Sobon, for his part, kept care­ful watch of Ki'el as she went about her evening busi­ness, and even as she slept, en­sur­ing that her new aether dy­namos sta­bi­lized, as he'd pre­dict­ed. They did, if slow­ly; she had made too messy of a job putting them to­geth­er, and her men­tal state wasn't par­tic­u­lar­ly sta­ble on its own. If she didn't work so hard on keep­ing her­self cen­tered... there wouldn't have been much he could have done to pull her through all of this trou­ble.

In the morn­ing, once she be­gan her chores, he ac­cel­er­at­ed his own ef­forts, feed­ing en­er­gy into his col­lec­tion dy­namos. Al­though the dy­namos were small, he was con­fi­dent that as long as he built them up, the six left, six right, one in, and one out dy­namos to­geth­er would be enough to take on at least a cou­ple ded­i­cat­ed war­riors, though per­haps not... what­ev­er it was he was able to sense from this dis­tance. Giv­en what lit­tle it had tak­en to im­prove his squir­rel body's core to a sil­very col­or, he was sure that any­thing less than that--the cop­pery col­or, and the duller gray, which he sup­posed were Bronze and Iron, giv­en what peo­ple had said--would be fair­ly unim­pres­sive.

Of course, he had no idea how ef­fi­cient they may be at us­ing their pow­er. If they had built up a cul­ture around us­ing their strange qi-fla­vored aether, with its high­er-di­men­sion­al flows, even a rel­a­tive­ly weak war­rior might be able to gen­er­ate re­al­i­ty-bend­ing pow­er. He want­ed to ask Ki'el what she knew... but he al­ready knew that it was lit­tle enough. Out here, far from any em­pire or great na­tion, a vil­lage may not have any qi war­riors, let alone ex­perts or schol­ars.

When she fin­ished mak­ing break­fast... Sobon not­ed that, as she had all along, she was still mak­ing a serv­ing of food for him. He most­ly hadn't been eat­ing it; she was no pro­fes­sion­al chef, and ac­cept­ing the food felt more like ac­cept­ing a place as a do­mes­ti­cat­ed an­i­mal, and less like shar­ing a meal. It ran­kled him, though frankly, he knew it was an over­re­ac­tion. As he stared at it now... if noth­ing else, he de­cid­ed, he couldn't stand try­ing to eat on a plate on the ground.

He'd been putting off most of his ef­forts to ac­tu­al­ly mold aether into prac­ti­cal ef­fects. He could; he re­mem­bered most of the li­braries, chains, pat­terns, and field geome­tries, but... with­out his cy­borg data­base linked straight into his mind, he would be fig­ur­ing out many of the de­tails from scratch. He'd... most­ly put it off, so far, but it was long since time to work on it.

Nat­u­ral­ly, he didn't start on the plate of food, in­stead spin­ning up one each of the left and right dy­namos, and spin­ning thin thread into the ef­fect pat­tern for telekine­sis. The pat­tern it­self... was com­plex, and he got bits wrong, but he was able to nudge the ar­ray in the few places where he wasn't sure un­til things fell into place.

At least this, un­like the ri­fle pat­tern, wasn't so like­ly to cause se­vere dam­age if he got it wrong.

With­in half an hour, at most, he had the telekine­sis pat­tern fleshed out, and picked up his plate of food and his own lit­tle fur­ry body, de­posit­ing them on the near­est par­tial­ly-in­tact rooftop. He mea­sured the con­sump­tion of the pat­tern as he used it to eat, de­ter­min­ing that the two small dy­namos were, to­geth­er, well more than the pat­tern con­sumed. It would be dif­fer­ent if he were mov­ing a hu­man body, or even a heavy iron weapon, or try­ing to over­drive the pat­tern and throw some­thing at lethal force; cer­tain­ly, he didn't ex­pect to be able to fight off a sail­ing ship with telekine­sis, not any­time soon.

When he fin­ished eat­ing, he saw Ki'el star­ing at him, and he leaped to a near­by tree and down to the ground, com­ing over to her. She kept look­ing at the roof where he'd been, though, and for a mo­ment he wor­ried that he had brought back some kind of trau­ma.

"I could bare­ly tell what you were do­ing," she said at last. "It was... com­pli­cat­ed, wasn't it?"

Sobon let him­self breathe out a quick sigh of re­lief. [ Yes. It... will be dif­fi­cult to teach you every­thing I know, Ki'el. But, noth­ing is im­pos­si­ble. It is only knowl­edge. ] He left un­said that he wouldn't re­al­ly be teach­ing her all he knew; he doubt­ed he would even teach her all he could, or all she would need to know. But he de­cid­ed that she would feel bet­ter with that white lie.

