My lips curved into a sinister grin as I looked at the hole in the tree, acting like a bullseye as I considered creating an arrow out of spinning water. If I had to categorize the concept into a single word, I would use “terrifying.”

I’m not a physicist, so my knowledge of the subject is rather limited, but moving water is a truly terrifying force. Unlike foam or goo, water is incompressible, meaning that it’s extremely difficult to compress it into a smaller area. So once it hits something at a high rate, it turns into a devastating hammer or even beam that can break through anything or cut through steel.

Worse, when it’s spinning, and it's a liquid, the rotational force creates a devastating shockwave with shearing force and pressure increases. That’s why shooting an empty soda can punches a small hole through it, but shooting a full can results in a small hole in the front but half the can exploding out the back, depending upon a bullet’s caliber.

That’s what I was about to do—creating a water bullet with piercing power.

Instead of following Kyro’s suggestion, I created the arrow and then created water around the shaft instead of the tip before increasing the speed. Pierce first—then send crashing water inside. That was the plan.

“That’s not what I told you to do,” Kyro said dryly.

“Yeah, it’s even worse,” I said with a wide grin. I sped the water as fast as I could, which wasn’t very fast or efficient, and then released it. The water broke apart in a wide splash before it even hit the tree, leading the arrow to puncture the trunk but leaving water splashing into the grooves in the bark.

“See?” Kyro said after a drink.

“Don’t give me that,” I pouted. “My way’s better.”

“No, your way’s harder. Doesn’t matter how good something is if you can’t do it.”

I frowned. I couldn’t dispute that logic, so I didn’t try. Instead, I visualized a spinning ball and created it on the tip.

“Your arrow’s going to fly no matter what you do,” Kyro said. “So what you need to do is shoot that waterball so it matches the speed and trajectory.

I nodded and did my best, and to my shock—it worked. Big time.

The ball flew forward at high speed, but the arrow beat it—

—and that’s when the terror began. It pierced right through the water ball before it hit the trunk, breaking a hole. Then the moving water crashed inside, incompressible and spinning hard, creating a massive pressure build-up and shearing force that ripped through the wood like a drill. It heated the wood from the friction and the piercing point, creating a shockwave that blew out of the back. Steam shot out of both sides alongside a rain of splinters, and the tree groaned and snapped, falling over.

Kyro lifted up his flask. “I’ll drink to that.”

I grinned widely as I heard a horn in the distance and heard Zyphrael fly through the area. I turned and found him and a dozen troops staring at me and Kyro.

“Why did you let her shoot!” Zyphrael asked.

“Did you see it?”

“That’s not the point.”

“Shame…” Kyro took a drink and wiped his mouth with his wrist. “It was damn cool.”

“This isn’t funny,” Zyphrael said, casually breaking Kyro’s barrier and thrusting his hand toward the drunkard’s flask. Kyro moved at a speed that didn’t even leave after images, dodging it and holding the booze back.

“It’s not funny.” Kyro took a swig and pointed at me. “Mira’s patron taught her Stage Three Separation. Give ‘er a few months, and she’ll be able to guide a few of…” He pointed at the tree. “Those.”

“This’s dangerous.”

“Everyone knows…” Kyro said. “Everyone knows. And you know it.”

The guard winced.

“If she turns, this is on you,” Zyphrael said.

“No, it’s not, but I’ll accept it.” Kyro flicked his fingers twice in a ‘Fuck off’ sort of gesture. Zyphrael looked at me with a complex glare and then flew away with his soldiers, leaving me and Kyro alone.

“Now what?” I asked.

“Now what?” He yawned. “I’m going to take a nap.”

“No the hell you won't.” I grabbed at him, but he casually dodged mid-yawn.

“And you’ll do the same,” he said sleepily. “If you mess up your channels, you won’t survive tomorrow.”

Only then, once the thrill and wonder and fear washed off, did I understand how tired and depleted I was. Much of what I thought was excitement was genuine heat, and my channels burned. My mind was hazy, and the moment I sat down, my body started to give out.

Kyro fluttered to a tree branch and lay down, lacing his hands behind his head. “Rest up. Tomorrow’s gonna suck.”

