Ranvir ran towards the rear of the pack during the morning runs. He was showing his cards as a poor fast runner, but was quickly developing the stamina for long distance running. That didn’t exempt him from sprint training unfortunately, it only seemed to make Master Vigo ride him all the harder. Or maybe it was how distracted he tended to get while running.
I could base the exercise around those methods we found during the first trimester. Ranvir thought, his mind turning over the possibility. Back when he’d first started training his friends, he’d shown them an exercise he and Kirs had found amongst journals and notes from talented tethered. These exercises never gained a lot of traction at the academy, since none of the tethered made it to Master due to fighting on the front lines.
It involved envisioning a band that followed the run of your tether and its influence all the way through the Discipline. Unfortunately, they’d never found much use for it, as it barely strained the tether and seemed to do little for them as tethered.
But they were a common development amongst some of the, if not fastest growers, then most powerful second stage tethered in recorded elusrian history. Due to the multitude of descriptions Ranvir had read from advanced tethereds, including Esmund’s own testimony, he was beginning to think it was an exercise that wouldn’t show its teeth until after their first breakthrough.
Something hit Ranvir in the back of his head, causing him to stumble and almost fall over.
“You’re not here to ogle the punishment duty.” Master Vigo yelled. “I wanna see some speed from those feet!”
Ranvir let out a quick “yes sir.” Picking up the pace, idly glancing towards the field the Master’d been referring to. Punishments had gone up after theory classes started. To the point that at least a few students were sent to lattice to climb ropes and ring bells. Ranvir did not envy the students that were catching their breath between ropes. As he watched one student jumped from the top without the clapper. He didn’t get far before a fifth year sent him back up for it.
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“Could you try it for me quickly?” Ranvir asked Esmund.
“What’s the point.” Esmund complained. “I probably won’t see Kirs today at all.”
The others around the table rolled their eyes at their short friend. Often wasn’t the Ranvir would use to describe Esmund’s complaining. It’s wasn’t strong enough. Not by far. Only a sentence could truly do it justice. Endless as the rivers. Ever present like obsidian. Annoying as fuck. The never ending story of how terrible Esmund felt because he can’t see Kirs.
“They’re just tallying the library. It’s not going to take more than a week or so.” Sansir said, trying to calm the distraught young man down.
“A week…” Despair emanated so thickly Ranvir could taste it.
“Look, maybe it’ll distract you from the situation if you try the exercise.” Ranvir tried again.
“Fine…” Esmund sniffed, though Ranvir didn’t see any tears in his eyes. “Just give me a second… that I won’t have with Kirs.”
Sansir and Grev rolled their eyes, digging into their food.
“Whoa.” Es muttered after a while. “My Dagger just activated.” He paused for a few long moments. “It feels like it’s reinforcing the Dagger, I guess.” He opened his eyes. “It’s pretty interesting, I think I might continue doing it.”
“Do that.” Ranvir muttered, scribbling in the notebook he’d been carrying alongside his lunch tray.
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Two days later, Ranvir was rubbing his fingers against his temples. At least he didn’t have to shade his eyes from the sun. Autumn weather was truly setting in, blocking out the sun with clouds of ominous promises. The dark and gray things moved quickly in the strong wind and there was a definite chill to the air that hadn’t been there before.
It almost wasn’t warm anymore.
Ranvir spent another ten minutes, struggling with the headache before it vanished as fast as it came. He let out a long sigh, embraced the pressure and poked a hole in the pocket space storing his chess pieces. With a quiet pop, they fell into his hand and he stuffed them into his pocket. With the way things were going, he didn’t see himself being able to embrace the pressure by the end of class and he didn’t want to lose them by walking off.
He was finally beginning to really understand that any form of skill only came under the hands of repetition and discipline. Him constantly carrying the pocket space around had made the effort of connecting to it near instinctual. Moving it with him was almost as instinctive as walking.
That wasn’t the only benefit, the connection between the pocket- and full-space had also gotten more stable over the months. When he’d first begun the connection would break, rupturing the pocket-space, sending the materials back out from the mildest touch of his power. Even sensing for it. Now, it had grown stable enough that he might soon be able to examine the connection between spaces. He was especially proud of his progress since it wasn’t something Figir mentioned in her books.
She briefly touched on the pocket spaces, but determined that generators were better with them than manipulators since they had better intrinsic control and understanding of their pocket spaces.
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Ranvir didn’t agree with her. A generator needed to constantly feed their spaces power or anchor them to something, like the small bronze clips where the excess fabric was stored in their uniforms.
With a deep breath, he left the pressure returning to tether-space, balancing the effort of pushing all the way out and remaining inside with trained ease. His exercise worked on the same concepts as the banding exercise he’d had Esmund do, but working from the tether instead of a Discipline.
The power came from the tether, the effect came from the tether, the Discipline came from the tether. That’s where they needed to build it from. According to Svenar, who was a Mantle and a true master of the Discipline of Wings, their advancement was different from Piercer.
Piercers punched a hole in tether-space creating a straight line to exert their power on the reality. Wings slipped through the space and into the real world. That tracked with the banding exercise he’d found on Wings.
The Wings’ tether-type started as a rope, then spread in the middle, before coming back together as a single rope. The method for advancing involved gathering power at the space in the center, like with Piercer, but instead of bursting through, it slipped past the bars of the tether and through the body. This involved punching hundreds of tiny holes in the tether-space wall.
