“It’s time for you to teach me something. I can’t afford to follow you forever. Train me, ‘Master’,” said Kan’on.

I groaned, half asleep in the morning light. It had been a few days since the attack by the Ilfid. The caravan had taken the rest of the day to take care of the wounded and take stock of any losses. The next day had been uneventful, the caravan making good time and leaving the forest behind for grasslands, where they’d stopped to make camp for the night. The teamsters parked the wagons in organized lines with enough space to take care of the animals and pitch tents. No open fire allowed though, didn’t want to set the whole region on fire.

“May the deep ones curse you to never make it to the privy on time again,” I mumbled.

Jingling and jangling sounds carried through the still morning air as drivers and teamsters broke camp and hitched horses. Glad that I’d become an official passenger, I watched as the guardsmen took up their gear and prepared for the day. Based on the level of organized chaos, we’d be setting out soon.

“I have an idea what your actual master, the geezer sitting in his frigid relic of a school, sent you to me to learn, and it’s not my tricks. I’m not sure if I want to teach you anything anyway.”

“I think the only thing you and I agree on is that the Grandmaster never says anything clearly. That he sent me to you at all is indication enough that I should be here, however much I would like to find my own path.”

I sighed and reached through the currents to my cubby to grab a flask. I took a measured sip before capping it and putting it in a convenient pocket. I did owe the old man a favor. Favors couldn’t be left unpaid forever.

“Fine, sure. A lot of what I know can’t be taught, at least not without paying a price that’s beyond your reach. The old ways though, the deep ways… that I can teach you.”

“I don’t understand the difference between how you perform magic and the old ways.”

“Well, they’re tied together. The distinction isn’t important. The important thing here is that I know what you need to do to learn it.”

Kan’on shrugged.

I sighed again. The reason he was sent to me was obvious after seeing Kan’on fight. He was caught between two levels of strength. On the one hand, he could outperform nearly everybody in terms of weapon arts and raw power, but on the other hand, he would never truly stand at the top of the heap with his sect leader. Not if he continued as he had been.

“You lack two things,” I said, ticking off my fingers, “willpower and flexibility.”

“Lacking willpower?” Kan’on scoffed. “I’ve endured countless hardships, injuries, and humiliations to get where I am. Nobody with weak willpower can achieve what I have.”

I snorted, wrenched my stiff body up and gathered my gear, packing it away in my bag and throwing it in the wagon bed. I tossed my sword in after, back in its scabbard and securely hidden with the dingy wrap. My injured arm and shoulder hardly twinged, only a shadow of the former pain remained as the last of the repairs fell into place. Jass was already sitting in his seat, puffing on a pipe and watching the purples and reds of the early morning sky fade away.

Kan’on tossed his stuff in and climbed in after. He stared at me, dissatisfaction plain on his face. Stiff backed cultivators were a pain the ass. Any perceived slight may as well have been a slap in the face for them, and likely would result in some kind of ridiculous honor duel. I’d been convinced for years that the sect leaders allowed this kind of behavior because there weren’t enough people for their gaggle of disciples to fight, so they may as well fight each other.

“You boys ready?” Jass asked as we settled down for a long day in the wagon.

I gave him a thumbs up and he cracked the reins. The wagon jerked forward, rocking around as wheels fought ruts and mounds in the grass off the road. I admired the view as Jass pulled us up onto the road in our normal place around the middle of the caravan.

“Looks like we’ve still got some time to wait. Slow morning,” Jass said, then pulled out his pipe again and started puffing away.

Of all the ways to travel the land, caravans somehow made it to the top of my list. Nothing beat the atmosphere, the smells, the sounds, the people. I gave myself some time to let it soak in, as well as let Kan’on stew in his own juices before I turned to him.

“Look, I know how the sect disciples train. Endless visualization training, meditation, internalizing power, and repetition. That’s good if you’re trying to overcome plateaus or learn the secret techniques you all love so much, but it’s terrible for learning how to change tactics or do things that are otherwise unfamiliar to you.”

“Let’s assume that what you say is true. What does it matter? I’m more powerful than you, I can feel it. What does it matter if I’m not flexible enough or lack willpower if I’m twice as powerful?”

“You think you can beat me in a fight?”

“Yes, absolutely.”

“You’re right, but not for the reason you think.” I chuckled at Kan’on’s confused expression. “You’d beat me, but not because of magic. You’d win because your ability with weapons and physical prowess are greater. I’d snuff out your magic like a candle in a monsoon.”

Stolen novel; please report.

“Prove it,” Kan’on said.

I raised an eyebrow and said, “Just like that? Ok, I’ll prove it, but we need to make this interesting. Every time you fail to do what I ask of you; you will break one of your own fingers.”

“That’s ridiculous.” He laughed for a second before realizing that I wasn’t laughing with him. “You’re serious. You really expect me to break my own fingers. Expecting that I’ll fail at whatever it is aside, you can’t honestly expect me to injure myself, right?”

“You want me to teach you. This is the way it’s going to happen.”

Kan’on had probably suffered many injuries over the years as a result of combat and just the normal course of training, but I doubted he’d ever purposefully inflicted an injury on himself.

One thing I didn’t miss from my previous life were those tragic stories where the hero casually cut their own hands to make blood pacts with fairies, or the hero sacrificed their bodies to gain powers to defeat the big evil monster. It was all bullshit.

I’d met very few people capable of chopping up their own flesh. You had to be able to overcome your body and mind’s natural response first, and to most that was an impenetrable barrier.

