As the weeks and months came and went, she used her time in the day teaching the younger students, fulfilling her various duties, and when time allowed create small physical objects.

In the evenings she would sneak out onto the black stone of the temple steps to use that training. Filling the various small pits and caves of the cliffside to the brim with magical energies.

One such evening, the wind from the ocean bit particularly deep. She sought refuge behind loose rocks and stone. She had carved a crevasse in the side of the temple foundations and in there she poured magic. As much as she could, every day. And every day, it would never remain stable. Today was like the many previous days.

When the basin had been half-filled, she tried her hand in the dark pool. It felt clammy and dangerous. Like a lake, suspended, like a viscous wet air. Ready to explode in violent energy. Taking a moment to breathe and recuperate, she felt the sizzling of the pool, and redoubled her efforts to calm the waters. While Syndra thought of it less as water and more like a cloudy dough… She shook her head and focused on the task at hand.

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With each breath, she poured more of herself into the pool, until she could barely contain it. Yet she kept going, pushing her limits, one breath at a time. Until she felt it. What she had made dissipated. As though hole in the rocks were leaking the magic into the sea. She tried holding it in place and it remained still for a while. Fighting against herself she dragged and poured and held the magic, but in the end, all that was left was the largely empty hole in the ground, with only a smattering of the magic left.

Why will you not stay? It wasn’t the first time this had happened. It was like a drain, or a sponge, drawing in her magic. Every night she went out here, and every night it was the same.

It just, disappeared. Yet every night, she could also feel that she poured more and more in. Never would it remain stable. She had also noticed her magic would no longer singe the plant life, it no longer left the soul disturbed or scared the animals. It no longer washed away the ambient magic.

While this is what she had wanted for so long, but it was wrong. It was unnatural. It wasn’t her. She would learn to control her power, not for something else to control it for her.