Vell pumped his legs on the glyph as soon as he felt his sacred breath burninto nothing. He exhaled, read the pattern of the water, and jumped off the glowing disc. His sacred breath vanished when he exhaled, and so did the glyph.

A feeling of vulnerability left him filled with momentary doubt before he sucked in the spiritual energy of the atmosphere and solidified it as sacred breath in his lungs. The feeling left just as soon as it came.

The head leaf scholar, Deneb, had warned Vell several times over the years that a glyph user should be most careful after releasing their sacred breath. Although his body had been tempered far beyond normal human capabilities, it was weakest after expelling a glyph.

It was his first time truly feeling that post-glyph vulnerability, and he grinned. It was just another reminder that he was truly alone. Every mistake, pain, ill, and triumph would be his to claim.

He surfed his new glyph, gliding from one wave to the next, connecting their momentum in a seamless path toward the fog island.

The roaring ocean and howling winds drowned out the distant cheers from everyone he had ever know. There would be no turning back. That knowledge injected him with exhilaration he could not tame.

His trial of forty steps had only just begun. A normal shamanic student would take this seriously. Afterall, more than this life was at stake.

If he failed, not only would his death curse his parents with the horrific memory of watching their son swallowed by the unforgiving ocean, but also stain his family’s legacy with a titanic failure. He had dared to test the untested central chain. Success meant eternal glory for his family.

Failure…

He could handle death. Roaming the Emerald Fields in the afterlife with his ancestors did not bring him fear. But casting shame on his matriarch and island? That burden was too strong to bear, even for a fully trained shaman.

Despite the crushing weight of expectations, he could not help but smile at the trials to come.

An unexpected wind blasted him from the side, pushing Vell away from his intended path of waves. It thwarted his ability to read the waters so much that the path of waves was now completely lost to him.

Rather than fighting against the wind, he fanned his arms wide, using the momentum to flip toward an emerging wave. He flipped in the air, scanning the waters for a new path. His breath released the glyph beneath him.

Reading the ocean was completely different than reading the waters of Master Fron’s pond. The waves out here were wild, unpredictable.

Just like Vell.

He grinned, corked the second half of his flip to meet the new wave, and once again inhaled the spiritual energy of the atmosphere. The manna soaked into his lungs like water to dry sand. It powered every part of his body with sacred breath.

Vell secured the energy, and exploded it below his left foot. A glyph glowed into existence, and he used it to surf the wave onto a new path. The glyph lasted him five waves of increasingly larger sizes. His sacred breath weakened, and he surfed up the largest wave, releasing the glyph with an exhale.

The momentum of gliding up such a large wave threw him high above the crest. Sunlight beat across his coconut colored skin, reflecting off the blue paint written in the ancestor’s ancient language.

He turned midair back toward his island and waved his hand. The only ones whose eyesights were sharp enough to see him from this distance were Master Fron and his mother. That was enough.

Vell used only a few glyphs, but his people seemed so far, impossible to reach. From this distance, the faces of his mother, father, and master were indiscernible. He would never forget their faces.

Ocean splashed against his face, mixing in with the tears of joy and grief in his eyes. Vell quickly blinked them away before his bare feet could sink into the ocean, twisted back toward the fog island, and created another glyph to skip on.

The time for goodbyes was over. Vell was no longer a son or student or brother. He was a pilgrim, a shaman only in the beginning of his trial of forty steps.

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Vell lost himself in the rhythm of reading the waves, glyph-skipping, and releasing his sacred breath. He burned through eleven more glyphs, totalling at fifteen glyphs skipped when he realized he was already halfway to the fog island.

Would he even need forty glyphs to make it?

He banished the tempting thought as soon as it came. It was arrogant enough to choose the central chain of islands for his trial. Any more arrogance would cost him his life. The ocean did not care about his ability to read. It was indifferent, wild, and untameable.

The journey halfway to the fog island had been increasingly more difficult, but tempered by his ability to find the most efficient path of waves. Up until that point, the ocean seemed to whisper to him which wave would be best.

