A week's worth of sol­id rest had done a lot for Ki'el, but it was still nowhere near enough. Af­ter the first day, the med­i­cine helped her to eat and drink, and speak with­out cough­ing, but try­ing to stand or move still elud­ed her. It felt un­com­fort­ably like she was wear­ing weights across her en­tire body--weights that she had the strength to move, but which stretched her flesh when she start­ed and stopped her mo­tions.

It was good that she had Chi­an there, but her real sav­ior was Kuli, as al­ways. The aug­ment with­in her helped her to hold off pan­ic, helped her to sense the flow of en­er­gy, helped her speak more clear­ly than her voice alone al­lowed, and... helped her to un­der­stand what ex­act­ly she had done wrong.

[ The aether that your mas­ter left with­in the Aether Sword is a lev­el far too high for you to con­trol, ] had been the pre­am­ble, but the aug­ment con­tin­ued. [ Use of aether al­ways has a con­se­quence, and when you do not un­der­stand the con­se­quence, the ef­fects ap­pear mys­te­ri­ous, con­fus­ing. I have not been told the prop­er meth­ods for us­ing that lay­er of aether, and so I can't pass them on to you. But every lay­er of aether builds on the ones be­low, and you can be­gin to un­der­stand it by un­der­stand­ing the aether lay­ers that it con­trols. ]

Ki'el nod­ded. Even Sobon had said that he would strug­gle to prop­er­ly use aether above the third tier--above Ac­cel­er­a­tion and Re­verse.

[ The first lay­er of Aether is res­o­nance, of work­ing to­geth­er with or clash­ing against oth­er en­er­gies, as you felt clear­ly while fac­ing the Con­se­quence lock on your qi cy­cle. To build the sec­ond lay­er of aether, no mat­ter whether you are cre­at­ing Gen­e­sis or Con­sump­tion, you must use both Sin­is­ter and Right­eous aether. No aether is good, and none evil. Gen­e­sis could not ex­ist with­out Sin­is­ter aether, and Con­sump­tion could not ex­ist with­out Right­eous aether. ]

How are they used?

[ The form of aether dy­namos that Sobon cre­ates re­lies pure­ly on math, and the math­e­mat­ics will like­ly not pro­vide you with the an­swer you seek. How­ev­er... to a lim­it­ed ex­tent, Res­o­nance aether al­ways touch­es the sec­ond lay­er of aether, just as it touch­es the phys­i­cal plane be­low. Ar­rang­ing that part of res­o­nance aether that you con­trol sim­ply cre­ates a loop that pulls aether from the next lay­er down­ward, and your own essence from the phys­i­cal plane up­wards, al­low­ing them to mix. The same prin­ci­ple holds for build­ing up to each fur­ther lay­er, al­though the arrange­ments get sig­nif­i­cant­ly more com­pli­cat­ed. ]

Ki'el didn't un­der­stand, even when Kuli showed her a ba­sic di­a­gram that in­clud­ed three lay­ers. The arrange­ment of the dy­namos must have made sense, but it was not in­tu­itive to her at all.

[ Func­tion­al­ly, Gen­e­sis aether is will­ing to weak­en it­self to pow­er oth­ers, and Con­sump­tion aether weak­ens oth­ers to pow­er it­self. The raw en­er­gy, with­out in­tent, pow­ers it­self by weak­en­ing it­self, and no en­er­gy is lost. ]

That much Ki'el could un­der­stand, though it felt odd to say that she had used a "pow­er to strength­en oth­ers" to grasp the key dur­ing her tribu­la­tion.

[ That was a mat­ter of will and con­nec­tion, not en­er­gy. Both Space aethers con­nect you to a tar­get, and Will al­lows for a great many things, for rea­sons too com­plex for a sim­ple con­ver­sa­tion. ]

When Ki'el con­sid­ered that for a long mo­ment, her mind in­evitably came to the next ques­tion. How do Space and Time aethers con­nect?

[ The math is sim­i­lar to the pre­vi­ous ex­am­ple, ex­cept in the de­tails. But func­tion­al­ly, Ac­cel­er­a­tion aether con­sumes the pre­sent to more rapid­ly gen­er­ate the fu­ture, and Re­vival aether con­sumes the pre­sent to sus­tain a ver­sion of the past. ]

Ki'el shiv­ered at the idea of aether con­sum­ing the pre­sent. She un­der­stood, hav­ing ex­pe­ri­enced it, that noth­ing as ter­ri­ble as that sound­ed was hap­pen­ing, but... even with bet­ter phras­ing, the con­cept felt alarm­ing. Draw en­er­gy from the world as it is now, to bring the fu­ture or keep the past. But what ex­act­ly was lost? Was it tru­ly just en­er­gy?

