Ranvir collapsed into a chair in the common room, listening with half an ear as Sansir and Grev continued their frenzied rant. He couldn’t tell what had gotten their blood up more. Their loss against Dovar, or him having achieved Flesh in the Discipline of Body.

“It’s insane.” Grev tried to sit down, but immediately had to get back up again. “He just threw you out of the arena with one hand?” He mimed the action as spoke, flinging the imaginary Sansir into the nearby wall.

“I know. I can’t even figure out how he did that.” Sansir agreed, pacing around the coffee table opposite the blond haired boy. “With Flesh you need a concept to start, but how would you make a concept for strength with smoke?”

Grev shook his head. “I don’t think he has a concept for strength. I think it’s like what Ranvir said. Speed, or something like it. Maybe ‘flowing like smoke’, as in how smoke can seep through even the smallest cracks.”

“I could see how you could get speed from that.” Sansir considered the proposition, very nearly kicking the table leg in his distraction. “Then how did he throw me?”

“He’s barely a head shorter than you and twice as wide.” Ranvir spoke up, rubbing a hand over his face. “He's fucking strong that’s how. A little speed, or whatever, and he could easily throw you that far. More importantly, what does this mean for the future?”

Grevor paused looking at his friend. “Elusria is going to be kicking Ralith ass up and down the front lines. That’s what it means.” He stepped closer to Ranvir. “Don’t you get it? Most people don’t get to live in a time when somebody has a talent like Esmund’s. To have another talent who’s, if anything, better-“

“What he’s trying to say is Esmund and Dovar could put Elusria on the map. Permanently.” Sansir had joined them, looming over Ranvir. “There wouldn’t be three big nation’s names at the front lines. There would be four.”

Ranvir leaned back in his chair, a kernel of purple and black intimidation spreading roots under their intent gazes.

“It’s that big of a deal?” He asked, already knowing it was. They both nodded in return. “How big are we talking? Like Twin Master potential? Do we even have a Twin Master in Elusria?”

Grev shook his head and stepped away from the chair. He seemed to calm down some as Ranvir didn’t match their energy.

“We don’t. When I was a kid I heard the Royal School’s headmaster was close, but she still hasn’t had that breakthrough and she’s getting old.” He rolled his head to the side, crackling it loudly. “Esmund could, probably become a Twin Master if he worked hard at it, maybe even a Triplet.” He shook his shoulders, the skin on his forearms pimpling. “That feels so weird to say.”

Ranvir licked his lip, feeling a cold blue settling into the roots of the intimidation. “And Dovar’s even better?”

“You saw him yourself, with your… eyes.” Sansir waved vaguely at his face. “You tell me, could Es have done that?” Ranvir shook his head but didn’t answer. “That’s what I thought. Dovar has already achieved Flesh. His first Discipline. Esmund might be close too, but he could still be months away. Even then he likely wouldn’t go for Body.”

“I think Figir mentioned that in her book.” Ranvir said. “It’s supposed to be harder to achieve than the others, right?”

“It requires that you conceptualize your element. Something that is only required for Sword or Cloak in the other Disciplines.” Grev put a chess board in front of him, as he spoke.

“What about becoming a Master? Achieving Lance, Mantle, or Heart?” Ranvir leaned closer to watch as Sansir sat opposite Grev.

“We don’t actually know. Most of the Masters just worked at it for long enough and eventually managed it. There’s a possibility that Ankiria, Sankur, or Vargish might know. If they do, they’re not sharing with us. The war’s not that important.” Grev moved his white pawn forwards. He was trying something new, not going for his usual style. It would be interesting to see how Sansir replied.

For a while they were engrossed in the chess game, but it soon became clear that Grev was the calmer of the two. While Sansir didn’t lose any massive pieces it was turning into a slaughter in slow motion. Grev trying to get the win, while Sansir just drew it out as long as he could.

“Do you really think they’ve has cracked the code to the third stage?” Ranvir asked.

“Not really. It’s just a rumor. None of them have.” Grev replied, with a snort. “They might be producing more tethered than us, but looking at the statistics, it’s clear they haven’t. We’ve cracked the second stage and most of our tethered stop there. If they knew the secret of the third stage, they should have a much higher ratio of Masters, to non-masters. They don’t. It’s just cranked up because they have so many more tethered.”

Ranvir leaned back in his chair. That made sense to him. If they knew how to do it, shouldn’t, maybe not most, but a significantly larger portion of their tethered achieve mastery?

He scratched his chin, turning his gaze away from the game. A little while later, Esmund joined them. He was quickly enveloped in Sansir and Grev’s excitement about Dovar’s power. Ranvir didn’t participate still deep in thought, but he saw his friend’s eyes change as they talked. Esmund wouldn’t let Dovar run away from him. He wasn’t going to be a footnote in the history books.

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Ranvir couldn’t allow himself to be either, then.

He thought back to something his mother had once said to him, as he found himself pulling his necklace out. “Talent cannot compete with hard work. Natural born instincts cannot, and have never, superseded our intellect. That is what raises us above the Goddess’ other creatures.”

If Esmund had the natural talent, Ranvir would just have to work smarter and harder to keep up. He was still deep in thought, rolling the rings of his necklace around in his hand, as the common room emptied.

