+ Reid +

"Alright - you should be excited - but lie back down. You won't want to do this sitting up."

Reid sheepishly lowered himself from sitting back down to a prone position and closed his eyes. His muscles were... less than happy with him.

"I want you to picture your metaphysical self - not in the sea of rage, but just on its own. Do that like it's your own body, then picture any place where you had to exert yourself and try in a physical sense. It could be sports, or working out - even that juggling class you took once would be functional. I'll be able to see when you're ready for the next step."

Reid tried to enter his metaphysical spaces and immediately found himself floating above the sea of rage, and had to pull himself back out of that metaspace twice more before he started to get it. He saw glimpses of himself in the third person, standing in a room. Each glimpse snapped away from him painfully, like it was a shard of glass getting removed from his mind. But the room he glimpsed wasn't quite in the same 'place' as his power metaspace's location. He knew he could make progress if he just kept pushing forward, so he ignored the building pain and rushed ahead for more and more glimpses. The more he saw, the more the new area made him feel like he was both himself and an outside observer. He threw himself at the glimpses and focused there - through growing pain that threatened to knock him out of himself entirely.

It felt like he was going to pass out, but he still held himself onto the image - if he did get injured, Win could heal him. But if he let this chance slip by, Nyx might make him move on to another stat. He couldn't let that happen. At the height of his pain, everything stopped as what he'd been trying to see snapped into a clear image. Reid was himself and saw himself, standing in the 'obstacle course' portion of a massive Gym complex his work sometimes paid for. There were foam pads and structures, bars secured to the floor and walls, ramps and monkey bars and a climbing net. It all felt 'real' in the same way his power metaspace did. Though this one was much smaller, it felt more... detailed. Like everything about him and the objects was accurate in a way it needed to be to function properly. Nyx popped into existence beside him and smiled.

"Oh my, this will do very nicely. So vivid, and so much substance already. Good, good! Now don't think or do anything else - just climb the net."

Reid struggled his way to the top, a haphazard bumbling mess where his metaphysical body didn't seem quite in sync with what he wanted it to do. The fact that he was watching himself and doing it himself at the same time was not beneficial in any way, at first. But as he struggled, Reid realized that things felt... familiar.

When he first started taking stock of his pickaxe swings, Reid had already known what some of his muscles were. There was work to be done in figuring out which ones acted like groups and what happened when they worked together, but he had something of a baseline to draw from. The same sort of cataloguing came back to him as he watched himself struggle and fail in his climb. He instinctually noticed details as he went, and an entirely new world was revealed within his metaphysical form.

His real body was a complex, intricate thing with blood and muscles and organs and bone - but he hadn't pictured his metaphysical self with the same type of complexity. Instead, he saw it as just 'him'. But when he looked inside that form, he began to see what it truly was - not a singular whole, but a flowing, changing, and interconnected series of internals. Instead of blood, tissue, and organs - each aspect was made of energy and mana.

He lifted an arm, and both felt and watched the energy shift. He lifted a leg, and felt another shift. He was stationary on the net as he worked through his metaphysical body and found the 'energy version' of his muscles with each motion. They were areas and pieces that oddly overlapped and intertwined with one another, and Reid was somewhat perplexed at their placement. He was still thinking of moving a leg as moving a leg - and his stomach flipped when he finally tried to 'move' his metaphysical body by just affecting the energy-muscles. His leg moved, but he hadn't raised it - he'd just sent energy through the right area to make it move.

It was an entirely odd sensation, but he did it again - and again, and again until the weirdness of it started to go away. His stomach was still unsettled, but it was manageable. He'd had worse from his cancer - and even then, he'd forced himself to hold it in until he could get away from Sara. This was nothing compared to that. Once he felt comfortable with the movements, Reid jumped down to the padded ground, and landed back in front of the obstacle.

Then he climbed the net. His body wasn't perfect, but it reacted much better than it had the first time up. His feet slammed back into the floor mat, and he rolled his metaphysical neck - then realized he'd done it thinking of muscles again. He repeated the motion by moving energy, and smiled. It was time to make some progress.

He ensured different groups were activated to propel him just a bit quicker the next climb, and continued to improve time after time. Activating the energy muscles in sequence was much more taxing than his physical muscles had been, though, and he soon tired himself out. When he began to pull back, Nyx was there again.

"A wonderfully strong start, especially since you only spent a few hours on this one. Congratulations, Reid. You figured out enough on your own that you'll be able to finish metaphysical dexterity off without further instructions from me. Just keep working at it after we do the rest. If you need something to keep you motivated - consider this. Once you have metaphysical dexterity down as naturally as your power is, you'll be able to do some new fun physical applications of mana on your body that go beyond the rage state you're used to."

Nyx winked with the last sentence, and her too-black smile was full.

Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

Reid checked his gains. The work he'd done was altogether pretty... basic, but working to better understand his form and movements in the metaspace did earn him a good chunk of points.

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Dexterity: 65 -> 85

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His weakest stat had grown so much that it was now his second strongest. That had only taken him a little over a week - and part of that time had been spent resting. He felt absolutely exhausted, but proud and excited by his progress. Reid pulled himself out of his new metaspace, then sat up and stretched. He winced at the pain the movement brought. Around him, the den was mostly silent - except for the persistent faint sounds of scraping rock and dripping water.

