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“You’re on your own now, boy.”

Power scoured Ranvir’s body like fire traveling across an oiled string. Ranvir cried out writhing as it seared through his body. Spikes of pain lanced his side as he jostled his ribs and his stomach burned from the kick, all the while power tore into him.

It worked from the center of his chest, through the gateway and down his body. It added oil the fiery pain of his side and tore new pains into his body as it worked down into his legs and through his arms.

“What is happening to you?” The smoke student said. Despite the pain and loss of control over his body Ranvir heard him clearly.

Ranvir’s back arched as the power traveled back up again. Through calves and thighs into his groin and stomach, up wrists and arms into his shoulders. Ranvir’s lungs had run themselves ragged and his throat was too sore to continue the choked screams, yet his body tried anyway as the power burned across his chest from two directions.

Ranvir saw stars as the power returned to center of his chest. After burning itself into his bones and organs it sought something new, something different. A purpose. A guide. A Concept for it to follow and understand.

“Listen to me, boy.” Latresekt growled, it’s yellow, orange, and red form almost impossible to make out in the agonized red, anxious oranges, and angry yellows that permeated Ranvir’s mind. “There’s no helping you for comes next. But you must choose carefully,” the power surged in Ranvir’s chest seemingly sure of their next goal, “But with certainty. You cannot falter at this step or we’re both dead.”

Ranvir forced his eyes to blink as he tried to make his body, rigid with pain, reply. The energy, renewed, and empowered with a goal, blew through his throat up past his mouth and into his brain. The last thing Ranvir saw was a violet light cast upon the smoke that hid his assailant.

Ranvir was elsewhere.

There was one important fact he recognized quickly. There was no pain here. Ranvir sighed with relief. He was surrounded by lights swirling in random pathways across the plains of black. Except, as Ranvir examined that single constant more closely, he recognized it wasn’t wholly black. It was a purple so dark he hadn’t recognized it to begin with.

Kneeling down as a phantom wind started picking up Ranvir grazed the surface of purple-black stone and felt the certain calmness and immovability of space. There was nothing in the world that could truly move or change space. It was perhaps its most core aspect.

World lurched as the thought struck Ranvir, connections he hadn’t realized floated about hooked themselves into… not the floor but the idea… his thoughts of the floor. Ranvir shook his head and dispersed the hooks with a slight mental effort. As he did the gusts picked up again, this time ripping at Ranvir’s uniform causing the hem to flap in the breeze.

Ranvir let out a long breath squinting into the wind, as he examined the area once more. A patch of pure purple-space had solidified in the sky above him. While the rest of the uncertain colors and changing pathways were whipped by the draft, that single patch held strong. Immovable.

He shook his head. A ripple of needles ran up his back, the pain making his chest spasm. This wasn’t how Dovar had described gaining Flesh. He’d described it closer to lying naked on a gravel, uncomfortable but not painful.

A shiver ran through him at the thought. However, no ugly agonized reds reared their heads at the pain. No squirming frightened oranges or yellows. Simply nothing.

Ranvir looked around uncomfortably. This place wasn’t far from what Dovar had described to him, though the enormous first-year remembered little else than the obsidian beneath his feet. Had he been mistaken? Ranvir could understand looking at the black floor and think it was obsidian. It certainly wasn’t a tethered thing, Dovar hadn’t described smoke. Not that he’d remembered much from the experience.

Ranvir staggered back as a stray gust caught hold of him, nearly ripping him off his feet. It tore half the buttons on his coat before subsiding, causing it to flap wildly in the gale.

More followed nearly knocked him onto his stomach as the storm intensified. Ranvir cried out as he braced himself against the ground. He did not have forever in here. Already, he could feel the hooks almost ripping in the cyclone that was gathering around him. Ranvir feared that if he let the wind take hold, he would lose whatever chance to control his path within here and Latresekt’s fear would come true.

