Edwin looked around, seeing the dead landscape slowly drift by them as they walked. Bordan and Leodin and the rest of their banner were a little further behind, having given Salissa space when she started flinging pointy tree trunks around at high speed.

“Actually, this would be much easier if we weren’t marching. Let’s just do it tonight when we’ve stopped.”

“What?” Salissa burst out. “You can’t be serious! Come on, don’t leave me hanging like that!”

Rolling his eyes, Edwin relented. “Fine, I can at least explain the method. And who knows, maybe you can manage to figure out how to do it while walking. How do I begin…”

He scratched his chin, looking away from Salissa’s triumphant grin to sort his memories.

“Actually, I should probably make sure that you’ve properly comprehended the previous lesson before I start a new one. Yes, let’s have a test!”

“You can’t be serious!” Salissa repeated with a groan. “We’re in the middle of nowhere and it’s raining, why would there be a test?”

“Well,” Edwin lectured, raising a finger to emphasize, “you can either take it as an analogy to life which will try and test you no matter whether it’s convenient for you, or you can take it as a warning not to be vexatious when I’m teaching you things out of the goodness of my heart.”

The mage gave him a flat look. “Only one of us is being vexatious, and it isn’t me.”

“Be that as it may,” Edwin shrugged, “I said there would be a test, and now I can’t take it back. Explain the difference between the two types of telekinesis.”

“Of course you can, you just made that up…” Salissa grumbled, but stopped when she saw Edwin’s raised eyebrow. “Fine. There’s basic telekinesis or brute forcing, and then there’s linking. The first lifts an object through magic alone, which is why it costs more mana, and the second disperses the object’s weight into the ground. Happy?”

“Sure…” Edwin began slowly, then turned his narrowed eyes at Salissa. “I would be happy if I was a five-year-old who’d never heard of magic before. Now, do you actually understand how it works or did I waste my breath the last time I explained it?”

His sharp tone shocked her, and she pulled back slightly, eyes wide. “I… I’m sorry, okay?” she finally mumbled. “Fine let’s do your st… test.”

Edwin nodded, looking forward to take a calming breath. Why was he getting worked up? They had just been joking. Maybe it was Walter’s disappointment in his students’ disinterest, surfacing when it felt like she didn’t appreciate his instruction. It was irrational, he decided. He’d only meant the test as an amusing way to get back at her for looking so smug.

“Look,” he said much calmer, “I know that for you as an adventurer and now with the war going on and everything it probably seems like the theory behind the magic you use is unimportant, and all that matters is the effect it generates and how you can use it in combat. It’s a perspective borne out of necessity, and it certainly makes sense to concentrate on that which is immediately useful. Nevertheless, a wise mage never forgets that it is precisely that theory that has spawned every single advancement in magic you now make use of. Only true understanding can lead to innovation, and in many cases, it is the only way to mastery as well.”

“Fine, I’m sorry,” Salissa said, and her chastised and somewhat hurt expression sent a stab into Edwin’s heart. Instead of lingering on it he nodded and continued, trying to gloss over his outburst.

“First question: Can you use basic telekinesis while moving?”

“Yes,” Salissa immediately answered, then she paused. “Well, kind of. You can’t move too far away.”

“Correct. Why?”

The young mage scrunched up her forehead as she tried to remember her lessons, though Edwin wasn’t sure if she’d ever even learned this detail.

“I don’t know,” she finally sighed. “All I remember is that you can’t move too far from the place where you started doing it.”

“Still correct,” Edwin nodded. “Knowing what you know, why do you think that is the case?”

“I don’t know,” she repeated, rubbing her hands as she looked off into the distance, thinking out loud. “It has to have something to do with range, but that doesn’t make sense because you’re taking the object with you, and it’s not linked to the ground… Because the magic acts as a counterbalance. So maybe this counterbalance is an actual… thing that is left behind if you move away?”

“Impressive!” Edwin smiled, clapping his hands. “You’re actually completely correct. Basic telekinesis creates an invisible magical anchor in the same space that the object is in once you grasp it. When moving the object, the force is funneled into the anchor just like linking funnels it into the ground below you for dispersion. That means that you can walk around while doing it, but once you move a certain distance from the anchor, the tether that links the object to it will start to become expensive.”

“Hah!” Salissa cheered, pumping her fist. “They didn’t actually teach me that! I just figured it out!”

“Yes, you did,” Edwin agreed happily. “Well done. Now the second question: Why can’t you use linking while moving?”

“Because the link goes through your body,” Salissa answered immediately. “so once you lift your legs and take a step the link is severed. Except you said that you can learn to do it so the link switches which leg it goes through while walking.”

Edwin opened his mouth to continue, then shut it and playfully narrowed his eyes at his student.

“You tried it, didn’t you?”

Salissa huffed, throwing up her arms. “Of course I did! I could never get it to work though.”

Edwin chuckled. “I’m not surprised. I think we can fix that, though. The first thing you need to realize is that it’s all in your head. Literally. Telekinesis is a conversion, so it all happens in your mind.”

“Yes, of course,” Salissa answered, rolling her eyes.

“I know you know this, but it’s important for what’s about to come,” Edwin said patiently. “Now answer me this: Why does the link go through your legs?”

“Because it has to,” Salissa answered immediately. “How else would…” She trailed off, her face scrunching up in surprise. “Huh. It doesn’t have to at all, does it?”

“No,” Edwin said, smiling. “We know that a link can go through the air and even objects because that’s already happening anyway. The link from the object to your body does it, and in basic telekinesis both links do. Let’s assume your subconscious knows what it’s doing, why would it choose to limit that part of the link to your body?”

They walked on, Edwin hooking his foot under a charred branch that was laying halfway on the road and kicking it to the side. After a short while, Salissa answered tentatively.

