“Wrong.”

“Shit, here?”

“No, the other way,” Dovar corrected tapping Ranvir’s leg with his practice sword.

Moving his foot accordingly, Ranvir tried not to grumble. Ideally, Ranvir wanted to work on rituals with Kirs, but realistically he needed the exercise with weapons, and she wanted to be the main force driving the ritual research forward.

“From the beginning,” Dovar said stepping back as Ranvir returned to his beginning stance. Technically, they were just working on a pretty basic set of moves, but Ranvir was doing them in real time. At least, until Dovar noticed a mistake. “Wrong, your knees are too bent.”

Ranvir huffed out a breath as he pushed himself out of the lunge, He’s right. That took way too much effort, he thought with only a mild yellow complaint tainting the thought.

Snow was, for the first time this week, not falling allowing them to see farther than normal in the moonlit night. It was still colder than the Downway, but at least they only had to stay out here for another forty minutes and not for the rest of eternity.

“Take a two minute break to catch your breath, then from the top," Dovar said stepping closer to Ranvir who straightened breathing deeply. “I’ve been thinking about that exercise you showed me.”

“The whirlwind?” Ranvir asked. After talking with a few older students from smoke classes he’d come up with an exercise that should improve Dovar’s control, while also slowly pointing him towards more of a wind aligned concept. To that effort, Dovar was creating a minor wind pattern, that sometime occurred where wind blew in two opposing currents right on top of each other. They were rare, incredibly unstable, and never lasted long. Perfect exercise for a tethered leaning toward wind.

“Yes. I was thinking about where you got it from. I asked Master Sigurd and he said he’d never heard of such a… silly exercise. He says exercises and techniques can’t affect Concepts.”

Ranvir having caught most of his breath scratched behind his ear, the effect dulled by his gloves. “I pieced it together after talking with a couple of fourth years at the library. I know there’s no knowledge of concepts being changed by the tethered’s technique, only advancement, but I figured it couldn’t help. The least it would align you toward the right direction making you more capable of shaping your Concept.”

“Figured? Pieced together?” Dovar sounded worried. “Are- Do you mean you made it up?”

Ranvir blinked. He almost blurted his answer into Dovar’s face in a rush to defend himself, but he’d learned from arguing with Kirs that rushing to get out the answer would only weaken the discussion. He needed to slow down.

“Everything we’re doing is something I made up," He gestured to Sansir, deliberately slowing his speech further. “Sansir’s the fastest to ever advance because of something we’ve made up. The tether exercises, the one you’re doing right now, is an exercise I just made up. That’s what we’re doing here. We’re working with theory, trying to apply it in practice.”

Dovar frowned, considering Ranvir’s words in full. “What if you’re working on something and it doesn’t work?”

Steady, Ranvir thought keeping his breathing slow. Spreading his lips into a relaxed grin, Ranvir used the stitching on his thumb to scratch at a brow. “This is all pretty simple, honestly. Compared to Concepts.”

Dovar was really frowning now. “What do you mean?”

“I can barely parse through your power, when you’re embracing the pressure," Ranvir explained. “Even now, when you’re just deliberately exercising your tether. I only get a vague sense of smoke. I need time and concentration to figure out what your Concept is even related to. If I didn’t know the answer I couldn’t guess how many hours of deliberate in-depth examination it would take to figure out ‘Smoke like the wind’. To counter that, try sensing Esmund’s power, then Ayvir’s.”

Ranvir knew what Dovar would find of course. Esmund felt like an overgrown pre-stage with all the complexity of a white wall, whereas Ayvir was like a three dimensional smith’s puzzle that had been sundered into a thousand pieces. The only reason Ranvir even got a sense of destruction from the master was the potency of his Concept.

“That makes sense, I guess," Dovar said. “But I’m still not convinced there’s that much you can do with Concepts. Mine doesn’t add that much.”

