Vayra opened her eyes, pushing away the white light of the void.

She was still standing at the edge of the river, but she began to walk back towards the hut. Halfway up the slope, she spotted a horse with two riders trotting along the path to the house. At the front was Nathariel, holding the reins. Glade sat behind him, with his black coat tied around his waist and the sleeves of his tunic rolled up to his shoulders.

As soon as they began to trot up the slope towards the hovel, Glade dismounted and ran towards her.

He paused in front of her, then looked her up and down and nodded. “Congratulations. You are…starting to look like a proper Mediator.”

“I told you it’d work out,” she said.

“We are not offworld yet.” He glanced back at Nathariel cautiously.

‘He’s always got to bring things down, doesn’t he?’ Phasoné complained.

Vayra grimaced, but she knew he wasn’t wrong.

Nathariel rode his horse back towards the pasture, then urged it to jump the fence. It did so easily. He dismounted, then vaulted back over to the other side and walked back towards them.

A shiver ran down Vayra’s spine as he drew closer, like an extension of the tingling feeling in her neck, except it pushed all the way down to her tailbone. “What was that?” she asked.

‘That’s what it feels like when someone stronger than you observes your core and channels,’ Phasoné said. ‘In other words, Nathariel stared at your spirit. He’s done it before, but you weren’t powerful enough to notice.’

After a few seconds, the Goddess gasped and exclaimed, ‘Oh, I’ve got it, now! At Master, you’re developing your spiritual senses. Seeing other people’s cores and channels, and noticing mana systems and sources…’

“You felt it this time,” Nathariel stated. “Good. I arrived just in time.”

“Just in time?”

“To help you progress through Master with the best efficiency you can. To bring you to the peak and develop your senses as much as we can, before your advancement locks them in.” He lowered his head and began to march back to the hovel. “But first, dinner. I don’t suppose you’ve eaten everything?”

“Not everything,” she said.

The sun was already setting, and Vayra’s stomach was growling. Glade headed down to the river to wash off, and Vayra and Nathariel walked up to the hovel to prepare dinner. Nathariel, it seemed, wasn’t tired of the heat—he said he wanted soup, so they made one.

He sent her to the garden to pluck vegetables. There were a few pale gray tubers behind the hovel, buried in the black dirt. She pulled on their heads and they popped out of the ground easily, just like carrots.

When she returned, she found that he’d already retrieved a set of vines from the side of the house. They were stiff, and when he cracked them in half, they let off a puff of embers and…blue sparks?

“These vines send roots all the way down to the river, slowly absorbing mana from the spirit-water that filters in,” Nathariel said. “You saw the sparks?.”

Vayra set the vegetables she’d carried down on the table and said, “Should I have?”

“Yes.” He passed her a steel knife and said, “Mind chopping them for me?”

She nodded, then turned to the counter, where he had laid out the cracked vines. She began to cut them into small little rounds, as she had seen the elven nuns at Old Uckoe’s theatre do. With each cut, they released another puff of blue sparks.

“That is your spiritual sight beginning to awaken,” Nathariel said. “It will take a while to control it.”

With every round of the vine she cut, more and more sparks flew up into the air. They began to cloud her vision and swirl in front of her eyes. She began to feel as though she was cutting onions, however, instead of searing the surface of her eyes, it started to sting the Arcara channels behind them.

“Sir…” Vayra began, rubbing her eyes. A pit formed in her stomach.

‘When I use my spiritual vision, it almost feels like putting a monocle on,’ Phasoné said. ‘It helps it…not be overwhelming.’

Vayra didn’t know what that felt like.

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‘Right. Uh, imagine, uh…it’s just instinct now, for me, so…’

“Imagine your vision clearing after a long night of sleep,” Nathariel instructed. “Shut your eyes and hold them shut.”

Vayra did as she was instructed. It didn’t make the sting disappear, but she couldn’t see anything. She turned away.

“You have a body built for this,” Nathariel told her. “Push Arcara through the channels in your head and flush them, then open your eyes. Let them focus.”

Vayra took a deep breath and, with a push of her mana, sent a wave of energy up to her head. After it passed through, her channels stopped stinging.

She opened her eyes, and for a moment, she let everything be blurry. As soon as she turned back towards the vines and the radiating blue sparks, she let her eyes focus. The blue sparks disappeared.

“What was that?” she asked.

“You were seeing ambient mana,” Nathariel said. “Before, you could only see it when it was in extraordinarily high quantities. It’s what gives Stream water its bluish tint. You also saw some when you were advancing, yes?”

“Yeah.”

“Now, you will see it all the time. But it will take refining to be useful.”