[ What is lost, and what is gained, will vary de­pend­ing on how you use it. Time-lay­er aethers re­main nat­ur­al parts of ex­is­tence, al­though they do not nat­u­ral­ly ex­ist in the pu­ri­ty that Sobon can cre­ate. ]

She con­sid­ered that, but moved past it quick­ly. And above time is...?

[ The lay­er above Time is known as Fate. It is some­thing peo­ple rarely con­trol, and ar­guably, some­thing that few should. ]

Ki'el would have said the same, just from hear­ing the word, and know­ing that the names of the aether lay­ers had been bru­tal­ly hon­est so far. How do fate and time in­ter­act?

[ Be­fore we be­gin, you must dis­tin­guish the speed of time from the con­se­quence of pass­ing time. Time aethers af­fect how quick­ly time pass­es, but even the stored mo­ment of time with­in Re­ver­sal aether is lit­tle more than knowl­edge of the past. It is not pos­si­ble to trav­el to the past, be­cause the past--the en­tire mo­ment of time that is the pre­sent mo­ment--no longer ex­ists. The nat­ur­al flow of time eras­es the pre­sent to cre­ate the fu­ture, which is what must be. ]

Ki'el... was will­ing to be­lieve that she only un­der­stood that be­cause Kuli spoke with care­ful in­tent. Mem­o­ries, knowl­edge of the past, ex­ist­ed, but the time that once ex­ist­ed is gone.

[ Fate aether breaks this rule. The whole past may not ex­ist, but Fate aether pre­sent in the world to­day is still an­chored in the time it was cre­at­ed. It main­tains it­self frozen in time, while also al­low­ing en­er­gy, will, and knowl­edge to pass through it like a gate­way. It is a con­duit that runs from the mo­ment it was cre­at­ed un­til the mo­ment it is de­stroyed. And fate aether is very fre­quent­ly de­stroyed; it is frag­ile, and at­tempts to ma­nip­u­late it fre­quent­ly cause it to snap, fray, or shat­ter. Al­though fate aether could be used to per­form very pow­er­ful ma­nip­u­la­tions of the fu­ture, even the great­est pow­ers have great dif­fi­cul­ty work­ing with it. ]

That got Ki'el's at­ten­tion. Could we find a thread of fate aether from the past and change the pre­sent?

[ That is pos­si­ble in the­o­ry, but in re­al­i­ty, threads of fate snap un­less the past and pre­sent are co­or­di­nat­ed. Gen­er­al­ly, the two fate Aethers work by trans­fer­ring en­er­gy across time, al­though many also fo­cus on the in­for­ma­tion passed through the con­nec­tion, which is known as Prophe­cy. The aethers them­selves are sim­ple in con­cept; Sa­cred aether in­volves freely of­fer­ing pow­er that will be tak­en at an­oth­er time, and Cor­rupt aether takes en­er­gy from an­oth­er time by force, for use now. In or­der to use the links for trans­fer­ring en­er­gy, you can­not risk the link break­ing, and so these uses of the aether are rarely used for prophe­cies. ]

Ki'el con­sid­ered that. Could I sim­ply push the Tribu­la­tion en­er­gy for­ward in time? To when I could ab­sorb it?

Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

[ If the en­er­gy is not un­der your con­trol when you trans­fer it via Fate aether, you will most like­ly dam­age the link. You can trans­fer en­er­gy you have pu­ri­fied, but only as much as you can han­dle cur­rent­ly. And you can­not do it in your cur­rent state. ]

Ki'el un­der­stood, but as she thought about fate aether, she be­gan to feel a sink­ing feel­ing. Even this fate aether is not what is with­in the Aether Sword.

[ No. Above Fate are the aethers of Con­se­quence. They trans­fer en­er­gy to and from the past, fu­ture, and past at once. Con­se­quence is the high­est lay­er of aether that the Founders, the alien race which Sobon re­ferred to as the great mas­ters of aether, are will­ing to ad­mit ex­ists to oth­er races, al­though it is be­lieved that they ac­cess oth­ers. It is a cer­tain­ty that high­er lev­els ex­ist, for be­ings that ex­ist pure­ly of aether, but we will nev­er ac­cess them. The en­er­gy in your sword ap­pears to be Truth aether, which will re­arrange the en­er­gy it can reach to cre­ate the vi­sion with­in your will. ]

Ki'el swal­lowed. This was the en­er­gy that she had cut Kem Jee Sai in half with. An en­er­gy that she had pre­vi­ous­ly... sim­ply spo­ken con­cepts to, like the con­cept of fire. And it was the en­er­gy she had told her con­cept of the qi turn­ing cy­cle to, and ab­sorbed too much of a tribu­la­tion.

