It was only an­oth­er three days af­ter that when Ki'el was well enough to stand and move, and was able to leave the heal­ing house, along with Chi­an. Dur­ing that time, Chi­an did her best to keep her com­pa­ny, though in the end, Ki'el spend more of her time try­ing to grasp the fun­da­men­tals of aether, es­pe­cial­ly those of Space and Time. It was dif­fi­cult, with her not be­ing able to prac­tice; her main ref­er­ence point for Space aethers was still the pair of riv­er stones that she had not even brought along, along with a few--or now, a great many--vague words from Kuli about space aether formed con­nec­tions at a dis­tance.

Even just sit­ting in bed, even with­out us­ing aether, Ki'el felt cer­tain that she was al­ready sens­ing the aether of oth­er things at a dis­tance--that she al­ways had. Kuli kept silent about some things, per­haps when the aug­ment felt that Ki'el would fig­ure it out on her own, but on this, Kuli was clear: space aether was an ac­tive use, far more than just a pas­sive sense of the world around her. To form a con­nec­tion to an­oth­er place, en­er­gy must be con­sumed.

Of course, she wasn't well enough to ex­per­i­ment when she left, ei­ther, but she still breathed bet­ter be­ing able to stand on her own two feet, if un­steadi­ly.

"The In­ner sect has pre­pared us hous­ing," Chi­an said. "Or... a place, at least. Broth­er Du said that most times, they al­low--I be­lieve he re­al­ly meant force--In­ner Sect dis­ci­ples to cre­ate their own hous­es, but you are... not pre­pared for that." She paused. "I'm not ready for it, ei­ther. I... should prob­a­bly not be in the In­ner Sect. I ap­pre­ci­ate that they are let­ting me stay, though."

Ki'el want­ed to re­as­sure Chi­an, but had no idea what she could say. She so far knew noth­ing of the In­ner Sect, or even the Out­er Sect, and how ei­ther of them func­tioned. "We will find a way," was all she could fi­nal­ly say.

Chi­an was silent, for a time. "I'm less wor­ried about my­self," she said, as they wan­dered down an­oth­er path. "I think that the Sect ex­pects a great deal from you. Al­ready, when I've gone out, I've heard sev­er­al peo­ple whis­per­ing. Al­ways call­ing me the friend of a prodi­gy." She scowled, her face dark­en­ing. "Or the ser­vant of one."

Ki'el, though she was tired and weak, did feel the ir­ri­ta­tion from Chi­an, and felt it in her­self as well. "You are no such thing."

"No." Chi­an sighed. "But a re­la­tion­ship like that would make things sim­pler. Some peo­ple al­ready seem... im­pa­tient with me. As though I should be able to do every­thing they do, when I've only just sta­bi­lized my tribu­la­tion en­er­gy." She sighed. "It's not as though I don't think I can learn, but I would have pre­ferred to go much more slow­ly. Af­ter get­ting away from my clan... I was hop­ing to make friends in the Out­er Sect and learn things slow­ly. Maybe..." her voice dropped, slight­ly. "Maybe that was spite. I al­ready spent a lot longer in the Less­er House than I planned to."

The Less­er House. It al­ready didn't feel real that Ki'el didn't have to go back to that place. Though... as she looked ahead, she saw that Chi­an had al­ready turned them down a path in the woods, one of many that had branched out ever since they had some to one of the high­er is­lands in the Sect. Ahead... was a small cot­tage, one that was fa­mil­iar to her--but, she judged, might have been the least of the build­ings in the Sect. It was cer­tain­ly not large enough to con­tain more than one room com­fort­ably, not with­out some­thing like Sobon's spa­tial ex­pan­sion.

"This is...?" Ki'el didn't ex­act­ly feel un­com­fort­able with the build­ing ahead--it was more than the Less­er House, and in bet­ter shape than what was left of her vil­lage. But com­pared to the mod­est lot Sobon had in Emer­ald Val­ley, it was noth­ing.

"It's bet­ter than it looks," Chi­an said, but her voice was warm. "They have some stu­pid name for this style of build­ing--Wis­dom Seek­er lodge or some­thing stu­pid--but ac­cord­ing to El­der Sang, you have the right to mod­i­fy the area around it by quite a lot." She paused, and turned back, point­ing to a stone by the side of the path. "That's one of the bound­ary mark­ers. There should be oth­ers, at the cor­ners. Once you can con­trol your qi again, we can try to fell the trees for wood, or some­thing." She frowned. "I... don't know any­thing about wood­work, though."

