Sansir scowled, something he seemed to do more and more often. His jaws hurt from gritting his teeth. The sharp cold of long travel had bitten him long ago and wouldn’t be leaving anytime soon.

It’s my fault, he told, cursed, himself for the thousandth time. I should’ve been more welcoming. At every turn, I made him come to me. If only I’d shown a little kindness, a little… something. He shook his head, running a hand over his bald scalp. The few hairs he could grow caught on calloused fingers. If I wasn’t so trapped in my own self-pity, wallowing—

He let out a loud cry, the random passersby startling and jumping away. “Enough!” he yelled. “Enough!” he felt like tearing his hairs out. He hadn’t changed at all. He was still wriggling in his own obnoxious mind. Trapped in it, swaddled like a baby unable to free himself.

He generated ice and lifted into the air. People were yelling and running away underneath him, but they didn’t matter. None of it did. He glanced toward the vast estates, towards the Queen’s Palace, but not at it.

No, he cannot help me either. Besides, he was too reliant on Grevor. Too often, he fell back into the comfortable confines of their relationship. Not tonight, not this time.

Another long journey was ahead of him. Flurries of snow trailed his path as he raced back to the school.

Midday had come before Sansir arrived. Eyes aching and numb beneath the knees. Running his tether-sense across the grounds, he didn’t find who he was looking for. Kirs and Es were down in the basement, working on something space-related.

Amalia was in Ranvir’s office, she taken over much of the paper-work while he was gone. Pashar was somewhere in the guts of the building with a couple other students. Most of them were missing, however. The old veteran and Kasos in specific.

They will not be the only ones. He considered for a moment. Pashar wouldn’t be able to help herself. She would sniff around wherever she went. Striding determinately through the passages, he soon came upon her classroom.

Only three other students were inside: Belnavir and Korfiyan. “Pashar, can I talk with you?” he asked, poking his head in.

Her face momentarily darkened as she halted mid-sentence. Perhaps his words hadn’t been quite as cordially spoken as he’d intended. “Fine.” Her clipped words and short tone agreed with his assessment.

“What?” she asked, closing the door deliberately behind her. Though her hand never left the handle.

“I need a way to help Ranvir. A way to hurt Saleema.”

“Can’t help you,” she said, pressing down.

“Pashar.” His voice dropped, and a scowl crawled onto his face with force as he seized her arm. “Can’t or won’t?”

She glanced down at his arm, the coldly back into his eyes. “Let go of me, before you lose that hand.” Her voice held more ice than all of his spirit combined.

Snarling, Sansir turned away and stormed down the hall. Behind him, Pashar slammed the door as she re-entered her classroom.

At his last resort, Sansir stopped in front of Ranvir’s office. “Come in,” Amalia called, after knocking.

“Do you know of a way that could help Ranvir fight Saleema?”

Amalia blinked at his abruptness. “Uh, not off the top of my head…”

Sansir took in a deep breath and pinched the bridge of his nose. An outburst was building in him, he could feel like. Like frost creeping out from the back of his throat.

“Although, I might be able to ask around.” Amalia got up from her seat. “That’s actually a good idea! I’ve been so busy with all of this work that I didn’t even think of it!” She hurried past him, ducking into another hall. “Come along!”

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Kirs grabbed her cup with both hands to make sure the tea didn’t slip from her fingers. She grimaced at the taste. It’d gone cold. She put it down next to the others, her digits feeling distant and clumsy. As if she was both drunk and working through a thick molasses.

“That one worked better,” she said, watching the ritual fizzle. “Still not long enough.”

“But stronger,” Es agreed from where he was examining the air above the circle. “Range could use some work.”

“They are space-tethered. The range will always need some work.”

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

Es chuckled. “True.”

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Dovar rushed through the low-brush. His body was light and springy, as if the years weren’t touching him at all. He shook his head and chuckled. That was the thought of an old man, not a kid in his early-twenties.

The air howled with his speed, yet he was in no fear of hitting a tree. Maneuvering was as easy as breathing. Flying like this was amazing, exhilarating on a scale he couldn’t put to a word. Yet, it compared not at all to looking down at the land. Seeing the world as if it was laid out on a map. Seeing it clearer than when on a map.

Life couldn’t truly be seen from the ground. Yet, life couldn’t be lived anywhere else.

A weight settled on him, as if the school suddenly collapsed in its entirety onto his shoulders. Which, in a sense, was true. His Discipline of the Flesh vanished, like a gut-punch to the stomach drove the air from him.

Crashing to the ground, Dovar only slid a moment before black obsidian caught him and turned to a slide. It still hurt, but he didn’t get hurt. Slipping to the end of the stone, he sat up and rolled his shoulder.

The student-body was murmuring excitedly to each other. “That was much faster than before,” Dovar said encouragingly. He didn’t feel bad that he’d been unable to withstand their assault. If he’d had even a chance against them, that would’ve been the disappointing part.

“How are you doing, my boy?” Kasos asked, groaning as he knelt next to Dovar. “Feeling alright.”

