I willed my acceptance to the wind spirits. Skipping past my chance to complete tempering here had never been an option. If I wanted to fulfill Esie’s request to learn more about what might be going on outside the goddess’s territory, if I wanted to prove myself as more than the troublemaker others wanted to mark me as, then I needed to complete my tempering within the wind spirits’ home.

There was a swirl of excitement around the chamber and then I was buoyed upward again, pulled into the air by a crowd of wind sprites. I only had a moment to wonder if the tempering would happen in this cave or if they meant to take me somewhere before I was swept, over and down, into the second half of the Twin Founts.

We plunged downward into the hole and all I could feel was relief that it wasn’t as scrapingly narrow as the crawl space I used to enter the cavern. Then the sprites went faster and faster with no regard for gravity or tight corners. I found myself hurtling toward walls, certain I was going to break my neck against the stone, only for the wind spirits to keep pulling me around the corner, a finger’s width of air between the rock and my nose.

Hating that I couldn’t control my flight and the repetitive, draining panic each new section of the passage provided, I closed my eyes. That way all I could see was the occasional gentle glowing light of a mote that passed closed by as the specks filled the wellspring’s wind. After that the trip could have been pleasant if I had been able to ignore what the rush of air against my skin meant. It took more will than I liked to keep my eyes shut and not give into the urge to see just how close the stone walls were.

I only opened up my eyes to see what was happening when I felt the space around me suddenly widen. It was both better and worse than I expected. I was in open air without any place to land within reach. If the spirits dropped me all I could look forward to was a long fall. Below there were only thick clouds of fog, though I could sense where the goddess’s veil billowed out all around us. The plateau’s edge rose up as a cliff behind me, numerous holes pocketing its surface. One notable opening was wide and smoothed, well worn, and a large outcropping of rock jutted from its mouth.

And the tip of that outcropping was covered in a large swirling mass of storms. Everything from snow to sleet and rain to scorching winds swept through its depths. Blistering heat, hotter than any warm season day I experienced, and mind numbing cold, so freezing I was sure it could make me a living statue within a few breaths, both emanated from that ball of storms. It seemed to pull in different wellspring wind streams while creating others.

This was a place of wild strength and beauty, and I no longer wondered at the trepidation whisper women had when they discussed staying in the storm for long. The nature of the chaotic, impossible storm before me made the season changing storms look tame in comparison. Even if I earned my boon here, I was no longer sure of my ability to stay in the storm long enough to gather information.

The wind spirits set me down on the outcropping near the entrance to the cave that disappeared into the plateau. Then they gave me their final direction:

Enter and temper by your own will. Seek the heart for greater hardship but quicker reward. Or leave to dance among lesser storms.

They scattered, seemingly to observe my choice. I eyed the storm of storms. It dwarfed me, but I refused to be cowed for long. The worst it could do was freeze me all over again, but with the hot blasts of air I doubted I’d remain that way for long. Nor did I have any way to see how far the outcropping extended into the storm, but I figured that if the spirits were keeping watch then they would carry me to safety like they had in the main trial area. If they didn’t, well, then this final trial would be more deadly than the rest by a large margin and I hadn’t heard any rumors to that effect.

No one else was around. Either others were in the storm or my habit of practicing long into the night had gifted me this opportunity to pitch my will against this final challenge without distractions. Lightning crackled and then boomed across the face of the storm.

I stepped forward.

I kept my stride smooth, unhurried, even as my heart picked up speed. My mouth dried out and I had to grit my teeth against the desire to stop and marvel at the impossible place I was headed towards. I had seen other impossible things and I doubted this would be the last. The goddess might not have created all the varied bits of life Her sister had pioneered, but Her creativity shone through in the depth She gave to the handful of things She was interested in.

For now, I had to focus. I only had one chance to forge my body anew here and earn the final boon of elemental resistance. One chance to earn respect in a way whisper women could understand.

I only stopped once I was a step away from the roiling storm. Its winds buffeted me, but like with the spirits’ veil I could tell the true strength of its forces were hidden behind an invisible wall. I hadn’t meant to stop. Originally, I had meant to stride right in, undaunted. But impulse caught me and I reached for my prayer needle. I pulled open the flap on my pants to prick one of the diamonds that made up my bless mark. Flicked the blood into the storm.

“I will persevere.”

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

I wasn’t sure if I meant it as a prayer or a challenge or something else entirely, and only the spirits would know if the droplets flaked away or not, but it felt right. Better than acting like an imbecile who didn’t know how to give respect when they wanted it in return.

That last and first step, the one that carried me from the calm air of the open sky to the roiling madness of the storm is something I will never forget. A riot of sensations—air so hot it burned my skin raw, wind so cold my fingers deadened to ice, a thousand sharp knives cutting me from all directions even as the half of my body still outside the storm only felt mild air. Tears welled up from the force of the wind and a gust strong enough to knock me off my feet slammed into my side and the only reason I stayed standing was because another blast caught my hip from the opposite direction.