{ There are many ma­te­r­i­al-con­trol aether pat­terns like the ones Sobon used to cre­ate quartz rods, } Kuli sup­plied, sens­ing Ki'el's ea­ger­ness, { but it might be bet­ter to learn the qi meth­ods first. }

Ki'el nod­ded. "I would like to study how we would do things like that with qi."

"Me too." Chi­an paused. "I... guess we're just al­lowed to do that. But, we'll have to pay, like every­one else. Al­though El­der Sang said lit­tle, he im­plied that you still have quite a few points left, though I..."

"What I have, you can use," Ki'el con­firmed quick­ly, be­fore the oth­er girl could hes­i­tate more than a mo­ment.

"...thanks," Chi­an said, sound­ing em­bar­rassed. "We'll take jobs for the sect some­time soon. I'm sure we won't have a choice, but I've also been rest­less. I want to do some­thing."

Ki'el agreed, but silent­ly. She knew that her chances of us­ing her aether or qi soon were still low, but she doubt­ed she could take any job for the Sect that was pure phys­i­cal work--not that she felt at full phys­i­cal strength yet, ei­ther.

When they fi­nal­ly got to the cot­tage and looked in­side, Ki'el found the room ex­act­ly as she en­vi­sioned it--a bare room with­out even mat­tress or table, a dirt floor, and only a sin­gle open door­way. "No hole in the floor," she said, bit­ter­ly. "That is a step up."

Chi­an wrin­kled her nose. "And it's pri­vate. I was shar­ing at­tic space with sev­er­al oth­ers. Every­one there keeps sep­a­rate from the oth­ers, but some­one al­ways seemed to be look­ing, even when I slept."

Ki'el snarled word­less­ly in re­sponse, but stepped in, pulling her mat­tress from her space ring and de­posit­ing it on the floor. The room seemed just wide enough to fit two side by side, which struck her as right, and just long enough to place a small table on the oth­er end with­out block­ing the door. "We can do this."

"We?" Chi­an sound­ed ea­ger, but paused. "Ah... I mean, I was hop­ing, but didn't want to guess..."

"You are my friend, and I would be hap­py if you re­mained with me," Ki'el said, though she felt like her voice was stilt­ed, up­set. Did that much still need to be said? "You have pro­tect­ed me and re­turned my friend­ship. I place as much trust in you as I do my fam­i­ly."

Chi­an gave her a smile in re­turn. "I hoped you'd say that. The Sect grant­ed me the small lot next to this, but... with­out a cot­tage, Wis­dom Seek­er or oth­er­wise. I could have sur­vived un­til I could pay to build some­thing, but..." She ap­peared a mat­tress from her own space ring next to Ki'el's, and then filled the room on the oth­er end with a small table. "I pre­fer this. I would be hap­py to join your prop­er­ty to mine, if we have use for the ex­tra space."

Ki'el nod­ded, but sagged to her mat­tress. "Do you have items to set up a pri­va­cy bar­ri­er?"

"Yes, Be­nai was hap­py to pro­vide me with them. They ...prob­a­bly won't stand up to any­one in the In­ner Sect if they re­al­ly want to force their way in, but Be­nai is very good at these things, and far stronger than she lets oth­ers know, so... maybe they will." She moved to the door. "I'll go place them. You re­lax."

Ki'el did, the bloat­ed feel­ing of her qi dis­or­der eas­ing now that she wasn't mov­ing. But... she couldn't re­lax, just as she hadn't been able to so far. When at last her thoughts set­tled on a ques­tion for Kuli, it didn't sur­prise her at all what she had been think­ing. What would I need to learn to ex­pand space the way Sobon did?

