“I will literally kill you when I get out of here,” Charlotte Wick cursed bitterly as she reached up and rubbed the small impact spot on her temple. The antagonism of her emotions brought back a powerful lashing from the Engraving around her that shattered her budding image of bloody rivers. She teetered back and forth, trying to ride the backlash. Growling, she forced discipline back into her mind, even though most of spine of her will became hatred for the man in front of her.

Beyond the edges of her modified image reflection pod, DiOrtho Vant chuckled. She jugged five pebbles, making them dance and disappear with quick movements of his hands. “I cannot believe that I’m taking my valuable time to train you, and all you offer me is hostility and cursing. At least in disrespect, you demonstrate an exemplary performance at every opportunity. If only you were so high-achieving in other areas. I have half a mind to just leave you here alone for a few hours. Perhaps isolation will help your attitude.”

Do it, you sick fuck, The teasing in Vant’s words made her shoulder’s heave. She felt like a pot of water boiling over. The emotional violence was picked up by the reflection pod, which then sent painful drills of vibration into her back and sides. Charlotte curled up, once more growling and helplessly trying to corral her emotions.

But she had reached a breaking point in this exercise when a follow-up pebble smacked her right between the eyes. She overcorrected, bits of her image and vicious emotions seeping out with every attempt, earning ever larger retribution from the training array. All at once, the pain grew too intense. Charlotte wriggled and collapsed. Her image shattered into pieces.

Detecting her failure, the training sphere hummed to a stop. Outside of it, Vant shook his head in mock disappointment. “I would tell you how admirable it was that you persisted so long, but I don’t support dishonesty. Especially when you have the Ghosthound’s honor to uphold. What you just did was pathetic. Well, maybe you just prefer the physical training; certainly, it doesn’t require any sort of thinking from your pea-sized brain. Go get your weight vest and get started. And don’t fuck your buckles up; you stink so bad I’m not going to help you.”

Charlotte glowered at Vant, considering whether she should finally break and just attack him for the shit he had been doing. Recently, he had started tossing small pebbles at her while she was in the meditation orb. The pain was small, but the distraction inevitably made her annoyed and lose her emotional stability. Her few small successes soon collapsed.

However, Charlotte huffed and turned away in the face of his expectant smile. Vant was practically begging her to attack him. At the very least, she could refuse to give him that satisfaction.

Besides, he was right about one thing; the Ghosthound had accepted her as his knight. She would persist through this torture, just to prove Vant wrong.

Also relevant to the fact she didn’t attack him was the fact that she had been training nonstop for the past week, alternating between emotional honing and physical fitness. In her exhausted state, she didn’t want to know how much of a threat she posed to him.

Especially since she had only now begun to rebuild her image after her Primal Force and Helen’s touch of death had imploded. Charlotte had overcome Vant in the tournament, but she didn’t think she could repeat that demonstration right now.

If she tried to fight him and lost, he would be insufferable for weeks.

Charlotte huffed her breath out through her nose several times as she strapped the weighted equipment around her body. Vant was right about one thing; the item of clothing reached of well-aged sweat. The heavy cloth jacket was loaded with metal bars covered in additional Engravings. Half of these resonated at an unpleasant frequency, making the toil even more uncomfortable. The other half somehow detected your remaining Stamina and adjusted their weight so you stabilized somewhere in the single digits.

For those with higher Stats, this became an agonizing exercise. The higher percentage the Stamina you were missing, the more exhausted you felt. Of course, you could persevere with the power of your image, but usually that’s when the discomfort metal bars activated. They would do everything possible to distract and detract from the training.

Your body would be tortured, your image would be interfered with. All to put you in the right mindset, according to Helen. If a special forces recruit couldn’t survive and persevere under these conditions, she would tell you that you deserved to fucking die.

Charlotte began to jog. Mentally and physically, the activity would drain everything from you. And when your sadistic trainer decided that you had worked long enough, you would go back in the image refraction sphere.

Over and over again. Polished until you gleamed with perfection.

She put one foot in front of the other and followed the course. The weight of the metal bars fluctuated until it settled on an effort that left her panting. Sweat dripped from her fur, adding to the musk of the equipment. Luckily for her, Vant’s shift as overseer for her training ended before he began to antagonize her again. Vizzeret Clamman, the powerful bodied wolf, took over his shift.

The wolf watched her progress through the course intently while also training his own image. At precisely the point that Charlotte believed that she would die, he announced that she could cease her efforts. She collapsed onto the ground and growled up at the sky for a full minute. It was a small escape valve for all the misery bottled up inside of her. After wiggling a bit, she rolled over onto her back and unzipped the equipment. She shimmied out of the bindings, too tired to get off the ground and damp with sweat.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

It took her a few minutes before she was prepared to sit up. Vizzeret sat with his paws almost delicately placed before him, observing him. Charlotte spat to the side. “Yea, I know that I look like shit. But Vant is being a real dick about the training. He won’t stop interfering while I’m in the image reflection sphere. Driving me up a fucking wall.”

To her surprise, Vizzeret nodded. “Well, it is necessary.”