But now, the ocean no longer whispered. It growled like a ferocious beast.

The waves suddenly grew to two and three times the size he had so far. Vell expected this, trained for it for years by reading the waves through Master Fron’s coveted spyglass. He sucked in the largest breath he ever took, and created a glyph below his foot, placing both feet on it instead of one to help balance against the newer, stronger waves.

As if in anticipation for his new tactic, the new wave thrashed against the glyph, threatening his balance.

Vell tried to ride up the slope of the wave, but water seemed to pull downward. He should have foreseen this. The ocean was the gaping maw of the world, the waves its sharp, endless row of fangs.

Spiritual energy permeated not just in the air but in everything - rocks, people, animals, plants, and of course, water. It was the reason why he could place the glyph on his feet and ride it. Technically his glyph wasn't riding the wave but riding the energy.

He vaguely recalled one of leaf scholar Deneb’s lessons about differential manna resonances which allowed for the glyph skipping phenomena. Vell had been too mired in his own daydream during that lesson to remember the exact details. It didn’t matter. That knowledge would not help him fight against the underside.

What he did remember that proved useful was how the larger waves usually meant not only more spiritual energy, but more currents of that energy coalescing in multiple directions until the wave folded back into the ocean.

The sensation of the ocean pulling his glyph toward its dark depths was something similar to an underside. Scholar Deneb would have shriveled at the gross oversimplification.

Vell focused his breath to fight against the pulling motion. His momentum up the titanic wave slowed as a result.

The more he fought against he underpull of spiritual energy, the more laborious he was to keep his glyph afloat.

His breath weakened faster than he expected, and the glyph grew flimsier.

He scanned the waters for the next wave so he could release his glyph before it broke, but stopped himself.

The glyph felt more malleable, no longer as dense as wood. Now it felt like riding a leaf.

His years of training told him to release the glyph before it was too late. But his instincts, his sense of touch and balance, told him that a flimsy glyph did not have to be bad.

Acting on instinct, he held his sacred breath, no longer fighting against the underpull of ocean-manna. The glyph stayed weak and thin as a leaf.

To Vell’s delight, the weakened glyph was easier to guide through the ever-shifting undercurrent of spiritual energy. His surfing speed grew faster. He crested the tip of the wave and flew higher and farther than anything he expected.

The sacred breath in his lungs almost burned out entirely on its own, but he released it before it broke and caused a backlash. With the exhale, the weakened glyph dissipated back into the atmosphere.

Vell shouted a triumph roar as he soared through the air. He had discovered a new glyph technique.

His eyes found a new wave, even larger than the one he surfed off of. He felt his face split into a smile. Vell no longer had need to feel wary of large waves. Now, they would be fun.

He sucked in a sacred breath, and created a new glyph as he splashed onto the new, larger wave. The manna flows of the wave’s undercurrent began to erode his glyph almost immediately.

Vell embraced the thinning of his glyph, focusing only on guiding it through the wild flows of the water. The wave curled upward, creating a nearly vertical wall of water. His let his hand skim across the inside of the barrel of the wave, and yipped excitedly.

Never had he imagined he could surf this fast.

He rode out of the barrel, and threw himself off the tip, keeping his flimsy glyph attached to his feet as he looked for the next wave.

Something shifted corner of his vision.

A large, dark shadow slithered under the gleaming surface of the ocean. It was far, but it ate the distance like an unfed predator.

Vell quickly checked the distance between him and his home island as he landed on a new wave. He was more than halfway between the fog island and his home. That was out of Master Fron’s normal range for summoning a glyph.

Master Fron was the sole reason the people of Vell’s island were able to play and swim and fish in the ocean waters near their island. His glyphs were not only powerful enough to deal with the sea beasts, but struck fear in the ancient water-terrors.

Vell was now no longer in the safety net of his master.

Any joy he had felt in that moment vanished. A sea beast had spotted him, and it was gaining speed.