{ Sim­ply us­ing the kind of meth­ods he used isn't dif­fi­cult, how­ev­er, de­sign­ing the ef­fect to be sta­ble and us­able re­quires sev­er­al dif­fer­ent meth­ods work­ing to­geth­er. You seem to re­call the ba­sics of his method­ol­o­gy, but the sta­bi­liz­ing method will be un­in­tu­itive with­out un­der­stand­ing the high­er math in­volved. The 'base­ment' in your mem­o­ries can only make use of the sta­bi­lized space thanks to force planes and grav­i­ty-al­ter­ing ef­fects, which you will also not un­der­stand. }

Ki'el sighed, hav­ing more or less ex­pect­ed a sim­i­lar an­swer. She didn't doubt that a method like the one Sobon used would be dif­fi­cult for most peo­ple with­out his back­ground. What do I need to learn to form sand into... quartz, the way that he did?

{ Meth­ods of that type vary in their re­quire­ments. I have no doubt that Sobon used ver­sions far more com­plex than you can use, re­quir­ing ex­treme­ly pre­cise con­trol, but less­er ver­sions with lim­it­ed ef­fects can be quite sim­ple. The ma­te­r­i­al used also mat­ters; ma­te­ri­als made of one or two types of [atoms], which can be sourced eas­i­ly, still re­quire you to un­der­stand their [chem­i­cal struc­ture], while ma­te­ri­als like wood have dif­fer­ent re­quire­ments. In each case, the pur­er a source you can find, and the sim­pler the re­sult, the eas­i­er the process. }

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

Chi­an came back as she was hear­ing that an­swer, and when she con­firmed that their space was pri­vate, Ki'el re­layed what she was think­ing. Chi­an had a strange look on her face as she lis­tened.

"...Your mas­ter could just form ma­te­ri­als with his ...not even qi, but aether? With­out be­ing a spe­cial­ist in that el­e­ment?" Chi­an with­drew a small stool from her ring and sat down next to the table. "You talk about him as be­ing very wise, but most of the peo­ple I know of who can con­trol a ma­te­r­i­al stud­ied their whole lives to do it. I guess..." she paused. "It's not that I doubt­ed that your mas­ter re­al­ly was great, or any­thing..."

"You have nev­er met him," Ki'el said, tired­ly. "And even if you did, you would not have seen the side of him that we did. But he grew stronger at a rate be­yond any sense, and he knew so much." She looked out the door­way, to the woods be­yond, feel­ing that the world felt dif­fer­ent with the wards set around them. Qui­eter, but also... emp­ti­er, in a way. Some­how, that empti­ness dis­turbed her, not be­cause she thought it was fake, but be­cause she like the feel of oth­ers' qi in the back­ground. As she conidered that still­ness, she con­tin­ued speak­ing, not re­al­ly think­ing about what she said. "In truth, I don't know how great he is, or if per­haps he is only what I have seen of him so far. Per­haps, in my mind, I have a... myth, of him."

"Myth?"

Ki'el looked at her friend, her thoughts catch­ing up to her words, but looked down at the floor af­ter a mo­ment. "He speaks of strange things, some­times. Of fate, and myth. He has made me re­al­ize that the world was not as I thought it was, but that is still prob­a­bly true, even with as much as I have learned. I do not know what is true and what is false. He could be the amaz­ing and wise war­rior that I be­lieve he is, or he could be... just... some­one. I do not know." Maybe I will nev­er know.

"I don't know why you're sud­den­ly ques­tion­ing it, but I think he must be amaz­ing, to have taught you every­thing he has." Ki'el glanced back up at Chi­an, who was lean­ing back against the wall. "But we re­al­ly ought to talk about what we do next. You said you want to learn to make things with qi, or with aether? I can find some­one to speak on these things, but with you not be­ing able to prac­tice..."

"It would be fine to ask Out­er Sect dis­ci­ples," Ki'el said, when Chi­an left the im­pli­ca­tion hang­ing. "And I would be hap­py to watch you prac­tice, and sense, and see if I can un­der­stand what is be­ing said and demon­strat­ed. It will be far bet­ter than wait­ing alone and think­ing."

Chi­an nod­ded, and stood up. "Should we start right away?"

Ki'el con­sid­ered it, then nod­ded. "I don't have a rea­son to de­lay."

In far short­er a time than Ki'el ex­pect­ed, Chi­an re­turned with a woman from the Out­er Sect, who bowed as Ki'el brought Chi­an's stool out­side and sat. "Sis­ter Ki'el," she said. "Sis­ter Chi­an said that you wished to learn about ma­nip­u­lat­ing wood qi, but can­not prac­tice yet."