His friends knew him well enough to not interrupt him.

Ranvir was determined to get the most out of the last two days he had left in smoke class. This mostly involved asking questions of a surprisingly patient, if reticent Teacher Sigurd.

Ranvir couldn’t tell if the Master was being tight lipped, or if he really just didn’t know the answers. It was frustrating endeavor that mostly felt like a waste of time.

He did learn one important thing from his relentless grilling, though. He’d been asking the older man about advancing into the first stage, trying to get a gauge on the average speed for most students. A year to reach the first stage, more if they were trying to for the Discipline of Body.

Dovar had managed it in just over a month. That was so much faster than anyone that Ranvir couldn’t fathom how the academy wasn’t falling over itself trying to court him. Then again, he was a noble. Maybe they had nothing to offer him he couldn’t already get for himself.

The revelation, however, wasn’t about how much of a talent Dovar was. It was something else related to advancing a stage. Specifically something he’d heard mention of, attuning a technique. It had come up a few times in Figir’s book. She went into more detail, for picking her technique at Sword, but he’d mostly skimmed that section thinking it only related to the second stage and beyond.

It did not.

“Attuning a technique is a qualitative gap between the different stages.” Teacher Sigurd explained. Ranvir’s questions had garnered the interest from a few of the other nearby students, though most had left to blow smoke at dummies. “It allows you to use a technique with significantly more ease than an un-attuned one.

“In most cases this might not seem like much of a benefit, throwing a plume of smoke isn’t hard for any Piercer, not even a Dagger. But let’s say a generator has attuned the ability to generate a plume of smoke in his Dagger, he will be able to put much more strength into the technique than an un-attuned tethered, simply because it takes no effort for him to do it normally.

“Another tethered, this one a manipulator, attuned gathering smoke into a condensed mass within his Dagger. He would be able to gather more smoke quickly and easily. As he advanced it might gain enough density to disable, or kill, enemies outright.

“Master Nikal was said to, in his prime, be able to kill any opponent who so much as had a single inhale of his Lance.” Master Sigurd stopped speaking looking around at his students. “Smoke is considered to be one of the least dangerous elements, that does not mean it is harmless.”

Ranvir nodded and thanked the teacher for his answer. He needed to think this over some more, look over Figir’s books to see what kind of techniques she developed. He remembered her having attuned space-morphing, manipulating the space within her Sword to make things blurry. It could be useful, though to his mind shrinking or stretching space could be more so. Not to mention her hardening ability.

Attuning a technique was easiest if done while advancing a stage. But it still required a lot of prep work, and practicing the technique before hand. You needed a certain degree of comfortability using the ability before it was possible to attune, something you could easily gain through higher advancement.

That was, Ranvir reasoned, the actual reason why Triplet Masters were so dangerous. Holding mastery in all three Disciplines was an awesome feat, but it wasn’t like being a Lance and Mantle would make someone a much greater threat than someone with Lance and just Veil.

Their style of combat should’ve already been pretty developed by the time they achieved Lance, and their raw power only increased when first reaching a new rank. Adding the area control of Wings would be a boon, yes, but extending it wouldn’t make a Lance that much more dangerous. They already had developed extreme range and ways to keep the fighting out there.

But the increased control of advancing could change things. A Lance could do things that a Sword or Dagger simply could not. Increasing where he could apply this control was good, but probably wouldn’t change too much in Ranvir’s eyes. But increasing the control of their already mastered area would be an unbelievable boon.

He couldn’t imagine the kinds of things a Triplet Master could do.

Which led him to his own dilemma. You couldn’t take back an attuned technique, once it was done there was no changing it. Not even reaching a new stage allowed one to change their attuned technique. He would have to pick a good one.

Something that, if everything went right, he would be able to translate into all three Disciplines, as even branching out to the other Disciplines didn’t allow for additional attuned abilities.

Shrinking or stretching space could be useful, allow him to land a blow while remaining out of range of his opponent, but it also left him with a problem.

If he went Piercer it was good, though, it didn’t really benefit from how narrow the field the Discipline controlled was. Wings would make it extremely powerful, he thought. That kind of control over his immediate surroundings would make him a nightmare to fight. Body was a lost cause with no benefit he could think of, he would be relying completely on the Concept he’d developed. Another thing he needed to learn more about.

Hardening or freezing space seemed like the way to go, but so far he couldn’t manage it without burning himself out in an instant.

With Piercer he would be able to pin enemies from a distance, using it to support his allies. Wings would allow him to protect himself, and set up shields depending on how it handled the need for a solid object to be there. So far his abilities didn’t really seem to care what was in the space he manipulated, so he deemed there was a decent chance it could work out. With Body, though, he saw the most potential. It could potentially allow him to harden his own place in reality, according to Figir things she hardened were tougher, didn’t break and could even stop things much heavier than them. Blocking a war hammer with a short sword was an example she used.

He wasn’t completely set on that ability. He still very much wanted try some other techniques, maybe look in some generator books. He liked the idea of hardening space but didn’t want to become blind to an even better idea, because he was staring too hard at his first good one. He’d also like to find out what constituted a technique, not that he trusted Master Sigurd to give him a reliable answer.