They won their match the next morning. And no, it wasn’t with the power of love and friendship. The other team just sucked.
Akari’s team started in an open grassland, with their opponents visible across the field. It was a single-elimination death match, like their bout against Garriland Team Three. Apparently, these quick games were a popular choice in the first-year matches. No one wanted to settle in for a twenty-minute skirmish when they didn’t even know the contestants.
Well, the audience got their wish. Less than a second after the countdown, Akari shot a portal behind the other team, Relia ran through with a cloud of death mana, and that was that. Luck had played a role here, but Akari could have spent the whole game polishing her glasses, and her team still would have won.
The audience booed Relia’s death mana, as expected. But Relia didn’t seem bothered by this. On the contrary, she offered a helping hand to their fallen opponents, then she smiled and blew kisses into the crowd.
“You sure you’re okay?” Kalden asked her outside the locker rooms. “I mean—you were great out there, but—”
“Yeah!” Relia cut in. “It felt great! I never would have used that on live TV a month ago. You guys were clearly a bad influence on me.”
“And the crowd?” he asked.
Relia waved that away. “I survived my condition. Not just this year, but forever. They could throw tomatoes at me, and I’d still be smiling.”
Akari nodded in agreement. It was hard when your teachers and teammates called you out. But the audience? They just cared about their own entertainment, and they reacted however the news told them to. Most of them knew nothing about mana arts, much less this team and their personal struggles.
An airship carried them back to Koreldon City that night, and everyone held their heads high despite their exhaustion. Four teams from Koreldon University had competed this weekend, and three would go on to the next round. The second batch of teams would compete in Azuland two weeks from now. Two weeks after that, Akari’s team would have their next round in Costria.
Four weeks to get their act together and avoid any more pesky defeats.
~~~
Akari sat down with Irina the following Garsday and they hammered out a plan. It wasn’t so different from the plan she’d made with Elend last summer. Fortunately, Irina’s plan was far simpler. She didn’t try to micromanage Akari’s sleep schedule, or make her spend four hours a day “enjoying life.”
But just like before, Akari had to keep her evenings free from training. Training, in this case, meant practicing with the sole purpose of building mana or refining her techniques. She already did plenty of that in the hours before class, during class, and the time between class and dinner. Not to mention the weekends, where she easily clocked ten to twelve hours per day.
“Obsessive mana artists peak early,” Irina said. “Then they burn out somewhere in the Artisan or Master realms. Today, your passion feels like a flame that will never die. But it will happen someday. I’ve seen it with dozens of young prodigies in the Artegium. Overtraining will kill your long-term motivation, but your time off will keep the flame burning.”
Akari nodded along. Elend had told her this last summer—how her daily routine should last her entire life. She’d even agreed with him, but habits had a funny way of overriding knowledge.
She’d always looked at addicts and assumed they were in denial, but Irina told her a different story. More often than not, those people were just like her. Knowledge was cheap. You needed habits and systems in place to move forward.
In Akari’s case, they placed a calendar in the pool house where she and Kalden could see it. Every day, she drew a red checkmark in the box to show that she’d followed the plan. If she overtrained that day, she had to keep the box blank. Then she and Irina would need to talk about what went wrong, and how to fix it.
However, certain types of training were still allowed under this plan. For example, helping Elise with her dream mana, which they did every Narsday and Kelsday. Akari could also train with Relia and Kalden, as long as she focused on helping them rather than helping herself.
“What’s stopping me from hacking this system?” Akari asked one night in the dining room.
Irina gave her a knowing look. “I’m sure you’ll try to do just that. But I’m more concerned with progress right now than perfection. If you can train twenty percent less this week, then we’ll call that a victory.”
Akari nodded. “So I can still cycle mana whenever I want?”
“No,” Irina said.
“What? Why not?”
“Aside from diminishing returns, and the unnecessary strain on your channels? If you can’t unplug from training, then you’ll never be fully plugged in.”
“But I am plugged in. Isn’t that my problem? That I focus too hard?
“I doubt that,” Irina said with an amused smile. “Even Mystics lack total control over their own minds. Overtraining isn’t the same as over-focusing. On the contrary, those with limited hours will often push themselves harder.”
Talek. Elend had explained this before, too. In terms of numbers, most mana artists grew at an exponential rate. Slow growth in the Apprentice and Artisan realms, followed by massive improvements in the Master realms. But this wasn’t because the Masters had more time. It was because they trained their minds, making the most of the time they already had.