Ki'el turned to look at him. "Can I use it to de­fend my home?"

Sobon's face could no longer smile quite the way he want­ed it to, but he felt his fa­cial mus­cles stretch any­way. [ That is the right ques­tion. That tool will not help you. I... will pre­pare some­thing that will work. But first you should un­der­stand what you have. ]

The girl turned and im­me­di­ate­ly start­ed walk­ing, and it took Sobon a mo­ment to re­al­ize she was head­ed for the pier. He fol­lowed, tak­ing the first op­por­tu­ni­ty to leap onto her shoul­der.

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

Ki'el let her­self be calmed by the mo­tion of the waves for a minute be­fore turn­ing her at­ten­tion to Sobon, who had drawn two of his glow­ing rings out, let­ting them float be­side him­self. Ki'el, with some dif­fi­cul­ty, sought out the two rings in her spir­it, and gen­tly coaxed them to move out into her hands.

It was, she con­sid­ered silent­ly, a bit coax­ing an­i­mals had once been, be­fore all the an­i­mals around her had be­come too hand-shy and fer­al to ap­proach. A pro­ject­ed sense of in­vi­ta­tion, di­rect­ed at them, and they ap­peared where she could reach them.

[ Very good, ] Sobon sound­ed im­pressed, and she wasn't sure whether to feel pleased or in­sult­ed. It had al­ways come nat­u­ral­ly to her; was it not the same for oth­ers? [ I don't know if you did it on pur­pose, but you drew the ...cy­cles, out, in your op­po­site hands. The one in your left hand is right-hand aether. Can you tell? ]

Ki'el stud­ied the cy­cle, not­ing that when she placed the thorn up­wards, it seemed to be flow­ing ...back­wards. She nod­ded, and with a mo­ment of fum­bling, switched the two rings.

[ Good. It's not nec­es­sary, but it helps you keep them straight in your mind. ] Sobon drew his right ring for­ward. [ Let's start with right-hand aether. I... am most­ly sure this is true, here, but right hand aether should have a pos­i­tive ef­fect on your body, so it is eas­i­er to ex­per­i­ment with. ]

Ki'el gave the squir­rel a look, and it just looked back, im­pas­sive­ly.

[ Look, ] Sobon said af­ter a mo­ment, [ I'm not a de­ity. I am from far away, and things are dif­fer­ent there. I am... ] he hes­i­tat­ed. [ It is true for this body, and it was true for... an­oth­er hu­man I knew. What is im­por­tant is that ei­ther left or right is usu­al­ly help­ful, and the oth­er... well, you don't want to force it into your body. You can force it into an en­e­my's body, to slow them down and con­fuse their... their qi, I sup­pose. I don't in­tend to lie and tell you that I know all. I know much. ]

Ki'el con­sid­ered that for a long mo­ment, and then let the left-hand cir­cle re­treat back into her spir­it, bring­ing the oth­er one in front of her.

[ Al­right. Be­cause the cy­cle al­ready has been giv­en a pur­pose, you don't need to force it to spin; sim­ply feed it, and it will do its job bet­ter. You can draw ex­tra en­er­gy ei­ther from your own spir­it, or from the cy­cle's own thorn, but don't be in a rush. If you make it un­sta­ble, you may have to start over. Don't use up all the en­er­gy in the thorn, ei­ther; that will tend to make it break. ]

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Ki'el con­sid­ered all that for a mo­ment, be­fore de­cid­ing to try what seemed the most ba­sic; as when she had sum­moned the ring from her spir­it, she just sent it a sense of of­fer­ing, with an in­tent to give. To her sur­prise, the ring re­spond­ed, im­me­di­ate­ly go­ing from a bare­ly-de­tectable spin to a slug­gish ro­ta­tion. Al­though she didn't see more of those blue sparks, she felt pow­er gath­er­ing in the thorn as the cy­cle spun.

[ Good. ] Sobon's voice was calm enough to keep Ki'el fo­cused on her task. [ Since you have it spin­ning, try to reach the thorn. Don't pull en­er­gy from it, for now, but take it so that you can use it when you're ready. ]

Again, Ki'el had to read be­tween the lines of what her in­tent should be, but she sent the thorn a sort of... re­quest for loy­al­ty, and a slight tug to­wards her left hand. Al­though she had to rephrase the idea twice, or per­haps three times, af­ter a mo­ment she felt some­thing in her left palm.