He nodded. “They caught me quickly.”

“That’s the little lady’s fault, I believe,” Kasos said, throwing a thumb over his shoulder towards Estrid. “She’s been putting in extra work.”

Dovar nodded. “I’m good for another try or two.”

“Truly?” Kasos leaned a closer. “Don’t push yourself too hard.”

“Truly.”

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Night had a grim feel as Ayvir paused on a stone outcropping. The rain had long since soaked him through. His monkey had long since snuggled up under his coat. He kept reminding himself that it wasn’t a pet, but it was getting harder to believe each day.

In the distance, he could see a city outlined in torch and glyph-lights. Pockets of illumination detailing muddy streets and make-shift alleys. Guy-lines become ropes of shimmering yellowish white light. Figures gleaming bronze marching the passages between the cloth’s mimicry of buildings.

Forcing his gaze away, Ayvir slipped down from the outcropping. This far away, none of the Elusrians could sense him. With his training refined by Ranvir’s natural understanding, even Ankirian technique was starting to feel rough and unpracticed.

In the distance, he saw the dark, gleaming barrier that held back the eyes of humanity. Raised hundreds of years ago. The obsidian wall raced from one end of the world to the other. It was unknown when the flesh-torn had taken it, but the conflict had swiftly pulled back from it. Not that they ever did much with it. Flesh-torn fought only with their claws and the pervasive oppressive touch of their spirit.

Ayvir ran in a crouch across the muddy plain towards that dark wall. He couldn’t get as low as he liked for the creature huddled against his chest. The warmth it provided was too welcome in the icy rain for him to push the monkey off, however.

Something brushed over his spirit. Ayvir tensed, sliding to a halt. His ankle turned and drove his knee into the dark soil. Cold instantly seeped through the cloth. That had not been the touch of an Elusrian. The feel was too heavy and familiar. He was surprised to realize something else. Whoever sent that touch had a highly refined tether-sense, or something like it. Yet it was no stronger than any first-stage, Ayvir had met.

With mud clinging to his knee and sapping the heat from his body, he waited in the dark, moggy, chill. His breath a bare shiver from his chest. Had they not noticed him?

Something clattered loudly and metallic in the Elusrian camp. Ayvir’s heart raced in his throat, eyes straining to see anything in the dark. His leg quivered with the effort of keeping him up.

A strange language sounded from somewhere to his right. Another darker voice answered it. Flesh-torn. He watched as two-figures emerged from what he had thought to only be a slight dip in the terrain, yet had been deep enough to obscure their forms entirely.

They appeared to be walking towards the wall. For long moments, Ayvir waited. Minutes endlessly piling on each other. Rain battered his face. His leg burned with his awkward position, yet he dared not move at all. A single split second of his powers would reveal his position to everyone. Flesh-torn and Elusrian alike.

Finally, he could maintain his crouch no longer and lowered himself to fully kneeling. He was shaking now, whether due to cold or exhaustion, he couldn’t tell. He still had almost a mile of no-man’s-land to cross before reaching the wall.

Taking a quick sip from his water-skin, he was parched despite the weather. He also took a moment to check on the oil-wrapped bundle in his pack while he was at it. It wasn’t surprising that flesh-torn were this far out, but that still didn’t bode well, he felt.

Soon, he was on the move again. Though the night was young and he needed to cross less than a single mile, he’d need every hour he could get. Stopping for patrols soon had him dropping entirely into the mud.

The first time earned a squawk from the Redpaw, the monkey nearly crawling out of his coat only to feel the rain and scurry back. Apparently, the cold was preferably to water. His fingers had gone numb and his boots slid as much from freezing-induced clumsiness as mud, yet he forced himself onward.

The wall loomed higher and higher almost in time with the moon’s descent. With less than two-hundred feet to go, he felt a far subtler and stronger touch brush over him. Despite the strength, it felt careless and quick. It didn’t linger on him, nor stop its scan, or change its origin.

Yet, somehow, Ayvir knew. He’d been found out. Painfully, he dug his limbs out of the mud, forcing stiff fingers to curl into fists. Raising to his knees, he stared at the ground.

I can’t meet them on my knees, he realized. He almost chuckled to himself at the thought, then remembered that he was supposed to stay quiet. But I was found out, though…

Shaking his head, he groaned with effort as he lifted one knee until his boots squelched into inches of mud. Pushing with his one arm, muscles howled as he fully straightened.

“You knew.” The voice loomed out of the dark, speaking in roughly accented Elensk. A figure emerged from the dark. Almost seven-feet tall and a spear almost as long as it was. It was covered head to toe in those same gray bandages as the rest of its people. A strange distortion hovered in the air behind it. As if it carried an invisible shroud behind it.

Ayvir reached for the bundle in his pack and the monster lowered its spear. “You shouldn’t have come here.” Its voice reminded Ayvir most of all of a commander’s. The strange distortion behind it wriggled forwards as if a thing alive, tensing and ready to strike. “They shouldn’t have sent you.”