Akari crept down the staircase, carefully avoiding all the squeaky spots. Her father was in the kitchen, braising the pork for dinner. The scents of garlic, onions, and ginger reached her nostrils, but she ignored her growling stomach. She could eat later, when her training was done.
Finally, Real Akari thought from the back of her mind. Another dream. And not just any dream. This was the memory she’d been waiting for. The day her father shared his theories on personal displacement.
Her conscious mind had slept through her dreams with Emberlyn. She’d been in denial then, refusing to see them as the memories they were. Now, her thoughts were clear, and she gave the dream her full attention.
Well, almost her full attention. Balance was important, too. If she focused too hard, then she would wrestle control from her past self and shatter the dream like an egg. She’d been pursuing this memory since Midwinter break, and she couldn’t wait any longer.
Dream Akari reached the bottom of the staircase, and her bare feet sunk into the plush gray carpet. Her shoes and socks were in her backpack, but she’d put those on later, once she was safely outside the house.
Fortunately, her father always listened to music while he worked, so the sound should mask her footsteps. Getting the door open was another matter, but she’d started oiling the hinges whenever she got the chance.
Just a few more seconds, then she was free. Her fingers curled around the doorknob, twisted, and pulled . . .
“Akari?” Mazren’s voice called out from the kitchen.
Damnit. Stupid Master-level hearing.
But Akari didn’t give up. She wore headphones like her father. Not for music, but for plausible deniability. How was she supposed to hear that distant voice when she might have music blasting in her ears? She couldn’t, of course. So she pulled the door open wider and prepared to slip out.
Except there was no burst of cool Hexember air to greet her. No sound of rain in the gutters, and no scent of dusty autumn leaves. Instead, the doorway was a portal that led straight into the kitchen.
“Ah, there you are!” Mazren’s tone was bright and cheerful, as if he hadn’t just caught her sneaking out. He stood by the stove, stirring a large piece of pork belly wrapped in butcher’s twine. His blue eyes darted from her backpack to her bare feet, and he shot her an amused grin. “Going to hang out with Emberlyn?”
“No.” Akari wrinkled her nose as she stepped through the portal. “We’re not friends anymore.”
“Oh.” His smile faded. “Did something happen?”
She shrugged and clutched her backpack straps. “Nothing in particular.”
Mazren glanced at the analog clock that hung above the kitchen door. “I thought we did spacetime lessons at three?”
“School was closed today.”
“That doesn’t make it the weekend.” He must have caught something in her expression, because he changed tactics. “You sure you don’t want to talk about Emberlyn?”
Akari forced herself to meet his eyes. “My parents make me do a bunch of extra work. Hard to find time for friends after that.”
Her father turned back to the stove and pulled off the lid, releasing a burst of scented steam. He turned the pork belly with a pair of stainless steel tongs. “Tell you what—If you can answer my questions today, then can you leave early.”
“Questions about Emberlyn?”
“Only if you want to. Otherwise, we can talk about spacetime techniques.”
She crossed her arms. “You gonna ask me a bunch of esoteric stuff I’ve never heard of?”
“Esoteric . . .” He nodded as he closed the lid. “Good word.”
Akari just rolled her eyes. She was eleven, not five. “How many questions?”
Her father sat down at the round wooden table. “If I give you a number, you’ll just give me vague answers and force me to ask more questions.” He raised his eyebrows. “That’s right, I’m on to you, young lady.”
She glared at him, and he continued. “It will be shorter than a full study session. I promise. Just one subject. One technique.”
“Fine.” Akari stomped over to the pantry and pulled open the door. If she was stuck inside, then she might as well give her stomach what it wanted. She pulled out a box of protein bars from the top shelf. Next time, she’d have to stash a few of these in her backpack ahead of time. She’d also have to sneak out the window rather than the front door.
The box of protein bars vanished from her hand, and she spun to see her father holding it at the table.
“First question,” he said. “What technique was that?”
“Displacement.” She plodded over to the table and slumped down in her chair.
“And what is displacement, exactly?”