She kept cutting the vines. A few more times, she had to wrangle her spiritual vision back under control, but she managed. Glade returned, washed and clean, and Nathariel tasked him with stirring the broth—they set up a pot on a fire outside, so it didn’t make the inside of the hovel any hotter than it already was. In a half hour, the soup was finished.

“Imagine you’re squinting at it,” Nathariel instructed, holding out a bowl filled with pale broth, chopped vegetables, and strips of meat. “But don’t narrow your eyes.”

Vayra tried, but ended up clenching her gut instead. She did her best to replicate the same feeling in her face, around her eyes, and slowly, she began to trace glowing blue lines through the broth with her eyes. They swirled like fish in a pond, though without any fish-like features.

“I see…something,” she said.

“You’re seeing the mana we distilled from the vines,” Nathariel said. “Useful mana, absorbable mana, energy ready to be integrated into your spirit.” He handed her the bowl and a spoon, and said, “Eat. Both of you. You will need it.”

She glanced back at Glade. He took a bowl nervously from Nathariel, but still bowed his head.

“Your friend managed to cycle,” Nathariel told her. “He is growing more powerful, and he may grow quite strong—for someone with a Fair Spirit—with proper nourishment. I would be happy to have him as a…student as well.”

Vayra took a single spoonful of her soup and swallowed it. It ran down her throat, tingling with energy and filling her stomach with swirling power. Like she was dealing with an elixir, she allowed the energy to fade outward into her body.

“Eat well, then get some sleep,” Nathariel instructed. “Early tomorrow morning, your true training will begin.”

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The next morning, Vayra awoke to the sound of metallic crashing outside. She nearly rolled off her hammock, but she spread her arms and caught her balance again. Slowly, she slipped out of the hammock.

Hers had been strung across the corner of Nathariel’s hovel opposite to the door, and Glade’s hung in the other corner. As far as she could tell, he was still asleep. Nathariel’s hammock, positioned in the third corner, was empty.

Vayra slipped out of her hammock and stepped softly to the door. A dreary, ash-smeared morning light filtered through the haze, along with a few stars. She pushed the door open a crack and leaned outside.

Nathariel stood in front of the shed, dragging rusted metal objects out its doors and along the path. They were shaped almost like humans, though they lacked detail. Their torsos were made entirely out of metal rings, which freely rotated. She figured they were training dummies, though she couldn’t yet discern how they worked.

Nathariel grumbled to himself as he dragged the dummies along the path. “You’ll fail with these two as well,” he said in a low voice. “They’ll turn out like all the other God-heirs. They’ll turn against you.”

The dummy bumped against a stone, wobbling, and he grunted in frustration. “And you’ll have created a dark Mediator, now, won’t you? Oh, Nathariel, you fool. You never learn.” Another bump, and another groan. “When will you just give up? You were never meant to be a hero…”

He had set out a small row of four dummies, and the one he was dragging was a fifth. Vayra tensed the muscles around her eyes like she was squinting, but she couldn’t sense any mana radiating off the dummies. They seemed to be normal, engineered, and non-magical.

As soon as he set the fifth dummy down, he turned around and spotted her peering through the doorway. “Good morning,” he muttered, straightening up rubbing the back of his head—as if he’d been saying nothing before. “Are you ready to get started?”

Vayra stepped out of the doorway, then walked down the path towards him. “I’m ready.”

Nathariel patted one of the dummies. “These are the old training totems given to me by my old master. The other fifteen are scattered throughout the woods, along a course. I make every disciple run it, but they’re tuned for much more powerful trainees.”

He turned towards the dummy, then drove a palm filled with flame into its gut. The disk rotated, and a steel bar shot out at chest level. Nathariel pushed the bar to the side. The flame-imbued Arcara that he thrust into it earlier ran along invisible channels in the dunny’s sides, which wound back around to the totem’s mouth and flared out towards him.

He ducked under it, then struck it hard in the chest. Bolts at its base released, and it toppled over on a hinge.

When Vayra stepped closer, she noticed thin channels of starsteel glinting up the sides of the dummy, perfect for carrying Arcara.

“Your task is to knock over all fifteen of the dummies,” Nathariel said. “I don’t expect success today, but I expect it soon.”

“But…sir,” Vayra began. “The sun is rising.”

“Do you think all your foes will be kind enough to face you during the night, or when the stars are out?” He shook his head. “You’ll have to find a workaround.”

As quickly as she could, Vayra gathered up her seer-core and filled it with as much starlight as she could. It would have to last her all day.

“Go ahead,” Nathariel stated. “Get started.”