Hina sat with her back against the curved wall in the room with the ladder. Her arms and legs ached from the walking, and the climbing and the brief fights. A year ago, she wouldn't have even been able to imagine doing that—killing things that were trying to kill her. A year ago she wouldn't have been able to imagine going into a place like this where everything was trying to kill her.

But there was something deeply satisfying about confronting a direct threat and coming out ahead. It was easier than the other kind of conflict. Once you got over the initial panic.

The break was a good opportunity to run through her exercises, so Hina did just that.

She cycled, the power rushing into her, and this time it was a little more controlled than before.

When she was done, she held a buzzing pool of crackling energy within her chest. And it felt like she was holding more of it now. Was it just a matter of practice, or was the greater baseline intensity necessary for improvement? Or was she just imaginging it entirely?

It was hard to know for sure.

Ambit expansion was next—the second exercise that had come with the invitation to the academy. She'd started on it after she'd woken up from their last encounter with Gerda, and Hina needed to make more progress before she could move on to Gerda's compression exercise, which required a developed ambit.

And moving forward with the compression exercise would give her a chance of using the sigil again, safely. And given how easily it had moved the boulders around the campsite, the sigil would have been extremely useful over the last couple of hours.

Spending time in this place, and in the wilds for that matter, was making it clearer that she needed more options for defending herself. More options in general. Right now, if she was backed into a corner, all she had was the strength of her body, her knife, and the borrowed iron poker.

It wasn't enough.

So ambit expansion was what she had to work on.

The theory was simple enough—get a sense of the border between the edges of your self—your ambit—and the potentia all around you. And then project power into that boundary, which would make it flexible, and then push.

Simple in theory, but the execution was complicated. Last time she had managed to shift her ambit around the point of her right index finger, but as soon as she stopped focusing on it, it shifted back to almost where it had been to begin with.

Kai was sitting with his back against the wall on the opposite side of the room, sipping water with a thoughtful expression on his face. No monsters were coming down the corridor, or down the ladder—no sign of Alik, or the apparition, or the rat-things.

Hina shifted her mental state. The right state of mind came easily down here.

She tried to focus her attention on the whole of her body, sensing the border between her self and the potentia all around her. She found that while she could run her attention along the border, she couldn't focus on anywhere near all of it at once.

She started with her left hand, tracing the surface with her senses. She examined her left hand closely, observing the scattered freckles on the back of her hand, and the knife-slip scar on the side of her middle finger. The worry-damaged nailbeds on her thumb and first two fingers.

When she felt like she had a good understanding of herself, of her left hand, Hina focused on the border, enveloping as much of it as possible in her senses.

She gathered her will, and projected her intent, pressing out against the world beyond her ambit.

There was a shift, as her ambit expanded around her left hand. The change was slight: not enough. Hina pressed harder and was rewarded with another shift, then three more in quick succession.

Exhaustion seeped into her focused mental state.

Hina held up her right hand, where the ambit around her index finger was still ever so slightly expanded when compared to the rest. So she focused on the other parts, projecting her intent.

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After a handful of moments of sustained pressure, Hina's ambit shifted, expanding until matched her left hand.

There was a sense of balance, a sense of equilibrium there.

The exhaustion seeped in a little more.

Hina repeated the process for her forearms, and then her upper arms. Each step a little easier than the last, as if her efforts with the rest of her ambit were contributing to the stability of the overall expansion.

After her right upper arm, she was too tired to continue. Hina relaxed her will, a little worried about losing all of her work—though in every case where her ambit retracted, it was easier to expand later, so was it really losing anything? She relaxed and her ambit quivered and stilled, staying expanded—ever so slightly—along the whole of her hands and arms.

Success. She slumped back to lean more heavily on the wall, a faint smile on her lips.

* * *

"I've got an idea," Kai said.

Hours later, they were still in the round room with the ladder, but it had been a break they'd both needed. Hina had even gotten in a brief nap.

"Gimme a hand? Hold this." Kai passed Hina the middle of a bundle of strings. "I'm gonna pull it, hold tight right... there."

"What is this?"

