By the time Kori finally woke up, everyone else was already fast asleep. Everyone except Rosa, of course, who was a flurry of insight going over the rush of discoveries which occurred while Kori slept.

“Basically, everything is exactly as we were promised.” “Uh, yeah, basically. But you have to think of all the applications, we could…” “No, I don’t have to think of all the applications. Our chaos is just always there for our support, and that’s all that matters. Sure, such has basically an endless list of ways it could help us, but that’s exactly why I don’t have to think of all the applications. True chaos isn’t for us to understand, only for us to work with. All I need to do then is to actually work with the chaos that is providing all of this for us, right?” “Oh come on, you know that it doesn’t understand all the principled stuff in turn, someone has to do all of the research to figure out the middle ground. I suck at research too, which is why I was hoping you would be able to put everything together.” Kori considered all of Rosa’s reports, generally actually uncertain what to make of it all. The generic theory made sense, but that made sense long before Rosa’s report. True chaos just did stuff to principled stuff in a chaotic way, though chaotic didn’t seem to mean they had no control over it. Chaos, it seemed, was perfectly good at controlling chaos. It was thus a wild card they could call upon that could deliver whatever they lacked. It could do anything, but it couldn’t do everything. The hardest part then was gauging the amount they should depend on it, how much would even be fair. Without that information, it was very difficult to find proper applications for such true chaos.

Kori was mildly aware of a feeling of respect from nowhere. Ah, that would possibly be her chaos trying to communicate with her. That was going to be another thing she would have to pick up on, being open with the same chaos itself. At the very least, she couldn’t think of a better research partner for the whole experience.. well, it and Rosa both. Her chaos was the expert in all matters chaotic, but Rosa was definitely skilled in matters natural to both sets of principles. Rosa had even ensured Kori’s stuff was in top condition when they awoke too. However, just like Rosa, Kori had slipped from the dream when Rosa had awakened, even if she had then instead simply resumed sleeping. All of this was generally quite the rush from her perspective, having to thus deal with the knowledge right after waking up. This whole thing was going to take quite a while to process properly.

“Well, this is going to be quite the project, so it might be better to look into other important matters in the meanwhile. I mean, after the things we completed that last fight, there are a few other things I really want to look into more. If dancing among frost was fun for you, you might actually be having some of the same ideas.” “Oh yeah, that did happen, didn’t it. By the divine, it was even fun. But.. I’m not that good with my gift, so I’m not sure I’ll be as capable when I’m not in an area already providing all the frost I might ever need.” “Hey, I ended up instead having fun with darkness instead of sand, I don’t even know how I might actually make use of my own gift. However, before we get a surprise visit there too, we might actually want to start preparing.” Kori had a point Rosa simply could not refute. Of course, she expected that any future encounters would leave their true chaos as an integral aspect, but it would still be important to learn how to do better with elementals in the process.. or even how to do better with science on Ruixse. That idea especially appealed to her, possibly because she was really starting to feel more comfortable with science than elementals. She was even certain that, as long as she still found a way to allow Axln to do some actual hacking, Lyun could ensure they both had a decent time working with technology.

They both arrived at the academy then soon after, leaving dusk to the sleepers of the world where people slept all dusk. Both of them felt reasonably well rested, they could go for a complete evening at this rate. Lyun instantly ran off to begin her own research. She had several things to investigate, from matters of her own gift in its newest implementation to research in creating actually useful technology in this world that reflected upon the instruments they had worked with from the other world. She honestly also wanted to run a few tests on her arm too, just to complete that research in its entirety. She already suspected what sort of elemental levels she would find, but she had so much else she wanted to test too. Quite honestly, the composition of her arm faintly resembled the best quality kyuemu ever imaginable, distinctly impossible in that nature. The most impossible part was how it wasn’t even exactly crystalline.. but it wasn’t not either.

Axln was thus left to look into her own goals. Her first goal was to look for Jhez and get some insight into distinct matters of elements. It helped that it appeared Jhez’s personal aspect was itself in gravitation, a reason alone for Axln to be in admiration of his ability. However, as the two of them went to a safe location for a demonstrative lesson in gravitation, Jhez was suddenly confounded by his gift not responding. Axln however figured out quickly why, being annoyed at the slight distortion around her. Eventually, the distortion faded, and Jhez resumed his demonstration. In a fundamental sense, it seemed that increasing darkness increased the density of darkness, which could crush objects towards the ground and make it harder for such things to move under such pressure. Reducing such dark intensity meanwhile made an object lighter, an idea Axln worried was the planet’s idea of a design pun. It seems even a lot of phase and rift principles were based upon light, the reduction of gravitation causing objects to be capable of not only passing through solid objects, but also passing from one location to another directly without anything along the way interfering. Of course, concentrated void was an exception, as such could simply make the resulting light fade away enough that a connection became impossible.

