"Mnemonics are all about concentration and repetition. You perform your technique simultaneously with the mnemonic you're using, whether that be word or gesture." Blaine immediately launched into a technical explanation, "The key is, make your shroud a part of the mnemonic. If you're using a gesture, wrap your shroud around your fingers. If you're speaking, breathe out your shroud along with the words. After several repetitions, your shroud basically trains itself to perform the technique using only the shorthand of the mnemonic."

Caeden nodded. He felt like he understood. "I think I get it. Can I try this with an already existing technique?"

Blaine nodded, "Yes, it's actually much easier. If you want to get the hang of mnemonics before we continue, go ahead and work on it with an existing technique for a few minutes. If it's something you've been training for a while, you should see some results quickly."

"That would be nice. I don't want to try learning to use two brand-new things at the same time. Ki is hard enough without adding mnemonics on top." Lily nodded.

Caeden wholeheartedly agreed. Plus, a few ideas for how to abuse this new system had popped into his head, and he was eager to see if they worked. There was only one technique he had at this point, which made the choice of what to try out straightforward.

"Thorn," Caeden spoke at the same time he started forming the rose-like collection of small blades. He added Sharp to the air coming up from his lungs and running through his voice box, all the way until the air emerged from his mouth as sound. He could see a red vapor drifting past his eyes coming from his mouth. It was interesting that mixing his shroud with the air gave it some airy qualities, but that was a thought for another time.

It was a measure of effort to carefully funnel his shroud up through his body like that. He was still using aura since it wasn't affecting his actual body, just the air inside it. Admittedly, it wasn't even a hundredth of the mental strain it took to make a thorn, but it added to the difficulty.

Caeden began rapidly dismissing and resummoning thorns while trying to create a mnemonic. The shroud on his breath became almost effortless after only ten repetitions. Caeden was glad he had spent so much time training to be able to make thorns quickly. It made iterating like this easy.

After not even a hundred repetitions, less than two minutes in, Caeden could feel something changing. Eagerly, he continued the exercise. Before five minutes had passed, he could feel his shroud working with him. He had always noticed that his shroud could move independent of his will. After all, when left on its own, Sharp tended to dart around and form bladed edges. He had assumed that was just a default. With every repetition, Caeden could feel the natural motion of his shroud syncing up with his thorns better and better, doing more of the work without him having to try.

"Thorn." The shroud flowed up from his lungs, through his throat, and out his mouth. Caeden put not a single ounce of effort into forming the actual thorn. It appeared anyway. His shroud even seemed to know where he wanted it to appear. "Oh, shit. Oh, this is so broken." Caeden started laughing. "This is just dumb. How did the teachers not tell us this? Thorn, thorn, thorn."

Every time Caeden repeated his new mnemonic, a new batch of whirling, spinning petals formed around him. They were all hovering in front of him, waiting. Caeden didn't have to do any of the mental effort of maintaining them; they just existed. And they were working away, passively generating shroud. He could sit here and regain all his Sharp without mentally exhausting himself. The biggest limitation of his technique had just vanished. "How high can I go?"

Caeden started spamming out thorns, feeling the flow of shroud being generated increase over and over again. Twenty, thirty, forty floating pseudo-roses spinning away. The noise was awful, but Caeden just used Physical Enhancement in his ears, and the overwhelming buzzing didn't bother him.

That was until Lily kicked him in the knee. Hard. "Turn that off! I'm going to go deaf, you dick!"

Caeden's giddy elation vanished. "Shit, sorry. Kinda got lost in the experiment." He dismissed all the thorns, taking the noise with them.

"I get it, and that's genuinely really cool," Lily half-smiled, half-glared. It looked like she couldn't decide between laughing at him or yelling at him, "Seriously, that's amazing. Please don't damage my hearing."

"Totally fair, my bad." Caeden raised his hands in defeat. He had forgotten his surroundings in the moment. "How's your practice going?" He changed the subject, hoping she would forget his temporary lack of situational awareness.

Lily smirked and made a series of three gestures. They were small, limited to moving her fingers on one hand, something that would be hard to notice. As she did, her fingers were wrapped in tendrils of solid blue shroud. In under a second, she had an ice dagger in her hand. It formed at lightning speed, much faster than she could normally do. "What do you think?"

"Great! So your mnemonic cuts down the casting time. Is that what you were trying to do?" Caeden asked.

"Yeah, of course. You weren't?"

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"No, I was trying to reduce the mental load of maintaining a thorn. Which is what I did." Caeden explained.

"Ahh, you've already touched on it." Blaine jumped in. "Mnemonics are a way of training shrouds. The mnemonic does what you intend it to do. Whether that's reduced casting time, maintaining the technique without effort, even things like auto-targeting opponents or setting traps. You tell your shroud what you want it to do, then repeat that with a shorthand over and over. Normally it takes much, much longer than what you two did. You both have high control, and I'm assuming you've been practicing those techniques for a while?" They nodded. "Yeah, that brings down the time it takes to make a mnemonic."