I’m sure that Kan’on was capable of that kind of willpower, if he was pushed to it. He probably thought that it wouldn’t be that big a deal, but making him aware of what it took, then pushing him to realize that he was capable… that was another matter. The whole point was to sharpen willpower, weaponize it. He needed to be able to turn the weapon on himself first.

“Fine. The sooner I can get it done, the sooner I can get back to where I belong.”

I grinned, admiring his confidence, but I was going to burst his bubble and all it would take is a simple heat cantrip.

“All you have to do is use the heat rune to burn my hand.” I set my hand on the bed of the wagon between us and looked at him expectantly. “But remember, if you fail you will break the finger of your choice. If you don’t, I will not continue teaching you until you do.”

Kan’on hesitated at the last part, but soon drew a familiar rune in the air over my hand. To my eye, it looked technically perfect, not unexpected from someone of his standing. The power he invested into the rune bled out into the Flow, building up as a precursor to the searing heat the rune was known for.

Much like with the Ilfid Brute, I nudged the current connected to the rune, urging it to spill its power out faster, bleeding away its capability to harm me. I sat there, waiting for Kan’on to realize something was off.

It didn’t take long. His brow furrowed, I felt and saw him feed more power into the rune, which swelled the currents, giving me more to work with to bleed the rune faster, which led to him feeding it even more power, until eventually he struggled at max capacity, and then finally slumped back, spent. My hand remained on the bed of the wagon completely unharmed.

“I don’t get it,” Kan’on managed to say between deep breaths. “It should work. There is no reason it shouldn’t have worked.”

“If you were fighting another ‘magic’ user, a ‘magician’, then it would have worked, because you’re fighting each other with your power, not fighting for control of the power. Relying on nothing but a rune and your power is a crutch. Now go ahead, break a finger.”

Kan’on looked up, shocked, seeming to have forgotten the price of failure.

“Pain isn’t a good teaching tool. I would expect someone like you to know that.”

“Pain can absolutely be a good teaching tool, under the right conditions. This isn’t that, though. This isn’t about the pain. Not really. When you’ve done what I’ve asked, I’ll show you what I mean.”

Kan’on hesitantly put the index finger of his off hand in his other hand, gripping it tightly. Seconds passed and aborted attempts were made. He even went so far as to severely bend the finger over, causing himself much more pain and dread than was strictly necessary. I watched his hands shake as he struggled with himself, working to overcome his own kneejerk response. And failing.

He jumped to his feet and shook out his hand. Giving me an irritated look, he grabbed his sword and jumped out of the wagon.

“Also, you’re not allowed to go do any visualization training on this! It has to be spur of the moment!” I laughed to myself as I watched him walk away. He’d get it. He just needed to work himself up a bit.

Was I being too cruel? I wasn’t a kind person by nature, but I couldn’t help but think about Kan’on’s sect leader, the grandmaster. If Kan’on was to truly take that old monster’s place someday, he needed to be sharper, his willpower a razor’s edge that could shred through enemies.

A self-satisfied smile crept onto my face and I grabbed the flask from my pocket. I let the liquor run down my throat, then sighed. It tasted sweeter than usual.

The wagon finally jerked into motion as Jass snapped the reins. He looked over his shoulder at me then gave a meaningful look in the direction Kan’on had disappeared.

I shrugged in response and said, “Guess he wants to walk.”

Jass just chuckled and puffed his pie as the caravan set out for the day.

###

Kan’on hopped back into the wagon sometime later, interrupting my cloud gazing. I sat up and searched his expression for any change.

“Will I be able to do the other thing you do? The thing where you throw a rock or your sword through a rune and it carries the effect with it?” Kan’on asked.

“Nope. But I can guarantee you that when you’re done there won’t be a single person alive who can interrupt your power. Not me, not the Grandmaster of Skyreach Pinnacle… nobody.”

“Just another impossible mystery then.” He let out a resigned breath and looked at his hands. “Well, you’ve convinced me.”

Kan’on’s expression hardened. Without hesitation, he grabbed his left index finger and snapped it at the knuckle… decisively. He grimaced and I heard a suppressed growl rippling up his throat as he cradled his finger against his chest, as if that would make it hurt less.

I related to that, the suppressed pain, on a visceral level. Even if it was just a finger, the small stuff always seemed to hurt more than it had any right to. On the other hand, he had a broken finger.

I drew up a bone setting rune in the air in front of me and looked around the bed of the wagon. I spotted one of the nuts Kan’on liked so much and plucked it from its place. I lined up the nut with the rune, aimed carefully, then tossed it through. It smacked into the broken finger, and to my delight, a strangled cry escaped Kan’on’s mouth, then his face did something I hadn’t seen before; his expression fell into a deep state of annoyance. Of course I laughed.

“I guess I should thank you, but you’re a vicious bastard, so you can forget about that,” Kan’on said, his finger bending and crunching back into place. After a few seconds the bleed-over healing effect repaired the rest of the damage as well.

“Let’s get started then. We’ll do the same thing again, but don’t go crazy with it. The first thing you’ll need to learn is awareness of the Flow, then how your willpower manifests into the Flow. We can use the rune as the starting point, you need to feel the connection. We’ll make another serious attempt another time. For now, just try to sense it.”

We sat in the wagon’s bed, him trying his damned best and failing to sense the currents of the flow as I propped up his with my own power. I didn’t blame him for being frustrated, though, despite my not-so-hidden enjoyment of his predicament. The first steps to practice the old ways were difficult. There were reasons not everybody could do it.

It took a feat of willpower.