I closed my eyes, thinking it would be impossible, but as soon as I leaned against a tree, I woke up to a paw tugging at me. I opened my eyes and found Kline staring at me. It was already sunset, and the sky sparkled like molten glass above us. I must have slept the instant I shut my eyes.

Zyphrael was snapping at Kyro to get out of the tree and Nethralis was staring at the tree I destroyed. I petted Kline, and he purred before stretching his limbs with a yoga bend.

Nethralis turned to me. “Are you used to working yourself that hard?”

I furrowed my brow. “I… I know I’m tired but that was… nothing compared to some of my training.”

“That’s doubtful… don’t forget that we’re opening up your channels. Your core’s like a fire and we’re increasing your oxygen flow. Push it too hard and you’ll burn yourself out.”

I nodded and tried to get up, but my body didn’t respond.

“See?” She whipped her hand, and my body became light. I pressed off the ground, and I floated to my feet. “We’ll train your neara tomorrow. For now, you need some sleep. Come. Let’s get you some food.”

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

I followed Nethralis back to the home, where we ate a small feast of delicious vegetables. They even brought me a meat dish that soothed my body and mind.

Nethralis smiled through all of it and then said, “Sleep.”

I doubted I could after sleeping all afternoon but I was wrong. The moment I shut my lids, I was out once more.

2.

I awoke the next morning and met with Nethralis for breakfast. Once we finished, she pulled out the box again and said, “We’ll give your channels a rest. For now…” She retrieved the alibista elixir, the nearan elixir that would aid my brain and nervous system. “We’ll work on this.”

“Okay…”

“Is your brain in a good place?”

“What does that mean?”

“Because once you take this, It’ll drive you to the breaking point.”

I didn’t like the sound of that, but I still said, “Great!”

Nethralis and I said our thanks to the fairies waiting on us and then walked into the brisk morning air in Serenflora. I expected it to be the magical, wholesome place I walked into before, but it wasn’t.

Something had changed.

Within a period of two days, the lively, happy economy had gone into lockdown. Fairies moved metal beams into the fields in the side streets while others erected temporary buildings, filling buckets with water. Other fairies flew in circles at high speed, doing drills, turning invisible mid-flight, and playing tag.

They’re gearing up for war…

“Correct,” Nethralis said, reading my mind. “We normally prepare for the harvest, but we weren’t expecting war.”

I nodded nervously.

“Come.” She led me back to the hot spring, and we joined the fairies and nymphs and sprites (all of which were far more curious about me than the day before) and entered the water.

Ingrained anxiety flared in my heart as I sat. Last time I was in the water, I unclogged my core. Now, there would be strange forces working on my brain.

“Alibista is a rare herb that discovers and heals broken pathways between the body and the mind,” Nethralis said as a servant handed me the elixir and flew away. “It does this by probing into your spiritual network—by finding your ghost—and reconnecting it. Once that happens, everything that pathway was protecting you from will flood in. You must block it out or accept it.”

I rolled the vial in my fingers as if looking for impurities in the milky fog but found none. “Are you saying that the brain damages itself to protect itself?” I asked. “From trauma?”

“Yes. Did you have a bad upbringing?”

“Thankfully not,” I chuckled. It wasn’t a funny chuckle; it was a sardonic, almost caustic chuckle that could strip wax floors and condemn prisoners to the gallows. “But the world kinda sucks. So… god knows what my brain’s hiding in there.”

“If you don’t know… you’re lucky. Drink it.”

The thin smile of my lips faded, and I stopped rolling the vial. I opened it slowly and whiffed a medicinal aroma, like uncoated pills. I raised my eyes to Nethralis. She nodded, and I drank.

It felt like slime from my throat to my stomach, then it turned to ice, and I clenched my abdomen. “God, this sucks…” I turned to her. “How long before it kicks…”

I saw Nethralis’s face—then my vision scrambled when a cacophony of sharp noises crashed into my head from all angles. I opened my mouth like I had an earache, but it didn’t help.

“What is this?” I cried.

“Those are tones your ears can no longer pick up,” Nethralis said. “Noise pathways that died and have been forgotten.”

