Sobon's new life as a squir­rel was not with­out its perks, for all its many and glar­ing is­sues. Per­haps the great­est... was sim­ply that he wasn't hu­man. Or, what­ev­er the lo­cal hu­manoids called them­selves; he didn't have to con­sid­er him­self one of them, pre­tend to be one of them. The mon­sters from his pre­vi­ous life--the Djiang and the Bilg, they'd called them­selves--had both done ab­solute­ly noth­ing to en­dear their na­tions and peo­ples to him.

This girl was of a dif­fer­ent cul­ture, and was too de­pressed and meek to be any­thing like a threat. Sobon wouldn't have trust­ed her on that alone, but af­ter ob­serv­ing her body and spir­it, she was... harm­less. More than like­ly, if dis­as­ter had not be­fall­en the is­land, she would have grown up to be a fish­er­man's wife, and per­haps been con­tent with that. She had no cru­el streak, no mal­ice borne of mis­treat­ment or jeal­ousy, and no in­san­i­ty from liv­ing near oth­er shat­tered souls. The aether of this place--he was still hav­ing trou­ble con­sid­er­ing the lo­cal en­er­gy by an­oth­er name, though he would try--was much clean­er than that of the ru­ined city or its fort, and she had not raised her en­er­gy lev­el much by her peo­ple's flawed method.

Even so, it was prov­ing dif­fi­cult to get her to change her method, and Sobon wasn't sure if that was be­cause he was a bad teacher or she was a bad stu­dent.

"So it's not a core, it­self," Ki'el seemed to pout when he shot down her the­o­ry. They sat on the docks, as the waves rolled gen­tly in. "But it isn't en­er­gy. En­er­gy is form­less, dif­fuse--"

Sobon con­cen­trat­ed on pro­ject­ing his throughts. [ Aether is Aether, ] he in­sist­ed, know­ing the thought would roll off of her with­out stick­ing. [ It is a part of all life, but that isn't what it is, ei­ther. It's a mir­ror that re­flects re­al­i­ty, and the glue that con­nects the ...world to­geth­er. But you are right; it isn't only en­er­gy. It is en­er­gy and ...place. By gath­er­ing... place, mixed with en­er­gy, you cre­ate raw aether. ]

Ki'el seemed to phys­i­cal­ly re­coil from the idea of mix­ing en­er­gy with space. "So if I cre­ate this en­er­gy here--"

[ It's com­pli­cat­ed, but I can tell you have the wrong idea. ] Sobon couldn't sigh, ex­act­ly, in this form, but he was able to con­vey dis­ap­point­ment through the lit­tle fur­ry body's pos­ture. [ You are cre­at­ing some­thing that you will take with you. But you must try to cre­ate some­thing pure, some­thing that is only your own will mixed with place. Not... ] He knew the word was trans­lat­ing wrong, but what could he say to such a child? [ ...not the larg­er place. Not even the place where you sit. Each speck of pow­er con­nects with a place no larg­er than the speck it­self. ]

The girl stared at her hand for a long minute, then looked at him, se­ri­ous­ly. "Is that why I shouldn't do it with­in me?"

Sobon's ears twitched; at least, she was clever. [ No. But I am glad you are think­ing. There is much to ex­plain, but... not now. ]

Ki'el spent the next few hours strug­gling, but as Sobon watched, it be­came clear she was be­gin­ning to un­der­stand the idea. Specks of rel­a­tive­ly pure aether would ap­pear, but un­rav­el in­stant­ly, a sign that she didn't sense them or know how to hold on. He wait­ed un­til she was con­sis­tent­ly gen­er­at­ing frag­ments be­fore guid­ing her to be able to sense them.

Be­fore they could move on to grasp­ing them, the girl moved on to do the rest of her chores, un­will­ing to let this ex­plo­ration of uni­verse's grand mys­ter­ies be the rea­son the stray dogs and cats went hun­gry.

Af­ter din­ner, though, she was on the dock, eyes closed, lis­ten­ing to the sound of the ocean and hold­ing her hands close to one an­oth­er. Sobon watched as the sparks ap­peared and per­sist­ed, some­times for bare­ly a sec­ond, but more and more she grasped specks and held them in her mind un­til she chose to re­lease them.