~~~
Crimson light filled the dojo as Kalden unleashed his battle mana.
He’d been working on a version of Irina’s Cloak of a Thousand Eyes. With this, Kalden could see an entire battlefield in his mind, down to the smallest patterns and details. He would know his enemies’ next moves before they did, along with the perfect counters. It would all be clear, like pieces on a crowns board.
Someday . . .
At this point, Kalden would settle for a Cloak of Ten Eyes. Battle mana was a brand new aspect. And while Irina had taught him the basics, this wouldn’t be the same as her technique. Instead, he’d have to build something from the ground up.
Ordinary techniques were bad enough, but Cloaks were the most complicated by far. Mana moved through channels in thousands of possible patterns. Sometimes, those patterns were useless. Other times, you’d stumble upon the seed of a technique with the outcome you expected. But most techniques were dead-ends. They might be useful in the Apprentice realm, but they wouldn’t scale as you expanded your mind and mana.
“How do I know if I’m doing this right?” he’d asked Irina during one of their training sessions.
She considered that for a moment. “You’ve probably noticed that some cycling patterns feel easier than others. More intuitive. Instead of feeling crushed and overwhelmed, you might even feel excited and hopeful.”
Kalden nodded. He’d definitely noticed this, and he’d taken note of the more promising patterns.
“Ignore those feelings,” Irina said
He frowned “What?”
“The right technique should scare you. It should feel too big to comprehend. This will leave you room to grow when you finally reach the Master realm.
His frown deepened. “That’s the opposite of what you told me last year.”
“That was before. Before you’d chosen your aspect, when you were still finding your place in this world. But now that choice is made, and there’s no going back. Now is the time to reach for the stars. If you don’t, you might never leave the ground.”
And so Kalden stood in the center of the dojo, trying one pattern after the other. Every single day. Glim couldn’t help him this time. At least, not the way she’d helped him with the soulshine. Cloak techniques were more personal, and there were no shortcuts. At least, no shortcuts they knew of.
Another technique broke into crimson mist, and Kalden glanced down at his mana watch, checking his total count.
1689.
He needed 3200 mana to reach Artisan, so he was more than halfway there. Those numbers were ridiculous for any first-year, much less for Kalden, the second-youngest student in the Artegium. Soulshine really was amazing once you fixed the side effects.
The door slid open behind him. Someone knocked on the wooden frame, and he spun to see Akari standing in the doorway. Despite her new rules about evening training, she still wore black combat shorts and a matching tank top.
“Hey.” She took a few steps closer. “Need any help?”
Kalden smiled as he stopped cycling his mana. She’d been helping the rest of their team, so it was only a matter of time until she extended him the same offer. He almost made a joke about it, but his aspect warned him against that. Akari was already too hard on herself lately.
By now, she’d shared most of her story, including what Noella Clifton had done. Or Noella Frostblade, as Kalden remembered her. Emberlyn’s mother had always had a strong sense of injustice, raging at the TV for things out of her control. It was all too easy to imagine her turning that rage on someone else, even a child.
Kalden had suspected this for a while. Or rather, his old informants, Darren and Maelyn, had suspected it. But they’d assumed this abuse had happened years before, in her old foster homes.
It was a lot to take in, and he was amazed that Akari and Irina had covered it all in one night. Then again, this was Akari Zeller. She was on track to reach Artisan before she turned eighteen. If she rushed through that, then why not charge through her therapy, too?
Regardless, he was glad to see her getting better. She’d complained about this new schedule at first, then she’d distracted herself with random tasks around the pool house. First, she’d organized her dresser drawers. Then her half of the bathroom, followed by her half of the closet. After that, she’d paced around the room like a raptor lost from its pack.
But over time, she grew more relaxed. Not to mention happier than he’d seen her in several months. He just hoped she could stick to the schedule this time. But knowing them, it would only last until the next crisis.
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Akari waved a hand in front of his eyes, and he realized he’d been spacing out.
“Sorry.” Kalden stepped forward and kissed her on the forehead. “Knowledge mana can fry your brain if you’re not careful.”
She grinned as she grabbed his t-shirt, stood on her tiptoes, and gave him a proper kiss. “What were you working on?”
“My Cloak technique,” Kalden said as they pulled apart. “And my Second Brain.”