Another sharp noise stabbed my mind, and I grabbed my head like an arrow had pierced through my skull. “But the river… I drank from the…”

“The Diktyo mends and cleanses,” she explained. “It doesn’t fix. It listens to your body’s orders to restore things to normal. But once you lose a limb and the phantom pain disappears, the body forgets and there’s nothing to heal. That’s why—”

Three more noises stabbed my brain in rapid succession, and I cried out.

“—this elixir seeks out your ghost. It finds the things that your body has declared dead and revives them so that they may be healed.”

More noises crashed into my brain, and I activated Mental Shielding. The effect was immediate. It was like a hail of arrows when someone rushed up with a shield and blocked from above. I took a deep breath, but it wasn’t much relief. The elixir was only picking up its effects. Soon, it had discovered more tones in my brain that had broken and were blasting me on all sides. I thrust my head into the hot spring, and to my surprise, it was extremely relieving.

Then I felt Nethalis’s hands on my back, and my mind cleared for a moment, giving me a moment of respite before the hell continued—

—and that was just the start.

When I surfaced, I started feeling sharp pains all throughout my body. It started with areas of bad posture, areas of my body that were wrongly set but ignored, and then pointed them out in my ear with a megaphone. Then came the dead areas.

There were hundreds of dead parts of my body. Each one came alive with the intensity and poise of a welding arc—shooting sparks into my brain. I used Mental Shielding to the max, but soon, it wasn’t helping save me from anything from direct attacks. I was getting battered on all sides.

But I could feel it.

Healing.

Real healing.

Noises came but disappeared, and I felt alive—aches appeared but melded away. And with every recovery, I felt lighter, and my morale improved.

The third stage changed everything. All the pathways between my brain and body got stitched together, leaving my body jolting around like I had just been tasered. My back locked up, and my mind felt like it hit a grindstone, and I started moving in ways that felt foreign and unnatural. And it was painful. Oh, yes, it was painful. It felt like I was in the boiling oil that restaurants use for sizzling fajitas plates, making me cry out.

Yet once again—after every connection, my body mended and felt increasingly whole.

Bring it on… I thought defiantly.

I could handle the pain, and I wanted to get stronger. So I pressed on—

—until the memories hit. Then I lost my enthusiasm.

Endless hours of the worst parts of my life flooded in—things that I would’ve feared remembering if I remembered them. My best friend Cindy dying of cancer in grade school; my dog Rini getting run over at fourteen. The moment that I got rejected from a crush in middle school and the shame of telling a confessor in seventh grade that “I would rather die” than date him. I remembered my parents arguing one night about a move. Dad had just gotten a better job offer during my second year of high school but mom was adamant that he not go because it would destroy my friends and confidence. I agreed, so he yielded. But two years later, she wanted to move into a better house after getting a promotion. He rejected her, citing that argument. She declared that changing schools and changing cities were two different things. I disagreed, so she yielded.

It felt strange to remember arguments with the same severity as the memorials I went to. To put them on par with the night Alex Rothschild and Mindy Corr overcorrected on the road after prom, leading them to fishtail on the ice-glazed i-25 highway and get t-boned. Yet it’s strange how powerful small memories impact you in ways that you don’t expect and how traumatic they can be. The fear of moving and leaving all your friends behind. The anxiety of going somewhere new and getting rejected. The uncertainty. The pain you feel when your parents argue and the stress you experience when you think about them divorcing.

It was the worst.

I don’t remember when, but somewhere in that dark and distant place that I was experiencing those memories, I could hear crying and realized it was my own. It was rough, and I wanted to break free—

—and then I felt it.

Two small hands on my back.

They rubbed my shoulder twice, and then a soothing energy spread through my body, and all the pains the elixir identified healed, correcting my posture and allowing me to breathe. The noise drifted away, and there was even tranquility in the way that I approached the memories flashing before me.

Then I woke up.

I opened my eyes and found that light was giving way to night, and the world felt chilly. Yet everything felt more vibrant and my emotions felt pure and clear as still water. My body felt even healthier as if I was a disgusting mess my whole life but had just shed an exoskeleton, taking all my ailments with it.

It sounds cliche, but I’ll stand behind it:

I felt like I was reborn.