Phasoné gasped. “Get it back under control. Widen your stance! Use the Eleven Gaze of Eather!”

Vayra spread her legs and unleashed three untimed, slow, open palm strikes into the empty darkness—not the Ni Mela strikes Phasoné has asked for. Nothing blasted out of her hands, but nothing was supposed to.

The void didn’t respond. Vayra tried to guide her willpower, counteracting a spear of untamed Arcara blasting through her core, but at the same time, four hands of darkness reached out and ripped at the outer core. She wrestled the light and darkness back and forth three more times, each burst getting more and more violent. Spikes of darkness reached all the way out of the core, and gray lightning blasted through the center.

Vayra fought desperately to form a rhythm and once again turn her core to water—malleable to willpower.

“Can you hold it completely still?” Phasoné yelled.

Vayra scrunched her eyebrows. With as much force as she could, and backing her thoughts with willpower, she thought, No! I’m losing control!

A wave of fear washed away the edge of the core. Phasoné’s presence grew dimmer in the back of Vayra’s mind. Phas, I need help! You’re…you’re fading!

“I’m still here!”

I need you to keep time! The Ni Mela wouldn’t do any good without the proper timing.

“I’m trying!”

Try harder, or you’re gone and I’m a cripple—inside and out. Without a core and Arcara control, Vayra’s mechanical limbs wouldn’t work at all.

“I—” Phasoné cut herself off. “I have an idea.”

A low hum built in the back of Vayra’s mind, and it scoured through her body. Her channels wavered, buffeted by the noise. It was slightly off-tune.

Is that—

“Be quiet and beat the time on your sleeve! Or…whatever you mortals do.”

Huh?

The hum shifted down a note into a perfectly sonorous pitch. Then it began to shift tone. Vayra recognized the timbre of Phasoné’s voice, even if it was just a hum. But the hum proceeded into a melody.

It rose and fell at the exact same speed as Phasoné’s counting. After a phrase of music, Vayra picked up the beat. She didn’t know much about music, but she didn’t need to. She just needed to feel each bar.

She stepped down, marking the first phase of the Ni Mela, then pulled back. Third phase: reach out, fourth phase, pull to the side. Willpower flowed down her limbs, and the core’s unbalanced spurts dimmed.

The hum halted for a second. A blast of light shot through the dark core, but Vayra maintained the next phase of the Ni Mela, an inward pull, for a few seconds longer than she should have. She extended her willpower to hold the light in place just a little longer. Phas…I can’t—

“Oh, damn it all…” Phasoné muttered. The core swayed, and the Goddess audibly inhaled.

Then she released a song.

Vayra couldn’t understand it; it wasn’t the standard Velaydian language. But it followed the same rhythm, and it was enough for Vayra to cling on to. She followed the basic stances of the Ni Mela, flowing along with the song and stirring her core with her willpower. Phasoné’s words crescendoed when Vayra transitioned into the offensive, intense stance, and they faded when she pulled back to a reserved stance. They had timed it impeccably.

The black inner core’s borders broke, and the liquid holding Vayra in place fell, scattering black droplets onto an invisible floor. She was flung back into her own mind, with direct control of her body…

Sort of.

She was inside the white void, now, though for miles, black liquid scattered across the ground. And the ground wasn’t so white anymore—it was the same shade of light gray that the outer core had become.

Phasoné stood just behind Vayra, hand on her chest, letting out the rest of the foreign song. Vayra still had a job to do.

With both hands, she reached out and moved to the last phase of the Ni Mela. It was a wide stance, with bent knees. With slow-motion two-armed strikes, she gathered the inky liquid of the black void into waves, then smeared it back and forth across the light gray emptiness.

With every light step, every swish of an arm, some of the black void soaked into the light gray, darkening it.

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When the last droplet of void faded, Phasoné ended her song mid-line. Vayra caught her own breath, then looked around. Everything was a uniform shade of gray. She could speak again, so she did. “Is it done?”

Then a spear of impulse passed through her core. She couldn’t control it, nor could she visualize it. She fell, but Phasoné rushed forward and caught her before she hit the ground—even if the impact wouldn’t do much.

“You’re advancing to Third Lieutenant,” Phasoné said. “You did the hard part. Just compact the core, draw in the Arcara and mana, and use it to improve the quality.”

Well, at least her mana was unlimited right now.

Vayra’s first advancement had only been months ago. She remembered the process of compressing the core, so she repeated it. Without a limit to her mana, the process of cutting and layering the strips of Arcara onto her core and wrapping it tight felt almost trivial—so much so that she didn’t need to visualize her core to do it.