“Cloak techniques suck,” Akari said. “I put mine on the back burner for now.”
He nodded as he strode toward a bench and sat down. “Second Brains can be just as bad . . .” He stretched out his hand and used a series of crimson planes to build a floating box, no bigger than his fist. The size didn’t matter here, but larger shapes were easier to control.
A second later, Kalden rattled off a string of thirty numbers in his mind, then he cycled knowledge mana from his brain to his outstretched hand. A tiny red Missile flew into the box, and the lid snapped shut behind it
“You start by storing simple things,” he said. “Images, words, strings of numbers. Anything you can imagine.” He turned away from the box and met her eyes. “Then you focus on something else for a few minutes. Just enough time for your brain to forget what you stored.” He trailed off, and rubbed at his temple. “You know how with physical arts, things just . . . work?”
She blinked. “Not really, no. I mess up my techniques all the time.”
“Right, but when you don’t mess up. As long as you form the techniques right, they work how you expect.”
Akari considered that, then nodded.
“Knowledge mana is different,” he said. “Sometimes, I’ll pull out the wrong answer from the box, but I won’t know why it’s wrong. Or maybe the answer is right, but I expect to fail, so that makes it wrong.”
Kalden opened his palm and shot a second Missile into the box, forming a Circuit technique and retrieving the string of numbers. His brain subvocalized them on its own.
“And sometimes the opposite is true,” Kalden said with a sigh. “My subconscious knows the right answer, so I’ll think of that when I retrieve the Missile. Then I won’t know where it actually came from—the box, or my brain. Does that make any sense?”
Akari shrugged. In all fairness, that was probably the correct answer. Even if Kalden’s words made sense, no one truly understood the human brain. Not even Mystics.
“And here’s the worst part,” he said. “Sometimes, everything works out like butter on bread. I’ll think of a long string of numbers, I’ll write them down on paper as a source of truth, and I’ll leave them in the box for an hour. One time out of ten, I’ll pull out a perfect answer. But I still won’t know why it worked. It feels exactly the same as all the failures.”
“Guess that’s why regular people give up,” Akari said with a grin.
Kalden returned her smile. The compliment sounded a bit strange on her lips, but she’d made an effort to compliment all their teammates lately. Even Elise. This was probably Irina’s work, because it all started after that night in Garriland.
And Akari was right, of course. Many artists, scientists, and thinkers chose knowledge arts as a way to boost their own intelligence. However, they quickly learned what a massive time investment this was. You could put thousands of hours into this aspect for minimal gains. Unless you planned to reach Master, you’d be better off focusing that time on your chosen skill.
There were exceptions, of course, like how Elend created Glim. But that was a unique case, and even he couldn’t replicate it.
Akari shuffled in place, shooting longing glances at the middle of the dojo.
He stifled another smile. “You want to help me train, don’t you?”
Another shrug. “I wouldn’t wanna distract you, but if you need help . . . What part of the Second Brain isn’t working?” Akari asked
“What do you mean?”
“Like, is it the Construct part, the Missiles, or something else?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “That’s part of the problem.”
She nodded. “Maybe we can break it down. The Missiles are a Circuit, right? Like my displacement technique?”
“It’s not as fast as displacement. But yeah. Same basic principle.”
“So what happens if you use that technique on me?” Akari pointed a finger to the center of her forehead “I could just tell you what you sent.”
“It could work, in theory. But . . . you’re talking about telepathy.”
“So? I’ve been training with Elise all week.”
“This is different,” Kalden said. “Elise is showing you illusions, and you’re resisting them. We’d be sending thoughts back and forth.”
Akari perked up at that. “Could we do that in combat?”
He blinked. “Yeah, but not in school games. Telepathy is illegal without consent, so the arena blocks it.”
“Even between teammates?”
“It’s simpler that way. You realize what a big deal this is, don’t you?
“No.” She wrinkled her nose. “Elise can show people their worst fears. How’s this worse?”
“Dream mana is illegal, too, But not in combat. There’s a long history of people using it in duels. Laws are weird like that. They're written over centuries.”
Akari shrugged. “But what if I agree? What’s the problem?”
“We’re both inexperienced,” he said. “And Circuits work both ways. I could send you anything by accident, and you could do the same. Thoughts, images, emotions . . . and if you try not to send something, you might get the opposite effect.”
“Oh.” Her eyes widened in realization. “So we can’t control it.”
