"When you said you would rest for today," Ash said, "I thought you meant longer than a single day." Ash sounded amused. She leaned against the trunk of a tree at the edge of the clearing, the morning light finding the gold in her hair.
"Even a single day of rest is more than we can afford, Ash. And besides." I cupped my hands and let a thread of Ruin gather in the right, a thread of Bloom in the left. "I consider this to be quite relaxing, in its own way."
"I suppose you would."
The chamber the Archon had given us today was a forest. It was a resonance chamber where the trees stood tall enough and the light fell green enough that if I did not look too closely I could almost forget the walls. A narrow stream ran along the eastern edge of the clearing. The mana here was thicker than the outside, but only just. It reminded me of another forest. One where I had woken beneath a blue sky for the first time.
We had come here because the Archon had refused me. I had gone to his office hours ago and demanded the Crest chamber -the one he had once dangled before me. The old man had apologized. Its last occupant, he said, had left it in no state for anyone. Not for a few days. I remembered who the last occupant was well, and so I was forced to believe him.
In its place he had offered this, the chamber for a class called Basic Survival. It was not terrible. Had he offered the desert, there would have been disagreement.
A small chirp came from the stream. Sol waddled along its bank, three steps and a pause, three steps and another pause. She pecked at a smooth stone and chirped. The stone failed whatever standard she had imposed upon it. She chirped more loudly and struck it again. This time, the stone broke under the might of her beak.
Then she stopped. She drew herself up and tucked her wings. She rolled. She rolled until she struck another small stone with a small bump. She righted herself, and continued her waddling.
I did not understand her fascination with rolling. I had watched her do it a dozen times now and understood it no better than the first. Perhaps I would attempt it myself someday, when there was no one to observe. Not even Ash.
I returned my attention to my hands. Ruin ate Bloom, black swallowing white. Bloom pressed back against the black and did not swallow anything at all. "This power," I said, "is far stranger than either Ruin or Bloom."
I had learned that much already. The two streams had to be perfectly matched in power, or the thing between them would not show itself. A hair too much of either, and there was only the eating. It was harder than it looked, which annoyed me. I could manage the precision required perhaps one time in three.
"It felt strange to me too when you used it then," Ash said.
I looked at her then. "You mean from the stands?"
"I do."
I considered this. All Essence carried a taste. The Requiem tasted of endings and the Cradle tasted of beginnings. I had assumed the third thing, would taste of both at once. It had felt like that to me, in the moment. I hadn’t considered someone else would think differently. "And what," I asked, "did it taste of?" The fact that power had a taste was still a somewhat alien concept.
Ash considered for long enough that I almost repeated myself. "Like tomorrow could be a new day," she said. "Like tomorrow didn't have to be the same as today." She shrugged. "Everyone probably felt the same thing."
A strange answer. At least it was less poetic than those texts I had suffered through. "That is marginally useful," I said at last. Somewhere by the stream, Sol trilled, as if she too remembered the taste.
There was a large boulder at the clearing's edge. I turned toward it. I channelled Ruin and Bloom together and fired.
The air cracked. For a heartbeat the clearing split along a hundred bright lines, and in the same heartbeat every line mended. The power struck the boulder and vanished. The boulder remained a boulder. It sat exactly as it had before, completely unmoved and unchanged.
"Well," I said. "That is progress." It had manifested at all, which was more than could be said for two firings in three.
Ash walked to the stone. She raised one hand and drew it once through the air, and the boulder separated down a hair-thin line. One half settled into the grass with a heavy thud. The cut face was smooth enough to hold a reflection.
"You are showing off, Hero," I said.
"I am." I looked at her grin. It was not a Hero's grin at all, and I decided to let her have it.
I turned the problem over. Ruin fired at a thing always did something. It decayed and ceased what it touched. Bloom fired at a thing always did something too. It restored and woke what had gone still. This third thing, whatever it was, had struck the boulder and done nothing, and yet in the Arena it had struck a girl clad in black lightning and turned that lightning into a rain of pale light. What had been different?
When I thought of it in those terms, the answer was almost too obvious. These Sovereign marks were a type of, or at least related to Concept Magic. Magic that read the caster’s intent and will as much as they followed their own design. I had loosed the power at the boulder wanting nothing in particular. In the Arena I had wanted very much.
I faced the nearer half of the split boulder. I fixed in my mind exactly what I intended and I gathered both powers and fired. The Ember Core wrenched. My vision went pale at the edges. I staggered.
Ash was at my side before I had finished the stagger. "Are you okay?"
"I am well enough, Hero." The words came out sharp. I felt her go still. I heard them as she must have heard them. "I apologize. I'm fine, Ash."
She nodded slowly. We both looked at the boulder. It was exactly the boulder it had been. "Did you try to do anything different this time?" Ash asked.
"I tried to will that miserable lump of rock into diamond."
