An uncomfortable silence still reigned over the breakfast table well after the argument between Evander and Mattias had concluded. Amara had filled up on the French toast so quickly and so eagerly before the argument began that she no longer had any more room for food, and with the awkward silence she now seriously regretted her inability to pace herself. Instead of eating, she used a fork to push bits of food around on her plate, anxiously waiting for someone else to speak.

Mattias was the one who eventually broke the silence, making an unobtrusive clearing of his throat to gain everyone’s attention. He smoothly placed his utensils down, then moved his chair back to stand up.

“Well! I hope you enjoyed breakfast. I’d invite you both to take all the time you need, but it hardly needs to be said that you have none to spare. I believe that Sun has taken the liberty of setting up a training regimen for Evander?”

Sunjata nodded to Evander. “We’ll head outside once you’re ready.”

“Outside?” Evander asked with mild confusion.

“Where practicing your abilities can’t do any damage to my home,” answered Mattias. “Amara and I will descend to the vault, which I’ve already set up for training.”

Evander frowned at him, but said nothing. Amara quickly organized her utensils on either side of her plate, putting them back in the same order she’d found them in, then rose to her feet.

“After you,” she told Mattias.

Mattias responded with a firm nod, and set off at a brisk pace towards the guest wing. She followed after him, sparing a single backwards glance at Evander and Sunjata before they disappeared from sight. They looked to be heading in the opposite direction, towards the hallway which led outside.

Her attention returned to Mattias, and she studied his back in silence, thinking.

He’s far too serious of a person to just randomly pick a fight with someone who is basically a child in comparison to him, she decided. Something else was going on there.

“Did you know,” Mattias suddenly began, “that we were once able to trace the evolution of our species before recorded history by studying the minute changes occurring in the fossilized teeth of our ancestors?”

A scowl crossed Amara’s face. “...No. And I don’t see what that has to do with anything.”

“We were discussing the human experience as it was before the cataclysm.”

“...You were doing that. Right before you picked a pointless fight with Evander.”

“He was the one who picked it.”

“No he didn’t, and you should know better. What kind of Seraphim lowers himself to argue with a twenty year old?”

“Evander is about to experience a very nasty shock,” Mattias snapped. “One that is going to shake his entire world apart. The person he’s going to become depends a great deal on how he reacts to that shock in the coming months.”

“Okay. That doesn’t explain why you got angry.”

“I don’t have to like him in order to help him.”

Amara opened her mouth to respond, then abruptly closed it. That answer actually felt satisfactory.

They reached the stairwell, and Amara followed Mattias down the spiral stairs.

“You’re not what I expected at all,” she eventually said.

“Oh? And what did you expect?”

“...I thought you’d be scary? Or just…evil? I don’t know. Instead you’re just strange.”

Mattias didn't respond, and in the silence Amara’s mind began to wander.

He’s slippery, she thought. It’s hard to get a read on him.

“How the Destined are granted their powers is usually related to aspects of their biology,” Mattias finally said. “Usually. I’ve observed that it’s by no means an exact science, but over the years most of the powers I’ve seen the Destined have are merely heightened aspects of things that come naturally to us.”

“Sunjata mentioned that the Nephilim are similar to us.”

“Did he, really? That’s interesting. They can be, I suppose, but the Seraphim are able to exercise a certain amount of…control. Over what powers their children will have. Sunjata is able to create portals because his father wanted him to have that capability.”

“Ndomadyiri. Do you know him?”

“In a certain sense. He and I were friends once, long before we became enemies.” He paused. “Fire has been humanity’s tool for a very long time. It’s an integral part of our success story, despite how fraught with difficulty that story’s been.”

“That must be why I’m able to control it.”

“Pardon?”

“I didn’t have any special affinity for fire before the stuff at the temple,” she said. “I guess it was related to what you were saying. Biology.”

Mattias scoffed. “...Personality also plays a part in how the Destined acquire their powers. And for a rare few, personality sometimes plays an outsized role.”

Amara frowned at his back. “You’re saying I’m fiery, or something?”