Akari leaned forward, pulled a protein bar from the open box, and unwrapped it. “You can teleport stuff from one place to another.”
“Teleport?” he asked. “How’s that different from a portal?” He gestured to the spot where she’d appeared a few minutes before.
“A portal is a Construct.”She took a bite of her protein bar, chewed, and swallowed. “Your mana exerts force over space, bends it, and makes a bridge between two spots.”
“Not bad,” he said. “And displacement?
“It’s a Missile technique.” She took a bigger bite and glanced up at the ceiling, straining to remember more details. “Actually, no. It’s a Circuit technique.”
“How does it work?” he asked. “Can I have an example?”
“You did it just now.” She pointed at the box of protein bars on the table. “You shot one Missile at the box, then pulled it back to your hand. Then you shot another Missile where you wanted the box to go.”
“But how’s it work?” he pressed. “What’s the mana actually doing?”
“It rewrites the parameters of the box.”
“Parameters?” He made a helpless shrug. “Explain it like I’m five.”
Akari glared at him. “Are you five?”
“If you can’t explain it to a child, then you don’t really understand it. You’re just memorizing definitions.”
She rolled her eyes. “Your shirt is big, and blue, and made of cotton. Those are parameters.”
“Alright,” he said with a slow nod.
Akari gestured out the window. “We’re on a mountain in Northern Espiria. That’s a spatial parameter relative to the planet.”
Another nod.
“Mana can exert force on parameters,” she said. “That box is cold right now, but a heat artist could change its heat parameter—make it hotter or colder.”
Dream Akari was technically wrong about this so-called heat parameter, but Mazren didn’t correct her. Probably because it matched up with the mana theory they taught kids in elementary school.
“Spatial mana is more expensive than heat,” Mazren said. “Can you tell me why?”
This had been part of her last reading assignment, so Akari was ready with her answer. “Techniques get more expensive as you climb the scale of abstraction.” She took another bite of her protein bar and started chewing “With concrete aspects, you—”
Stolen story; please report.
“Don’t talk with your mouth full.”
Akari finished chewing, then swallowed. “Concrete aspects work like tools.”
“Concrete aspects?” Mazren asked.
Akari pressed on before he could whip out his favorite phrase. “Stuff you can touch. Fire, water, stone, air—things like that.” She gave him a look to see if he would correct her. “You shoot physical mana, and it alters parameters using classical physics. There’s no mana loss.”
“No mana loss?” her father asked with a raised eyebrow.
“Less than ten percent. Too small to matter. Space mana is abstract because it alters parameters directly, without classical physics.”
He hummed in consideration. “Not bad. Except all mana uses physics. We use the scale of abstraction to measure our understanding of it, not the mana itself.” He gestured to the box of protein bars. “Heat mana doesn’t rewrite some invisible list of parameters. It introduces kinetic energy into the target’s atoms. This increases their thermal energy, and we perceive that energy as heat.”
She frowned. “Why don’t they just tell us that in school?”
“They will,” he said. “When you get to high school. The fact is, we’ve had heat artists long before we knew about atoms. The first heat artist was a guy named Master Calorys. He—”
“You just made that up,” Akari said. “Calor literally means ‘heat’ in Cadrian.”
He chuckled. “The same is true for Old Koreldon. But where do you think they got those words? Anyway, Calorys had a revelation about heat. He understood it deep in his bones, centuries before the science caught up.”
Akari shot a longing glance out the window. She should be training right now, not wasting her time on this. What was next? Would they learn about Grandmaster Coldys who discovered ice mana?
“This is important,” Mazren said with a grin. “I promise.”
“How?” Better to keep things moving, or her father could spend hours on these little tangents.
He leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table. “Tell me—does displacement work on people?”
“Of course,” she said. “You’ve used it on me” When Akari was five, Mazren had thrown a small stone into the air, then he’d swapped Akari’s body with the stone. The stone’s momentum had transferred to her, and it felt like flying.
“Last question then. How would you use displacement on yourself?”
Akari blinked. This question sounded familiar. But of course it did. This was the displacement problem—one of the most famous questions in the world of spatial mana arts.