"Huh." She considered it. "Well. That would have been a rather convenient power."
"Indeed it would have."
I disliked this. In my old life, one knew the exact specification of every power in one's arsenal. There had been experimentation, yes, but experimentation was not guesswork.
"Maybe the change you were trying to make was too much," Ash said.
I looked at her. "Too much?"
"To turn a normal rock into diamond…that's a big change, isn't it? Maybe you need to try something smaller." She frowned, reaching for it. "Or something similar?"
In the Arena I had turned lightning into light. The change had been vast in consequence, but not in distance. One brightness had simply become another, however odd.
I knelt. There was grass beneath me, ordinary green grass. I fixed a smaller wanting in my mind and I loosed the power.
This time, the third thing did something. The red spread outward from where the power had touched, blade by blade, running through the green like a stain through cloth, until a patch of grass burned red. It was not the red of blood. And for the length of the firing, the Ember Core did not make any sound at all.
Ash's eyes were on my face. Then they went to the grass. "That's beautiful," she said.
It was the red of my old sky. The perpetual red that had hung over the Demon Realm every hour of every day. I reached down and touched the grass and found it perfectly ordinary beneath my fingers. It was normal grass in every way but its color. Sol waddled over and pecked the red grass. She gave an approving chirp.
"When I used Sever on a flower, the color came back," Ash said. She looked at the red grass. "Yours is staying. I did figure out how to do it right, eventually. I'm surprised you figured it out so quickly. It took me hours."
"So it is. And that is not much of a surprise. This style of magic did make me the most fearsome mortal to ever live, after all." My power changed what the thing was. The grass was red now, and it would be red until I decided otherwise.
There had been an impression there, the same way there were always impressions with Ruin and Bloom. It had been so small. Almost nothing, almost no more than a shrug. As if the blade of grass was content to be grass, and did not care if I chose to make it red grass instead. "This will need far more testing," I said.
"Want me to bring you things to test, then?"
I looked at her. "Perhaps you know me too well, Hero." She smiled, and went to find me things.
She brought stones first. Small ones, then larger ones. I used my power with great care. One boulder became a hundred uneven stones, and then a thousand rough pieces of gravel spread into a road that crossed the clearing and arrived nowhere. A second became two blocks that might be called seats by someone generous. Reshaping was possible. Complete transmutation was not.
I tried to turn a cupped handful of water into a blade, and got nothing save for a vast amount of wasted Essence. The stream, when I reached for its impression, was the loudest inanimate thing I had touched all day, and what it said was that it was entirely content to be water and never had any interest in becoming a sword. Apparently, even water had interests in this new world. "The stream," I informed Ash, "is insolent." She laughed.
I tried, once, to turn a lump of stone into a vase. What emerged was a lump with a dent in it. It did not feel like a failing of my power, but a failing of myself. Some things, it seemed, still had to be made rather than willed. The clay bead sat warm against my collarbone, and I did not touch it.
I turned the red grass green again, and it went as easily as it had come before. My successes climbed as I learned the shape of my new power. My requests had to be precise, and I could not turn a thing into something it could have never been. There had to be continuity and recognizability. Even then, I could not shape a single boulder into a great highway capable of marching an army. Those laws still persisted. After some time, I thought I had a good grasp of my new power. At least as far as the inanimate was concerned.
Then Ash brought me a brown rabbit. She held it out to me, and its absurdly large ears looked no more normal now than they had that first night. It trembled in the Hero’s arms but she held it steady. I reached for it with the third thing, and willed its color to change.
The cost was far, far greater. This single test drained more Essence in seconds than the entirety of the tests I had done so far. My body almost shook from the effort. The change took, in the end. The rabbit's brown deepened toward a red it had never worn. And from the impression I understood why it had cost as much as it had.
It was because the creature was refusing me. The grass had not cared. The water had merely been smug. This creature knew what it was, and it did not want to be changed. My Essence had overpowered its own wanting, but the overpowering had cost me.
"I apologize," I said as I reached for the third thing again. I turned the rabbit back to brown. Ash set it down. It sat still for a moment, then bolted for the trees. I watched it go.
Ash steered me to one of the stone seats, though I could have walked well enough on my own. Sol had appeared beneath my feet, and she was chirping mightily. I sat down. Sol climbed onto my thigh, then into the space beneath my hand. Her four wings flared. The chirping did not cease until I brushed a spot atop her head.
Ash crouched in front of me. Her gaze settled over my chest. "It goes quiet when you use it, doesn't it?" I said nothing. "I've been feeling it all day," she went on. "It stops when you fire that power, and it comes back the second you stop. Don’t tell me I imagine it."
"That is a trivial side effect, nothing more." I said.
"Is that why you turned grass red then green then red then green again?" She asked.
I looked at her. Ash just looked at me without saying a word. I waited for her to say something. Her jaw was set, and her eyes were fixed.
