Dellen glanced at the other initiates in the room around him. All of them had passed beyond the First Trinity? He could not remember the qualitative jumps between Trinities, but he was certain that Ardentus had just told him that he was much weaker than those around him.
He wanted to know how his forging had affected his Chronometric Aether, but he did not dare so much as think of the cradle of moonstone and whisper steel while he was watched.
“Where did they find an initiate who had yet to reach First Trinity?” Asked a woman to Dellen’s left.
“We were captured,” Dellen said.
Ardentus crossed the gap between them and backhanded Dellen out of his circle. “Initiates do not speak to each other.”
Dellen lay on the floor, stunned, his entire body felt weak, and his stomach rumbled.
“Yes, Master Ardentus.” His face smarted where Ardentus had hit him, even though it had been protected by the mask, and his vision refused to focus on one point. He had felt like reaching First Trinity would have meant something. Instead, it seemed that instead of being an insect in a pond full of hungry fish, he was now merely the smallest fish.
“Return to your seat.”
Dellen pushed himself up from the floor, his head still reeling from the force of Ardentus' blow. The taste of copper filled his mouth as he gritted his teeth, his body protesting against the pain. Despite the ache in his muscles and the sting on his cheek, he maintained a stoic composure.
He stumbled back to his seat, feeling the weight of humiliation settling upon him. The gaze of his fellow initiates bore into him, a mix of curiosity, pity, and superiority. Dellen could sense their judgment.
As he settled into his seat, Dellen focused on regaining his composure. The words of the woman to his left lingered in his mind. She had questioned how an initiate who had not reached First Trinity had ended up among them. It sparked a flicker of curiosity within him, a desire to uncover why the order was keeping him or the ‘unsullied’ as they were being called, at all.
Dellen's eyes darted towards Ardentus, who stood tall and imposing at the center of the room. The masked face of the master revealed no emotion, but the air around him crackled with unwavering authority. “You are all little better than children in my eyes. I will train you like children, spread around me in a circle.”
The initiates spread so that each still stood upon a training circle, but there was now an empty circle between each. Ardentus formed a ball of lighting between his hands and threw it at an initiate, “Catch.”
The initiate reached out with both hands held apart as though holding a ball and accepted the ball lighting in their hands. They grunted and then tossed the ball across the circle to another initiate. The ball was thrown again, and again, crisscrossing the circle until it was thrown to Dellen.
He reached out with both hands, circulating Electrical Aether around his palms, preparing a cradle for the ball lightning. It landed between his hands and broke apart like a ball of water. Electricity spilled everywhere, sparks burned the tips of his fingers before running down his wrists leaving black marks on his bandages and scorching the sleeves of his robes. He hissed in pain.
“Pathetic,” Ardentus said, he threw ball lightning at Dellen, it broke apart again. Ardentus shook his head, “If you can’t catch a simple ball of lightning, what good are you to us or anyone?” He threw another ball.
Dellen had just a moment to prepare, he flooded his hands with Aether, the ball came into his hands, wavered and splashed against him, singing his fingers. He gritted his teeth and didn’t make a sound.
Ardentus stepped out of his circle of metal. “Stand in the center circle, initiate,” he said to Dellen.
Unsure of what was to come, but certain that he wasn’t going to like it, Dellen quickly stepped into the circle.
In an almost bored voice, Ardentus said, “All of you, throw ball lightning at him once a minute, each, until either he learns to catch, or he falls.”
Dellen’s head whipped to Ardentus, then he spun on his heel. Some faces were impassive, but smiles formed on several. Lighting sparked in their hands.
Five balls of lightning shot forth in a staggered volley, Dellen’s heart rate spiked, trying to catch five was a fool’s errand, he would end up scorched on the floor with his muscles spasming. He circulated Electrical Aether to his hands and tried to bat the closest two of the balls away. That left three balls of lightning coming for him.
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Dellen stepped left on his circle, dodging one, and crouched beneath another, it passed over his head, air crackling in its wake. The final ball, he sprang back up to catch, it splashed against his hands, burning his fingers and setting fire to his bandages. His wrists slammed into his chest as he smothered the flames.
“The exercise is to catch, not redirect or evade,” Ardentus said, still sounding bored.
Dellen returned to the centre of the circle. He could do this. He knew that he had once ascended far past First Trinity, he would do so again. “How do you catch lighting? What do I need to do with my Aether?”
“Balance the charge in the ball with the charge in your hands.”
The words triggered a memory. For a moment, Dellen remembered learning this before, electricity could be held, but only if it had no place to escape.
Another volley of balls came at him.