“That’s impossible,” she said.
“Unprecedented,” he corrected. “So is every problem before it’s solved. Now, start with the first step. Identify the problem.”
Akari strained to recall her spatial mana textbooks. She knew about the problem, but where was she supposed to start?
“I’ll help you.” Her father pulled two protein bars from the box. “Everything has mass, right? And things with more mass are more expensive to displace.” The protein bars vanished from Mazren’s hand, appearing on the table in front of her.
“Sure,” Akari said. That was why space artists preferred to swap two objects when they could. You moved less total mass that way, which meant less mana to power the technique.
“Good,” he said. “Now, let’s say you have two mana artists. One is an Apprentice who weighs two hundred pounds. The other is an Artisan who weighs one hundred and ten pounds. Which person is cheaper to displace?”
“The Apprentice,” Akari said. “Mana has weight, too. Not regular mass or energy, but something else. That weight matters more than body weight.”
He nodded. “Now let’s say you were a space artist like me. Could you displace a person who had your exact mana counts?
Akari paused, then the infamous problem came back to her. “No . . .” She rubbed at her temple. “That’d be like displacing myself, but that’s the impossible part.”
Mazren grabbed a piece of paper and jotted down the displacement equation. The left side was a variable that represented the technique’s target, while the right side showed the mana cost. The problem was immediately clear. The technique’s cost was several times more than the target. Mazren could displace Akari because she had far less mana than him. However, he could never displace himself, and no amount of advancement would fix that.
Her father leaned back in his chair. “So how would you solve it?
“I wouldn’t,” Akari said. “I’d just use a portal.” Unlike displacement, portals made actual bridges in physical space. They didn’t care about mass; size and duration were their only restrictions.
“Portals are slow,” he said. “You have to physically step through them.”
“Or fall,” she said.
“That’s too slow in the heat of battle,” he said. “Even some Apprentices can shoot Missiles faster than terminal velocity.”
She crossed her arms and slumped back in her seat. “Not like you’ll let me fight in the first place.”
“Let’s say I would. Someday, when you’re older. How would you displace yourself in this hypothetical battle?”
Akari almost gave up again, but her father had already given her several free answers today. She could feel a lecture about perseverance coming on—those always built up inside him like pressure in a bottle. And when he was done, he’d still make her guess.
“Swapping,” Akari said. “Take a box. Fill it with weights and mana. Then I swap myself with the box. Problem solved.”
“You’re on the right track,” Mazren said. “But we can do better than just weights and mana. Most novice-level weights are iron. You probably weigh about sixty pounds—“
“Sixty-seven!” she cut in.
“Sixty-seven.” His lip curled up in an amused smile. “My mistake. But you have less than three milligrams of iron in your body. That’s not the most efficient material transfer.”
Akari groaned. Since when did the material matter? In hindsight, though, she basically knew this. It was easier to swap two stones than to swap a stone and a coin, even if the two objects had equal mass.
Fortunately, her father didn’t make her guess this time. He was clearly too excited. “Good idea with the mana, though. We could make it your mana, to be as efficient as possible. Then we could take samples from your body. Skin, hair, blood, muscle, and bone marrow. The list goes on.”
She laughed at the mental image of lugging this box around the battlefield “You call this faster than falling through a portal?”
He nodded. “There’s a lot of setup, I’ll grant you that. But you can fit all of this in a pocket dimension.”
Akari parked up at that. “So if I fit this stuff in a marble, I could appear wherever I threw the marble?” That still didn’t sound much better than a portal, but other ideas flashed through her mind. What if she threw a marble down an opponent’s mouth, then swapped it with a blade? Or a grenade? Her father probably wouldn’t appreciate that idea, which was why she kept it to herself.
“We’re only halfway there,” her father filled in the equation once again. “Even if the pocket dimension is perfect, it still won’t be enough.”
“Spacetime,” Akari realized. “That whole thing is impossible with space mana, but I’m not training be a space artist.”
He nodded as he brought the protein bars back to his hand. “Space and time are linked. When I move these bars, I don’t just move their position in space. I move their position in time.”