"Well," Kai pulled the strands from one side taut and formed three groups. "You know how we're trapped?" He braided the strands.

"Yeah."

"Surrounded by fiends?"

"Yeah."

"And how we've gotta get past 'em?"

"Unless this ladder goes somewhere else, yeah."

"And how we found that bag of really heavy rocks?" He held both ends of the braid. "Okay, let go. Hold the middle, two fingers like a hook."

Hina did as he asked.

Kai pulled both ends taut. "I figure we throw the rocks at the wolf-things." He formed three groups of strands, staring intently. "Maybe scare 'em away." He braided the groups together.

"And this—what you're doing makes us better at throwing rocks?"

"Uh-huh."

"Huh. What is it?"

"It's a sling. They used to use them for hunting." He pinched the end of the braid. "And war. Hold this." He split the threads into two groups and dropped one. "Hold tight, I'm gonna pull on it." He divided the threads into three groups and braided them together.

"So why did they stop?"

"Well, maybe a crossbow is better." He pinched the end of the smaller braid. "Hold this in your other hand." He started on the other side. "But we don't have a crossbow."

"I'll put one on the shopping list. Where did you learn to do this?"

"Ariki took me hunting rabbits a couple of times—in the empty fields outside town." He pinched the two smaller braids together. "Hold this tight." Kai began to braid all off the strands again. "We'd sneak over the wall. He showed me."

"So you made one of these before? But you didn't bring it with us?"

"This was—before. I left it with him. I didn't want anyone to find it."

"Okay." She didn't want to push. "So how does it work?"

Kai paused and pointed at the two overlapping braids. "You put a rock here." He continued braiding. "The two straps make a pouch. They hold it so long as the sling is—stretched out? You swing it around and the rock stays there, but if you let it go or whatever, the rock falls right out of the pouch."

"Right, so you've got a rock in there. Then what?"

"Put the rock in, hold both ends, and you throw it. One end has a loop for your finger. You let go of the other end when you throw. The rock goes flying really far."

"This would kill a wolf?" Hina didn't quite manage to keep the scepticism out of her voice. "Really?"

"Maybe. Hurt it, at least." He tied a knot in the end of the braid. "All we gotta do is hurt them," he said. "And they'll run off, probably. Knife."

Hina passed it over.

"This is filthy. Did you not clean it?" He poured some water on his shirt and then washed the knife off with it. "Ugh."

"Sorry." She frowned, annoyed to be apologising for not cleaning her knife. "I was a little busy."

Kai trimmed the loose strands at the end of the knot. "Wanna see?"

"Sure. Let's try it in the corridor?"

She passed him one of the heavy black stones from her pouch, and slung her bag back over her shoulder. She followed Kai into the hallway.

"I'm gonna stand over here," he walked a few steps away. "And aim that way."

Kai stood facing away from Hina, both ends of the sling in his right hand. With his left, he put his stone into the pouch. He drew his right hand back, and pushed the pouch down with his left hand, so that it started to swing back around his right hand. As the stone neared the top of its arc behind his right hand, Kai pulled it forward in an overhand throw, and released the end of the sling.

The stone went flying, and hit the wall of the corridor with a crack, and bounced, skittering out of sight along the wall.

Hina walked with Kai to retrieve it. They walked for a long time before they found the black stone lying on the ground in the center of the corridor.

She bent down and picked it up, checked it for damage: the stone was completely unaffected by its multiple collisions with the wall. "Huh." Hina smiled. "That was impressive. Let me try?"

It was harder than it looked, the stone would slip out of the little loops if you moved the wrong way while throwing. Kai had to duck out the way of more than one stone that went flying in the wrong direction. But after twenty or thirty throws—throwing back in the direction of the ladder, for easier retrieval—she felt like she had the hang of it.

"Do you want to make another one of these for me?"

"That one is for you. I used up most of our string," he looked sheepish. "And I've got this spear already—you needed something better at range."

"Huh. Well, thank you. I appreciate it."

He smiled. "You're welcome."

"So want to try going up the ladder now?"

"Yeah, let's go up."