Grant numbly followed Fyodor and Kyra across the training area, still reeling from what he had done, and the statement that Fyodor had expected a greater show of strength. A greater show of strength? He had demolished tonnes of metal and sent it flying through the air as though it was a piece of cardboard! Had he underestimated how much energy he should have available to him? It was hard to really measure, after all, and while he thought he had isolated about half of Kyra’s power to use, maybe he should have access to more. Or, he realised, maybe it had something to do with the difference between Sources. After all, Ki had mentioned last night that each Nu- Source, he corrected himself firmly, gotta stop thinking that word - had different areas of expertise. Maybe Ki’s power wasn’t naturally suited to the more physical side of things, so he needed to imbue himself with proportionally more power to get the same effect compared to Kyra, who, judging from her battle with the Gryphons yesterday, was fairly practised at using her powers physically. The image of her decapitating a Gryphon with a punch flashed through his mind, and he shuddered slightly at the gory vision.
Grant realised Fyodor had been talking to him the whole time he was thinking this, and struggled to bring his attention back to the conversation.
“... so you shouldn’t use too much energy on it,” he was saying.
“Sorry,” said Grant sheepishly, “I wasn’t listening properly. What were you saying?”
Fyodor glared at Grant in exasperation. “Pay attention!” he snapped. “You’re in a new and dangerous world, boy. If you have your head in the clouds, soon enough you’ll lose it entirely.”
“Sorry,” Grant said, shamefaced. “I was still focused on the fact that I could punch a block of metal through the air. I just… I didn’t expect to hit it that hard.”
Fyodor glared at him a bit longer, before it faded and he let out a sigh. “Fair,” he admitted. “I remember when I first realised what I was capable of. It took me days before I could wipe the grin from my face.
“Anyway,” he said, stopping in front of the training dummy and facing Grant fully, “as I was saying - imbuing yourself is an important talent. To survive, you must be able to do so by instinct, as quickly as possible. Any time you suspect you are in danger, it should be your first response. As you grow more used to being in that state, and your power grows, you will be able to Imbue yourself with more energy, and grow stronger and faster. However, there are greatly diminishing returns. I use only a small fraction of my power to imbue myself, and if I were to use all of my Source, the benefits would be negligible. That matters, because whenever you imbue yourself, it will decrease how much energy you have available for other uses. You wouldn’t have realised this since you can’t manifest your power yet, but any energy you are using to imbue yourself is locked off for that purpose until you release it, and can’t be used for any magic or other powers. For now, imbuing yourself with all the energy available to you is probably fine, but as your power grows, you should practise only using a small part of your Source to imbue yourself, so you can use the remaining power for other purposes.”
Grant nodded. “Yep, got it. So… is there any reason that I can’t try practising that now? Trying to imbue myself using only a portion of my power, instead of all of it?”
“There is no reason not to,” Fyodor said, shrugging. “However, separating parts of your Source like that can take quite some time to accomplish. For the first few days, I would say it is more important to focus on simply mastering the process and controlling your new strength and speed, yes?”
“Yep. No problem,” Grant said, resisting the urge to feel smug at how easily he could isolate sections of his power already, thanks to Ki’s help.
Fyodor nodded, before gesturing towards the dummy. “So,” he began, “now for the truly fun stuff. As cool as it can be to toss your strength around, I think you’ll agree that it fades from ‘amazing’ to simply ‘pretty cool’ in the face of true magic.”
Grant grinned and nodded eagerly.
“Glad you agree. Now, the first step of your training is to discover your aptitude. That’s what we call your… area of influence, I suppose. For example, Ed’s aptitude is metal. Maya’s is food. Kyra’s is a bit trickier to define, but we tend to describe it as ‘enchanting’. Luckily, discovering your aptitude is easy. Simply send some of your Source out into the world, with no intention or will behind it, and it will naturally exert itself according to your aptitude. So, face the dummy, and let it rip - just a sliver, mind you. Otherwise the results could be drastic.”
