Volume 1, Chapter 8: Hands-On Learning (Patreon)

“My turn?” The fireball looped through the air as I began to feel my lips burning from dehydration.

I needed water, and before I could go looking for it, I needed to feel more confident that nothing would eat me along the way. That, in turn, required both Bri and me to understand how to use the magic we had been given.

I was also privately pleased that I had managed to construct that entire chain of events without numbering any of it.

“Yes, yours.” I rose to my feet and glanced down at my socks, which were now almost completely black.

“All right. What do I do?”

“Hover in place and don’t move until I’m finished. I don’t have much experience painting in three dimensions, but I tried sculpting with clay once, and I have divinely fucking dexterous fingers—which can be confirmed by both my lovers and the targets of my pickpocketing skills—well, maybe not the latter, as they are oblivious to this day—so I’m one hundred and seven percent certain everything will go perfectly on my end. Okay?”

“On your end? Lovers? What are you, um… talking about?” The two flames serving as her eyebrows separated from her face entirely and hovered above her for a second before settling back into place.

“Just don’t move.”

I reached toward her, but unlike the flame from the lighter, the fire she produced was far too intense, and I instinctively jerked my hand back.

“This isn’t going to work. Fuck.”

I muttered the curse under my breath, then focused once again on covering my hand with the armor provided by Cinderhide. I wasn’t the one to back down from a challenge, and so I watched my skin begin to glow, then crack, as something resembling rapidly cooling lava seeped from the fractures and spread over me all the way to my wrist. Despite its appearance, it still allowed complete freedom of movement, even retaining the flexibility of living skin. I confirmed as much by flexing my wrist, opening and closing my hand several times, then moving my fingers individually and in various combinations.

My soul, however, was nearly exhausted.

Using my abilities in rapid succession had pushed my Psyche close to collapse. The dizziness returned, but I reached toward Bri again anyway. This time, when no overwhelming heat struck me, I pressed all five fingers of my right hand against her body.

“That tickles!” Her entire body spasmed into three almost separate tongues of flame before snapping back together, showering me with harmless sparks. “Be, um… more careful!” she cried, bouncing in place at the exact moment I forced Pyrography into action through sheer will.

[Authority Conflict detected. Competing Claims: The desire to shape the fire according to one’s will versus the fire’s will to remain in its current form. Sources of Strength: conceptual, precision. Anchors: Authorship. Resistances: Soul Resistance, Identity Cohesion. Conflict State: Contested.] Instinctively, I understood the nature of the opposition her soul had placed before me. I hadn’t expected it, but only a moment after realizing what had happened, it struck me as perfectly natural that a soul possessing its own Authority would stand in defiance against any attempt to force it into being something other than what it was.

I gave Brigid a meaningful look and quickly realized—feeling the heat radiating from her against my cheeks—that she, too, understood what had just happened.

“Can you stop resisting what I’m trying to do?” I asked, still trying to draw lines of fire out of her with my fingers.

“I don’t know how…” she replied quickly, but after a moment I understood that the resistance on her end had been withdrawn by a simple decision. That was her will, and so it was done.

So I pulled my hand away, gently moving it off her round body and leaving lines of living fire pinned in space, still attached to her. Her face shifted within the sphere, and her eyes followed my movements.

Gripping my head with my unoccupied hand, pressing down and forcing myself to endure at least some of the throbbing pain—which, I realized, was not affecting my body but my spirit—I began deftly twisting my fingers, weaving one line after another, repeatedly ending the connection to the source of fire at one finger and one point only to resume it elsewhere a moment later.

In this way, I began sculpting something like a hand in midair.

First came the fiery back of it, elongated and rounded. Then, shaping my own fingers into something like a claw—or a crab’s pincer—I carefully stitched a thumb into the air. Leaving one connecting line in place so as not to end the ability, I released the remaining fingers and moved to the front of the hand, where, with a simple thought, I resumed all five lines, each attached to a different finger. In that way, I finished painting the entire hand.

When I had completed my masterpiece, I slowly stepped back from Bri, disengaging all the anchor points and leaving the newly created fiery hand attached to her body. Since she remained the source of the fire, I did not have to personally sustain it with my own Authority. Even so, I could feel that, in some way I still did not understand, I remained connected to my creation.

“That’s amazing!” Bri said, flattening herself again, first horizontally, then vertically—her own version of bouncing up and down. “Only… why do I have three fingers and a thumb? You, um, have five fingers total, right?”

“Yes. When I was a kid, I liked watching Looney Tunes cartoons. Beings a little like you appeared in them sometimes, but every single character always had four fingers. I thought it would suit you.”

“Looney? Hmmm. You’re right, I like it.”

“Can you move the hand?”

“Not really. It just… exists.” The smile on her fiery face melted away as quickly as it had appeared.

“Never mind. Keep your chin up. We’ll try something else,” I said, pulling the keys I found in the bag.

