"Calm down. Don't drink so fast," Rika told him.

Alden was guzzling down water from the bottle he'd brought on the train, which Rika had already refilled twice. He felt dehydrated and dizzy from the reading, and the food and water were only keeping him awake for so long. Alden refused to sleep yet, not while he was so eager to explore the new power he'd stumbled upon.

"How does this work?" he spluttered between mouthfuls.

Rika sat back on the coffee table cross-legged, her expression thoughtful. "What did you get stuck on?"

Alden didn't know how to respond.

"I mean, what did you feel? Before she showed up. What was the sensation?" Rika clarified.

"...Falling," Alden answered, the unpleasant memory springing into his mind.

"Movement," Rika said, satisfied.

"Huh?"

"You've got your affinity. Probably."

"What's that?" Alden asked, curious.

"Well, everyone's got one, as far as I can tell. I've been trying to figure them out as a side project. Kind of fascinating, who ends up with what. It's gotta be linked to what you feel before she pulls you back."

"And what does it mean?" Alden prompted impatiently. Rika looked like she might launch into a more detailed accounting, when he desperately needed to know what just happened to him.

"Well, assuming I'm right, you're gonna find movement magic a lot easier to use and control," she explained patiently. "You might discover how to do something before anyone else does, too. Call it a flash of insight. It'll be related to your affinity for sure."

"And yours is electricity?" Alden guessed.

"Close. All the elements, really." Rika raised her hand, and snapped her fingers, then immediately spread her palm wide.

A small yellow-orange flame flickered into existence floating in the space she revealed. Even from across the room, Alden could tell it was quite real.

"Lightning's just my specialty. Something no one else knows how to do yet," Rika boasted.

She flicked two fingers, sending a crackle of electricity buzzing about the lick of flame. It sped around a dozen times before both puffed out of existence a moment later as Rika closed her hand. Even to a complete novice like Alden, it was clear how far superior her sense of control was with the little bolt of lightning.

"Wow," he breathed.

"You know it," Rika boasted. "So, where do you want to start?"

Alden opened his mouth reply and was struck by a yawn, overwhelming his senses. Fatigue had finally caught up with him after the very long day he'd endured, coupled with the exertion brought on by the reading of the book.

"Tomorrow then," Rika noted, clearly amused.

"Sorry, it's not you—" Alden stammered.

Rika chortled. "What, are you breaking up with me? You're tired, it's cool. Magic can wait."

Alden glanced around, unsure of what to do next. The short duffel bag he'd been lugging around since he'd gotten off the train sat in the corner. It had a few changes of clothes and other belongings, but he'd had no idea how long he might be staying in Rallsburg. He certainly didn't have anywhere to stay.

"Should I just take the couch…?" he mumbled halfheartedly.

"Huh?" Rika was surprised. So was he. For the briefest moment, his sleep-deprived mind assumed she meant for him to share her bed. She quickly disabused him of that notion. "God no. You're going next door."

"What?"

A few minutes later, Alden was looking at a sparse, almost barren apartment. A single couch, a nearly empty kitchen, and a plain but comfortable looking bed in a single bedroom upstairs.

"The place is empty, always has been. Thanks to my apparently kidnapped landlord, you're probably good to stay here for at least a few nights," Rika said, eyeing the tiny bed with something akin to distaste. Alden briefly imagined what Rika's bedroom might look like, but pushed the thought away as his face tinged with warmth, before Rika could find some other reason to tease him. He set down his bag and began pulling out his necessities.

"Need anything? Toothpaste, blanket, towel?" Rika asked.

"I think I'm okay."

"I'm just next door. Bang on the wall if you have to." Rika turned to leave.

"Rika?"

"Not gonna sleep with you, Alden," she sighed, but her hand stopped turning the door handle all the same. She glanced over her shoulder patiently.

"I'm your friend," said Alden.

"No shit," Rika replied, rolling her eyes. "Go to sleep, dumbass. You're gonna have a killer headache in the morning."

Alden nodded, and a few seconds later he'd already collapsed on the bed, his eyes sliding shut almost involuntarily. As consciousness slid from his brain, he felt his shoes untied and pulled away, and then his legs hoisted back onto the bed, but he was too tired to comprehend who was helping him, until he heard her whisper from the edge of the bed.

"Thanks."

The door clicked shut, and the rest of the world closed with it.

"Hold out your finger like this."

"You're just flipping it off."

"I do what works, okay?"

"I just feel like it should be more like this," Alden shot back. He shifted his fingers into a position that felt more natural to him. "Is it really just all about hand movements?"

"Nah." Rika took his hand and adjusted his fingers back to their original position. She was wearing a pair of comfortable thin black gloves to dampen her residual electricity, but he could still feel it flowing faintly through the fabric. "Now, look at the paper. Push your will out into it."

He tried. Alden had no clue what that meant, but he tried to force his mind to take hold of the paper and shove it aside.

It didn't budge.

"It's not working," he sighed aloud.

"Maybe… Try projecting an image. Something mental, like an invisible hand," Rika suggested. "Imagine you have an arm extending out from your brain and let that do the grabbing." It sounded ridiculous to Alden; then again, he had zero experience here, while Rika could send blades of grass flying around the riverbank easily.

After waking up in the empty apartment, Alden had barely time to get dressed and showered before Rika was already banging on his door, a bag of fresh doughnuts in hand. An hour later, they'd gone back to the riverbank near the bridge where the entrance to the Market sat concealed only a few dozen meters away.