Ki'el nod­ded, and the woman stepped for­ward, ea­ger­ly. "I am Sis­ter Muzi, and I have stud­ied the prop­er­ties of wood for sev­er­al years. Be­fore we be­gin talk of ma­nip­u­lat­ing it, we should speak of what it is. Wood--when processed for use, and not still liv­ing--can be fun­da­men­tal­ly un­der­stood as two main ma­te­ri­als. Part­ly, it is made of fibers, which we call [thread­wood], and part­ly, a com­plex sub­stance we call [press­wood]. Wood with­out ei­ther com­po­nent is much weak­er, and cer­tain ways of ma­nip­u­lat­ing it will break the threads or re­sult in less­er press­wood bonds..."

Ki'el lis­tened in­tent­ly as Sis­ter Muzi spoke at length about how the fun­da­men­tals of wood, and watched as she bent a sam­ple of pre­pared wood into shape, and then the same with a fresh branch from the for­est, which oozed sap im­me­di­ate­ly when she twist­ed it. The woman talked about how the com­pounds from the wood nor­mal­ly liked to dry and set be­fore use, and said that bend­ing live­wood would not nec­es­sar­i­ly meant that it would main­tain the shape as it dried.

Be­fore Ki'el knew it, two hours had passed, and Sis­ter Muzi bowed out to go to an­oth­er task. Al­though the woman had not specif­i­cal­ly taught her any­thing about how to ma­nip­u­late wood, Ki'el felt that she would do a much bet­ter job at mak­ing a first at­tempt, if she could, and when she said as much to Chi­an, the oth­er girl agreed.

"Liv­ing things are com­pli­cat­ed," Chi­an said, mov­ing over to a near­by tree and press­ing her hand to it. "The fox part of me feels that--we are for­est an­i­mals--but I nev­er looked clos­er. No mat­ter how I sense, no part of life is ever quite sol­id. It's a mix, even if it's some­times very well blend­ed to­geth­er." She low­ered her hand and looked back at Ki'el. "I am go­ing to try a few things."

And Chi­an did try, sev­er­al times, to bend wood with her qi, but she still had trou­ble get­ting her qi to do what she want­ed, to say noth­ing of at­tempt­ing new meth­ods. In the end, nei­ther she nor Ki'el were sat­is­fied with the ex­per­i­men­ta­tion, and Ki'el only felt more rest­less.

So she turned in­wards, again. Kuli. What can we teach Chi­an so that she can be stronger? Con­trol her qi bet­ter?

Ki'el's aug­ment seemed to hes­i­tate be­fore an­swer­ing, but when Kuli did an­swer, it didn't seem to re­veal any doubts. { Your friend's the­o­ry of how qi works is fun­da­men­tal­ly wrong. She still un­der­stands Qi as be­ing much like spir­i­tu­al en­er­gy, al­ready con­tain­ing wis­dom that she can sim­ply 'com­mand'. To form her own qi tech­niques, she must com­mu­ni­cate her full in­tent to her qi, not mere pieces of it. }

Ki'el nod­ded, al­ready un­der­stand­ing parts of that. When she looked at Chi­an, she found the fox girl look­ing aback at her, and Ki'el con­sid­ered how to say what she want­ed to say.

"How well do you think you've learned Fire?" she even­tu­al­ly asked.

"Fire?" Chi­an tilt­ed her head. "I was... most­ly learn­ing it to hide my na­ture, but... I guess I still un­der­stand some of what you said."

Ki'el swal­lowed, feel­ing un­com­fort­able with dis­guis­ing her in­ten­tions, but ges­tured. "Show me. We could use a fire here, any­way."

Chi­an sighed, and got to her feet. "I should make a fire pit, first. Let me gath­er some stones."

Ki'el didn't ar­gue, al­though be­tween that and gath­er­ing the wood, it took Chi­an a while be­fore she was ready to at­tempt to light the fire with her qi. Al­though she was able to light it, the girl took three at­tempts--and the re­sult was not spec­tac­u­lar.

"I do re­call some of your in­tent," Chi­an said, "and it helps that you also put it into words. But there is too much--"

"Try to tell me what you un­der­stand, with in­tent," Ki'el said, find­ing that her voice was cold­er than she want­ed, cold­er than she in­tend­ed.