The integral factor then was how dark could even invert both aspects of light. Darkness could not only be so intense as to be physically impenetrable, it could also distort regions so that an opening that had existed no longer did so. Gravitation was an aspect of both ideas, as a gravitational force could prevent the passage of anything physical while a gravitational well could make it a lot harder to go from one location to another nearby location. Shadows could also do a lot to manipulate such as well, though Jhez wasn’t as well versed in that area. Shadows were specifically a wall that could block light, another demonstration of anti-light. However, with enough intensity, a shadow could entrap an entire region as if it did not exist for a while. Such crushing shadows could utterly destroy anything that might have been in the area at that time, but would even obstruct rift and phase instrumentation too.

Such a discussion did prompt Axln to realize how dark armor might have done her so well in the process. She was even sure that the entire crushing shadow experience had also been involved. Less obvious was how she could use darkness in new ways on this side, even with her weapon. Actually, thinking about weaponry, maybe such a lesson was valuable after all. Lyun’s weapon was light elemental, maybe she might hit more if her shots rifted? No, the things were almost just hitting instantly, and it wasn’t as if rifts ignored trajectory. Aiming would still matter. However, while pondering everything, she found Xwyhr had suddenly walked into the area.

“I’m sorry to bother you, Professor Jhez, but I have a question about one of our assignments.” “Wait, professor, as in Jhez is your teacher?” “Well, one of them, I guess. When you’re studying cosmology, there are a ton of lessons in the history of gravitational forms. The area between worlds are mostly formed up of the void, but dark elements seem the most prevalent in that empty void otherwise. That’s part of why travel between worlds is so difficult, because the distance is artificially drawn out.” “Wait, you were really good with stone though, and always had such an interest in stone. Is there any interaction between gravitation and stone then?” “Stone is the element that is the least influenced by darkness, least likely to be crushed at least. Darkness, though, can’t exactly be pierced or crushed by stone either, not really. However, gravitational forces find it easiest to manipulate both stone and wood elements, and stone is probably the easiest of the two there. It is really easy for darkness to magnify the physical might of stone, especially if the two work together to provide crushing force. This could change though if you involve stone-like aspects, such as metal, or.. sand. Yhzia would have been the best to talk to about metals, but I’m really not sure at all about sand.” Xwyhr seemed already inclined towards what might have made Axln curious about the subject. However, maybe like her sister, Axln wouldn’t get the easy way out of lessons, and would have to hunt down more explicit records in lieu of any decided expert in the field. Leaving the two of them to whatever assignment was mentioned previously, Axln started her search of the archives for any suitable records.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

Picking up a few handy reference books, Axln also grabbed a couple of potentially useful instruments. Even her most recent discussion inspired the idea that the two most important ideas in elements are inversion and reaction. Synergy principles that refined what happens from an element in a complex situation. Digging up notes was taking too much effort, so it was time for mad scientist experimentation. Finding a suitable lab for such, she set to work at setting up what she felt would be a suitable demonstration of her own. By now, it was inevitably obvious that she was a protege with elements, even if she didn’t exactly grasp the entirety of that potential. However, it did imply that a lot of her instincts with elements would potentially be a lot more sound than she could estimate. What she needed wasn’t a deep analysis, she just needed.. ideas.

Sand’s inversion was sky, which included things like wind and.. oh right, lightning. Maybe that was why Mheridz butted heads with her all the time? Anyway, that didn’t matter right now. Wait, actually, it might. Create sand, invert sand. Oh, nope, that created a bubble of air. Mix more sand, you get a sandstorm. Wait, so this isn’t a matter of complete inversion? Right, because you can even have fire and frost at the same time too. With that consideration, she turned to the instruments she brought to compel it to supplement some basic elements for her. Sand and Frost? Cold sand, not even useful, beyond maybe being a bit stickier. Frost was just generally a bit adhesive anyway, so this was really plain. Simple wood was the same way, though she wasn’t exactly certain what else wood represented. Supposedly, people had a lot of wood to their makeup, for as little sense as that made. Sand and water makes.. mud. You know, that shouldn’t have even been surprising. Much like mixing frost and water made ice, it would be a really simple thing. It was a reaction, but sadly she wasn’t feeling much from it. Then she tried fire.