“Not exactly,” he said, chuckling.

Her frown deepened. What he meant wasn’t clear, but she quickly decided not to press him on it any further, sensing that she wouldn’t like the answer.

The stairs finally deposited them onto a small landing similar to the one which led into Mattias’s room. He approached the door at the far end of the landing and immediately stepped through it. The room beyond was cavernously large but almost empty, except for what looked to be a single ornate wooden dresser sitting alone in the middle of the room. A wooden door was positioned on the wall far off to the right, and a large, metallic looking set of double doors sat on the wall directly opposite the stairwell. Lit lanterns lined the walls, just like the rest of Raven’s Roost, but no carpet was present in the room. Only a grid of well-polished milk-white floor tiles.

“This is the first room of my vault,” Mattias said. “Sunjata and I cleared it out for your training. That door over there on our right is Sunjata’s room.”

“What about those metal doors across the way?”

“That leads deeper into the vault,” he said, pausing for just a moment before adding: “You won’t be seeing the rest of it.”

He approached the dresser, opening its double doors wide the moment he came within reach. It was empty inside, except for a single metal censer with a long stick of unlit incense protruding from its mouth. The censer looked suspiciously similar to the one Amara had seen on his desk the previous night.

With one fluid motion, Mattias extracted something small and shiny from his robes and held it aloft towards the incense. He pressed his thumb against the object, and a tiny flame suddenly sparked to life from it. Amara could feel the moment it discovered the incense, instantly accepting it as fuel.

She let out a scoff. “Why do you like incense so much?”

“You can feel the flame on it, yes? Demonstrate for me. Make this flame consume all of it.”

She suppressed some irritation at being ignored before lifting her hand towards it. The flames rushed downwards into the censer, burning up all the incense until it was nothing more than a small pile of smoking ashes resting at the bottom.

“Do you have to raise your hand in order to use your power?” Mattias asked.

“Um…no, actually. I don’t think so. I just did it unconsciously.”

“Then don’t do it anymore. It will warn your enemies what you intend to do, and if you do it enough you’ll associate using your power with the physical act of lifting your arm.”

He approached the censer once again, impatiently waving smoke away from it. Once again his hand slipped into his robes, and out came a long stick of incense, exactly similar to the one she’d just burned.

“Why does that even matter?” Amara asked, watching as he once again ignited the stick and placed it inside the censer. “The fire moves almost as fast as I can think about it. Hardly anything has a chance to react to it in the first place. The speed even takes me by surprise, sometimes.”

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Mattias took a step back and shut the dresser’s double doors. There was a coldness in his expression when he turned back around to face her.

“By raising your hand, you are mentally tying your physical form to something that is by its very nature, intangible. The Pattern gives you power, but it is not dependent on your body. It is independent, external, everywhere, no matter how it may feel when you use it. No physical form can contain it.” He paused, adding: “You’re going to unlearn just as many things as you learn, here—consider that your only warning.”

He took a few steps away. “Now. Use the fire in the censer to burn down the dresser.”

Amara looked between Mattias and the dresser, then scoffed. “I can’t control the fire if I can’t see it.”

“Really? Could you see the fire as you sent it down into the censer to burn all of the incense?”

Surprise washed over Amara, and she eventually shook her head. “...No. I guess I couldn’t.”

“And yet you still held control over it. The only difference now is that there is one more physical obstacle standing between you and it.”

Frowning, she turned her attention fully to the dresser. Her eyes roamed it up and down, but she felt nothing no matter where she looked. Instinctively, she raised a hand towards it, only to immediately receive a sharp reproach.

“No! Keep your hands at your sides.”

“What’s the point of this!” she snapped. “I thought you wanted me to unlock a second power! How is this going to help with that?!”

“I just said it, didn’t I? The pattern has no physical form. How can you expect to find this power if you don’t even know how to look for it, let alone where? You must challenge and overcome yourself.”

An aggravated sigh left her before her attention returned to the dresser. “...This is literally impossible. I can’t do it.”

