by Dante King
I laid awake that night and stared up at the ceiling as I worked my way through my meditation exercises. The meditative practices usually helped to clear my mind for sleep, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was amiss in Flametongue Valley. The missing monks still hadn’t returned. Why had Tymo sent us out in the first place? Why hadn’t the Hierophant re-emerged from his meditations after the better part of a month?
They were all questions I didn’t have the answers to. But I’d find it out, sooner or later. For now, I needed to dedicate all of my energy toward my training. I was close. I could feel it every time I stretched out to touch the Vigor of the world around me. But I was missing something.
I mentioned it to Tymo the next morning. “It’s like there’s a wall around my mind, and I can’t push through it. Every time I try, I feel like I get a little closer.”
“Then you have begun to understand the difficulty of true Augmentation,” Tymo answered. “To cast techniques from your own body is a simple, straightforward method. To use it to power your physical form is simply an extension of that.”
He prowled around me and waved a hand. “Enough talk. Reach out again.”
I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and let my senses crawl outward to the smooth floor of the monastery hall. Vigor throbbed within it, hummed in the air around me, and sat tantalizingly just out of my reach. I lifted a finger and tried to cast the smallest Untamed Torch I could. But, as before, the energy I needed flowed from my body.
“No,” Tymo said sharply. “Do it properly.”
“How?” I challenged him.
“There is no easy, simple path,” Tymo said. “Those of the Straight Path seek such power. You, as the next Swordslinger, cannot have any such inclinations. Again.”
I bit back a reply and tried again. Over and over.
But it was simply out of reach, and I couldn’t figure out why.
Tymo muttered something under his breath as I rose for dinner hours later.
“What was that?” I asked calmly.
“I am deciding whether or not to separate you from your companions to speed the process,” Tymo replied. “It’s obvious that they’re a distraction from your learning. You took to Physical Augmentation like a fish to water, but this is beyond you. A contributing factor may well be your conversations over dinner.”
“They’re a huge part of why I’m here,” I said. “It would have taken me much longer to get this far without their help at Radiant Dragon, and on my travels.”
“You will reach a point where you stand alone, Swordslinger,” Tymo snapped. “As our great teacher, Eresin, did. You will stand at the precipice, without your allies. Your reliance on them may very well be your undoing. And I will not allow you to fail in such a manner.”
“I’ll deal with it when I get there,” I told him. “The least you can do is to let us discuss our training together over meals. They might learn a strategy in Augmentation from the other brothers that could help me. Would you deprive me of that knowledge?”
Tymo's gaze met mine, and his eyes narrowed. “Do you trust to my teaching?”
“Do you think I’d be here if I didn’t?” I countered.
He shook his head. “No, I don’t think so.”
“You called them here along with me,” I reminded him. “Let us talk, at least, if you’re going to be so difficult about everything else.”
Tymo's jaw tightened, but he gave me a simple nod and left the hall without another word. I trailed along behind him with a grim smile and threw myself even further into the practices of Augmentation over the next two days.
“You need to do better,” Tymo told me at the end of the two days.
I opened my eyes, fought off a growl, and looked at him. “Any suggestions, then? Your earlier lesson for Physical Augmentation worked a treat. Is there some strategy that will make this easier?”
Tymo shook his head. “This is the way it has been done for centuries before you, Swordslinger. Months were spent in seclusion to understand the nature of Vigor within the world around the practitioner. There’s no simple solution. You must simply try harder to overcome your own limitations.”
I nodded. “I’ll do my best.”
“Do better,” Tymo said and left me to join the others for dinner.
Chapter Twenty
I knocked on Kegohr’s door a few hours before sunrise. His snoring cut off abruptly, but I didn’t hear the crashing and moving that I’d expected. Even Kegohr’s massive form was capable of a little subtlety when he needed it.
Vesma opened her cell door behind me, and Mahrai joined us a minute later. We snuck through the main hall, soundlessly, and slipped out into the freezing dark of the Vigorous Zone.