Charlotte’s eyes widened. She huffed another breath out through her nose. “Necessary? Just because I’m a knight now? This wasn’t how Helen originally trained us, Clamman. Not even close. She- she was rough-handed, but that was to make us stronger. To make us realize our actual capability. This-”

“This lights a baleful fire in your stomach. It stokes a fire of rage that nearly overwhelms your focus.” Vizzeret said calmly. Charlotte twisted her lips, not liking how accurate of a description that really was. Yet the wolf seemed confused as he observed her. “... are you truly unaware? This is necessary for the current you. This method might not be how we were trained, but it was how DiOrtho Vant was handled by Helen.”

“What?” Through her frustration, it took a few seconds for anything other than Helen’s brain to sink through to her mind. The more she mentally reviewed the statement, the more her frown deepened.

Vizzeret serenely nodded. “Overseer Helen did not train us all equally. She had a special relationship with DiOrtho Vant. Often, she would drag him off for extra training sessions when he wasn’t improving fast enough. She would ridicule him and constantly keep him from being able to escape distractions. She would be just as painful to him as the training itself.”

“I-” Charlotte licked her lips. Much of her memories of Helen were still painful, but she did remember being envious of all the time Vant spent with the Overseer. She hadn’t, however, known what exactly they had been doing. “Okay, so what? She messed with him and now he needs to do it to me? Is this some sort of sick pay it forward?”

“In a sense. He needs to do treat you this way because you’ve changed,” Vizzeret’s voice was gentle. “Changed to be like them, the Overseer and him. Overseer Helen pulled Vant aside because he needed the goading to achieve greatness. What he lacked was not the focus, but the fire to animate his already powerful image.

“Now, your old image required your focus. You steadily discovered its shape and limits, based on inspiration from the Ghosthound. But this new one… the one you are developing based on the Overseer’s original image, which doesn’t need to be neat and detail-oriented. It needs raw emotional force. This isn’t easy for Vant either; but he needs to pass on the same lesson Overseer Helen taught him because she is no longer here for you. That you create and control that fire. And when you master that power, you can accomplish almost anything.”

Charlotte stared at Vizzeret for several silent minutes. He leaned down and licked his paw, ignoring her intense stare. In the bear woman’s chest, her rage deflated; all the frustration and vicious hatred began to leak out of her. She continued to sweat.

She let out a long sigh. She felt exhausted. “I almost wish you wouldn’t have told me that.”

“Yes, well,” Vizzeret straightened. “If I hadn’t, you might really have attacked him next time. Has he started tossing caltrops in front of you while you do the physical training?”

Charlotte just looked at him.

“You have a lot to look forward to,” Vizzeret observed. “But let us not get ahead of ourselves. Back to the reflection chamber.”

*****

Randidly, Edraine, and Raymund stood in the small room in the building. The atmosphere was heavy. Randidly released a long breath. “We should handle the issue with the Patron of Feathers first.”

Raymund nodded, but his expression was tense.

Randidly felt a lot of sympathy for him; just as much as he wanted to find out what happened to Techetadore, Randidly wanted to try and assist Shal. But he also knew that it was too much to believe this wasn’t a trap.

Considering the fact that Elhume himself set off in pursuit of the Swaccs, the most ominous possibility was that it was a trap by the hulking monstrosity himself. Perhaps due to Randidly’s interference with the Patrons, Elhume now sought to draw him out.

Which was the worst outcome, but a mysterious entity from the Nexus doing the same didn’t make him feel much better. Or, god forbid, Devick tracking down Techetadore and Shal and using them as bargaining chips-

“So,” Randidly interrupted his own thoughts; spiraling now would help no one. He looked at Edraine. “How does the citizenship process work?”

“Touch the three coins together to make the Tier 2 citizenship coins.” Edraine pointed. “Careful to make sure one of the genuine articles is included in each. Then take those three coins and combine them. The Engravings on them should take care of the rest.”

Randidly did as directed. The Tier I coins all released a pale blue light as they neared each other and the specialty Engravings engaged. Even though he despised the Nexus, he couldn’t help but feel admiration when he looked at the elegant arrangement of its magic. He could feel the shape of what citizenship provided, splicing another world on top of the base one.

The coins flashed in a blinding light and then three coins remained. These bore an even more complex Engraving and released a soft green light.

Looking at the coins, feeling the Tier II citizenship Aether constructs, Randidly wondered how Elhume had subdivided the fabric of space in the first place to stack it on top of each other like this. Humming to himself, he pulled the three coins together.

After another burst of light, one final coin remained. This one was larger, almost the size of a small play. The light it released was a deep purple. Elegant gold patterns covered both faces and the thin edges.

“And now?” Randidly asked.

“Squeeze the coin and claim your citizenship,” Edraine whispered. “Prepare to see the whole of the Nexus, finally.”

Randidly squeezed. The coin crumbled and shattered.

For a long moment, nothing happened. Randidly became increasingly pale. "Uh, did I just break-"

Then the Aether construct snapped into place and the notification popped up in front of him.