[ You are do­ing well, ] Sobon said when she fi­nal­ly stopped. [ To­mor­row, we should be able to work on con­nect­ing aether to form a larg­er piece. ]

Ki'el gave him a look that was sur­pris­ing­ly re­bel­lious--a look she had giv­en him sev­er­al times, es­pe­cial­ly at the be­gin­ning. But, af­ter only a mo­ment, she sighed and stood up from the dock, look­ing up through the trees at the moon. She didn't go back, though, not for a long mo­ment.

"...Is it still com­ing?"

Sobon was sur­prised by the ques­tion, as he had been think­ing about oth­er things--most­ly, how he was ever go­ing to ex­plain some of the more ad­vanced con­cepts to her. But he looked up at her, still look­ing up at the moon, and then glanced at the hori­zon.

What­ev­er was com­ing was pow­er­ful, but how close was it go­ing to come to this lit­tle is­land? He men­tal­ly com­pared its pre­vi­ous in­ten­si­ty to where it was now, and thought about sail­ing ships, or pos­si­bly ones with prim­i­tive mo­tors. Still, it was hard to gauge. [ Yes. But it is not com­ing too quick­ly, and it may not come here. ]

"It will." Her voice held a bit­ter con­vic­tion.

Sobon looked at her with sur­prise. [ Is there some se­cret here? ]

"No." The girl just closed her eyes. "I just know my bad luck. They'll come here to fin­ish the job, tear apart my home and make me..." she grit her teeth and shook her head, vi­o­lent­ly.

Sobon would liked to have ar­gued against bad luck or fate, but, well.

[ We can leave, ] he sug­gest­ed.

Ki'el's eyes snapped open, and she looked down on him, then turned on her heel and start­ed walk­ing back. "You might as well tell me to die," she said. "My life is here. What pa­thet­ic shreds of it are left."

Sobon watched her go, not re­al­ly sure how to re­spond to that. Even... even if she learned to touch aether, even if she learned to con­trol it, even it she could ex­pe­ri­ence the same rise that he had seen in Jom's body, which was ap­par­ent­ly far be­yond the lo­cal av­er­age... if a crew of ma­raud­ers or pi­rates or what­ev­er else land­ed here, she couldn't de­feat them all on her own.

On the strength of his own aether... he had no idea. He wasn't sure what the world's mod­i­fied aether did, or how strong he was go­ing to be rel­a­tive to any of them. He hadn't fought any­one since the butch­er in the al­ley­way; while the reaper who had end­ed his life was clear­ly some­thing far be­yond his cur­rent pow­er, prob­a­bly be­yond the pow­ers of any­one else he had met... he had no con­cept of how they had it all or­ga­nized.

Per­haps the girl knew, but he wouldn't hold out hope. Her un­der­stand­ing of even her own peo­ple's tech­niques seemed rudi­men­ta­ry.

Mean­while, this ro­dent's body was dif­fer­ent from Jom's body, in not only phys­i­cal form but also in its... qi core... thing. Al­though the col­ors and lobes looked sim­i­lar along the edges, as he ad­vanced by ab­sorb­ing aether, the struc­ture of his... core looked very dif­fer­ent to Ki'el's, and hers looked a lot like Jom's, as he re­mem­bered it. His own latched too firm­ly onto his flesh, like it in­tend­ed to do more than mere­ly strength­en his mus­cles, skin, claws, and teeth, but that is all that ad­vance­ment had done for him so far. Well, per­haps it had in­creased the stu­pid rat body's in­ter­nal or­gans, or some­thing--he was no bi­ol­o­gist.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

It had made him leak some kind of foul black goo, when he ad­vanced from five-star dark-gray to one-star sil­very-gray, but that seemed more like a one-time side ef­fect He had washed most of it off, and stud­ied what re­mained for a while. All that he could tell for sure was that it was un­pleas­ant to every sense he had, nat­ur­al and aethe­r­i­al.

In all--could he fight in this body? Against a boat load of lo­cal war­riors? He hes­i­tat­ed even to test out his abil­i­ties. He had con­sumed all his left and right dy­namos to cre­ate the in­ner-out­er pair; he could make new ones, of course, but he was hes­i­tant for sev­er­al rea­sons. For now... al­though left-hand aether wouldn't mark the world too bad­ly, in­ward-aether left a... stench. A black mark that nei­ther right nor out­ward aether could im­me­di­ate­ly re­move, and that felt dis­re­spect­ful to this al­ready dam­aged isle.