“Range? Moving mana inside my aura doesn’t actually cost me anything.”

Edwin turned to her with surprise, then smiled. “Bravo! You are absolutely correct. I am impressed, I hadn’t expected you to get this one. Now now, don’t celebrate too early, we’re not quite there yet. Next question: Why does the link get broken if you lift your feet?”

Salissa narrowed her eyes again, although she didn’t quite lose the satisfied smirk as she jumped at the next problem. “Let’s see. We just said that it absolutely could go through the air. Also, it’s not like I actually have contact with the ground because I’m wearing shoes, which means it’s aura contact, not physical contact. But then, why would the link break?”

Again, they walked in silence for a little while until she finally threw up her hands.

“It doesn’t make sense! There’s no reason why it should break just because I lift my feet off the ground!”

“You’re not wrong,” Edwin said, kicking another burnt piece of wood. It splintered, and glowing embers sprayed across the ground, extinguishing almost immediately as they fell on the wet earth. “The link doesn’t break, it gets broken. By you. When you lose aura contact with the anchor in the ground, your subconscious reflexively interrupts the link before it can cost you mana. Remember, none of this is actually rational.”

“Wait, but that means that all I have to do is learn how to keep the link going despite having no contact with the ground! If I could link through the air, I could keep it going even while running or jumping!”

“True,” Edwin chuckled, “but good luck with that. It might be possible, but nobody has ever managed it. The problem isn’t the magic, it’s getting your subconscious to do what you want. That’s how linking works in the first place: You’re used to standing on the ground, using it as an anchor for your own weight, if you will. Your subconscious just does what it has always done, except with magic instead of your body. You can’t lift something while you’re in the air, can you?”

“But that’s so… frustrating!” Salissa burst out. “We know it works, why can’t we just do it?”

Edwin couldn’t help but laugh at that. “You think so? I always just thought how fascinating it is to see how your subconscious does complex magic in the blink of an eye, and how you can train yourself to change how that works.”

“Yes, great.” Salissa said drily. “So that’s why it’s possible to learn to have the link go through one leg at a time?”

“Yes. It’s like learning to walk after learning to stand. If you think about it, standing is already fairly complex.” He gestured. “We have this weirdly shaped human—”

“Hey!”

“—standing much taller than she is wide, the full weight of whom is only supported by two feet with a very small surface area. There’s a reason why we don’t build tables or chairs with two feet – it’s not very stable. Yet, a person is never really in danger of just falling over, even if they twist and turn their body, or get pushed. It’s a complicated balance of minimal adjustments of your body that you don’t even realize take place, all governed by your subconscious. Now, walking is even more ridiculous: You sway your body in one direction, effectively putting yourself off balance on purpose, then lift off one of your feet. Now you only stand on one foot while in that precarious position, only to catch yourself with the second foot before you fall – and you keep perfect equilibrium throughout the whole thing!”

“Huh,” Salissa said, surprised. “I’ve never thought about it this way.”

“Of course you haven’t, why would you? Like breathing, it just works – you’re thinking about your breathing now, by the way, you’re welcome. Don’t worry, it’ll pass in a few minutes. But if walking ‘just works’ as an extension of standing, why shouldn’t linking while walking work as an extension of linking while standing?”

The young mage studied him with a frown. “Did that sentence make sense? Because I feel like it shouldn’t have made sense.”

“Well, you can either convince yourself that it shouldn’t work, and it probably won’t. Or you can believe me that it will work – which it will – and learn to do it yourself.”

She still looked apprehensive, but nodded. “Alright then, how do I do that?”

“Well, now we get back to why I said that this would be easier if we weren’t marching. The way to train this is to stand still, lift an object, and then slowly lift a foot, keep it in the air for a few seconds, and put it back down. Then do the same with the other foot. If you do it slowly, the link will naturally adjust to the change in pathway. This way you get used to the feeling of it changing from one leg to the other, and after a while you can switch legs more quickly. Then you do the same, but every time you set your foot down you move a step forward. That’s important, because the tricky thing with linking is that not just the link that has to move, the anchor area below your feet has to move as well, and at the start it won’t want to.”

“Right, I’d completely forgotten that!” Salissa burst out. “The weight of the object is anchored in the ground! How could the anchor move with you while being pressed on by the object?”

“Another great question!” Edwin smiled. After the unfortunate and gruesome death of one overzealous mage had caused the research team that was studying half-linking to be disbanded, Walter had completely disregarded the sternly worded warnings of the team leader and continued to look into alternative applications of telekinesis. His exploration of the matter had taken over half a year, and if he hadn’t been quite fed up with his colleagues at this point, his findings would likely have netted him a not insignificant amount of fame and professional recognition. As it was, nobody but him had ever learned of it. Until now.

“You’re on a roll today. The answer is that the anchor created while linking is fundamentally different to the one created while brute forcing. The latter is basically just a small ball of immobile mana, but linking is something else entirely. It has to be, because the amount of material you need to link to for different weights of objects is vastly different. Think of it like a mass of tendrils that spread out through the ground from your feet, extending and retracting depending on how much weight you’re holding. All it needs to do while moving is to extend the tendrils in the direction you’re going while retracting the ones behind you. Nothing about this is actually different from how it works anyway, which is why it’s possible.”

Salissa opened her mouth, then shut it again. “Huh.” She finally said. “How do you…”

“Ah?” Edwin stopped her, raising a warning finger.

“Fine!” she harrumphed. “This better work though.”

“Oh, it works. Beginning slowly would be better, but considering we don’t have anything else to do you might as well start practicing right now. You’re going to need a pebble.“

Salissa arched an eyebrow, extending her hand to the side. A moment later, a small rock slapped into her open palm. Edwin chuckled.