“You’ve already done the impossible many times. Now focus.”

Her eyes roamed across the dresser once again, but no matter how long she looked, no matter how hard she focused on it, there was still nothing. Frustration quickly began to well up within her, a feeling which threatened to turn itself into anger until she heard her mother’s words in her head.

Patience is my virtue.

She sighed again, and abruptly sat down cross-legged on the floor, still staring at the dresser.

“Think of it this way,” Mattias said from somewhere behind her. “You’re like a canvas. The Pattern is the painter holding the brush. Just find where the brush strokes have fallen on you.”

Easy for you to say, she nearly said aloud. But she decided to set those thoughts aside and focus, searching for something that she knew didn’t actually exist.

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

Amara was still seated before the dresser hours later, still trying to do the impossible, and still failing. Mattias hovered over her the entire time, occasionally peppering her with annoying questions and comments.

“You haven’t lost focus, yes?” “Don’t fall asleep, now.” “Are you still trying?”

Each time it took a serious effort not to snap back at him. Between him and the impossible task he’d given her, she felt mentally exhausted by the time he finally, mercifully, gave her a break.

“It’s been several hours,” he said. “Go relax for a while. Visit the kitchen and get something to eat, if you like.”

Wordlessly, Amara rose to her feet, and marched past him towards the stairwell. She avoided eye contact with him, not trusting herself to speak without sounding bitter or angry.

Worries and doubts plagued her as she climbed the stairs up towards the guest wing.

I don’t know why I expected anything else from his training, she thought grimly. I wonder how Evan is doing.

The hallway was empty when she arrived at the guest wing, as was the kitchen. Not feeling hungry whatsoever, she decided to bypass the cupboard and head outside, curious about Evander’s training but mostly just craving some escape.

A small cloud of dust rushed inside the moment she pulled at the door handle on the wall-door, and terribly bright sunlight filled the darkened room. Squeezing her eyes halfway shut against the sun, she stepped outside, pulling the wall-door closed behind her.

She instantly spotted a fresh pair of tracks on the sandy path which led down into the desert, and she followed them for a little while before impulsively leaving them behind, following another, smaller trail which led further up into the rocks. Before long it deposited her onto a shadowy cave-cliff which, to her delight, held an amazing view of the vast desert landscape. It seemed like the perfect place for her to decompress for a bit, and she took a moment to stretch out her strained back muscles before fully taking in the view.

The air was dry and hot, but in the shade it wasn’t entirely uncomfortable, and after the coolness of the stone inside she eagerly welcomed the change in atmosphere. A strong breeze occasionally blew onto the cliff, bringing with it a pleasant chill and a heavy smell of sand and dust. The mountains she’d seen last night were present on the horizon in all their lumpy, brown-black glory, dividing the yellow-white sea of sand below it from the cloudless blue sky overhead.

Maybe it was just because there were no trees to obstruct the view, but the sky seemed unnaturally huge. Back in Shiloh, the sky had never stood out in such a notable way, even at night. The sheer vastness of it spawned a feeling akin to despair within her, as if there was some sort of unseen, unfriendly sort of magic dwelling within the vast emptiness of the sky and the frozen sea of sand below.

I like it here, she eventually decided. I don’t miss the wheat and the trees. Everything there is to see is right here, and I can enjoy all of it at once. Nothing’s being kept out of sight from me.

It was then that she heard footsteps approaching from nearby. When she turned to look she spotted Evan climbing the hill towards her, following the same path she'd taken. He lifted a hand up in greeting once they made eye contact.

“Hey!” he called out. “I was coming back up for lunch when I saw your tracks. Wow, that's a view!”

“I thought so too,” she said as he sidled up next to her. He sat down, but Amara decided to remain standing.

“What have you been doing?”

“Sunjata gave me a brace of spears, and I’ve been running around out there in the dunes throwing them at targets he set up. Practicing my accuracy, I guess. Not really what I expected to be doing.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Hm! Yeah. Actually, he took off after a while. I’ve been out here alone.” He looked up at her. “What about you?”