Chi­an looked at her, but her eyes changed af­ter a mo­ment, and she nod­ded. She set­tled back by the fire, and closed her eyes, and med­i­tat­ed. Af­ter a while she said, "[Fire] burns [wood] with [air] and heat." But even with those few words, Ki'el could tell--even with­out Kuli's help--how sev­er­al of the con­cepts felt wrong, in­com­plete.

"If that were the in­tent you put into your fire qi, it would do a poor job," Ki'el said, feel­ing like the sound of her voice was too au­thor­i­ta­tive, too smart. She felt like it didn't sound much like her­self at all, but... she didn't stop. "Qi must con­tain the whole con­cept, as much as you know. What burns is not al­ways wood, but any­thing that can burn, in­clud­ing things in the air. And there is more in the air than just the kind of air that burns, but the one kind of air is need­ed for fire. It is the com­bi­na­tion of those things and heat that makes it hap­pen." Hav­ing said all of that, Ki'el's next words felt much more nat­ur­al, even though the use of qi to speak them aloud itched at her. "[Fire] is the [re­ac­tion] of [fuel] and [oxy­gen] with heat."

Chi­an frowned, and tried to speak, but stopped with­out any sound com­ing out. Ki'el un­der­stood--she had felt the same when she first tried to speak with in­tent--and wait­ed un­til the girl was fi­nal­ly able to speak. "The burn­ing... of [fuel]... and [oxy­gen]. With heat."

Ki'el nod­ded at her. "Qi is not spir­it en­er­gy. It needs the whole in­tent."

Chi­an looked at the fire, and frowned. Af­ter a mo­ment, she gath­ered qi into a ball in her hand; Ki'el winced, wor­ried that the fire would ex­plode, when the girl re­leased it, the air swirled, and the fire went out. Chi­an frowned at it. "So it's true, with­out oxy­gen, there is no fire. Hmm..."

Ki'el watched the oth­er girl play with her fire qi on and off for the next few hours, oc­ca­sion­al­ly ask­ing Chi­an to speak with in­tent again. As time went on, the girl seemed less and less re­luc­tant to speak the same sort of un­der­stand­ing of Fire that Ki'el had spo­ken, as though she was grudg­ing­ly ac­cept­ing what Ki'el had al­ready spoke. Though... in truth, Ki'el be­lieved that it was sim­ply how the girl need­ed to learn, just as Ki'el of­ten need­ed to learn in her own way. It would be wrong, she was sure, to sug­gest that Chi­an was be­ing re­bel­lious, al­though from the way she act­ed, it was easy to un­der­stand how teach­ers some­times thought so.

Her moth­er had seemed to think so, in some mem­o­ries she had, when Ki'el had been young. More of­ten, though, her moth­er had been kind and pa­tient. She sup­posed that every­one had times that test­ed their pa­tience.

The day wound on, and Ki'el found she had to rest for much of the af­ter­noon. The next day, Chi­an again fetched Sis­ter Muzi, who went over what she had said the day be­fore, but more briefly--un­til Ki'el in­ter­rupt­ed her to try to speak what she had learned with in­tent. The rest of their ses­sion in­volved both her and Chi­an try­ing to speak in­tent that matched that of their in­struc­tor. The woman was re­lent­less in cor­rect­ing them, and only when when they were be­gin­ning to sat­is­fy her did she be­gin speak­ing on ma­nip­u­la­tion meth­ods.

That came very close to the end of their ses­sion, though Ki'el and Chi­an ex­changed notes af­ter the woman left. Kuli helped Ki'el keep a fair­ly good im­pres­sion of the in­tent the Out­er Sect sis­ter had giv­en them, and with that, Ki'el did her best to keep Chi­an fo­cused.

When, af­ter an­oth­er af­ter­noon nap, Ki'el came out to find that Chi­an had in­ex­pert­ly twist­ed sev­er­al branch­es into strange shapes, they both shared a grin, and Chi­an be­gan to talk about where and how her in­tent had not quite had the cor­rect ef­fect. Ki'el watched her make an­oth­er at­tempt, pri­vate­ly won­der­ing if Chi­an would be able to make ad­e­quate use of wood ma­nip­u­la­tion in­tent in an­oth­er few days, and she won­dered how Mian and Xam were do­ing in the Out­er Sect.

She hoped that her friends were at least do­ing as well as her, or at least, were as hap­py as Ki'el was be­gin­ning to feel.