Grant nodded, facing the straw-stuffed doll at a distance of a few metres. He reached down into himself once more, feeling that ocean of power within him. Yesterday, when attempting to draw upon his power, he had pictured the energy within him pulsing down his arm, extending out into the world. Now, he knew that doing so would unleash far more power than he should have. Instead, he tried to pinch just a drop of it, and only from the smaller, separate source. The power resisted him, shifting and swaying in an attempt to avoid his mental grasp, but finally he managed to catch the smallest possible amount with his mind. He drew upon it slowly, a small thread of power emerging from the pool and seeping down his arm. He felt the trickle of power begin to reach his palm, his arm tingling as the energy began to build up. He raised a hand, pointing his finger at the dummy.
As soon as the thread reached the end of his finger and touched his skin, he felt the power connect with the air, and unleash itself. A thin, bright and white-hot ribbon of fire exploded from his fingertip, lashing through the air and carving a burning trail into the straw doll. After barely a second of contact, the fire sliced clean through the training dummy, blazing through the air before dissipating after a few metres. Not having expected such a powerful manifestation, panic flooded Grant once more, and he jerked his hand up in the air. At the same time, he frantically tried to stem the tide of power that was coursing down his arm. The power within him loved being used in this way, and the small trickle of power that he initially released was slowly strengthening, drawing more and more of his power out into the world. He struggled for a second to release the mental grasp he had on his Source, to overcome the desire of his power to be let loose. After a brief moment he managed to let the power go and the flame died out instantly, the power receding back into the swirling pool within him.
He bent over, taking deep breaths to calm his racing heart. That was the barest trickle of power? He could still feel the heat in the air, though he could tell that he was more-or-less immune from damage from it now - otherwise, his finger would be burnt black. But the energy he had just unleashed… he strongly suspected that the blowtorch he had just created could have sliced through metal or flesh with the same ease that it had cut through the still-burning straw with. For the first time, even more so than when he had punched the pillar with his imbued strength, he began to truly appreciate the power he now held. If he had unleashed the full breadth of the power Ki had bestowed upon him instead of that tiny thread, it would likely rival a nuclear bomb. He was walking around with the power to destroy cities, to level the earth and kill thousands if he chose, maybe even millions. The childish glee of knowing he had magic was quickly being quelled by the danger he realised he could pose if he didn’t train properly. He might have far more power than the other Forsaken, but that meant that it was imperative he swiftly learnt how to avoid an accident that could destroy them all. His training had suddenly transformed from a fun little experiment to a desperate necessity. And that was before he even began to consider the breadth of the responsibilities that Ki had begun to unload upon him the night before. Apparently he wasn’t just meant to have this power, but to use it to save humanity. Somehow. From something he didn’t even know about. What the hell had he gotten into.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
He felt a hand on his shoulder, and jerked away instinctively, spinning to face Fyodor.
“Easy there, comrade,” Fyodor said, taking a step back and raising his hands in a gesture of peace. “Nothing to be ashamed of. It can be… alarming, realising just how real and terrifying our powers are. I had a similar reaction, my first time. In my case, the dummy was pretty much evaporated.” He smiled reassuringly.
Grant managed a weak smile back, heart slowly returning to its normal pace. He was glad that his reaction was once again misinterpreted as just another aspect of adjusting to his crazy new life, but the fear of his powers was already beginning to fade, while the paralysis that came with knowing the burden he had been chosen to bear just seemed to grow larger in response. Grant wasn’t a particularly brave or special person - he hadn’t been in fights, he avoided confrontation, he wasn’t interested in bungee jumping or parachuting or any other life-threatening situations. He liked his life; hanging with friends, drinking, playing games, keeping fit. The transition from regular Melburnian to - apparently - the individual responsible for saving the world was only just beginning to sink in.
