That night I was in no mood to read; Makka not answering the door had left me in a state of perpetual worry. Somewhere deep inside me, I knew that, probably, all he needed was some time. To be alone for a day or two, reflect on what had happened, and set his mind up. That was probably the case.

However, that part of me was buried under layers and layers of fear and worry. What if he had really taken offense, or worse, what if he didn’t consider me his friend at all? I didn’t want to think of it, but the possibility that he had already left for the East without us, was also real.

I could barely think about anything other than this. Studying runes and formations was the very last thing that I wanted to do. But my promise still stood intact. What if Makka spoke back to me and I hadn’t made any advances in the theoretical department?

I could not let any of that happen, so I forced myself to spend a few hours in the Compendium. I could have gone to my cell and just read Layan’s book again to make sure I caught all the hidden meanings and subtexts. However, I needed something to take my mind off of that.

I read until my eyes said enough, until the point where they closed without my consent. I didn’t manage to stop thinking about Makka for more than five minutes, but in a way, I had managed to keep my promise.

I’d like to say that, finally, I managed to sleep a night without awakening once. But I would be lying. My head was too full of problems and devoid of solutions to reconcile such a deep sleep. Nevertheless, I rested just enough that going back to the training center was not a huge undertaking.

Dravia was already waiting for me. She and the pile of seemingly random objects she had brought with her. Surely each would serve a specific purpose in my training, tone a different part of my body, or develop a skill I was currently lacking.

I saluted with the traditional Drak’ga gesture, and she reciprocated with the military one. I hoped one day I would be close enough to her to ask about her past, where she served and why she was here. But that was not the day.

“Your stance. Where did you learn it?”

She had a particular curt way of saying hello. Certainly not my preferred one. I had come to enjoy small talk, and this type of situation usually threw me out of it.

“That’s my previous teacher’s style. They were generous to share their own technique with me, and I’ve been diligently trying my best.”

She hummed once, her eyes drawing a fine line. She didn’t trust me. I didn’t know why, but clearly she was buying the origins of my stance. However, if there was one thing I would never lie about is Yaasir’s teachings.

“Let me start by pointing out your biggest flaw,” she completely changed the topic. “Yesterday, when the fight started, you were rigid. Your movements came from your head, and you were not flowing with the battle. Yet, you perfectly captured the essence of your stance. You didn’t expose yourself or try maneuvers that were not thought of for your battle posture and your hands’ positioning.

“The second half, I was fighting a completely different person. You adapted to me, to the fact that I am significantly stronger and that normal attacks wouldn’t do anything to me. And, in doing all of that, you forgot about your technique, weak points, and even common sense.

“Only when you get a hold of the Ink can you become the master of your stance. Communion means ‘where two become one’, and that’s far from just giving up on yourself and handing all control over

“Come.”

I was still processing everything she said. Again, without directly saying so, there was praise in her message. She was telling me that I did well on the last part of the fight—if it could be called that. Also, she was making it clear that before that point, either when being myself or when letting Ink control me, I had performed below her expectations.

We went slightly off the center of the dome, where she pointed down to a mat on the floor.

“I’ve divided your training into three different parts. The first thing you will be doing is learning how not to fight.”

I’m sure my face at that moment was nothing short of a puzzle. It took me a few seconds to make the connection between her previous admonishment and my first assignment, but I did after only a few seconds. Hopefully, not long enough to make her rethink my status as her student.

“You know about communion, and you have used it to fight. You have probably also used it to draw, am I right?”

I nodded; she was, of course, right. Communion had been crucial to unlocking the chest and fighting for Spare. Since I knew how to enter that state, I had been using it whenever an occasion presented itself.

“Have you ever tried it without any purpose in mind?”

“No,“ blinking, perplexed by the question, I realized I had never done that.

“Today, and over the course of the next few days, you will learn to commune without seeking anything in return. Sit over here.”

I initially sat cross-legged but reevaluated half-way when she shook her head. If there was some specific way of doing it, Spare didn’t know either. For all I knew, it might have been her or her former master’s tradition.