Reid braced himself to get to a knee and signal Win for a round of healing. He hoped she was awake - his schedule had gotten completely mixed up by the training. He grunted out a question.

"So, what will we do next - perception or intelligence?"

"Neither. Don't get up and don't get healed - next lesson starts now. You're going to work on vitality."

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||+|| Win ||+||

Win had always been competent. Maybe part of that was expected, but she worked to be a diligent student of her family's teachings all the same. Dad had always told her that the most accomplished thing she could ever hope to be was a steward. That there was no higher calling than tending to places, people, and institutions and spreading good work. Whenever she'd fallen short in any aspect of her life, she could always soothe herself by helping those around her. In a direct sense, she'd always been able to help by healing.

Bringing herself and Lycra back from the brink of death had been the first time she directly used her skill in... far too long. Forcing that much mana through herself had been so hard on her body, it turned some of her organs to sludge. What bit of pride she had left led her to pretend to be asleep so Reid didn't see her regrowing her stomach. It was a pitiful display of magical ineptitude. Even with herself restricted to G grade, she once could have healed wounds like that all afternoon.

But that was before this place.

Promised death for everyone she knew and everyone around her if she flexed her skill, Win was thrown down a deep hole and then spent years wallowing in pity and helplessness. She daydreamed of revenge for weeks at a time. It was only the kindness of those around her that kept Win from succumbing to her lamentations completely. When she finally picked herself up, it wasn't because she was better - it was because she had to help. Those were hard times, and the same people that kept Win from starving herself to death desperately needed resources and hands. So she donned her role of steward, and threw herself into that work.

She'd made each and every prisoner her charge and responsibility. It gave her days purpose and meaning - and distracted her from harsher truths. From the things she missed. From all she'd left undone, and every ill memory that plagued her long life. She set rules, resolved issues, and welcomed a blur of countless faces to the forgotten depths of the planet.

Zticqalep's principle wasn't about magic, but the 'ghost wizard' attached to Reid had told her to ensure she followed it anyway.

It was the idea that everyone, regardless of the pressure they placed upon themselves, was always less important to the function of systems and society around them than they assumed.

The realization happened slowly, and it was both new and unwelcome.

Nyx meant that the prisoners existed before Win, and that they would keep existing even if Win disappeared. It was a bit of a slap in the face, but one she needed.

At some point, Win had become more reliant on the prisoners than they were on her. The systems she built no longer needed her to run them - there were talented and smart people with their own apparent heirs at every level from the clinic to the canteen to the net patrol. Her being gone down here for over a week meant that they'd worry about her safety - but nothing would stop or fail. It had been that way for a long time, and she just kept willingly tangling herself up with it. She chose to carry that burden - when other arms were already shouldering the load. The work was something she needed.

Here - away from her routines - Win was left with herself, and the truth. No matter what worry rolled through her mind, her people were okay. They'd be fine without her. They didn't need a steward.

Wrestling with that concept was difficult.

Being alone with her own magical ability, practicing the tree was worse.

Passable. Passable. Passable.

Throughout her years at the academy, she'd only ever earned the basic marks on any of her mana control exams. That was all she'd ever tried for. Such things didn't matter with such a prodigious mana pool. Fine tuned application was for those without innate talent. It was okay if she wasn't the best mage - because she was always a steward first. The words and excuses emerged from hibernation in the back of her mind, as vivid as they had been for that naive, stupid girl that found reasons to avoid the areas where she didn't naturally excel.

Win still really had been skeptical about Reid's notion that he had an ancient wizard as a passenger - partly because it was an insane notion. But that skepticism had turned to admiration, then frustration as she learned that not only was there an ancient knowledge in Reid, but it had pegged her weaknesses in a few short glimpses at her healing energy - her suppressed energy. She hadn't felt intimidated by someone else's knowledge in a long time. She hadn't be chided like a child in far, far longer.

The tree's trunk started to harden again, but she pushed in too much energy too quickly. The roots overloaded and fizzled out of existence. She let out a frustrated humpf and started again. She was calm. She was collected. She'd done things so much more difficult than this - things that required greater power, with massive stakes, or that were truly life altering. But she couldn't shake the deep rooted voice that just told her to give up on this one frustrating task.

Up at his workbench, one of Lycra's creations whirred, then failed with a crackling pop. Reid was stuck in another trancelike state, where Nyx was no doubt making the most ridiculous existence she'd ever met progress further away from rational understanding. As if he weren't already odd enough, Win was now almost completely certain the man was self-affixing. Not only that, but he was doing it at a rapid pace, like some secluded alliance member's once-in-an-era talent. He was just... beyond the pale. Prodigious.

She, too, had been called a prodigy once.

But that girl avoided hard subjects and gave up too easy.

Win was too old to be a prodigy, now. But she still had grit - and she'd gained patience, perspective, and humility.

It was okay that Reid was more talented. She was happy for him in that regard.

But grit was hers - and she would not be outdone on work ethic. Not when she tried.

A week of near-constant energy control practice was small. She could do more.

Her tail curled and her fist clenched.

She would do more.

Win focused her energy into hair-thin strands, and made roots.