Gritting his teeth, Ranvir forced himself to think on his power. He hadn’t been prepared to choose his Concept, but it wasn’t like he hadn’t thought about it. He’d wanted something that could put him on the front lines with Esmund, Sansir, and Grevor. He wouldn’t stay back with the other space tethered forced to turn tents into supply deposits.

He would be out there with his friends helping. He needed something strong for that. He looked up at the Immovable patch of space. That could be helpful. A force on the battlefield that no one could move or change, but it would limit him. His powers would be focused on becoming or making something immovable.

Ranvir shook his head, he hadn’t explored other ideas thoroughly enough. Another hurricane gust slammed into him, ripping his coat entirely open and tearing him off his feet. Ranvir flew half a dozen feet before he crashed to the ground like a leaf briefly caught in the wind.

He slammed a fist into the ground, painless. He looked up to see the patch of space was almost gone from his sight, despite not having gone so far. He slammed a fist into the ground again forcing it to hurt. It didn’t.

It was always like this. Caught in the gusts, torn along his path by the storm.

First he gets a power so rare people don’t know how to teach him. So he gets thrown into the class with the oldest and least engaged teacher they have. Then Grimar picks him out as an enemy, despite being twenty years older and three stages of advancement beyond.

So Ranvir gets blinded and has to attempt his first trimester trial without his sight. Another gust ripped Ranvir further from the Immovable patch, his hands grinding against the flat stone-like space as he tried to hold on.

Then the riots in the second-year, one of rioters drawing a knife on Ranvir. There was never a truly quiet moment, only small breaks between the rushes. There was no cover, Ranvir just had to endure the storm. If he made it through one gust, another bigger and stronger picked him up.

The assailant from so long ago, who finally made their triumphant return to beat the shit out of him. Then his savior. The one who stopped the first attack. Ranvir shivered as a gale pummeled him into the ground, his chin bouncing off it as his arms and legs failed to resist the hurricane force.

Saleema al-Bacchus. The insane triplet master of ancient power. Ranvir’d spent so much of his third trimester paranoid that she would come after him. He’d felt her touch on him many times throughout the last six months. But it hadn’t broken him either, so the burden had increased.

Frija, his daughter. However lovely, she was also another responsibility, one that he wasn’t ready for. He didn’t even know how he was going to handle his own life, let alone how to give her a fulfilling one.

Ranvir closed his eyes, grit his teeth and pushed against the squall keeping him down. He would just have to keep trying. Keep pushing. But the winds were growing stronger and Ranvir didn’t have the strength to push out from underneath them. He only barely managed to roll onto his back, before it slammed him back down again.

The colors were fading from the world around him, the pathways they traveled was more turbulent than ever. The hooks from his mind and power strained under the gale. Ranvir winced as he looked around. This was it then.

He’d been blown around by the storm but it had finally managed to pin him down? Now, it was just going to crush him. Ranvir shook his head, the movement jerking under the gale assaulting him, whipping from side to side. He wasn’t in pain and he wasn’t choking from the pressure. This wasn’t a physical place, it was much more mental and spiritual.

He didn’t need freedom of movement to pick a Concept. Latresekt had told him. He needed certainty and strength of will. And just like the space-stone underneath Ranvir, the winds could not crush him. It could force itself on him but it couldn’t destroy him. He would endure like he’d done all the other trials. Then he would push through. Space wasn’t just immovable, it was everlasting.

It didn’t stop. Ranvir wouldn’t stop. You couldn’t push it away or remove it. And you couldn’t push Ranvir down either.

Space Persisted.

And so did Ranvir.

Another patch of purple emerged above Ranvir. This one wasn’t a hard barrier untouched by the Storm. It’s outline wavered and occasionally faltered, but it never disappeared. No matter the pressure put on it. It continued. Ranvir focused on it, set his hooks on it. Even as they strained against the Storm as it tried to pull them loose, Ranvir kept resetting them.

Until the cords connecting him and the Persistent Space closed and they were brought together. They were battered and slowed but they never stopped. Ever onwards.