The glass shattered to pieces as it fell to the ground. Woah, now that was neat. Of course, there is a bit of sense there, but that was quite different from most of the other stuff going on. She made a similar attempt, just time being more careful with the fragile results. It was like a window, a completely useless one. Wait, technically the best use for a window was to block out the wind, even though the thing would still probably shatter with a powerful wind force. Lightning would.. she didn’t even know. However, nothing she had actually expressed lightning itself. She knew she couldn’t just treat lightning like an electrical current, such wasn’t completely accurate on this side. However, she knew at least how light worked, light passed through glass, it was just that transparent. It wasn’t like glass did anything that dramatic very normally on the other side either, you would have to apply something to distort it or something. That reminded her, such distortions were exactly what she learned darkness was good at. She set darkness to the glass.. and stared at her own reflection. It was a mirror, she had just created a mirror. I guess this side didn’t even need to bother with silver backings, just a coat of shade handled everything. She dropped water on the mirror.. and it bounced on contact. Clearly mirrors here reflected more than what one might expect, but that did imply that darkness could handle some of the ideas behind it, glass just handled the.. projection?

She turned to using a form of simple shadow, realizing quickly that she could shape shadow into a physical form that fooled light. Basically illusions, but almost physically so. Actually, this was more of a holo than even the ice sculptures Rosa had made, light forced into looking real when nothing was there. If you added gravitational force, you could simulate a kinetic factor. However, shadow wasn’t exactly a stable composite, that’s probably the advantage frost had. Frost still made for much better sudden, sturdy platforms. Glass however appeared capable of also trapping shadow very easily, providing a texture but not much of a sense of durability. Separately, darkness and sand were just dark sand, very difficult to spot but otherwise not impressive as far as she could tell. Dark and Fire.. conflicted and drained each other.

She was forced to take another break at that point, discovering yet another distortion in effect, provided by Lyun again. However, of everything she had done, she had found the glass still endured. The mirror existed, but the shadow had faded, so it was just a window again. As normal glass, it didn’t look like the glass was projecting light anymore either. Right, because glass could be curved into lenses to sharpen, magnify, or distort light. A lens could completely revise what light could do. She blinked for a moment, the compulsion to test making her impatient as she waited for the distortion to end. Once such was gone, she created a slight lens and then went for a light instrument. The beam of light passed through the lens, sharpened to a fine point, and diffracted to a new angle. She then provided a coat of shadow to the lens. When light passed through, the light was unable to simply go straight, it instead curved part way on a projected route, passed around behind her, and then went up to a spot on the ceiling.

This now might be perfect for Lyun. Add a lens to her weapon, then add an instrument to shape her targeting for her so that her light beam can’t miss. She couldn’t make such an instrument, but she could probably adjust something to fit that principle well enough if something similar was made for her. Meanwhile, her sand could be pretty handy if she had a handy supply of fire. She might need to have instruments handy for that though, but it could be really annoying trying to adjust fire all the time to any slight whim to shape her needs. Having a gift with fire would have helped, but neither of them had that.. except that inverting frost could often instigate combustibility. Lyun then could help her with this, letting them forge glass easily together. It was still annoying that the dark element though seemed so very interesting but so very hard to use. She was absolutely infatuated by it, mesmerized by it. However, in the midst of her experimentation with mirrors, she found that the fire instrument had suddenly stopped working. Looking inside, the shard had gone completely pale, it was dead. Knowing that she at least needed more glass to test with, she turned to the shadow instrument and opened it to get the shard from such.

The shadow instrument was actually missing its shard, it hadn’t ever actually been included.

She tried to use the shadow instrument again, producing a dark shade in the process. Speculating impulsively, she set the instrument aside and tried to achieve the same process by matter of focus alone. Floating before her was yet another dark shade, vanishing when she got startled suddenly. Axln had been told that she had an affinity for sand, but no one had ever told her that such wasn’t strictly a limitation. The gift was totally capable of expanding for those with an earnest intent in learning and discovery. Toying with it, she noticed she had a distinct area in shadow-crafting, not explicitly darkness. Gravitational influence however actually eluded her, to her disappointment and confusion. If she was going to get an extra knack, wouldn’t it be better if it was gravitation, pulling things around just seemed a lot more.. fun.? Wait, did she actually feel that travel was actually fun, the idea hadn’t even dawned on her yet. She did remember talking about similar stuff with Xwyhr though, her entire family sort of liked exploring.

She then recalled some of her lessons of shadows and light just earlier. She had just seen a few tricks shadows could be capable of, but she remembered hearing that shadows were direct inversions to most of the basics of light, being a wall that denied light. Shadows could fill a region as if it did not exist too. Shadows directly countered light effects such as phase and rifts, being the direct inversion of them. Shadows did not relate to light force though, that was gravitation’s inversion. Spreading thin shadows created a passage that might not have existed otherwise. Lyun was very versed in inverting her own affinity into flame, and even Axln had managed to create bubbles of air with sand. If she could then invert shadows…

Axln began her practice in earnest, devoted to seeing how far she could go with this discovery. Sure, using shadows was still proving to be a bit more taxing than sand, she was still far more capable with sand, but she wasn’t about to discard this secondary potential either.