Fresh air washed over us, chasing away the scent of incense and dust, forcing the fog of sleep away from us with a jolt. The flaming spurts of the mountaintop around us illuminated the pathway. We walked until Dying Sun Monastery was barely visible behind us. A flash of fire illuminated the weapon on Kegohr’s back. It wasn’t the same as his trusty stone-headed mace, and I couldn’t help but stare at the thing.
“Where’d you get that?” I asked him in astonishment.
“Master Berrin made it for me,” Kegohr said. “He said that my old club was a little too unsophisticated for my power now, so he made me this one.”
Kegohr tossed me the huge mace with a laugh. I pushed fire through my Physical channels and caught it with a grunt, surprised at its weight. Even with magically assisted strength in my veins, the thing must have weighed more than me. A polished wooden shaft, almost five feet long, stretched out and curled into a mighty steel head. Flanges curled decoratively up around the head, and gold runes glinted in the firelight. The flanges and sheer weight of the thing gave Kegohr an edge against both flesh and armor. Coupled with his enormous strength, it was a hell of a weapon. I hefted it in my hands, impressed at the workmanship of Kegohr’s teacher.
“What do they want you to do, knock down Wysaro Castle with this?”
“I probably could, too,” Kegohr said with a laugh. “It’s amazing.”
“Did they give you any new weapons?” I asked the others.
Mahrai snorted. “Apparently, my greatest weapon is my Augmentation, not a staff I can belt people around the head with. So, no.”
“Same old spear,” Vesma said. “Nothing new yet. Maybe they’ll give us new weapons after we finish training with them. If we don’t get kicked out.”
I cast my eyes back to the monastery. “There’s no way they can hear us out here. And they seem to sleep pretty heavily. I haven’t had any issues with waking anyone up.”
Mahrai raised a saucy eyebrow and chuckled. “That a fact?”
“If they can sleep through my snoring,” Kegohr assured us, “then they won’t have heard us leave. Any luck with your Environmental Augmentation, Effin?”
I shook my head. “Nothing. Half of me wonders if Tymo is stalling me.”
“I doubt it,” Vesma said. “Look what you can do with Physical Augmentation.”
“Well, Kegohr seems to be the expert these days,” I said with a smile. “Want to show us what you can do, big guy? How about a rematch?”
Kegohr grinned. “You’re on.”
“Oh, this’ll be good,” Mahrai said as she sat down on a nearby rock. “Try not to break the mountain while you’re at it, boys.”
I unbuckled my weapons and handed them to Vesma. Kegohr laid his new mace beside Mahrai and turned to face me. My mind flashed back to our little bout a few weeks ago. Kegohr had been confident then, but I’d quickly managed to turn it around on him. But there wasn’t a shred of doubt on his face anymore.
Kegohr cracked his huge knuckles with a ripple of reports that reminded me of gunfire and raised his fists in a basic fighting stance. The Spirit of the Wildfire flooded through him, and flames burst from his skin in their usual orange color.
“No blue?” I asked as I advanced forward.
“Just wait and see,
” Kegohr replied confidently.
I maintained my Augmented strength and opened up the sparring with a flying kick. Kegohr caught the blow on his forearms and shoved outward. I used his momentum to turn a backflip in the air and find my feet. But Kegohr took advantage of the opening with a punch that I barely managed to duck. His mighty fist whizzed over my head, trailed fire, and crashed into a boulder behind me. The rock cracked at the blow, leaving a cloud of dust and debris.
I fired off a couple of rapid body shots, but Kegohr just laughed and clipped me with a backfist. My feet left the ground, and I shot into mid-air. I fought through the fuzzy lights, caught myself with a burst of Flight, and landed in a fighting stance.
“Damn, big guy,” I said as I rubbed my shoulder. “That’s terrifying.”
Kegohr slammed his fists together, and blue fire washed through his usual orange. It wreathed itself around his body, flared around his hands, and burned brightly enough to hurt my eyes. He came in like a wrecking ball, and I instantly switched my Physical channels from fire to water. I couldn’t match his strength, even at Spirit of the Wildfire’s base level, and Kegohr was shifting versions of his technique like this was some kind of anime.