“Right. Masters do it, but they have years of practice.”
Akari mulled that over, then nodded once. “I’m fine with it if you are. You know my secrets, anyway.”
“All of them?” Kalden asked.
“Yeah.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “You’re saying you have secrets?”
Kalden waggled a hand. “‘Secrets’ is a strong word, but there will always be surprises.”
“So? Sharing thoughts won’t change anything.”
She was right about that. If they stopped surprising each other, it would mean they stopped growing, and that was unacceptable for mana artists like them.
“You sure you don’t have anything you want to share first?” Kalden asked. “I mean—if there’s anything you wouldn’t share with me, then maybe we shouldn’t do this.”
Akari finally sat down on the bench beside him, stretching her legs over his lap. She rested her chin on her thumb, and he could almost see the ideas racing in her mind’s eye. “I used to check out Elend. You know—all those times he walked around shirtless.”
“Guess I can’t blame you for that,” Kalden said with a light chuckle. “I used to check out Relia, too. Mostly during training.”
“She does have nice abs,” Akari muttered.
“So do you,” Kalden said as he patted her stomach.
Akari crossed her arms and looked up at the ceiling. Her grin faded over the next few seconds as she summoned another memory. “I wet the bed till I was like fourteen. Just one more thing that pissed off Noella . . . no pun intended.”
“Oh.” Kalden had hoped for something more humorous or lighthearted. But now . . . was she implying she’d been abused for something else that wasn’t her fault?
Akari shot him a sidelong glance, clearly anxious to see his reaction.
“That’s messed up,” he said before he could stop himself.
She winced.
“Sorry—I meant Noella, not you.” But of course, that was still the wrong answer. Akari wanted to be like the heroes from her movies. She didn’t want anyone seeing her as damaged or troubled.
Kalden couldn’t think of a way to make it better, so he pressed on. “I think Emberlyn had the same problem.” He hoped that was a safe answer, but Emberlyn could be a touchy subject, too. Especially when it came to Kalden’s relationship with her.
“Yeah.” Akari studied a wooden support beam. “That’s how we met. She went to a sleepover in elementary school. and some other kids found out. Then my hero complex took over, and I defended her.”
“You went to a sleepover?” Kalden asked.
“Huh?” She turned to face him. “No, this was in school the next day. I never went to any sleepovers.”
“Ah, so I was your first? That night we shared a hotel in White Vale?”
Akari winked at him. “Your turn.”
“What?”
“To share an embarrassing story.”
“Honestly?” Kalden said, “I don’t keep track of that stuff.”
“Bullshit. You were a weird kid, just like me.”
“I’m not saying I don’t have regrets. And I’ve definitely had my share of emotional break down. I just don’t dwell on them.”
Akari snorted. “Well, aren’t you special?”
Clearly, she felt shortchanged. Kalden thought about making something up, but that would defeat the whole purpose of this.
However, there was one thing he could say. Something that had been on his mind for several weeks, but he’d never put into words. It wasn’t a secret, but he wouldn’t want it to slip out at the wrong time.
But when was the right time? And how often did his careful planning actually pay off?
Kalden met her eyes and drew in a deep breath. “I love you.”
His knees trembled as the words left his mouth. In some ways, this felt too late. He should have said it sooner—before they’d slept together, or before she’d moved into the pool house. He should have told her that night in Garriland, or afterward, when she’d told him the whole story about her and Noella. Akari had been a mess of insecurities that night, and he’d wanted to reassure her that nothing had changed between them.
At the same time, it felt like too much, too soon. Was this tempting fate? They were still young, and they would change a lot as they advanced. They might not be together forever.
Akari’s face broke into a wide grin, then it turned into a nervous laugh. “Doesn’t count. I already knew that.”
Kalden cleared his throat. “You know, it’s customary to say it back.”
She shrugged. “Never been much of a rule follower.”
He raised an eyebrow. “And laughing is definitely frowned upon.”
“Not much of a people pleaser, either.”
Kalden knew for a fact that wasn’t true, but he kept that to himself. Akari shot him a look as if she could read his thoughts.
“My father never said that to my mother,” Kalden said. “Guess I didn’t grow up with a lot of positive male role models.”
“I get it.” She ran a hand up and down his left bicep. “All my role models were in movies, but none of them were real.”
“You’re parents seemed like good people, though.”
“They were,” she muttered. “But I was too dumb to realize it.”