He slowly became aware of a distant, vague sense of reassurance and confidence coming from deep inside him. He focused on the feeling, confused as to how he could feel that way when his brain was overwhelmed with confusion and doubt, before realising that the feeling wasn’t coming from him, but from Ki. Ki, for whatever reason, believed that he was the right choice for this. Grant was baffled as to how Ki could have that much faith in him, before he remembered that Ki had seen every memory he had. Ki had studied his every waking moment, seen Grant at his worst, and at his best, seen his flaws, knew all the traits he was lacking, and still believed he was the right man for the job. Grant didn’t fully understand how he had been drawn into this world, or how actively Ki had been in that choice, but whatever Ki had been looking for in his choice of host, Grant apparently met his standards. Enough for Ki to reveal to him a bunch of dangerous secrets, dangerous enough that he couldn’t be allowed to remember them at the moment. But whatever had been said last night, and whatever Ki had seen in his mind, it was enough. Ki trusted him to get this done. He had granted him access to this enormous wellspring of power, and the responsibilities that came with it, trusting that he would use it well.
Grant let this knowledge sink into his mind. He found an unreasonable amount of reassurance from the confidence that Ki apparently had in him. Grant somehow knew, down to his bones, in much the same way that he had known he could trust Ki even after their conversation had been removed from his memories, that if Ki was that certain that he was the right man for the job, that that meant a lot. Probably more than Grant could currently understand, given the holes in his memory.
He took a final, deep, steadying breath, before straightening up. “Sorry,” he said, smiling at Kyra and Fyodor, more genuinely this time. “I just wasn’t really expecting… anything like that. I didn’t even realise it would be fire, let alone a fucking flamethrower that powerful.”
They both smiled back at him reassuringly. “Nothing to be ashamed of,” Fyodor repeated. “No one knows what their aptitude will manifest as the first time, and fire is certainly one of the more destructive and terrifying options. Every creature on Earth has a deep, instinctive fear of fire, and for a damn good reason. It’s a literal force of nature, after all.”
Grant nodded in agreement. “Yeah. Although apparently I can’t be harmed by fire anymore, otherwise I’d have burnt myself making that, which is cool. Is that something we all have? Or is that a side effect of fire being my aptitude?”
Fyodor exchanged grins with Kyra before chuckling. “She’s right, Suriya’s gonna love you,” he said. “Yes and no, is the answer to your question. Our resistance to harm covers heat and cold to a certain extent, but you will have a greater resistance to heat than most of us, and, more importantly, you will always be entirely immune to your own manifestations. However,” he raised a finger, looking at Grant intently, “I will pass down some knowledge that we have found out the hard way, many decades ago. While you will be immune to fire that is made from your Source, that will only remain true while you retain a connection to that blaze. If, for an extreme example, you set a forest on fire, do not walk into it. Once you have severed the fire from your control, it becomes magical no longer, and belongs to the natural world. Such a blaze is more than capable of overcoming your protections and burning you to your bones. As we discussed before - never, ever let your powers mislead you into thinking you are invulnerable.”
Grant took that in, then shook his head. “I mean… Thank you, that’s good to know, but seriously… It says a lot about this new life that the advice ‘Don’t walk into a bonfire’ needs to be repeated. Especially ‘cause if you hadn’t said so, I probably would have done it at some point.”
“Tell me about it,” Kyra said, rolling her eyes. “One of the things I was told my first week was ‘remember that just because you can bring something to life, doesn’t mean you should’. Nearly broke my brain, hearing that.
Grant laughed slightly harder than the joke warranted, a little hysterical as the final remnants of his stress and worry drained from his body. Fyodor waited for him to calm before continuing with the lesson.
“Now,” he said, waving a hand and causing a small pebble to leap from the ground near the river into his outstretched palm, “clearly, fire is your aptitude. You may be interested to know, this would seem to lend weight to the theory about your Source being the same as Jorgen’s, though it will be a few weeks, or maybe even months, before we know for sure. The biggest indicator will be if your new house fails, I suspect. Anyway - as you may have been told, we are all of us capable of feats of magic outside of our aptitude. You may have noticed already that your Source is difficult to control, but control it you must. You must learn to enforce your will upon your Source, and use it to shape the world around you. Your first test is to make this pebble float. Now, reach for your Source.”
Grant cracked his neck back and forth, a slight trace of soreness beginning to seep into his body from the brief uses of his power, before he closed his eyes and reached for his power once more.