"Honestly, the biggest hurdle to making a mnemonic is making the technique first. After that, it's just brute force repetition. Now, are we ready to move on?" Blaine looked between them.

"Actually, you mentioned training to get your embodiment." Caeden rubbed his maimed hand. "Could you tell us about that?"

"Hmph," Blaine huffed and crossed his arms. Like a child. "Look, I want you guys to start learning Ki, and we keep having all these delays. How about this? Whenever one of you manages to make some Ki, even the tiniest bit, I'll explain. Sounds fair?"

"I guess?" It's not like Caeden was in a position to bargain.

"Great! Now, try to use a mnemonic while performing the technique I taught you to create Ki." Blaine demonstrated once more, wrapping his sword in shroud and taking a swing, producing a line of Ki the width of a string.

"How is this supposed to help? I thought mnemonics were supposed to help with already established techniques." Lily asked.

"Hmm? Oh, I didn't explain fully. For most shrouded, a mnemonic wouldn't help them form Ki. In most cases, Ki Creation is about understanding your weapon. We're avoiding that by using the unique opportunities offered by your shrouds' aptitude for the process. Mnemonics are all about getting your shroud to assist you. So using a mnemonic on an incomplete technique will hopefully get your shroud on board and let you separate Ki from your domain with less resistance." Blaine was making hand gestures, waving back and forth as if to help them understand through sheer force.

Caeden thought it sounded like bullshit. It seemed like their teacher was throwing out mnemonics, hoping it would help without any real proof to that end. But he was willing to try it. After all, mnemonics had already proven to be exactly what he needed.

An hour passed with Caeden trying to use a sword to cut his shroud, which seemed dumb on the face of it. Adding to that, he was also repeating 'cut' with every swing, like a command. He started to feel silly after half an hour with no reaction. His mind started to wander, and he began imagining all the techniques he could use with mnemonics. Caeden had several ideas for using both Sharp and Physical Enhancement that he had abandoned due to previously insurmountable flaws. Some were simply too metally taxing or slow to activate, while others required more shroud than he had. All of this was essentially solved with the proper application of mnemonics.

While his mind was drifting, Caeden kept up the exercise, the action of swinging his sword and repeating the phrase falling into the background. As he lost all focus on the task, there was a small shift in Sharp as it wrapped around his training sword. That small shift caused a sliding sensation to radiate out from the edge of his blade into his shroud. It stuttered and shook, but several drips of white light came off his sword. They were tiny dots, like little specs of dust, but they were real.

"Oh. Oh!" Caeden came back into focus. He had done it, just a little bit. He excitedly looked toward Lily, only to find her already watching him. "What?"

Lily laughed. "You spaced out so hard. I finished, like, five minutes ago. We were just waiting for you."

Caeden let out his own self-deprecating laugh. "Sorry, I'm excited about doing some more with mnemonics. I started thinking up some plans, and then it just happened."

"Of course." Blaine nodded sagely, "Your mind drifted so far from the action of swinging your sword that you lost focus of it. Since your shroud was right there, it stepped in. It's just like a mnemonic. This is why meditation is a great way to learn Ki Creation."

"Why didn't you just tell us that then? What was with the whole mnemonic thing? The actual mnemonic part didn't help at all." Lily gave the swordmaster a skeptical look.

"Because, have you ever tried meditating on purpose? My Ki sensei taught me with the meditation method. It took me weeks to get to do what you just did." Blaine snorted.

Lily and Caeden looked at each other. Caeden looked back to their sensei. "I think that's more of a personal hang-up than a hard rule. Meditation isn't that hard, right?" Caeden looked to Lily for support, who nodded.

"Don't be ridiculous. The easiest way to meditate is to do something so pointless and boring your mind can't help but wander, and then poof, you're meditating." Blaine clapped his hands.

Caeden paused, then slowly shook his head. "Nope. Pretty sure that's not how meditation works."

Blaine sighed. "Look, do you want me to show you how to improve your Ki Creation or not?"

"Actually, I'd like you to tell us about how to train toward embodiment since you said you would." Caeden once again rubbed the scar tissue on his hand. Recently, he had wondered about getting it healed up. It had never bothered him, and he had just accepted it as a part of his life. Now, that felt like an excuse to not try. Something he had apparently been doing a lot.

"Ugh, if you insist. This was not supposed to be part of your training." Blaine groaned and stomped his foot in frustration. "You both keep interrupting our training."

You keep telling us about these other skills! Why wouldn't we ask?! Caeden felt like screaming. You can't just introduce entirely new facets of our shrouds to us and then ignore it! He held back from actually saying anything since it would only derail the conversation further and probably make their teacher even huffier.