It was late into the afternoon, and Avakian had been scratching away at a notebook with a mesmerising level of passion for hours. The something that seemed to inhabit his body was frustratingly elusive, sometimes chiming in with advice and sometimes giving him nothing but silence.

He was, of course, designing the glyphs that would be etched onto his very body. So far he had used Èskrimmer's Six to form a 'pseudo-core' that would act as capacitor to power his other runes, as well as dozens of thin grooves for channelling the Void throughout his body.

His idea was that he would slowly syphon the atmospheric Void present in his body into the core, then use it as a power source instead of his vital reserves.

Currently he was sitting down nervously while Ellian and Samuel reviewed his current draft.

"Better, good use of Èskrimmer's First for the core; it's generally better to have a greater number of smaller runes than fewer bigger runes, it makes it more stable." Samuel complimented, passing the notebook to Ellian.

"Hmmmm."

"What is it?" Asked Avakian, crossing and uncrossing his legs.

"Hmmmmmmmmmm."

"Seriously? What?" He asked again, getting stressed out.

"This one will work, not efficiently, and not for long, but it will work." Ellian remarked. "It would help if we had access to better storage runes, but in the 74th the best we have are still kinda shit."

"It'll work?" Avakian asked in disbelief. "I can move on to designing the rest?"

"Yep. Here's the rune you asked for." She handed him a stack of notes with a hand-drawn glyph.

Despite Ellian's apparent rudeness and acerbic personality, Avakian could tell the amount of effort she had put into the notes. The glyph was drawn with her characteristic looping, lilting style, and had handwritten comments labelling each of its different attributes.

"A bold choice - electricity." She stated wryly. "It's temperamental, difficult to tame. I hope you know what you're doing."

If Avakian didn't know better he would've almost assumed she was worried.

---

He returned back to the dojo with his notebook under his arm, class had ended, but he fully intended to work on the plan for his etchings deep into the night.

An intention he was thoroughly disabused of when he saw Chiros striding towards him, a practice sword in each of his hands.

"Oh no."

"Oh yes."

Their unfortunate sparring session went marginally better than the last, Avakian taking Chiros' advice to heart. He didn't do any risky manoeuvres and instead almost exclusively defended, occasionally jabbing or slashing at tendons when he thought he could get away with it.

Surprisingly Chiros was more satisfied with this spar than the last.

"Good. I haven't shown you any of the forms, but you're still starting to grasp the general philosophy of our style." Chiros commented.

Avakian still had glyphs bouncing around in his head as they walked back to the kitchenette, and asked Chiros a question he had been wondering about for a while.

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"Chiros, do you know what makes Kamatie so strong? What glyphs does she have etched?"

Chiros paused slightly in thought.

"I'm not quite sure. Kamatie's a bit of a caveman; like me she isn't really an expert on glyphs. Instead our etchings are engraved into our DNA or cells, and as we absorb more Void they deepen and multiply, giving us better and stronger abilities. Kamatie's been around for thousands of years, far longer than people have lived in this city, plenty of time for her etchings to grow to a ridiculous degree."

"Do you know the extent of her abilities?" He ventured, intrigued.

"Nope. When we spar she sometimes uses some kind of kinetic ability, so if I had to guess she has some kind of power over momentum or inertia, but I'm unsure. You should probably just ask her."

"She wouldn't get annoyed? I imagine that would be a bit of a sensitive question." He questioned.

"Hah." Chiros barked out a laugh. "Kamatie isn't exactly quick to anger, you could set her on fire and she would just look at you funny."

He then proceeded to do an extremely poor interpretation of Kamatie's reaction to being set on fire. Avakian was still laughing half an hour later as they were eating their meal.

---

Avakian woke at sunrise.

"Why do I think of it as sunrise?" He asked himself, confused. "There's no sun in the sky. Come to think of it, where does the light in the sky even come from?"

He shrugged. "Oh well."

This morning's class was 'Combined Firearms Safety', a module he wasn't exactly enthused about. His aim was appalling with the bow and he didn't expect to be much different with a gun.

According to Chiros, firearms weren't nearly as popular as they were millenia ago. The existence of the Void meant that far more dangerous weapons could be produced with glyphs. Nowadays the only place firearms saw significant use was in the Higher and Outer Folds, where the Void was much sparser.

Avakian arrived at the gun range to find a familiar face; the fiery-haired man in his 'Wilderness survival' class, Josef. The young man was leaning against a wall near the entrance, hands in the pockets of a rather stylish green jacket.

"Avakian." Josef voiced quietly. "I meant to visit. I asked Junice where you lived but she didn't know either."

"Ah, that's fine." He assured. "I had Chiros and Ellian for company."

They both stared at one another in silence, neither quite sure how to continue their conversation.

"So, uhh. About that insect huh." Josef started. "I was pretty heroic beating it."

Silence.

"Excuse me." Avakian spluttered in fake outrage. "You beating it? I did all the work; you were just holding onto my coattails as I propelled myself towards greatness."

"You helped. I got the final hit."

"I'm pretty sure the fire got the final hit."

"And who started the fire?" Josef grinned smugly. "Checkmate."

"Aghhh..." Avakian made fake dying noises as they walked through the entrance to the gun range.

The lesson went about as well as Avakian had expected it to, for some reason his steady hands and good reflexes simply didn't carry over to his aim. Josef, on the other hand, was a different story.

The wiry young man could hit the bullseye nearly every time with a cornucopia of weapons. Avakian saw him using stubby pistols and long rifles, noisy repeaters and even a crossbow.

"Holy hell!" He exclaimed, watching Josef nail another target in the centre. "How did you even get so good?"

Josef started to blow the smoke off his gun, but then promptly realised how terrible of an idea that was and put it down.

"I suppose I'm just extremely talented. And humble. And good-looking." Josef quipped.

"Well I know at least two of those are a lie." Avakian dry-witted.

He shrugged as the two walked out of the range.

---

Back at the dojo Avakian was lying on his bedroom floor, still working on his glyphs. His current plan was rather basic, but if used properly would provide him with a robust form of self-defence.

One half of his etchings would be purely based in his upper body, and would be dedicated to generating and manipulating an electric charge. Unfortunately he was still a long way from being able to fire lightning bolts; the electric charge would have to be delivered through his sword or in hand-to-hand combat.

The other half would be present throughout his entire body, and would be focused on enhancing his kineticism. By selectively activating kinetic runes he would be able to run faster, swing his sword with more force, or even walk on air for short periods of time.

He was partially inspired by Ellian's psychokinesis, except his etching plan was far simpler as it only focused on his own movements.

Avakian slept restlessly, mind rife with runes and electrical theory.