As it turned out, Alden was even less proficient at the elements than movement. It didn't help that Rika was vastly more proficient than him and enjoyed showing it off.

  He split his fingers, just as Rika had demonstrated, making a sort of reverse snapping motion with his mind focused on the element as Rika had described, and in the air a fireball appeared. It was a wispy little yellow flame, almost invisible and giving off so little heat he could barely sense it was hovering above the tips of his fingers. A few moments later, it puffed out, leaving only the faintest sense of warmth as evidence it was ever there.

  "Why isn't there any smoke?" Alden wondered aloud.

  "What?"

  "Like when a candle goes out, there's a trail of smoke. But there's nothing here."

  "Well, that's the wax of the candle still burning away. You can actually relight that smoke if you wanted." Rika made a large flame in the air—much more visible than Alden's paltry efforts—then dismissed it just as quickly. "But we're not burning anything. So no smoke."

  "If nothing's burning, how can there be fire? Isn't that… impossible?"

  Rika grinned. "Magic, Alzack. If you can solve that little mystery, you'll be light years ahead of the rest of us in figuring this shit out."

  "Huh?"

  "Like I was saying before. There's still science here. There's patterns and connections, lines between things. Everything is connected in some way, by relationship or by a mutual nature. We just gotta figure those connections out, and as we do, we find out new ways to experiment. New spells to throw around."

  Alden still wasn't quite grasping it. Rika seemed to notice his confusion, as she continued to explain. "Take the simple movement stuff you've just learned. You can send things dancing through the air. Cool, but pretty limited, right? All you've done though is basic, visualizing grabbing at things from a distance and hovering them through the air. Everyone does that. Now imagine you can push things. Maybe send an entire wall of force, like a shockwave."

  Rika raised both hands, interlocking her fingers with palms splayed outward. Without warning, she shoved them forward at Alden.

  It was like an invisible brick wall had slammed into him. Alden watched the grass flatten beneath the wave as it rushed to meet him. He fell over flat on his back, coughing from the impact.

  "Oh shit!" Rika was at his side again instantly. Alden could have sworn she warped to his side. Had he blacked out again for a moment? "Hey, you okay?"

  "Yeah," Alden spluttered, pulling himself back to his feet. He was winded, but otherwise he felt fine. "Nothing permanent. I'm okay."

  "Fuck, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to throw that much out." Rika looked embarrassed.

  Alden starting laughing. "That was one of the coolest things I've ever seen."

  "Seriously?" Rika asked, a smile beginning to crease the edges of her lips.

  He nodded. "How do I do it?"

  Rika shook her head. "Nah, can't make it that easy. You'll never learn that way. You gotta experiment." She retreated a few steps to give them some distance, sitting back on her legs on the grassy bank. "Go ahead, see what you can do to me."

  "To you?" Alden asked, feeling anxiety rise up again in his chest. "What if I mess up, do something terrible?"

  "Like what?"

  "I don't know. Seems like you can do a lot with telekinesis. What if someone just nicked an artery or snipped the nerves at your brain? Wouldn't you just… die?"

  Rika shook her head again. "You can't. Go ahead and try. Make my hand move or something."

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  With great apprehension, Alden reached out mentally as Rika had taught him. He was too nervous to even try for the hand lying calm in her lap. He settled on a single finger, just the pinky that was idly toying with her streak of blue hair.

  As he extended his will toward it, he found himself blocked. It was like pressing up against the cleanest, clearest window imaginable—so transparent it may as well not exist, and yet it barred his passage. He couldn't push through it, no matter how much effort he threw into the spell. As tension knotted his brain and pressure started building up in his ears, Alden released the spell with a huge breath.

  Rika nodded in satisfaction. "Mason's Law."

  "Who's Mason?"

  "An uptight prick who really wanted something named after himself. There's a lot of those here," Rika added with a grin. "Smart guy though. Basically, you can't directly affect another person. He worded it a lot more elegantly, but that's the gist. So no mass-murder by nerve pinching, or setting a fire inside someone's eyeballs, or mind-control—although apparently that does work on animals…" Rika trailed off thoughtfully. "Gonna have to see if I can figure out how Nat controls her pet. Anyway. All the stuff you've seen, it's just people affecting the environment, or themselves. Never each other."

