Recently a heavy rain shower had rolled through the region so Ranvir was back home fixing up some newly sprung up leaks in his roof. Well, he was taking a break from fixing leaks in his roof. Well, he’d stopped to practice Stone Spear, his evolved Ability of Stone Toss, which had been lacking again as he’d grown yet stronger. Okay so, he’d been taking a break from training his Stone Spear, by relaxing in the heat but he’d been doing actual work.

Just not for a few minutes. Working on Abilities felt weird, unnatural almost. They reminded him most of all of his Attuned Technique, helping him create pocket-spaces. However, Abilities were even more rigid in their nature than even his attuned techniques, which Ranvir hadn’t thought possible.

Where his technique for pocket-spaces assisted in creating, maintaining, and sometimes even the expansion of its allocated area. His Ability Stone Spear created and then threw a spear made of stone. He could direct where it went and even when it threw, but that was about it.

Abilities were, in turn, incredibly efficient compared to anything he could do with space, theoretically. However, in actual combat, he often found himself pouring a lake’s worth of mana into a bucket, so much so that he had considered not distributing any points into Mana: Draw reaching Tier 4.

He had maintained the portion into Perception, however, which came with its own set of troubles. At first, he’d just noticed details from further away, then off notes in food he couldn’t identify, then lately scents and smells had grown stronger, more distinct. Perception was odd. It didn’t appear that his points were distributed evenly throughout his senses. Ranvir’d mostly hoped for it to affect his vision and perhaps his hearing, but that had not been the case.

The range of his senses didn’t seem to have increased all that much, but the clarity was definitely up on all of them. There were no simple explanations for the oddity of Perception. The best he’d found was a comparison between the reclusive sekethi, the bear-like kortians, and humans. Sekethi seemed to favor taste and sight, similar to humans, where the kortians clearly favored scents and hearing. The only exceptions appeared to be a braced suffering from an ailment of some sort, in which case that could affect their increases. Obviously, a blind person didn’t experience a growth in their ability to not see.

Ranvir stood up and shook his shoulders out.

“You’re not curious at all?” Latresekt asked, trying to distract him.

Ranvir shook his head and held his hand out to the side. His Draw stat gave him access to a huge uncrossable river of mana. His Ability gave him something to channel it into, but if he wasn’t careful, it was like trying to fill a waterskin from a waterfall.

Stone Spear, Ranvir thought with slow deliberation. He could will the Ability to activate without thought, however moving with premeditated and meticulous attention to detail gave far better results than mindless repetition.

First, before even the mana flowed through Amanaris, a calmness settled over him, followed by a pinpoint focus as he sighted on his target. His attention was not on wherever he chose to throw the spear, but inside himself, upon Amanaris-space.

A state of being Ranvir had first experienced when first testing rituals with Kirs. He’d since then grown more comfortable entering the state, then when he was trapped in the confines of a bed and feeling on the lash of a withered body and the words of a once mentor, he’d forged the ability to achieve that focus on his own, without crutches.

Stone surged in a tide that could blow away roads and leave buildings in ruins, stemmed only by Ranvir’s will. The mana reached the Ability passing through it almost calmly. Slowly, spills began happening more and more often as Ranvir was strained to maintain the Ability.

He opened his eyes only when he felt the stone reaching up through the soil of the forest and hovered before his hand. The weapon had formed imperfectly. Instead of a pointed tip with a razor’s edge, it was a mostly blunted, vaguely triangular shape. Ranvir couldn’t stop a little smile from creeping onto his face as he saw the straight haft, sure the texture was still rough-cut stone, but the first time he’d used the Ability it hadn’t even been straight.

When Ranvir’d seen older sentinels using the Ability, the spear had been a polished gray rock so smooth to the touch it would be difficult to wield like a regular weapon, with an edge so sharp the weight of the weapon could shear through leather. Ranvir didn’t know if he would ever get an Ability that perfect without Mana: Control, but he was determined to try.