[ I... am not pow­er­ful or well-in­formed enough to give you nu­anced ad­vice on us­ing it safe­ly, but in my ob­ser­va­tions so far, your in­tent and vi­sion must align. When you spoke Fire to it, that did not align with your in­tent. But fac­ing the tribu­la­tion, your in­tent and con­cept aligned, al­though you may have been mis­tak­en to trust it. ]

Ki'el con­sid­ered that, but only briefly. Isn't that how just qi is used? In­tent, vi­sion, and pow­er?

[ Truth aether is a fun­da­men­tal com­po­nent to qi. Qi is a man­u­fac­tured en­er­gy, one cre­at­ed by great mas­ters. De­signed to make ac­cess to Truth aether, and more specif­i­cal­ly, the aether lay­ers be­low Truth more ac­ces­si­ble. To use Truth aether is in­deed like us­ing qi, but a lev­el of qi nor­mal­ly re­strict­ed to the most pow­er­ful, who have the most ex­pe­ri­ence with its nu­ances. It is qi with­out struc­ture or fil­ters. Qi al­lows one to build up to a ver­sion of Truth aether piece by piece, where you are try­ing to cre­ate a fi­nal ef­fect at once. ]

More than any­thing, it was the rote con­fi­dence in Kuli's men­tal voice that sapped the strength from Ki'el, mak­ing her feel like she had been toy­ing with pow­ers far be­yond her com­pre­hen­sion. I was ex­per­i­ment­ing with en­er­gy that peo­ple like the Djang Prince and Princess are not yet qual­i­fied to wield. Kuli didn't an­swer her thoughts, let­ting her dwell on them. The con­se­quences of the pow­er I use... if I make any mis­take... are heav­ier than a tribu­la­tion. And I... can't even sense the en­er­gy, can't un­der­stand it. I was only giv­ing it an in­struc­tion, a word, and hop­ing that noth­ing hap­pened that was wrong.

[ The only rea­son I would have al­lowed it is be­cause you fo­cus on care­ful in­tent and pu­ri­fied qi. The path that most take, where their qi it­self changes as they evolve... those peo­ple rarely if ever hold the full con­cept of their qi, the full in­tent, in mind. If those peo­ple at­tempt­ed to wield this form of aether, their in­tent would be in­com­plete, con­fused, but they would still have a vi­sion in their mind that res­onat­ed with it. The aether would take the in­com­plete in­tent and the vi­sion and cre­ate an un­pre­dictable ef­fect. As long as you fo­cus on hold­ing the full in­tent in mind every time you use your qi, you will be train­ing your­self to wield Truth aether ef­fec­tive­ly. ]

Ki'el med­i­tat­ed on that thought for a long time, long enough that Chi­an broke her con­cen­tra­tion to say she was go­ing to get food, and ask what Ki'el want­ed, long enough that Chi­an broke her con­cen­tra­tion again when she re­turned. As her fox-spir­it friend helped her sit up and set a tray with fried rice, fish, and veg­eta­bles on it be­fore her, she asked what Ki'el had been think­ing about.

"Kuli was help­ing me to un­der­stand... the pow­er that is with­in my Aether Sword," she said, with some ef­fort. "A pow­er that my mas­ter left me. One I was not ready for, but... may be some­day."

"Some spe­cial qi na­ture? Or some pow­er­ful... aether?" The word was clear­ly still for­eign to the girl, though she only hes­i­tat­ed for a mo­ment over it.

"Aether. An aether pow­er­ful enough..." Did she want to ad­mit that qi was cre­at­ed? By crea­tures that may, some­day, wish to de­stroy the world, crea­tures that the Di­a­mond Lord had spit­ed for some fool­ish rea­son? Did she even un­der­stand what had hap­pened, was hap­pen­ing? Did even Sobon un­der­stand it? She swal­lowed. "...pow­er­ful enough to have the same po­ten­tial as the great­est qi, if Kuli un­der­stands it cor­rect­ly." That last bit felt like a lame eva­sion, but Ki'el--though of­ten blunt and a proud­ly straight­for­ward girl, was un­used to speak­ing of great and pow­er­ful truths as though she un­der­stood them.