Dellen's muscles tensed with anticipation as he focused on the next incoming ball of lightning. He extended his hands, swirling with Electrical Aether, and carefully inverted the charge to draw the sphere toward his palm. The Aether responded to his command, swirling and pulsating with controlled intensity.
With precise timing, just before the ball touched his skin, Dellen visualized another inversion of the charge, attempting to encapsulate the lightning within a protective sphere. His first two attempts proved futile. The lightning burst free, evading his grasp and crackling through the air.
The remaining three balls hit him on the torso and legs. Dellen's body spasmed. A surge of pain coursed through his limbs, causing him to stagger and lose his footing.
His muscles convulsed in response to the electric shocks, momentarily rendering him off balance and vulnerable. The room spun, and his vision blurred, his body spasmed.
Gritting his teeth and summoning every ounce of resilience, Dellen rose from his momentarily weakened state. He steadied himself, his eyes fixed on the waiting balls of lightning held by the initiates around him.
With renewed focus, he repositioned his stance, circulating the Electrical Aether within his body, ready to face the next onslaught. The initiates released another barrage of ball lightning, Dellen stood his ground, despite the relentless assault. Each sphere crackled and surged as the initiates threw them one after another. The room filled with an electrifying tension, anticipation mingled with the sparks that danced through the air.
As the first ball lightning hurtled towards him, Dellen reacted swiftly, raising his hands to intercept the incoming ball. The sphere flew into his palm, and again, he inverted the charge, caging it. The second sphere was too close for him to try that again; instead, he created a thumb-sized opening in his cage, and the constrained charge squeezed out, elongating a shot toward the second ball. The bolt and the ball bounced off of each other, veering in new directions, both away from Dellen.
He caught two more balls, one in each hand, and tried to use them to avoid the final ball lighting of the volley. He threw the two balls he held up, emptying his hands. “Haven’t I passed your test?”
“Not yet; any one of these five could do better. You need to show me that you should be here.”
Dellen didn’t want to be there, he was all but certain that Ardentus would let them kill him if given the slightest excuse. He adjusted his stance, positioning himself so that he was head-on with the initiate who most often threw first. Ball after ball came at him, each one posing its own unique challenge. Some were faster, some were bigger, some were stronger. Some he managed to deflect, redirecting the lightning with calculated movements. Others struck his clothes, leaving scorch marks and singeing his sleeves.
With each missed catch, Dellen's determination grew. His body spasmed from the shocks, but he gritted his teeth, refusing to show any signs of weakness. He absorbed the pain, the stinging reminders of his shortcomings, and channeled them into his drive to improve.
He began to read the subtle patterns and nuances of the ball lightning's trajectory. His eyes honed in on their movements, calculating their speed and angle. He started to anticipate their paths.
The initiates continued to unleash the onslaught, and Dellen let fewer through. His hands, marked from the earlier encounters, became more adept at catching the swirling currents of energy.
He snatched an incoming ball of lightning with fluid motions, his palms becoming an extension of the crackling storms. Dellen's body trembled with the strain, yet he pressed on. His clothes bore the marks of his perseverance, singed and tattered. He needed Ardentus to call a halt soon, he understood the theory, but there were limits to how much Electrical Aether he could draw before he was too tired to continue.
Another ball landed in his palm, a thunderstorm in miniature on his right palm, then he caught the second ball on his left before bringing both together and melding the charges into one, holding a double-sized ball in a single cage.
He collected another ball in his left hand, and pushed them together again, repeating the feat one more time with the fourth ball before releasing a huge ball of crackling energy into the path of the fifth ball, meeting it head-on, deflecting it, and continuing to the initiate who had thrown it.
The initiate’s eyes widened, and their hands spread apart in an attempt at catching the ball lightning. The ball wobbled, then broke, crashing over them, running over their body and into the metal plate at their feet.
“That’s enough.” Master Ardentus came out sharp, like the crack of a whip, calling a halt to the barrage. Silence settled in the room, the crackling energy receding. He turned on the fifth initiate, “How is it possible that you were unable to catch a ball lightning thrown at you by an Aetherforged of the First Trinity?”
The initiate gave Dellen a poisonous stare, mouth twisted in distaste.
“I’m talking to you,” Ardentus said, his voice low and full of menace.
“I didn’t expect him to throw it back to me,” the initiate sounded almost sulky.
“How is that possible when the entire point of the exercise was for him to catch the ball lightning and throw it back to all of you?” Ardentus’s low voice made it clear that the question was rhetorical and not to be answered.
From the emphasis on the words, Dellen assumed that everyone else in the room, aside from Ardentus, was of the Second Trinity, working towards the Third.
Ardentus turned to him, “Take your place in the circle. Practice isn’t over.”