Ranvir frowned. It wasn’t that he disbelieved Dovar, it was just that while he was a very diligent student and as clever as Kirs, he was also rigid to the point of hindrance. “What can you do with it?”

“Makes me a bit faster and more flexible, improves my ability to turn very quickly as well.”

“What about making you lighter?” Ranvir asked. “What have you tried doing with it? Can you stain things with your touch? How far can you push your Concept?”

“What’s the point? I don’t want to be lighter when I’m fighting someone. Staining the handle of my weapon isn’t helpful either.”

Ranvir stopped himself from yelling at the tall tethered, deliberately lowering his voice instead, “You could fly! If you could stain things, then you could blind your enemy with a swipe," He mimed wiping his hand over Dovar’s eyes, “Maybe you could make the air in your lungs like smoke, you could do anything if you push it far enough.”

“I don’t think it works like that. I’m a manipulator, Ranvir. I can’t make the air in my lungs into smoke.”

“Why not? ‘Smoke like air, right? What if it was Smoke-like air?” Ranvir asked emphasizing the hyphen between smoke and like.

Dovar started waving his hand, clearly ready to dismiss Ranvir, when he paused. “Maybe," he finally acquiesced.

Ranvir nodded, then fell into his ready-stance, “It’s worth considering. You need to master your ability before you can become a master.”

Dovar nodded, then gestured for him to begin the form.

A day later, Ranvir stepped away from where he had been practicing his forms. Dovar was watching him, in theory, but the smoke manipulator was more concerned with his new experiment.

The tall tethered was slowly drifting down from a jump. He’d hung in the air long enough that it was noticeable and weird to witness. He’d tried a few things, he couldn’t in fact make the air in his lungs into smoke, the best he could do was add a bit of wood smoke scent to his breath. Reducing his weight and staining things with his touch he could manage, though the stains were weak, didn’t last, and didn’t spread easily. Ranvir suspected the only reason he could manage that much was the relative weakness of his Concept.

Leaving the slow falling tethered behind, Ranvir walked over to where Grevor and Ayvir were practicing. They were both doing the Body exercise, Ranvir’d developed. He still didn’t know what to call it, though he knew his time was up. It wouldn’t take long before one of his friends named it something sacrilegious and, or, stupid. The best he’d come up with was Discipline attuning exercise, but that didn’t work due to attuned techniques and he didn’t want to muddy the water.

“Ayvir, do you have a minute?” Ranvir asked.

The master blinked his eyes open, then got to his feet. “Sure, is it about her again?”

Ranvir nodded, doing his best not to look in the direction of their observer. Rafeeda el-Safi was bundled up like she was going into a snowstorm and not the mild drift they were actually experiencing. Ranvir was actually surprised she didn’t die from dehydration underneath all those clothes, she had to be sweating horrendously.

“I noticed her too," Ayvir said though he didn’t bother keeping his voice quiet.

She’d been watching them for the past few days, usually hiding herself in darkness by pushing away most of the light around her. It worked brilliantly against the eyes, especially at night. Ranvir could only barely make her out when he took the time to look. But to both his and Master Ayvir’s senses her location was pretty clear. The others hadn’t yet noticed her, but Ranvir thought they’d find her if they searched for her presence.

“I’ll take care of it," Ayvir said his mouth drawing into a confident smirk. “Everybody! We’re doing a little training exercise for Esmund and Ranvir, gather around.”

The others gathered around the master, when he turned with a flourish, “And you,” Ayvir said into the darkness surrounding them. In the near solid darkness of night, especially with the overcast sky and snow it was nearly impossible to see anything beyond the sphere of light. Ayvir ripped away blanket of diverted light Rafeeda used to hide herself. “You can join as well. If you’re going to be standing there you might as well help.”

Ranvir stared open mouthed at Master Ayvir. “I didn’t mean for you bring her into it,” he whispered

Master Ayvir just waved him off like this wasn’t one of the more insane things Ranvir’d ever seen.