Rika claimed it was just a nice, usually empty place, but Alden suspected she was lying in wait for Kendra or Lily to emerge from the Market. He wondered if they'd even bother to exit from the bridge, given how the Market seemed linked to so many other places around town, but brushed the thought away. He had more pressing concerns, like his complete inability to move the lone sheet of paper sitting on the sidewalk in front of them.

Alden did as she suggested, imagining a ghostly hand stretching out from where he sat to grasp the paper. As it did, he twisted his fingers sharply.

The paper fluttered. Was it just the wind? No, it had matched his fingers so precisely. He felt elated, until the wave hit him.

From the tip of his finger all the way up his arm, he felt his muscles drain like he'd been lifting heavy weights for hours. His arm fell limp to his side, practically numb from exertion. He gasped involuntarily. It was a strange feeling. The paper had moved instantly, and he'd felt nothing, but only a moment later the effort he'd put out struck him like a truck barrelling down the highway.

He collapsed back onto the soft grass slope.

"Good shit, huh?" Rika smirked.

"Now I know why you brought this blanket," Alden said, still winded.

"Well, you're definitely a movement guy. Took me days to get the paper to lift off the ground at all." She sounded a touch jealous.

"It's nothing like your lightning," he put in abashedly.

She looked at him with scorn. "Don't patronize me."

"Sorry." He turned back to the paper, eager to try again.

"Hold up there, Zack-ey. Give yourself a moment," Rika cried out, but it was too late. Alden was already twisting his fingers once more, and the paper fluttered, hovering in midair. He shot a grin at Rika, and was awake just long enough to see a frown begin to crease her eyebrows before his world went black.

"Alden, wake the fuck up!"

"...huh?"

He spluttered back to life. There was a wall of red bricks above him, the underside of the bridge leading out of town. Apparently Rika had moved him under cover while he'd been out.

"What happened?"

"You passed out for a minute. Don't do that again," Rika snapped. There was genuine concern on her face.

"I'm okay," he mumbled, struggling to sit up. Rika planted a hand on his shoulder, pushing him back down firmly.

"Nope. Stay down, let yourself wake up a bit more."

After a moment's indignation, Alden felt grateful for her insistence. Even that modicum of effort sent his head spinning, his blood pounding through his skull. His relaxed position was easing the pressure, bit by bit.

It was still sunny and warm out. Rika was sitting just off to the side of the blank wall where the door to the Market would appear. She was alternating concerned looks at him with glances around the river, to the swathes of trees lining the far bank and the road leading away. He decided that, being relatively incapacitated, now was as good a time as any to ask a few more questions of her.

"How long have you been doing this?"

"Eight months, give or take?"

"That recently?" he asked, shocked.

"Well, they only discovered the first parts of the book like a year and a half ago," said Rika. "Maybe a bit earlier. Then there were a few months of people going nuts with magic, before the Gods stepped in. After that they made the Council, got everyone organized, then they had a falling out. No one explained that part to me. They all get nervous when I bring it up," she added dismissively. She clearly didn't think much of their fears.

"Going nuts with magic, but still no one found out?" Alden prompted.

"The council and such helps, but I'd bet anything the Gods are working behind the scenes pretty constantly to keep us all out of trouble." Rika frowned. "Makes you wonder how they do it."

"Yeah, it does," Alden added pointedly. Rika gave him a look.

"Fuck if I know. Maybe they just disappear them, that'd be easy. Oh hell," she faltered, seeing the expression that had briefly crossed Alden's face. "Sorry."

"How do I get better at magic?" Alden asked, determined to change the subject.

"Practice," Rika answered simply.

"That's it?"

"Fuck no. You gotta learn and experiment, do research, and train yourself. It gets a bit easier over time, but not by much. Unless it's your affinity, but even then it's never easy. Might be magic, but it's still work." Rika pointed at her arm. "It's like a muscle in a way. You work at it, it tears and gets sore. Like that migraine you had earlier, or the fact that you just passed out a few minutes ago. But when it heals, it heals back stronger than before."

She reached out her hand toward the paper Alden had been struggling with. With a few gentle movements, it began to flip up and down, fluttering around in figure eights. She made it look effortless, until he glanced at her face instead of the paper. She let it down a moment later. Alden could see the exertion affecting her, but Rika still always seemed to want to show off what she could do.

"You said you have to research?" he prompted. "Research how, exactly?"

"Scientific method. Take a guess, try some stuff out, see if it worked, find a pattern. Calling it magic's just a placeholder, I'd say," Rika replied, settling back against the wall again. "It's a science, but no one's got a clue how it works yet. What's that quote? 'Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.'"

"But you can shoot lightning from your fingers and move things with your mind," Alden protested.

She shook her head. "Yeah, but there's a logic to it. It's consistent. We know exactly how anyone can start using magic, even if we don't know why it happens." Rika pointed up at the sky. "The entire universe was formed by the Big Bang. We know how that happened, and roughly how everything formed after that, but we know fuck all about why."

"So logically…"

"Logically, magic's gotta follow some rules. Yeah, it breaks the laws of physics as we know them, but so did a thousand other things in the past, and we revised those laws. Someone's gonna have to revise them again."

"Not you, though."

"Nope. Too lazy."

He laughed. Rika grinned.

"Glad you've still got some sense of humor. Now, any other questions from the peanut gallery?"

"What's a peanut gallery?"

"Cheap seats in a theater, you uncultured hack." She stood up. "You good yet?"

Alden pulled himself up to a sitting position, and found that the nausea and headache had subsided substantially. "Yeah."

"Cool. So what's next? You wanna try making fire?"

Alden grinned. All caution fled from his mind as an image of himself popped into his mind, with balls of fire floating in his hands and an intense look on his face. He rubbed his hands together excitedly. This was going to be fun.