“Should I sit in any particular way?”

“It’s not about how you sit, but how you sit,” she said, emphasizing the second time. “Straight back, feel your muscles, yet let your mind relax.“

I did as she said. My back was straight and my legs wanted to move, but I kept them in check. My hands were tensioned, so I let them rest on my knees. I took a deep breath. I chased all my thoughts away.

But Makka came back to haunt me.

“You don’t need to be drawing or fighting to call to Ink. You have already done it before. Empty any other thoughts and recall what that felt like.”

It felt guilty. I wanted to forget about everything and only think of the present, of my task. I wanted to ignore the fact that Makka had chosen to answer back. I thought of Dravia, of not disappointing Yaira.

I thought. I did the complete opposite of what I should have been doing. And the more I paid attention to it, the greater the struggle. Feelings, thoughts, prayers, wishes—everything had chosen that moment to come at me. I was afraid of failing. If I let down my mother, Spare, Yaasir, my friends, and now Dravia, I wouldn’t forget myself.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

“I can’t!”

I opened my eyes in fury, sending my punches crashing down the floor. I had tried, but I couldn’t get anywhere. It was overwhelming—I was.

“Take a look around yourself,” Dravia said, ignoring my complaint and most certainly my tantrum.

Obsessed with my own thoughts, I had failed to notice that my surrounding had changed. I missed it both when it was changing, but also when I opened my eyes. But now that I knew, it was impossible to miss.

There was sand in circles around me. Concentric circles that were born from the exact place I was sitting. One small mountain of sand gave birth to a valley until the next one. I didn’t have to know what they were to be certain that it had been me. They fit exactly Yaira’s description of what had happened in the baths.

“But, how? I’ve failed at leaving my mind blank…”

“You did, and that’s why this is all you could do,” she told me with a smile on her face.

It looked weird on her. It was new. It was unexpected. The stern teacher that I had seen until then disappeared, and all I saw was the friendly smirk of a mother teaching her son a lesson.

“Open your eyes wide and don’t blink; this is not something I will be repeating any time soon.”

Surrounded by sand, the phrase sounded more like a punishment than a reward. Nonetheless, I placed my faith in her and opened my eyes as wide as I could as she was closing hers.

She inhaled for three seconds as her hands came forward from her hips. Two fingers pointed forward while the thumb looked at the sky. If it were anyone else but me, that’s all they would have seen. Just a person taking a martial stance.

Yet my eyes had almost popped from their sockets. She was glowing. I could no longer see any of the tattoos on her body because all of her had become a single entity.

There was no thread of Ink exiting her body and going somewhere else. Instead, what I saw, was a column of white radiance hitting her body. And then it happened.

Her eyes opened. Her arms extended forward. She exhaled as a martial shout came from her diaphragm. The circles of sand on the floor blurred and became airborne. For two seconds, they stayed there, floating right in front of my eyes, unmoving, until she relaxed and the sand fell back into chaos.

“What you’ve seen,” she said while I forced my mouth to close, “is a really inefficient use of Ink. Yet, at the same time, it’s an unequivocal proof that I’ve reached a purer state of communion.”

“Inefficient?” That’s all I could ask, because for me, this was well beyond what any Inker had ever shown me.

Spare, even if I still admired his masterful technique at craving with Ink, had never been even close to that. He was equally astonished at what just happened. She called Ink to herself; that’s what my true sight was telling me. She made Ink go to her and she made a display of force with it.

And yet she calls it inefficient.

“You cannot simply make Ink appear out of thin air. Every bit that I’ve used has been repaid twice with Ink on my body. The reason why the general population is advised not to practice the old ways, why this knowledge is reserved to only a few, is that they cannot pay the price.”

There was a silence. She was telling the truth; I knew. Spare had once become really agitated when I confessed to having read, touched, and learned a formation from his Ink Formations book. In his words, I could have died or become catatonic. And it seemed there was a science behind it.

“When the price cannot be paid in unbound Ink, then you pay with your own. And, if yours is not enough, then you pay with your Line.”