Thus al­ways with weapons, Sobon mused dourly. Med­ical aether was vast­ly more com­plex than sim­ply ap­ply­ing en­er­gy X to wound Y, and no re­pair man­u­al on any ship was as sim­ple as "Just wave your hand and turn back time, it will be fine." While he ex­pect­ed to use very lit­tle en­er­gy, in ab­solute units, he had al­ready seen how a lit­tle bit of pure aether was sig­nif­i­cant com­pared to what the lo­cals had.

He didn't want to dam­age Ki'el's home, and he didn't want to at­tract trou­ble... but he wasn't sure how far away was far enough. The reaper, he was sure, had de­tect­ed what he did from far away, and he wasn't ea­ger to re­peat that ex­pe­ri­ence here; he could only con­ceal his dy­namos and keep them chained down, for now.

At the very least, though... the same would be true for the raiders. It would be much eas­i­er to hurt them that it would be to heal them, es­pe­cial­ly if they laughed off the threat of a sil­ly lit­tle tree rat. And the best way to dis­tract them from him... was to give them a seem­ing­ly more dan­ger­ous tar­get to fo­cus on.

Ki'el wouldn't like­ly en­joy be­ing used as a dis­trac­tion, but if it helped them avenge her fam­i­ly, he was sure she would for­give him.

----------------------------------------

In the morn­ing, af­ter at­tend­ing to the strays, Ki'el sat down again on the pier. Sobon, ea­ger to see what she did on her own, hid him­self at first; she didn't both­er to wait, and ea­ger­ly jumped in to prac­tic­ing. At first, she sim­ply tried to hold on to one speck, and then he no­ticed her grasp­ing at more than one, and even bring­ing them to­geth­er, al­though she clear­ly wasn't sure how to gath­er them into a sol­id whole. Only once she took a break, though, did he jump down from a near­by tree.

The girl jumped at the sound of him land­ing, al­though he was fair­ly qui­et, be­fore re­lax­ing. "Oh. You're here."

[ You're do­ing well, ] Sobon praised her again, be­fore mov­ing out to sit on her legs and look up at her. He felt her skin twitch, as if he was tick­ing her, but ig­nored it. [ Con­nect­ing the pieces is... go­ing to be a strange con­cept. I'm not sure how to de­scribe it to you, al­though I have been think­ing about it. You sim­ply need to un­der­stand that it is part of how aether works. A part of what it is; a part of its na­ture. ]

"It's a place," she re­peat­ed what he had said, though she clear­ly didn't un­der­stand it. "But what does that mean?"

[ It is hard to de­scribe, ] Sobon ad­mit­ted, look­ing up at her face... and find­ing him­self star­ing up the girl's nose, as she looked away, her skin twitch­ing un­der his feet when his tail brushed against her. That... strange­ly enough, got him think­ing. [ Bub­bles! That's a good way to de­scribe them. ]

The girl looked down at him, and he was re­lieved not to be star­ing into her nose any­more. "Bub­bles?"

[ Sure­ly you've blown bub­bles in the wa­ter be­fore? ] He didn't even wait for her to con­firm it. [ Bub­bles are a thin skin of wa­ter around air. Join­ing places is like... mak­ing two wa­ter bub­bles join, in con­cept at least. The 'place' is the in­side, but the struc­ture it­self is the thin edge that con­tains it. ]

She looked at him, but af­ter a mo­ment, raised her hands and tried again. Sobon watched, un­til he felt her skin twitch­ing un­der him again; he hopped off, land­ing light­ly on the wood of the pier, and he thought when he looked back that she was calmer.

With­in a half hour, she had got­ten the knack of gath­er­ing aether into a much larg­er speck. As she prac­ticed, though, he also quick­ly no­ticed that her body was ab­sorb­ing the aether when she re­leased it, al­though her core wasn't yet ad­vanc­ing. Most like­ly, a tech­nique like this would be the kind of thing those bar­bar­ians would prac­tice--just slow­ly gath­er­ing and at­tun­ing pow­er, one tiny speck at a time.