The farther he could get without needing any points in the stat, the stronger he would be than any potential enemies. The stronger he would be against Saleema. Rocks and pebbles hovering next alongside the spear quivered. Occasionally, tiny shards flicked off the spear’s own vibrating form, as the improper casting strained to hold the power.

Ranvir lifted his other hand and pointed towards a small hill that was developing in what was rapidly becoming a new clearing on his land. Go, the spear didn’t fly particularly straight, nor did it follow a graceful curve. It was incredibly fast.

The Ability was thrown at speeds better resembling that of arrows as it whipped forwards. The blunted spearhead howled through the air before it hammered into the ground a meter before the hillock and shattered, throwing more clumps of dirt on to his developing mound.

Sighing, Ranvir waited hopefully, but no notification appeared, telling he’d reached Ability score 102. He knew Control would immensely help the development of his Ability Scores, but he couldn’t believe it was necessary. Sure, now that his strength in Stone was on a level similar to his space mana, he realized the tether provided some level of help, but it wasn’t near as much as the guidelines for braced were.

“It would be a shame to waste useful resources, wouldn’t it? Especially someone who has not only instinctive knowledge of mana, but combined with centuries of experience working the power. That would just be horrible.”

Ranvir licked his lips. “I don’t trust you.”

Latresekt didn’t reply with words, instead the creature just straightened its back, almost standing on two feet. Ranvir frowned, his attention focusing in on it. Had it grown slightly taller? He thought the legs might be less pronounced.

“Are you turning back into your previous self?”

“It would appear so, wouldn’t it?”

“Playing up, the enigmatic and strange creature is getting old,” Ranvir grumbled as he summoned another, much sloppier spear and threw it at the hill. It veered brazenly off course and flew into the sky before simply falling apart and raining dust and pebbles onto the forest canopies thirty meters to the left of his goal.

Latresekt shifted, returning to a more casual stance. “Thank you. Maybe you should accept the deal and we could do something about it.”

Ranvir blew out a long breath and turned back to the roof and the project he’d abandoned. “Maybe ask for something else.”

This time it was Latresekt who growled in annoyance, a little of the feral creature it had been just a couple of months ago slipping out. “There is nothing else you can offer me.”

Ranvir returned to the work on the roof, reseating the tiles that had either been set poorly on the first attempt—highly, extremely unlikely—or they’d been knocked loose by the rain that had come through the other day, much more likely. It wasn’t so bad a job; it was just horrible to work under the direct Korfyi sun, even weirdly constructed as it was.

“Then how about you offer it to me for free?” Ranvir muttered as he applied more sealant.

“Not happening.”

“Then maybe tell me why you want to leave tether-space through my Disciplines.”

“Honestly, there’s nothing dangerous about it.”

Ranvir raised an eyebrow. “I know you can’t see it, but I’m giving you a skeptical look.”

“I got the gist,” Latresekt huffed, shuffling back and forth. “You can’t even think of a reason it would be bad. You’re just denying me out of principle.”

“The fact that I don’t understand why you would want it is enough reason to not give in,” Ranvir replied. And he genuinely didn’t know. He’d initially suspected that access to his Disciplines and the ability to leave through them would give Latresekt control over them, but it had already been asserting control over his powers before that point. In fact, after the spirit had migrated into tether-space, it had exerted less control than before.

Besides, like Latresekt had said, it was a creature of mana, of the First Order. If it was within the control of his Disciplines it would be vulnerable to Ranvir’s spirit of the Second Order, which could theoretically kill it. To Ranvir, it seemed a much safer bet to stay within tether-space, which contained only First Order mana.

“It’s like arguing with a mana-cursed child,” Latresekt complained, not for the first time. But both parties were too wary of the other to simply give in. After sensing more of Latresekt’s core construction, Ranvir could not trust the spirit and the spirit was clearly unwilling to set a precedent of helping.

Something shifted below Ranvir. He knew immediately that one of his experiments still going on in the basement had just reacted to something. For a second, he thought it was his beacon. Then his entire being hitched as Ranvir realized it wasn’t something coming through to his guides but the ritual next to it. The searching ritual.