Zu Mari stumbled as Kia ran into his back, the chain of prisoners bunching up at his disruption to their steady movement.

“AAAAAAAAAHHH!!” he screamed, too frustrated for any attempt at subtlety. “Why does this keep happening to me? I’m Zu Mari! Destined scion of destiny! Chosen of the gods! I am not some common weakling who needs to spend years practicing just to accomplish one tiny thing!”

Menya punched him hard enough to knock him out of line, dragging Kia and the prisoner ahead of him down with him as he fell to the ground. “Silence, kevnis, and be grateful I’m feeling generous today. Get in line.”

Zu wiped blood from his face, rage building by the moment. He was so tired of this place and its rules and overpowered powers. He wanted to destroy the whole thing, burn it all.

Reaching out indiscriminately, he grabbed random sections of the citadel through dimensional manipulation, binding more and more together in a clumsy hodgepodge, one all but guaranteed to collapse violently.

He kept adding, the spell growing more and more unwieldy and his control trembling on the edge of capability. It may be undone a moment later when the loop reset again, but right now he was going to bring this whole city down with him.

“Stop.” Something smashed down on his spell with overpowering force, breaking his concentration and flattening reality back into its intended shape, and it took a moment for the intense focus to fade and allow him to recognize it was Master Elvanis.

The child stood on the railing in his soft green robes, looking directly at Zu with a satisfied smile. “You. Come.”

Zu very nearly self-immolated on the spot just to show Elvanis he wasn’t one to be ordered around, that he was tired of playing these games. But while a minute before, he’d have done it without hesitaiton, the dampening effect of Master Elvanis’s smothering presence had quickly subdued his anger under a mix of anticipation and dread.

He knew it was too late. His secret was out. He’d lost control of the situation the moment he overstepped, showing such blatant progress without any excuse for it, shouting about progress and failure when he had no other reason to do so.

He allowed Menya and Nira to unbind him, then stepped toward Master Elvanis with his head held high. He may be in for… he wasn’t sure what, but he was still Zu Mari damn it! He was sick to death of being afraid and subdued and under the control of others.

It may be beyond his power to change the latter, but he could certainly change the former. Fear was for lesser men, not future gods. All the places where fear tried to take hold, he ruthlessly crushed it with overwhelming confidence. Death, pain, what did they matter in the end? What mattered was how he carried his destiny, and that was something he’d more and more failed to uphold.

How young and naive he’d been when the mere glimpse of Serena’s beauty had stolen his sense and left him overwhelmed. How foolish to let events take control of him, rather than seizing them himself.

Everyone was stronger? According to what metric? Zu had yet to see anything spectacular from any of them. Nira could make portals? So what! He didn’t need her. He didn’t need anyone.

Amid this furious internal struggle, he moved too slowly for Master Elvanis’s satisfaction; something grabbed him roughly in a fist of air and dragged him into the sky.

“I’d begun to think I’d been mistaken,” Elvanis said conversationally as they landed on his personal balcony, far above the one where the prisoners stood below. “Your deception was well done.”

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Zu staggered as the air fist released him, but regained his balance with dignity. “I am done hiding.”

“Who are you?”

“Zu Mari.”

“That name has no meaning to me.”

Zu spread his arms. “It means me. What more does it need to do?”

“Explain how you have come to me. You are from no family of consequence, no bloodline of meaning, and yet in a span of days have progressed from exploding pebbles to a multi-reach web strong enough to annihilate half the city. Who are you?”

He barely refrained from saying ‘Judgement and death,’ which would probably get him in serious trouble. Instead he went with the safer choice.

“Destiny.”

Master Elvanis regarded him with dispassionate curiosity, the expression eerie on a child’s soft face. Zu was struck by the absurdity of the image; himself, a tall, strong warrior, Master Elvanis a spoiled and overpowered boy. The balance of power was wrong. He should not be forced to put up with this kind of thing!

“You seem agitated,” Elvanis said after a time. “Come inside.”

He strode into the vaulted meditation room, water flowing out from the pool in its center, running up the walls and across the ceiling before dripping steadily back down at a fast tempo.

Zu’s steps quickened, the sight of the pool bringing back that glowing memory of power flowing through him properly, however weakly. He did not need Master Elvanis’s forceful shoves this time, eagerly seating himself without waiting for formal invitation.

Master Elvanis seated himself nearby, watching Zu intently.

Zu closed his eyes and drifted, feeling the power flow around him, past him, parting and rejoining beyond. He yearned to reach out to it, to draw it in and through himself, to let it flow as it had before. Yet his reaching was faint and uncertain, a whisper instead of a command. A child trying to speak, a babe trying to grasp tightly. He did not have any strength in his… whatever it was that reached for the power. It was atrophied with disuse, or stunted from birth; both, perhaps.

“Master Elvanis, may I speak?”

“You may.”

“Can you unlock my inner circulation? Is it possible, even though I was crippled from childhood?” Master Elvanis’s words echoed in his memory. I am stronger than your weakness.

“No one is ever truly crippled. There is always some way forward, even if it does not appear how you might desire.”

“But can you do it? I thought, for a time… I felt it. But now it’s gone.”

“Bring me your sword and I will help you.”

Zu’s heart leapt in sudden hope. Without really knowing what he did or how, he reached to Smoke of Progression and pulled it through, drawing it from the air as easily as he had the first time. Zu rose, stepping from the pool, then held out the blade in both hands to Master Elvanis. The child lifted the godsword from his hands, eyes narrowing. “I see. This explains much. Not all, but enough.”

He drew a finger along the blade, and in Zu’s mind Smoke of Progression screamed in sudden panic. “No, don’t let him, please, I—“

Zu stumbled forward as Kia collided with his back. He twisted out of the silver chain, snapping it with sheer physical strength - it suppressed powers and spirit, but he was no weakling and the chain was thin - then ran to the edge of the balcony and looked up, ignoring Menya and Nira’s angered shouts.

“Master Elvanis?" Zu demanded, "You promised!”

“And I will keep my promise.” Master Elvanis dropped from the top of the tower, robes fluttering in the rush of his passage. Zu’s bonds snapped apart and disintegrated into dust, then less than dust and were gone completely. “This one is mine. Do what you will with the others.”

Zu took his hand and let him pull him into the air, his heart pulsing with eagerness.

This time they did not return to the pool, but to the roof above. Master Elvanis set Zu on the very pinnacle of the tower’s tall roof, then raised his hands. The entire roof split at the seams, sliding open like an iris. Zu quickly cast Striding Wind Sustaining so he did not fall. Streams of the upward-flowing water emerged into the sunlight. They shimmered with iridescent color like oil or soap bubbles and streamed straight up to where Zu sat, hovering in the air. But his platform of wind pushed the streams away, preventing them from reaching him.

“Release your wind technique. You do not need it.”

“Master?” Zu did not dismiss his technique. He would survive a fall, but…

“Dismiss your technique.” Master Elvanis’s voice turned hard. “Now.”

Zu dismissed Striding Wind Sustaining. For a moment he fell, staggering and flailing, then the streams of water caught him and he bobbed a moment in their bizarre embrace. Then he righted himself, balancing, and the water began flowing up and over him before scattering away.

The power in his core stirred, the twisted and empty channels of his body shifting.

And energy flowed through him.

Master Elvanis smiled widely. “Now, Zu Mari, it is time to see what you’re really capable of.”

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