[ Good, ] Sobon said, once she had stopped for a mid-morn­ing break. [ Take some time and rest. This af­ter­noon, we will move on to form­ing a thread, and then... per­haps you will be able to be­gin for real. ]

Ki'el had stood up and stretched, and now she looked down at Sobon. "To cre­ate the cir­cle, you mean. The ro­tat­ing na­ture of qi."

Sobon felt im­me­di­ate­ly like he had been mis­un­der­stood, again.

In­stead of wor­ry­ing about it, he scam­pered up a near­by tree and leaped over to the girl's shoul­der. She seemed sur­prised, but she let him, and moved back to­wards her house, where she picked up her staff again. He stayed silent, think­ing about what she had said, and when she got to the prac­tice yard he hopped off her shoul­der onto a bro­ken bit of fence near­by.

She prac­ticed with her staff, and he found him­self not­ing, again, places where her form was wrong, her swings were clum­sy, or her bal­ance was off, but how could he be­gin to cor­rect her, in this form? So he stayed silent, for now.

When she paused, and seemed about ready to put her staff away, he fi­nal­ly said, [ Ro­ta­tion isn't the na­ture of aether. Ro­ta­tion is a pur­pose, a tool. ]

Ki'el turned to look at him, her face a bit blanker than usu­al, per­haps be­cause she was still men­tal­ly locked on her staff prac­tice.

"If you say so," she said sim­ply, and be­gan to march back to her house.

Sobon scam­pered along af­ter her, feel­ing undig­ni­fied, and made his way onto her shoul­der when he had the chance. That was less pleas­ant now that she was sweaty, but it didn't both­er him. [ If I had to put the na­ture of aether into words... I sup­pose it would be pur­pose, and en­er­gy. ]

Ki'el slowed in her steps, but only briefly. "Pur­pose. I don't un­der­stand."

[ The in­side of the bub­ble, ] he said. [ It is like the place in which your mind ex­ists. ]

Ki'el con­sid­ered those words for a mo­ment, and then slowed, and then stopped. Sobon sat there, look­ing at her face, try­ing to see whether she was un­der­stand­ing it, or whether she was con­fused, again.

"It's not like it," she cor­rect­ed him. "My mind... does ex­ist in such a bub­ble, does it not?"

Sobon bobbed his lit­tle ro­dent head. [ Ex­act­ly. ]

"Then I'm...?"

[ Life is not pos­si­ble with­out aether, ] he said. [ Life is a com­plex ma­chine to make use of aether. Mind is an in­sane­ly com­pli­cat­ed tool with many parts each ded­i­cat­ed to sup­port­ing what you may think of as your soul, the part of you that is you. You could not be your­self with­out those many pieces ded­i­cat­ed to cre­at­ing you. And like­wise, when you cre­ate aether, you must also give it a pur­pose. ]

"Vi­o­lence and sub­mis­sion," the girl whis­pered.

Sobon's whiskers twitched. [ I don't know what that means, ] he said. [ But-- ]

"It is what my nama told me the na­ture of qi was," she said. "The dual na­ture. But that is only the pur­pos­es we give it, isn't it? We use it for vi­o­lence... or we sub­mit to na­ture."

[ There are many tools, many pur­pos­es for aether, ] Sobon an­swered. [ Some are nei­ther vi­o­lence nor sub­mis­sion. ]

The girl nod­ded, and closed her eyes. But when she start­ed to raise her hands in front of her, Sobon reached out with a paw and grabbed her ear, gen­tly. It star­tled her, and she stopped.

[ Not yet, ] he said. [ For the ex­er­cis­es we're do­ing, you need aether with­out in­tent, with­out pur­pose. If it isn't pure, it will be trou­ble lat­er. ]

She looked at him, and then sighed. "Fine. But now I need to go fish, or we will have an­oth­er day of eat­ing only fruit and for­age."

Sobon let her, hop­ping off her shoul­der when she passed by a bro­ken stone wall, and watch­ing her go. She was clever, he thought again. He hoped he was do­ing the right thing by teach­ing her.

Some­one as trau­ma­tized as her might fall too eas­i­ly into dark­ness. He'd try his best, but... it was hard to know for sure what would come next. At the very least... he had to be­lieve he'd be able to tell be­fore she be­came too pow­er­ful.