"This silent siege of yours," I finally said, "is too effective a technique." Still she waited without a word. I looked at the red grass I had made green again. "Yes, Ash. You have not imagined anything. Maybe I was chasing that quiet without realizing it."
Ash was quiet for a moment longer. Ash's hand found mine. Her palm was warm against my knuckles. Ash's thumb moved once. "Then don't keep that part secret. When it's bad, tell me. That's all."
This was technically a lesser promise than the one she had demanded before. It required no surrender of decision, only information. It was therefore easier to grant. "Very well," I said. "I promise."
Ash nodded. Her fingers tightened briefly around mine. Sol forced her way bodily between our joined hands and my stomach, arranged herself there, and trilled. Ash sat on the other stone seat. "If it's quiet you want, I could simply speak less."
"Do not dare."
She laughed. Sol chirped with her. I stayed sitting for a time. Sol settled on my thigh and began grooming one black wing.
Ash rose, planted her feet and rolled her shoulders. She began her stretches. Most of them were not the same stretches she had inflicted upon my legs, but many were similar. It had been my body then, folded and pressed. Now it was hers, and I watched, simply because there was nothing else to look at.
Her shoulders were broad. Her balance was excellent. The line of her back as she folded forward was a simple observation. The strip of pale skin at her waist where the tunic rode up as she reached was another observation. The way her pale skin gave in to the roundness below was simply another-
Ash looked up. She caught me looking. Her face flushed, but she did not look away. She held my gaze and it was I who looked away first. The light from the trees had made it uncomfortable to gaze at that angle.
Sol looked from Ash to me, and back to Ash. She tilted her head very far to one side and did not chirp. "What are you looking at?" I asked her. This time she did chirp, loudly.
"So," Ash said. "Have you decided?"
"Decided what?"
"Its name." She rolled one shoulder. "You've been thinking about it since we got here. I can tell."
I sighed. As it happened, I had. "Coincidentally," I said, "I have just now thought of a name."
"Coincidentally."
"Coincidentally." I cleared my throat, and drew myself up as much as one could upon an uncomfortable stone seat. "I shall name this power: Divine Reconstitution."
Ash groaned. She actually stopped stretching to do it. "Lys."
"It is only two words this time."
"And what two words they are. Ruin, Bloom, and now Divine Reconstitution. What a trio they make."
"Perhaps it is a little out of place," I conceded. "Very well. I shall simply call it Reconstitution."
"Lys, that single word is the length of three."
I clicked my tongue. "Then you name it, Hero, and I shall consider whether your suggestion merits the-"
"Turn." I went still. "You're turning one thing into another," Ash said. "So just call it Turn. It just makes sense." She paused and looked at me. "But well, you can call it Reconstitution if you want. That's not a bad name either."
I considered this. Turn. It was a small word. It was a plain word, a word with no majesty in it at all. Surely the thing that lived in the space between the Beginning and the Ending, deserved something with more weight than a single blunt syllable-
It did not. The word was the whole of what the power did. Sol chirped at the word Turn, the way she had once chirped her approval of her own name. Besides, I did not disapprove of the name the Hero had chosen, and only partly because she was the one who had chosen it.
"My retainers," I said slowly, "keep naming my powers." It was not meant to sound like a complaint. A Queen was supposed to object. "Very well, Ash. I shall name it Turn. And you shall be hon-"
"HEY! IF YOU TWO ARE DOING ANYTHING WEIRD, I'M COMING IN!" Ash and I both turned toward the treeline. We both knew the voice. "SERIOUSLY! I'M WALKING REALLY, REALLY SLOW, SO IF YOU ARE, YOU HAVE ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD!"
Ash groaned and went scarlet in the same breath, which told me she understood what this was about. I did not understand it in the slightest. Ren burst from the treeline a moment later with Edda and Corin trailing behind her. The three of them stopped and took in the clearing.
Corin's mouth opened. "Is that... a road?"
"Why…" Edda pointed at a patch of grass. "Why blue?" It had simply felt right at the time, not that I would tell her that.
Ren was crouching over a patch of red grass. "Okay this is awesome, can you do my room like this? I want it all red. No -wait- half red and half yellow, like fire, that would be so-" Edda's hand landed on her shoulder and reeled her back.
"Right! Right." Ren straightened, and fished into her pocket. She came up with two silver medallions I had occasionally seen on some of the other students. "No way are you two sitting in here all day, not when there's a festival going on outside. Come on, there's barely anyone even left at the Academy. Don't tell me you didn't notice?!"
I had not noticed. Though, come to think of it, the Academy had seemed rather bare as Ash had led me to the Archon's office. And the man had said something about one festivity or another before I had demanded the Crest resonance chamber. "We are not going-" I began.
"Let’s do it." Ash said, smiling. Sol let out an enormous chirp. She had already decided the matter of the outing.
It was, it seemed, my turn to groan. Sol chirped again.