Inside the core, the walls began to squish in on Vayra and Phasoné. Vayra hadn’t thought the void was limited in space, but a wall began to press against Vayra’s back, pushing her closer to the Goddess with every layer of Arcara she added.

When there was no more Arcara to use, Vayra expected herself to pass out, whether from sleep exhaustion or using too much willpower, but she stayed standing, her nose a mere inch away from Phasoné’s.

Vayra caught the Goddess in a hug and rested her chin on Phasoné’s shoulder. “Wasn’t so hard, yeah?”

“At least we…didn’t die.” Phasoné let out a sigh. “Or I didn’t die, and you didn’t become a cripple.”

“At least now I know you have a wonderful singing voice.”

“Product of advancement, not skill. Your voicebox gets purified and tuned the higher you climb.”

Vayra pulled away a little, then met Phasoné’s gaze. “So…what was the song?”

“Nothing. Just a little…ditty from my homeworld.”

“The way you say that makes me not want to believe you.”

Phasoné looked down at the gray floor and shrugged. “I know I can’t convince you otherwise.”

“Oh…it’d be really nice to be able to read your thoughts, now.” Vayra put her hands on her hips. She tried to step back again, but her back pressed against the edge of the void. “But I guess that’s a one-way street.”

“Sadly,” Phasoné began, “you’ll be able to very soon. As you progress through the Lieutenant stages, you’ll get a lot more…insight into me, good or bad. That, among other raw magical strength improvements and soul-hardening.”

“Not sure if I want to know, when you put it like that.” Vayra scratched the back of her head. “So I’m a Third Lieutenant, now?”

“Correct.”

Phasoné took one more step back in the other direction. “Now, get on with it. Get back out and report to the others what happened.”

“Is time still stalled in here?”

“Not exactly,” said Phasoné. “It wasn’t stalled at all in the black inner core, and in the outer core, it was stalled completely. Now, it passes at about half-speed inside.”

“Good to know,” Vayra said, then forced her eyes open outside the void, drawing herself out completely. She was still on the forecastle, hand still dipped in a bucket of Stream water, but the host of Order of Balance Adepts gathered around her, as well as Glade, Nathariel, and Captain Pels.

“Are you alright, my lady?” one of the Adepts asked, rushing across the deck.

“I’m alright.” Immediately, Vayra yawned. She wanted to stand up, but neither of her legs responded, and she didn’t end up moving. She tried again, coaxing blood back into her flesh-and-blood toes with a wiggle. She had no Arcara to fuel her prosthetic leg or arm, so she spend a few seconds cycling mana from the bucket of Stream water just to give herself something to fuel the limbs with.

Then she pushed herself up.

Her body hadn’t been remade, nor did anything feel stronger right away. But it looked different. Lines of unbroken blood-red feathers ran along her arm and leg. They nearly pushed to the surface, but they hadn’t broken through her skin yet. It looked like it should hurt, but even when she pressed the slight bulge, there wasn’t even a sting. No inflammation, nothing. The lines ran up her neck like a tattoo, and when she rubbed her cheekbones, she felt another ridge of feathers at the tips—like whiskers. More lingered along the tips of her ears, too, before dipping back down and snaking around her gut.

‘You better not turn into a bird,’ Phasoné complained.

Vayra tilted her head. “Will I actually?”

‘You will forge an ideal form eventually,’ Phasoné said. ‘Which will, in parts, be of your choosing. I’m sure feathers will remain. Get more powerful, and you might be able to transform between your phoenix heritage and ideal humanoid form.’

Vayra dropped her arms.

“Wonderful, wonderful!” Captain Pels clapped a little. “I didn’t see what happened, but…” He nudged Nathariel. “The expressions on Mr. Layre’s face were quite a thing to behold. But I figure you’re exhausted, and we’ve got two watches—sixteen hours—before we arrive at Harvest Sanctuary.”

“He’s saying that you better make it count,” Phasoné said.

But the Goddess’ voice wasn’t inside Vayra’s head. It came from behind.

Everything shone white, as if they had sailed right past a star. The light dimmed after a moment, but it didn’t go away entirely. Vayra whirled around.

There, a few feet behind her, Phasoné stood. She had no colour—everything about her was a framework of starlight-white wires, just like how the scythe manifested—but she had appeared nonetheless.

Vayra tried to pass her hand through the apparition, but when it bumped up against a line of Arcara, it stopped. Phasoné’s form was mostly physical.

“That’s new…” she muttered.

“To prove that we made it to Lieutenant,” Phasoné said.

“I think our survival was proof enough.” Vayra turned back to the crowd. She spread her arms and shrugged. “Voila?”

Everyone stared on with gaping mouths and raised eyebrows—everyone but Nathariel. The Admiral just crossed his arms. “Just go to sleep.”