“So . . . you’re already a spacetime artist?”
“Yes and no. My aspect is flawed. It deals with time, but its creators didn’t realize that. And this is why my techniques are so inefficient. Remember Master Calorys from before? He controlled heat, but he didn’t truly understand it. Centuries later, we realized that heat is just kinetic energy, then we made a new version of his aspect. This new version was ten times more efficient than the first.”
“So that’s it?” Akari asked. “That’s the secret? Become a spacetime artist, then make a pocket dimension full of . . . yourself?”
Real Akari couldn’t help but agree. If personal displacement were that simple, she would have solved it weeks ago. Her father’s plan sounded good, but the math still didn’t add up, even with a real spacetime aspect.
“Getting the spacetime aspect is hardly easy,” he replied. “You’ve been working on that your whole life.”
“Yeah, but still . . . “
He looked at her as he placed the pair of protein bars on the table. Yes, there was a problem here, and he expected her to figure it out.
Akari glanced at the protein bars, then back to the paper. “What if two things are perfectly identical? What’s the equation for that?”
Her father smiled as he rewrote the equation. Yes, even with a perfect swap, the technique would drain her total mana supply. And a pocket dimension was far from perfect.
“That’s useless in a real fight,” Akari muttered.
“There is a way to boost the efficiency even more, but you’re not ready for that yet.”
“Why not?”
“Because this last part is a secret,” he said. “And secrets can be dangerous.”
“Thought I was gonna be the world’s first spacetime artist?” she countered. “Shouldn’t I know the secret?”
“I’ll make sure you know when you’re ready. In the meantime, this would be an unnecessary burden.”
Akari just shrugged. She’d been protesting on principle, but she honestly didn’t care that much. Like her father said, it would be years until she actually needed a technique like this. “Does that mean I can go train now?”
He nodded as he cleared off the table. “Go train, honey. You did good for today.”
Dream Akari stood up from the table and grabbed her backpack.
Meanwhile Real Akari was practically screaming from the back of her mind. The dream couldn’t end now. It couldn’t. She needed this technique, and her father was the only person who who could teach her. If this failed, she had nothing.
The dream started to fade, just like they always did. With nothing left to lose, Akari stretched out, seizing control of her past self. The dream reacted to her efforts and began pulling apart even faster, like an unraveling blanket.
No. Akari bore down with all her mental might. Back in Creta, she’d been helpless over these dreams, but so much had changed since then. Elend had taught her meditation, and she’d spent weeks training in his pain machine. Irina had helped her face her worst memories, and she’d practiced telepathy with Kalden.
This dream was hers to control, and she couldn’t let it break.
Akari turned around to face her father, who stood over the stove with the braising pork belly. She closed the distance and drew in a deep breath. “Dad?”
Mazren turned to face her, and something changed in his expression. Before, he’d spoken with a light tone and an easy smile. Now, he grew suddenly serious, and his eyes seemed to see her as she really was. Not the eleven-year-old novice he’d been teaching, but the Apprentice she’d become.
Logically, such an interaction should have broken the dream. Elend’s technique was meant to show her the facts, and this couldn’t possibly be real. Still, she persisted. One moment of doubt could shatter this, whatever it was. She couldn’t let that happen.
“I need to know this technique,” Akari said. “If you don’t tell me now, then we’ll never get another chance.”
Her father studied her for several long seconds, then nodded. “I understand.”
Akari blinked. “You . . . what?”
“Last Haven was attacked, wasn’t it? You, me, and your mother—we all got separated.”
“Well, yeah.” Technically, that wouldn’t happen until two years after this memory, but Akari wasn’t about to correct him. Time travel was impossible, but what if her father had always known this would happen? What if he’d left this memory here for her to find?
Such a thing seemed improbable, but now wasn’t the time for questioning. That would come later when she reviewed this with Kalden.
For now, she swallowed and pressed on. “I’m an Apprentice now. I aspected my mana, and I’m ready for this technique. I need it, and you’re the only one who can help me.”
“I understand,” Mazren repeated. “We’d better get started.”