"The great­est qi..." Chi­an leaned for­ward onto Ki'el's bed, care­ful not to jos­tle the tray with her food on it. "I can't imag­ine what that must be like. What wis­dom it must con­tain."

Ki'el stared at the tray of food. But that's the point, she thought. It is pow­er with­out wis­dom. If what Kuli says is true, then qi ex­ists so that we can build wis­dom through­out our lives. But... she con­sid­ered, her head cock­ing slight­ly to the side. That is only wis­dom in con­trol­ling one spe­cif­ic qi na­ture. The path I am on, if I con­tin­ue it, re­quires me to have the wis­dom to con­trol many dif­fer­ent types of qi.

When she con­tin­ued for more than a mo­ment, Kuli in­ter­ject­ed. [ You are free to use the men­tal space I pro­vide to form sev­er­al types of qi, or fo­cus on mas­ter­ing one. I am here to as­sist you; my pres­ence should not force you down any path. ]

But Ki'el re­ject­ed that thought, not be­cause she want­ed more pow­er, but be­cause she knew that she would end up find­ing in­ter­est­ing con­cepts that she want­ed to un­der­stand, and un­der­stand­ing them would al­low her to use them. A strange feel­ing be­gan to bub­ble up in­side of her. If I want­ed to learn and grow in that way while us­ing qi, would I even be able to? Are the peo­ple in the In­ner Sect lim­it­ed to ac­com­plish­ing only a frac­tion of the things they wish to, sim­ply be­cause of how qi works?

"Ki'el?" Chi­an's voice dis­tract­ed her again.

"Think­ing," she said, and reached for her food. "Not all pow­er comes with wis­dom with­in it. Qi must be built over time, but the pow­er of aether is raw."

"Ah. I for­get that some­times, be­cause the spir­it pow­er of my blood­line is some­thing I will con­tin­ue to un­lock over time." She looked down at her hand. "I... would like to talk to you about my tribu­la­tion, if that is okay with you?"

Ki'el nod­ded, as she be­gan to eat, and Chi­an spoke about her duel with her an­ces­tor. About the Wheel of Sun and Sky, which had helped her to find per­spec­tive and clar­i­ty in the face of a storm wrought by some­one else. Al­though it didn't give her any ex­tra abil­i­ty to wield the nat­ur­al qi of the Rag­ing Storm Fox blood­line, she still felt as though the ton­ic had changed her for the bet­ter, giv­en her strength to face oth­ers.

Ki'el ate and lis­tened to her friend, think­ing that it was nice to see her in a good mood. Chi­an was cute, she thought, speak­ing an­i­mat­ed­ly about dif­fi­cult things. Al­though it was clear that the girl still wor­ried and feared, she seemed to have pushed past some of it.

"...my sec­ond tail is grow­ing slow­ly, but I'll be much stronger when it's done." She reached be­hind her, touch­ing some­thing near her butt, but it wasn't large enough to peek out be­hind her like her first tail. "I was told that the num­ber of tails a fox has is a sign of their pow­er, but I didn't un­der­stand it be­fore. I feel like... a dif­fer­ent part of my an­ces­tor's wis­dom is fill­ing the sec­ond one, maybe. The first one lets me touch and com­mand the types of qi that I am al­lowed to reach, but the sec­ond one... I feel like it be­gins to ex­pand what I can touch, what I can con­trol. Nor­mal­ly, it has to be very close to me. Even dur­ing the tribu­la­tion..." She looked dis­tant. "I had nev­er com­mand­ed my en­er­gy from so far away, but it felt right, nat­ur­al. I think it's sup­posed to be like that?"

Ki'el nod­ded, see­ing the par­al­lels to Space aether, but didn't try to speak on them. She was still un­sure of what she knew, and what she could con­vey well to oth­ers, and she would need to think for a time be­fore she was will­ing to act on she had been told.

"Any­way, I should eat, too." She took her own tray from the floor where she'd set it and put it on her lap, but paused. "Oh... I did see Mian. He and Xam are adapt­ing to the Out­er Sect, though they're wor­ry­ing about you. I told him that you've awok­en and are re­cov­er­ing..."

Ki'el nod­ded, and lis­tened, and ate. She still felt aw­ful, but things were get­ting bet­ter, and she still had a great deal of think­ing to do.