A long silence passed between them, then Kalden moved her legs aside and got to his feet. “Are we gonna do this, then?”
“Hell yes.” Akari leapt off the bench and joined him in the center of the dojo, roughly five paces away.
Kalden cycled battle mana through his channels and fell into a combat stance. The stance wasn’t necessary for this technique, but it still served a purpose. The body and mind were linked, but the body was far easier to control.
Akari did a few warmup stretches, then mirrored his stance.
Kalden formed a set of three random words in his mind: gem, maze, and cascade. Then he cycled the knowledge mana to his brain, and shot a Missile straight toward Akari’s head.
Akari raised an arm at the last second. Pure mana appeared in her palm, followed by a blade of pale blue light. The blade shattered Kalden’s Missile, and it faded into a cloud of crimson mist.
She blinked down at her own hand, and color rose to her cheeks. “Sorry . . . just a habit, I guess.”
“It’s my fault,” Kalden said. “We should have started closer,”
They each took a few steps forward, then they repeated the process. Akari took a deep breath, forcing her body to stay relaxed. This time, the Missile passed through her skin, and she screwed her eyes shut, straining to concentrate. She opened her eyes a second later, and a mischievous grin spread across her face. “You’re imagining me naked?”
He matched her smile with his own. “Probably. But we’re looking for a set of three words. Did you get anything like that?”
She frowned. “I think I see the problem here. How do I know if the thought is mine, or yours?”
Kalden thought back to his training with Irina. “I know one technique that might help. Take a few deep breaths and clear your mind. Then listen for something far, far away. Something upstairs, maybe, like a timer on the microwave.”
“What if no one’s running the microwave?”
“That’s not the point. The point is to listen for it—to get your thoughts out of your own head.”
Akari closed her eyes, and her chest rose and fell with several deep breaths.
“It could go off at any second,” Kalden said. “And you might miss it if you aren’t listening hard.”
She nodded, still keeping her eyes closed.
“I’m going to send you another thought. When you hear something, you should assume it’s me. Second-guessing yourself won’t lead to progress.” In hindsight, Kalden didn’t follow that advice very well himself, but he hadn’t noticed that until now.
Akari nodded again, and he shot a Missile with the same three words as before.
Gem, maze, cascade.
The Missile broke through Akari’s skin, and she made a face. “Sounds like gibberish. Like you’re playing a song backward.”
“Okay, that’s a good sign.”
She opened her eyes. “Seriously?”
“The problem is thought language,” he said. “We both speak Espirian, but our brains use different pathways to represent each word.” Fortunately, this had been well documented in his textbooks, along with the workarounds. He just needed to send one thought as a decoding function, and then feed the phrases into that function. If he did it right, then Akari’s brain would compile it like computer code.
They tried several dozen more experiments with limited success. But he had to admit, this already felt better than training with the box. Akari gave him real feedback each time, and that feedback served as a compass to guide his changes.
He even tried mixing in some empty Missiles without telling her, and she didn’t hear any gibberish or static those times. That proved this wasn’t their imagination.
“I think I heard something that time,” Akari said. “Can you try . . . thinking louder?”
Kalden nodded, despite the absurdity of the request. Mental mana arts was weird like that—something could still work, even when it didn’t make sense. So he increased the volume of his mind-voice, and tried to imagine his skull vibrating from the sound.
Akari opened her eyes when the next Missile reached her brain. “Gem, maze and . . . castrate?”
“Close,” Kalden said with a chuckle. “Let’s try again.”
“Cascade!” she said a second later.
Excitement flared in Kalden’s chest, and he wanted to punch himself for not asking for help two weeks ago. Then again, he never would have considered this idea on his own.
“You really are a good captain,” he told Akari.
A small laugh escaped her lips, as if he’d just made a bad joke. “Still feels like I’m faking it sometimes.” Then she changed the subject before Kalden could say anything else. “I thought this was a Circuit technique. Don’t I get to send you a reply?”
“Yeah.” Kalden cycled more mana to his head, sending her translation function with no data. “Just focus hard on one thought when the Missile reaches your brain. I should hear that thought when I pull it back.”
She nodded, and that same mischievous smile crept across her face. Kalden braced himself for some inappropriate joke as the mana left his palm.
It returned a second later, and Akari’s voice was loud and clear in his head: ‘I love you too, Kalden Trengsen.’