Survival instinct, what little I still had of it, flared now that there was no one else around. It tried to trip me backwards, back out of the storm. Even on the edge of the storm it was all too much. A hundred different sensations, a hundred different forces, pushing and pulling on me, changing from one body part to the next, one second to another.

But to leave now would be failure.

And I couldn’t die.

I shoved forward another step. Was battered down to my knees before I growled and rose to gain another step. My frozen fingers burned even as a light wind brushed passed my face smelling like a fresh meadow. Tears froze my eyes shut one moment before a scouring wind forced them open the next. There was no rhyme or reason to any of it. Just every bit of weather I had ever considered coiling around each other in this sphere.

Rain lashed my legs and lightning flashed overhead. The air shrieked and moaned, boomed and cracked and whispered. I burned and froze. Was scraped raw by gritty winds and brushed so lightly by others I wasn’t sure if it wasn’t my imagination concocting something pleasant in this nightmarish place. The wind slammed me to the ground and picked me up again. Pulled my legs and arms and hair in all different directions until my joints nearly popped from their sockets.

Despite it all I continued forcing my way forward.

The storms got worse and the tempering continued.

This wasn’t a trial for thinking. Not unless you counted continually confronting the primal fear of being in a storm that was strong enough to destroy everything in its path. There wasn’t time to react. Even if you were fast enough to move out of the way one thing you just moved into the path of another. There was no dodging, no dead spaces of quiet air, not unless you left the storm behind.

This was trial of tolerance. Tolerance of pain and being uncomfortable and unable to control the space around you. Tolerance of only having the company of your own mind when all it wanted was to leave this overstimulating place behind. When it was certain you would die if you didn’t.

But my bless mark never prickled and the longer I stayed in the storm, after a certain point, the easier it became to stay. I knew what the storm could throw at me now even if I didn’t know what would come next. And going back would require just as much effort as going forward.

Everything around me raged. Bit and slashed and hit. I gritted my teeth and kept going forward. At some point I realized I had yet to find the edge of the outcropping despite being thrown every which way. It gave a surreal edge to the whole experience, since I was sure the outcropping had narrowed the closer I got to the storm and I should have found where it dropped off by now.

I knew I had reached the center of the storm when I could no longer stand due to the forces swirling around me. It left me too exposed, even if I could have stayed upright longer than a heartbeat before a gust knocked me over. Still, the heat and cold, rain and sleet and snow still found me and as it did I had just enough presence of mind to realize that my body was changing.

It wasn’t easier to weather the forces being thrown at me just because I knew what to expect, but because each individual storm began to affect me less. What had given me frostbite was still uncomfortably cold, but it didn’t deaden me with numbness. What had scorched and blistered my skin felt more similar to standing in a funeral pyre than diving into lava. Or so I imagined.

Everything became just a bit milder, just a bit more bearable. Only the force of the winds kept their strength. I shifted in place, trying to determine if I had completed my final boon or if I still needed to temper further in the storm. For the other boons there had been a decisive moment between not having the boon and then gaining it: drinking shadow, catching darkness and covering my eyes, a wind spirit pouring into my head.

That moment for this final boon hadn’t come yet. If there even was one.

The wind spirits had said to enter and temper by my own will. I kept my place in the storm through my stubbornness insisting I stay and I could already feel the changes across my body, so perhaps it was simply a waiting game. The longer I stayed in the storm the better tempering I’d receive, but that didn’t seem…completely correct. The whisper women hadn’t mentioned differences in tempering between those who did temper in this storm of storms. Only between those who tempered here and those that used the season changing storms.

It seemed too passive despite how difficult it was to stay where the storm could reach me. But how could I temper through my own will if that wasn’t the answer?

My mind caught on what I had done before entering the storm. How did we offer our will to the goddess?

I fumbled before pulling my prayer needle free. No longer dexterous enough to undo the flap on my pant leg, I pricked my wrist before smearing the blood over Flickermark’s trial mark on my chin.

“Temper me.”

For a long, long moment nothing happened. Then I saw the blood flake away on a burst of wind and lightning jolted from the sky to my ribs. Everything went white with pain as my body locked up.

I couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe and it was like I was frozen again, except for the way everything hurt. I don’t know how much time I lost to that agony, but slowly, oh so slowly it faded away until there was nothing but the storm doing its best to beat me into submission. Except that it felt muted now, still strong and harsh, but no longer a cacophony of sensations I could barely withstand. The scorching wind no longer blistered my skin and the freezing gusts no longer froze me solid. And, unlike with a normal lightning blast, everything was still intact. My clothes, my skin. No burns or hearing loss or other injuries to speak of.

I knew now, with certainty, that I could survive the worst the elements could throw at me longer than I had any previous right to without becoming a living statue.

I had gained my final boon.