He needed to mimic the gathering and release of power. The problem with that was anyone that could do that effectively, was already strong enough to advance and wouldn’t need the exercise.
Tether-types. Ranvir thought, trying to track down an errant thought. Ragnhild thought they determined Discipline affinities, but why? They all appear different, but that can’t simply be it.
He brought his attention to his fully developed loop, disappointingly he’d seen very little in terms of benefit after it finished growing. But maybe there was something else to it. He focused on the energy moving through it, causing it to show up as purple light running through the threads like a river.
Focusing in tighter, he focused on the flow through single thread. It connected with the threads surrounding it, alleviating the burden. Equal amounts of power did not flow through all of the strings, but he knew they carried the strain of it together. In fact, at the center, maybe a fifth of tether total, carried more power through it than the entire rest of the tether combined.
Idly, he picked at the power, causing some of it to diverge away from the center, focusing on an outer cluster of strings. The power sputtered and the twisting of the tether returned it to the center quickly.
What if I mimic the Wing tether internally? If the measurements of tethers were the same, then he would start with the power gathered as it was currently in the beginning, then divert it to the outer edges as it began the loop, then let it return to center at the end.
The first try didn’t go well. Whenever he drew the energy out it would immediately be spun back to the middle by the tether. The only possibility was to constantly hold the energy to the edge of the tether. Something he simply couldn’t do on any significant scale.
I need to stop the rotations. Ranvir concluded. This was as simple as making it spin faster, but less straining. The power hitched and stuttered but was far easier to control. A glint of golden glorious victory suffused him as he spread the energy into three, one for each thread. He kept some distance between each flow of energy to mimic a Wing tether.
He was already beginning to feel the strain, within a few moments of beginning. With an effort, he forced one flow back into place, when another ruptured the thread it was held in. Purple energy caught on something, causing a jolt to move through the thread. The impact rocked his entire tether, before it suddenly ruptured.
Purple power, spitting and hissing, spurted into his tether-space. The energy slammed into the wall of his tether-space to no effect, causing Ranvir to let out a breath of relief. Considering how to contain, Ranvir felt a flicker similar to how he would flex space, around the energy.
Tether-space ruptured and blinding white pain screamed into him from everywhere. Shadows of red warning hidden under the suffusion of white. Ranvir started heaving, though he never felt the gut wrenching sensation of actually throwing up.
For long minutes, his body tried spilling its guts onto the grass as he slowly came back to himself. Flashes of white shimmered in echo of his growing headache. When he opened his eyes, the first thing he was the blood dripping from his nose.
Letting out a whimper of pain, he fell backwards clutching his head as the world spun.
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A day later, Ranvir sat in front of Sansir and Grev, Master Svenar standing next to him as he ran them through the exercise. Now he watched in hope as they tried the slightly more refined exercise. He finally realized he didn’t need to train the actual breaking through. He just needed the control and the gathering of power.
And he’d needed to contain it within his tether as an exercise, since working with the raw power could have very devastating effects if something went wrong.
“You’re bleeding again.” Master Svenar muttered.
Ranvir grunted his thanks, the ground swimming underneath his feet as he dabbed at his nose with the cloth he’d more or less taken to carrying around constantly after yesterday’s attempt ended.
Master Stjarna had told him he hadn’t injured himself too badly, apparently his tether served as more than a neat rope to visualize his power. The lack of protection from the tether had made the overexpression backlash somewhat more severe. Bouts of nausea, dizziness, and nosebleeds even twenty-four hours later kind of severe.
“I really hope this works.” Ranvir muttered. During one of his healthier bouts that day, he’d theoretically worked out how to make it work. He’d stopped the rotations, which he’d known would make the power less stable. If he increased the rotations until they reached beyond a certain point, the energy started acting like a solid. That should, in theory, stop the energy from running back to center.
If the subjects had the strength to perform the exercise. Something he’d been lacking at the time.
He knew it could work thanks to a quick attempt from Master Svenar. The old teacher had actually congratulated him on the exercise. He’d felt the reverberation throughout the entirety of his Mantle, even retracted as it was. Svenar was a Master, though, and many magnitudes stronger than the ones who actually needed the exercise.
Grev lurched forwards, gasping. His eyes were tearing up as he clasped his head. He let out a quiet whimper before he avoided moving as best he could. Ranvir winced in sympathy, recognizing the symptoms of severe over-expression. He’d hoped for better, but had expected the worst.
The problem he’d discovered was that power didn’t move evenly through the tether as it turned and changed. The spin made it more stable, but it required a powerful twisting to make such manipulation of the energies within possible. The moment the rotation faltered… Well, Grev was a good example.
Ranvir had thrown up when he’d failed, but he was also more out of it than normal. He looked hopefully to Sansir, who already had a Wing-type tether. Maybe he’d be more successful.
Even as he thought it, the tall ice tethered lurched forwards onto his hands and knees. At least it’s not inducing skeletal fatigue. Ranvir thought, searching for some light in the dark
Sansir looked up at them, squinting from pain. Then shook his head briefly before glaring at the grass underneath him.
Ranvir hung his head with a sigh, feeling the heavy weight of a comforting hand from Master Svenar. “This is a good first step, you’ll get there”