[ You should keep us­ing your right hand for right-hand aether, ] Sobon chid­ed, gen­tly. [ Be­lieve me, you don't want to mix them up. ]

Ki'el felt a brief flash of ir­ri­ta­tion, but was able to con­vince her right thorn to switch to her right hand af­ter only an­oth­er few mo­ments' work.

[ Good. You can sep­a­rate pieces from the thorn and treat it like aether thread that you were mak­ing when you cre­at­ed the rings in the first place. In terms of what to do with it... for now, feed it into your body. Start with... let's say, your hands. ]

Ki'el frowned, but com­plied. Af­ter some fuss­ing around and one in­stance of break­ing off a piece of the thorn with­out be­ing able to con­trol the re­sult­ing piece be­fore it dis­ap­peared, she was able to of­fer the en­er­gy to her left hand.

Im­me­di­ate­ly, she felt a hot flash cov­er her hand, and her skin felt smoother, her mus­cles en­er­getic. She brought her hand up to her face and stud­ied it, but there was no vis­i­ble dif­fer­ence, even when she flexed it.

[ Right-hand aether match­es the nat­u­ral­ly pro­duced aether of your body. When you feed it in, your body sim­ply has ex­tra en­er­gy to use. It's not a com­plete re­place­ment for sta­mi­na train­ing; there are side ef­fects to burn­ing aether to pow­er your mus­cles. I... don't sup­pose you know enough bi­ol­o­gy to talk about that, though. ] The squir­rel paused, and she turned to look at him, but when she didn't speak af­ter a mo­ment, he con­tin­ued. [ It can help tough­en up your body, and most im­por­tant­ly, it in­creas­es your chance of sur­vival when you have a wound. I... sup­pose that your nor­mal qi does the same, but the point is, this is all spe­cif­ic to right-hand aether. ]

[ Left-hand aether doesn't match your body. If you were to push it into your body, it would do the op­po­site, mak­ing you lethar­gic, weak­er, soft­er, and more like­ly to die. It will do the same to an en­e­my, if you can force your aether into their body--and if you push raw right-hand aether into an en­e­my, or a friend, it will en­hance them, just as it will you. ]

"Do not mix them up," Ki'el said, sound­ing a bit snip­pi­er than she meant to. "I un­der­stand."

If Sobon was of­fend­ed, he didn't show it. [ If you in­tend to use left-hand aether as a weapon, you will need to learn to pro­ject it with­out ab­sorb­ing it. In this, again, we see aether's need for pur­pose... ah, no, maybe that's too com­pli­cat­ed. Try... while work­ing with the right hand aether, still, try tak­ing just a bit of your thorn and let­ting the en­er­gy emp­ty out into space away from your hand. ]

Ki'el did so, or in­tend­ed to; ap­par­ent­ly, Sobon in­tend­ed for her to some­how bridge the aether into the phys­i­cal world, and not mere­ly have it in­ter­act with the spir­i­tu­al, which was a new chal­lenge. When fi­nal­ly she was able to press her qi out into the phys­i­cal, she could vis­cer­al­ly feel some­thing odd shift in the air, a flick­er­ing quiver, and she could al­most imag­ine that she per­ceived... some­thing more, a cloud of sil­very-blue smoke in the air in front of her hand.

[ Good. That's enough for now. The only oth­er thing I'll tell you is that if you have aether in hand and sim­ply re­lease it, re-ab­sorb­ing it into your spir­it body, it will ap­par­ent­ly in­crease your body's qi. This is dif­fer­ent from us­ing the en­er­gy to feed your body, so you can do it with your left-hand aether as well. ]

"Why is it dif­fer­ent?" Ki'el closed her eyes and tried to ex­am­ine her qi core, and was sur­prised to find that it had ad­vanced quite a bit over the last few days--and was now at four bronze stars, just start­ing to lick at five.

[ There are many kinds of aether, ] Sobon, replied, sound­ing a bit ir­ri­tat­ed. [ Where I come from, they are de­scribed as var­i­ous kinds of spins, though var­i­ous... di­rec­tions. Any­thing above the ob­vi­ous is com­pli­cat­ed, but there is also spin­less aether. The... the cy­cle is an ef­fi­cient way to gen­er­ate aether, more­so than hap­pens in na­ture. The act of re­leas­ing aether should re­move its spin, al­low­ing your body and... core, I sup­pose, to do with it what it wish­es. ]

That should tick­led some­thing in Ki'el's brain, some­thing that had been wait­ing for a nasty sur­prise to crop up any­where in the tree rat's ad­vice on aether, and she bris­tled. "Should?"