I selected the one that looked sharpest, extended my lava-covered hand in front of me, and drove the metal into it. Then I dragged it across the surface, opening a wound that, despite its strange appearance, still leaked my own blood.

“Come closer and try to heal this. Maybe your ability doesn’t require the hand to work, only for it to exist. Go on, Bri.” I clenched my blackened hand, allowing several drops of blood to fall onto the sand, then opened it again and waited for my helpful little flame to approach.

She hesitated for a moment, biting her lower lip and narrowing her eyes beneath furrowed brows. Then she drifted closer, trying to position the fiery hand attached to her above mine.

“I can feel it!” she cried, and my Anima subconsciously informed me that we had entered another Authority Conflict, but the instant I became aware of it, I consciously ended my resistance, allowing the power offered by Bri to alter me.

Before my eyes, the transformed skin of my hand sprouted tiny tendrils. They reached across the open gash and caught hold of the wound’s opposite edges. Hundreds of them emerged along both sides, each gripping the flesh across from it. A moment later, they began pulling the two sides of the skin together, sealing the wound.

Once I felt that my hand was fully functional again, I drew it away from the fireball and willed away the protection provided by Cinderhide.

When the crust evaporated, it revealed a whole, though slightly burned, hand.

“It’s gone! The wound is gone!” Her smile widened to unnatural proportions. “I healed you!”

“Well done,” I replied, walking over to the log I had partially chopped apart earlier and sitting down on it. “Don’t mind me. I’m a little dazed. My Psyche isn’t exactly the strongest. If I remember correctly, it was classified as Nascent. Out of all my abilities, Pyrography is the only one I could use for a long time without much trouble. The others put a serious strain on me. Two or three uses in quick succession, and I’m done. What about you?”

“I don’t know. What I did didn’t feel difficult, so I think I could do it more often, but, um… maybe it depends on the size and severity of the wound? I don’t know. I feel like it might. My Psyche and Anima are both Nascent too. But the most important thing, Lex, is that… guess! Please guess what the most important thing is!”

“That it worked?” I massaged my temples with both hands, leaning back against the tree behind the fallen log.

“No! I mean, um… that too. Hmmm. Maybe you’re right and that was the most important part. Now I’m not sure.” She began spinning in circles, staring intently ahead of herself.

“Bri…” I drew out her name in response to her movements. “What were you trying to say?”

“Oh! I forgot. I wanted to say that I felt my Soma. Now that it’s moved once, I can feel it all the time. I think I’ll be able to use my other abilities now. Hmmm. Would you like me to examine you? We could see whether anything troubling is happening, you know, inside you.”

“Not yet. If something is wrong, I’d rather not know—especially out here, where there are no hospitals and you can only heal cuts. Once you gain an ability that can cure cancer and other nasty diseases, I’ll let you examine me. Until then, my shield against illness will be blissful indifference and ignorance, all right?”

“I don’t entirely understand, but all right. I’ll examine you once I’m a powerful sorceress!”

“All right, I’ll hold you to that,” I replied, rubbing my tired eyes. “Tell me something. I didn’t notice it when you used your magic, but every time I use mine, a light appears wherever I’m using it. I assume it’s Soma. Whether it’s on my hand before the armor forms or at my fingertips before I seize a flame and pull it through the air, it’s always there. When you used your ability, nothing like that appeared.”

“No?” she replied, furrowing her brows. “I saw green-and-white light on your hand, with a little turquoise mixed in. Does that mean I still don’t have any, you know, inside me?”

“I don’t know, Bri. Maybe each of us can only see the other person’s light. That seems more likely,” I replied after giving it some thought.

After answering, I ran my tongue over the roof of my mouth to check its condition. It was not good. My throat was dry, my teeth ached, and I was still desperately thirsty. That was probably also because the last drink I had consumed was wine, long before I had ended up in bed with the woman I intended to rob.

Apparently, karma had decided to return and punish me for my wicked deeds.

“What are you thinking about?”

“Now that we know we can rely on both your magic and mine if necessary, I really need to find something to quench my thirst.”

“Can’t you drink what’s dripping from the leaves above?” she asked as I forced myself onto both feet.

Caught off guard by the condition of my soul—my body protested forcing the world around me to spin in circles. This subsequently forced me to brace one hand against a nearby tree to keep myself from falling. I laughed inwardly when I realized that, all things considered, this was not the worst hangover I had experienced in my twenty-four years of life.

It was hardly something to be proud of, but the thought still gave me a little optimism and renewed energy.

“Maybe I could, but a few scattered drops would only annoy me. They certainly wouldn’t help.”

I waved a hand at her, then grabbed the bag—while still leaning against the tree—and slung it over my shoulder.

“Let’s keep moving,” I said and realizing my mistake, quickly corrected myself. “Well, some of us will be moving. The rest get to glide effortlessly through the air… lucky bastards.”