  Alden nodded. It was limiting, but it was reassuring. It meant he didn't have to worry about accidentally pissing off the wrong person and dying instantly for it. Hopefully, anyway.

  "Now, back to throwing around a wall at someone. Tell me how I did it. Or do it yourself."

  He sat back and thought. If he couldn't hit someone directly, how would he knock them over like Rika had done him? Alden went ahead and tried it anyway. This was about experimenting, right? Rika seemed fully confident he couldn't do anything to hurt her.

  He raised his hands in the same manner she had shown, fingers interlocked, and threw them at her with the force he could muster. In his mind, he tried to widen his push, so that it became a huge block to hurl at Rika. He could feel it working, but at the same time the strength behind his push was so weakened that he barely felt the resistance from the field around her body. He may as well have not pushed it at all.

  Rika just grinned at him. She plucked a bright yellow dandelion from the grass nearby and tucked it behind her ear tauntingly, not a care in the world.

  A few minutes passed with Alden still trying every variation he could think of to send a wave of force at her, but all for naught. Rika was enjoying herself far too much, currently sending tiny flames dancing around him in circles and forming little faces with their tongues out. It was intimidating how her level of control so dramatically dwarfed his own.

  Alden finally collapsed back onto the grass, after a final desperate attempt to grab every single blade of grass between himself and Rika and shove them forward together. He felt like he might have blacked out from the attempt had he pushed any further.

  "Oh, come on. You're not giving up that easily, are you?"

  "You win, Rika. How'd you do it?" Alden grumbled aloud.

  "She's pushing the air, kid," A harsh, gravelly voice from above interrupted them.

  Both twisted upward to see the gaunt-looking man from the council meeting—Viper—who now stood at the top of the riverbank glaring down at them. Or perhaps that was simply how his facial features were normally arranged. Alden wasn't sure from this distance.

  "Thanks for giving it away," Rika snapped, leaping to her feet. "The fuck do you want?"

  "Should be nicer, girl. I could help you." Viper climbed down the riverbank to the path, only a few paces away from them. "Go on, kid. Try pushing the air."

  Alden was skeptical, but did as the man said. Instead of reaching toward the objects he could see, he tried to grasp at the air itself. Almost immediately on changing his focus, Alden could sense the particles in the air as he touched them mentally. He grasped a wide range, as many as he thought he could handle, and once again tried to shove them as Rika had.

  A wave rippled out—nowhere near as strong, but visible nonetheless. The wind he'd created sent Rika's hair fluttering to his great satisfaction, before he nearly doubled over once the force recoiled back into him. She shot a glare at him, dampening his spirits, then turned to face Viper.

  Up close, Alden could see his rough skin, patchy and unkempt stubble on his chin, and that his left arm was tightly bound to his chest in a sling. His jacket looked military issue, as did his boots, and he wore a set of small pouches in varying shapes and sizes on a belt around his waist. His face seemed in a perpetual scowl, even now while he was apparently trying to be diplomatic.

  "Rika, right?"

  "Yeah, and you are?"

  "Viper's good enough. I got a proposition for you."

  Rika frowned. "Why would you want to work with me?"

  "Because I agree with you. An auction's fucking stupid for something like this. Too dangerous. Shouldn't just hand out powerful stuff to the highest bidder."

  Viper reached for one of his pouches. Rika flinched, her own hand shooting to the bag at her waist.

  He stopped. "Calm down, kid. Open it yourself if you want." He took his hand away.

  Rika did so, flicking the string off that latched it down with a quick gesture. Inside was a small piece of paper, which she floated out into the open, catching it neatly out of midair.

  "K&B at noon. The fuck's this supposed to mean?"

  "Means the Scrap's gonna be there. Tomorrow. Means we're gonna steal it." Viper cracked the barest hint of a smile, and it sent chills down Alden's spine.