timekeeper trinket on his wrist “six hours?”

Talia’s laugh came up short. The young woman scratched at her neck uncomfortably.

“I guess I just thought I had to do it all at once. If I should’ve been taking breaks, why didn’t you tell me?” she replied sheepishly.

The mage-commandrum shook his head in disbelief.

“Well, I assumed that it would take longer than it did, first of all. And second of all, I figured that you would stop after the agony of the first lock, let alone all fifteen of them.”

“Eighteen,” Talia corrected.

Zaric stopped short. Again.

“Eighteen…You’re a monster. A masochist. Is this why it worked when I threatened to smash you against the ceiling? Is that what you get off on? Gods, woman, you need to have a chat with Lazarus.”

Talia shrugged, content with her accomplishment and simply savouring the bonus point of having blown Zaric’s mind. She’d done something that not even he had accomplished in the same timeframe.

Talia allowed a burst of pride to fill her. It felt good.

“I kind of…stopped feeling it after the third channel. Pretty sure this is a teacher’s mistake, not a student one. Hey, speaking of teaching, where’s Osra anyway?” Talia asked as she noticed the girl’s disappearance.

Zaric’s mouth finally snapped shut.

I could get used to the look of shock. Might even be worth the slog of Will training.