Kegohr threw a jab, but I ducked around it and replied with a roundhouse kick to the inside of his leg. He didn’t even flinch from my kick and responded with a hook powerful enough to take my head off. I leaned back, and Kegohr’s massive fist whistled past my nose by a fraction of an inch. His knee crashed into my gut and lifted me from the ground. The air vanished from my body, lights danced in front of my eyes, and I gasped as he caught hold of my leg and swung me around like a rag doll. I tumbled over the gravel, activated my Physical strength channels, and crashed into a boulder. The entire rock exploded like it was made of glass.
“Ethan, are you all right?!” Vesma demanded.
“My ego is a little wounded,” I said as I stood up, caught my breath, and grinned. Kegohr’s power boost after a few weeks was far beyond anything I’d encountered before. Hell, the monk had barely been harder to fight than him.
Kegohr bounded toward me and threw a kick that could have caved in a brick wall. I sidestepped it, and the rock behind me shattered into a cloud of dust and stone chips. I countered with an aimed shot at his liver, but Kegohr caught it on his elbow. He bared his tusks in an excited grin as he countered with a crushing left. I managed to cross my arms and block it, but my bones flexed in my arms as he laid me out on the slate as easily as swatting an annoying insect.
“Damn, buddy, you hit hard,” I said.
I rolled over my shoulder, sprang to my feet, and rushed at Kegohr. He jabbed at me again, but I slid under his blow and caught him in the gut with both my feet and all of my momentum. Kegohr grunted and staggered back before I flipped over on the ground to avoid a stomp. The brittle slate cratered under Kegohr’s foot, and I shielded my eyes from the tiny pieces of shrapnel.
I rolled over my shoulder again, sidestepped another enormous punch, and jumped onto Kegohr’s outstretched arm. He grunted as I snaked around to his back, slapped on a tight choke, and squeezed for all it was worth. Kegohr swung wildly and tried to buck me off, but I had my hooks in.
“Go to sleep,” I said in his ear. “Come on, big guy, nap time.”
Kegohr’s chest rumbled, and he slammed his fists together again. The blue fire around him flashed outward in the same grenade-like blast he’d used earlier. I held on with everything I had, but it wasn’t enough to keep my grip, and I flew off his back like a rodeo cowboy. I flipped in the air and landed on my feet as Kegohr’s Physical Augmentation shifted again. Blue gave way to pure white flame, and he spun with a roar. His eyes blazed with blinding light as he sprinted toward me. The ground trembled under his massive stride, and I dived clear of his path. Kegohr’s fists vaporized a small formation of stone like it was brittle glass. I leapt into the air with the best spinning kick I could muster and slammed my foot against his jaw.
Kegohr didn’t budge. His berserker grin widened, and he hit me with a palm strike.
The slate broke apart around me as I slid backward across the rocky ground and came to a grinding halt 15 feet away. Stars danced behind my eyes in a dizzying whirl, air vanished from my lungs, and I stared up at the starry sky in astonishment. Air finally came back into my lungs after a second, and I sat up with a crazy grin on my face.
“Now that's what I’m talking about!” I called back to him.
Kegohr took a deep breath. The white aura of pure power faded into his blue-gray fur, and he strode over to pull me out of the shallow trench he’d dug with my body. I accepted his hand and grimaced as I my nervous system finally kicked in.
My brain was telling me that I’d been run over by a train.
Mahrai and Vesma stared at me in amazement as I shook my head to clear it.
“All right, Kegohr,” I said, “I’ll admit it. You’re stronger than me.”
“Nah, nah, nah,” he said. “You’re still the better Augmenter. We were only using physical attacks.”
“Are you even human?” Mahrai asked me.
I shrugged. “I’ve gotten used to scrapping with stronger types.”
“You should be a smear on the ground,” Vesma said, astonished.
“He’s tough,” Kegohr said.
“You pulled your punches,” I argued. “Still, the rogue monk we tracked down didn’t hit that hard. What the hell are they teaching you up there?”
“The finer points of control,” Kegohr explained. “Master Berrin said that Spirit of the Wildfire is Physical Augmentation, yeah, but there’s stages to it. We gave each of them names.”