“Mattias made me sit in front of a dresser and try to burn it from the inside out. The entire time.”

“Really? Why?”

She rolled her eyes. “...I don’t know. He said something about me that seemed weird, but I didn’t want to ask him about it.”

“What was it?”

“He said that personality sometimes has an effect on what powers the Destined gain, and for some of them it’s one of the main things that affect it. Or something. He was talking about me, I’m pretty sure, but when I asked if that meant I was fiery he just laughed.”

He looked away from her, attempting to hide the sheepish expression that’d appeared on his face.

“What? What was he talking about?”

“Well…you do get mad kind of easily.”

Amara was taken aback. “...No I don’t. Do I?”

He nodded. “Sounds like he was trying to get into your head. Don’t worry about it. I don’t trust that guy as far as I could throw him.”

“You must trust him a lot, then.”

“No I—oh. Point taken.” He paused. “Does it feel like everything’s been happening really fast, or is it just me?”

“God, no. I feel like I’m drowning.”

“Yeah. I really think Mattias knows way more about what’s happening than he’s letting on.”

“...Well, I don’t disagree with you. But is there anything specific making you feel that way?”

“Uh, the wheat, for one thing. How do we know for sure there’s only one way to cure it, and that it involves fighting Shabboleth? We only have Mattias's word on that.”

Amara had been thinking something similar somewhere in the back of her mind. She nodded to him.

“You’re right. There’s no denying that he’s capable of that kind of thing. I’m just wondering what the point of it would be.”

“I dunno. But you’ll probably figure it out sooner or later.”

She turned a stare on him, waiting for an explanation.

“You know him best,” he said quickly. “And you’re smart. Way smarter than me or anyone else in the village. Honestly, I’m fine with you making the decisions for us. You’re in charge as far as I’m concerned.”

Surprise held her tongue. She might’ve written off his words as a clumsy attempt at a compliment if not for the conviction she’d heard in them.

“I think it’s why Caleb and the others are so mean to you. Everyone kind of knows that you’re the smartest in the village. Well that, and they’re jealous of your mom.”

“What—my mom?”

He nodded. “It’s obvious that you two are really close. Caleb in particular hates you for that. His family’s a mess.”

Amara returned his nod with a slow one of her own, thinking. She’d known that Caleb’s mother and father were awful—everyone did—but what Evan had said about herself and her mother was an alarming revelation. She’d always just assumed they’d been harassed and belittled by the rest of the village because her mother was unmarried. The idea that there’d been much more to it than she’d ever imagined all along only made their situation feel more frustrating.

She was about to ask after it when Evander suddenly yawned and stood back up.

“I’m all dirty. Think I’ll go take a nap and a shower. Probably not in that order.”

“No, you can’t!” Amara nearly shouted. “Stay here and talk with me some more, please! I can’t go back there yet. You don’t know what it’s like!”

“I feel gross, Mara. We can talk later.”

“Well double dumbass on you, then!”

“Hey! Watch that mouth!”

“Or what, huh?! I’ll burn you to a crisp, buddy.”

“Well jokes on you, buddy, because I think I’m kind of into that.”

“What, being burned alive? Get the hell out of here, you weirdo!”

“Fine!”

“Okay!”

“Alright then!”

“Fine!”

They fell silent then, both waiting for the other to say more. Amara gave Evander a grin, which he instantly returned.

“...You don’t actually have to leave if—”

Evander interrupted her by abruptly turning away and walking off down the path. A burst of laughter instantly left her at just how well he'd timed it.

He’s fun like this, she thought, her smile fading as she watched him leave. I just wish he didn’t want more.

Once he’d disappeared around the corner, Amara turned her gaze back to the landscape. The idea of going back down into the vault to stare at the dresser some more felt harrowing.

“I give up,” she said aloud. “I quit. I’m never leaving this spot again.”

She managed to hold on to her declaration for almost thirty seconds before a sigh exploded from her and she turned to follow Evander off the cliffside. If saving Shiloh for her mother meant she had to stare at furniture all day, then so be it.