I reflexively turned my arm to look at my ankle. My Line was there, long and unaltered. When my mother died prematurely, her Line had just dissolved. As did Drak’oora Kasd’s. It begged the question: had Ink reclaimed what was Hers to begin with?

“The price to pay when using Ink like this, freely and without guidance, it’s steep. The reason we use glyphs, sigils, and formations is none other than efficiency. Focusing Ink on a clear and defined purpose. When you materialize that Ink, when the formation acts, the price is paid with the drawing itself.”

I couldn’t stop myself from gasping. I had been misunderstanding Ink for as long as I had been using it. It didn’t wear out because you used it; instead, because you used it, you were paying the price and returning that Ink to its origins.

What I saw now—those lines, strings, threads, and connections—were the price being paid back. Slowly and continuously, a tiny drip of Ink was finding its way back to its origins.

To its origins, Spare.

I had to tell that to someone; I just couldn’t keep it quiet. It had been so obvious, hidden in plain sight right in front of me.

The East is where Ink comes from. That’s why the Empire is fighting wars there, and that’s why they haven’t been able to distribute more Ink. We are running out of Ink.

We are running out of Ink… I repeated it once more as the implications sank in.

“Listen, Tarar. What you have in your hands is not the end of the Empire,” Spare said in a way that was too quiet and serene to be good. “You have the end of society as we know it. If word gets out and spreads, there will be panic and chaos like we have ever seen.”

That… the end of society…

We fell into tacit silence. That was the only good answer to what I had just discovered. If that scenario came true, if all Ink had been used, then our society would crumble.

Even Dravia had not spoken. She might have known what I was thinking of, or maybe she was just giving me some space to think. If she realized what was going on in my head, then she ought to give me at least a week.

Spare had just told me to be careful with this information. And he was most certainly right. It could not spread, or we risked generalized chaos. But Yaira and Makka had to know. I would have to find a way of letting them know without Drak’oora Layan catching that information. It was going to be tricky.

“You have to practice until you can make Sand levitate,” Dravia finally interrupted my train of thought. “You won’t be able to do it as fast, but the sole feat of achieving it will signify that you reached a purer form of communion.”

What she said was right; it was a purer form of communion, and it would take me days and even weeks to achieve what she had just shown me. I diligently trained on that same mat day after day, fighting my thoughts for a spot in my mind.

Two days in, however, it became clear that I wouldn’t be able to solve it that way. Leaving Makka’s issue unresolved was not something I could park away. Either I made peace with him, or he would have to outright say he was no longer my friend. I could not keep living with the uncertainty.

So that day I decided that it was enough, and I went to his cell with the intention of making a point. I was furious, actually, and I wanted him to know. Unlike last time, there were no noises whatsoever, but I still knocked on the door. No one answered. There was no light coming from outside.

“Makka!” I said as I energetically knocked a few more times. “We have to talk, Makka!”

I waited, knocked, worried, and raged interchangeably for the next five minutes. Worst case, I was expecting to annoy him to the point that he would open me just to punch my face and shut me.

That never happened. Instead, I got an angry neighbor poking his face from the door next to Makka’s.

“Enough with the yelling!”

"Wait!“ I ran to his door and stopped it from closing before he could just dismiss me. “Has Makka been here lately?”

He brought his hand to his beard and scratched it. Humming, he closed one eye.

“Normally, I hear him close the door late at night when he is back from the Compendium. But… I believe it’s been a few days since I last heard from him.”

It can’t be.

I started running as I shouted back a ‘thank you’. Makka couldn’t have just gone to the west by himself, could he? I sprinted to the only other person I knew I could confide in. This was a matter that I didn’t want to tackle alone and that I shouldn’t tackle alone.

I frantically knocked at her door, which opened before I could even yell her name.

“Tarar! What’s wrong?”

“Makka! Makka is not answering! Since three days ago, I have not been able to talk with him. I-I thought he was mad at me and that he needed some time, but now. What if he has gone there by himself?”

“Come,” she carefully grabbed me by my shoulder, “let’s go inside and talk.”

Why have you run away without us, Makka?