There was a mo­ment's em­bar­rassed si­lence, but only that much. [ You'll should only be able to ab­sorb it by re­mov­ing its pur­pose, and thus its spin. Forc­ing the en­er­gy into your­self with­out re­mov­ing its pur­pose will feel very dif­fer­ent. ]

"But you said I need­ed to learn to pro­ject left-hand aether with­out ab­sorb­ing it. As though that mis­take would be sim­ple, and ob­vi­ous."

[ Learn­ing to pro­ject it re­quires forc­ing the aether. Forc­ing it out and forc­ing it into your­self are sim­i­lar. ]

Ki'el forced down a snap re­ac­tion, one she wasn't sure even had any thought be­hind it, and looked away from her teacher. If only her teacher wasn't some stu­pid tree rat...

[ I must apol­o­gize, ] Sobon said, af­ter a mo­ment, and she turned her at­ten­tion back to him, forc­ing the ir­ri­ta­tion back down. [ Af­ter all that has hap­pened to you, I un­der­stand that ex­pect­ing so much of you isn't rea­son­able. You need help that I can­not pro­vide, Ki'el. I am a war­rior, not a ...heal­er of ...hearts? ] His men­tal words sound­ed strange at the end, as though try­ing to fit a con­cept into a gap that didn't quite fit.

And yet, de­spite what he said, she found that she didn't un­der­stand him at all.

"I do not re­quire a heal­er," she said, cross­ly, and felt a ris­ing stress in­side of her that she could bare­ly rec­og­nize. Usu­al­ly, when it came, she was alone, and... and it was al­right to just let it take her over. All she lost, then, was time. But now... "What I re­quire... what I de­sire..." Ki'el found her jaw clench­ing, and she wasn't sure what she was try­ing to say.

[ For you to be healthy, you would re­quire a world that had not be­trayed you. I can­not pro­vide that. I can only be a per­son who will not be­tray you in the fu­ture. ]

"I do not re­quire the im­pos­si­ble of you!" She found her­self snap­ping at him, and sur­pris­ing­ly, felt her qi re­spond, form­ing a rough dis­charge in the air be­tween them, one that blew back the grass and ruf­fled Sobon's fur, but didn't budge the squir­rel at all. She bare­ly no­ticed that de­tail, her thoughts dragged along by a for­eign mo­men­tum. "But all of this, these triv­ial de­tails and dis­cus­sions of... of math and cir­cles and thorns, of lefts and rights, these do not feel like a war­rior's way. This is the way of a cow­ard­ly tree rat who... who pre­tends to know com­bat in or­der to feel bet­ter about his in­ad­e­qua­cy."

Ki'el found her­self clenched, eyes sealed shut, per­haps ex­pect­ing her mas­ter to strike her to main­tain or­der. Her grand­moth­er had, a time or two, when she drift­ed off in a lec­ture about ei­ther qi, or in those few dis­cus­sions about the world be­yond their is­lands that had been too un­in­ter­est­ing for her child­ish mind to keep hold of. But that si­lence stretched for a long mo­ment, and she let her eyes open and look out.

Sobon had turned to face the wa­ter, and she could read noth­ing in his pos­ture.

It was only a bare frac­tion of an in­stant be­fore Ki'el would have launched into an­oth­er tirade when Sobon's voice reached her mind. Some­how, the words con­veyed tired­ness. [ I should have known that you would not be ready, ] he said. [ I sup­pose it was the staff train­ing. I con­vinced my­self you had the mind­set of a war­rior, but you are still a child. ]

"I am not--"

Ki'el gen­uine­ly did not know how she found her­self in the wa­ter. Be­fore she was able to re­spond, she'd not only been dunked head­first into the riv­er, but drug out to sea, be­fore the rat Sobon let her go. She was no stranger to swim­ming; she had her legs un­der her very quick­ly, and when her eyes were clear, she saw the squir­rel float­ing in midair be­fore her, look­ing every bit the wise, mys­te­ri­ous crea­ture she knew he must have been, de­spite the small, fluffy ex­te­ri­or.

[ When the en­e­my comes, I will deal with them, ] Sobon spoke into her mind. [ I will not say, do not fear them. But you will not be harmed. You may take what­ev­er time you re­quire to de­cide how much you trust me. ]

And then it was gone, in a flash of qi, or aether, so quick­ly that she lost track of his body be­fore she even knew that she need­ed to try to fol­low his move­ments. So she just hissed through her teeth, most­ly at her own id­io­cy and in­dig­ni­ty, and swam back to­wards shore.

It was the eas­i­est swim she had ever done, and that was sober­ing food for thought.