“So, regular fire is stage one, right?” Vesma asked.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Stage two is the blue stuff. I call it the Enhanced version. And the white stuff, well…” Kegohr shifted, suddenly self-conscious. “Well, I call it Banefire.”
“And you can channel it through this?” Mahrai tapped the handle of his new mace.
Kegohr scooped up the weapon like it weighed nothing. White flame wrapped around him in a blazing inferno, and the steel head of his mace shone with a blinding light.
Kegohr’s muscles rolled under his fur as he arched back and slammed the mace down onto a taxi-sized boulder beside him. The rock came apart with a thunderclap of sheer power, and slag dripped from the head as he grinned and hefted his club over his shoulder.
“Sure can,” he said.
I eyed the pile of boiling stone where the rock had been a second ago. “Remind me not to piss you off, big guy. That’s fucking terrifying.”
Vesma jumped to her feet. “My turn.”
“You really sure you can top that, Ves?” Kegohr asked with a playful smile.
“Maybe not, but I think you’ll like this,” Vesma said.
Vesma stepped out beside Kegohr, tied her hair back into a ponytail with a deft twist of her hands, and stepped into the air as casually as breathing. Snaking streamers of fire flickered around her feet as she stood a foot off the ground. She spun in place and gradually levitated higher with a small, dance-like twirl. A spurt of fire from her boots propelled her further into the air, and she caught herself again with a simple twist of thought.
I’d used something similar in my own fights, but Vesma’s command over her Flight was unprecedented. Even Yo Hin didn’t have her pinpoint control of the technique.
“Fuck, I wish I could do that,” Mahrai muttered.
Vesma’s face spread into an expression of pure joy as she drifted higher. She snapped her fingers, opened her palms, and summoned Flight into her hands. The streamers of fire jumped up to her palms from her feet, and she drifted back to the ground at an inch a second. Her boots brushed the slate again, and she offered us a small curtsy. Her eyes shone bright, even in the dark, and I’d never seen her so happy before in my life. Bright warmth radiated from every inch of her as she dug into her Vigor and summoned twin Untamed Torches into her hands.
“You remember our bout with the Master
s of Radiant Dragon?” Vesma asked.
“No way,” I said. “You didn’t learn how to shoot lasers, did you?”
Vesma offered me a smile and opened her palms. Precise bursts of channeled flame flew from her hands and seared holes into a boulder behind me.
“Damn, that’s really something,” he said. Her Untamed Torches were like some kind of high-tech laser beams.
“It probably wouldn’t do much to you two,” Vesma said. “Physical Augmentation makes you resistant to the elements, depending on the form. But any regular fire Augmenter wouldn’t stand a chance.” She shook her hair free and beamed at us. “I’ve been working on my own Physical Augmentation, but I can’t seem to tap into the strength you two have.”
“So, what can you do?” Mahrai challenged.
Vesma’s eyes sparkled mischievously, and she held up her hand with her palm facing inward. A red-hot glow emanated from the center of her flesh and lit up the bones of her hand. She placed the hand over her breast, and the heat spread deeper into her body. Her flesh became almost translucent as an orange glow glimmered through her skin and lit her up in the darkness. Vesma’s eyes found mine, and her smile turned downright seductive as the warm glow faded.
“That,” Vesma said.
“I’ve seen the monks project an aura,” I said, “but I can’t say I’ve seen them internalize it before. What’s the advantage over projecting heat around your skin?”
“I haven’t figured it out yet,” Vesma admitted. “But it keeps the cold at bay.” She patted out a small flare of fire on her shoulder. “Well, it’s not ideal. But until I find armor or something that’s capable of diffusing the heat, I’ll just have to deal with it.”
Mahrai stretched, stood up, and strode out onto the center of the rocky outcrop we’d chosen as our training area. She gestured idly, and her Greater Stone Golem rose out of the slate effortlessly. I raised an eyebrow at the sudden appearance of her minion.
“Doesn’t that normally take you a few seconds?” I asked.
Mahrai shrugged. “It’s faster these days.”
