Chương 5: Chapter 3 - The Training Grounds 2/2

It was hard to call the training yards anything other than a random field on the other side of a broken door. There was evidence that there was once order there: buried walls and half a dozen shattered stumps, but, at least at the moment, what they called the training yards was simply outside. When they had come out, the first thing Alyssia pointed to was a shimmer far in the distance. A barrier, she'd explained, set up by the priests that had come with them to the Cathedral of Concentric Sunrise.

A haphazard replacement for the God's protection that would shield them for several days while they completed the summoning of new heroes. The Karash had crossed through something Alyssia called Smoke Walking. Karina glanced at the distant shimmer. Whatever protection it offered, she had seen what could get through. She turned back to the fire in her hand. There was something she could work on. That temptation lingered until time blurred.

Alyssia stood behind Karina, keeping a close eye on her as she summoned fire again and again and again. Each time she set her hands ablaze, burns began to form on her fingertips, skin browning and cracking until Karina dismissed the fire. Between attempts, she waited for the heat beneath her skin to settle and the cracks to begin closing. At first, she could only make the flames larger or put them out. Then she managed to keep a small tongue of fire burning above a single finger.

Holding it there took more care than letting it spread.

"It's usually much harder for new heroes," she said as Karina summoned fire again.

"Mana, its management and regeneration. To us, who were born here, controlling it feels like breathing, but usually..." She crossed her arms.

"Usually, the process isn't so clean." Frankly, as soon as Alyssia said it, Karina realized it shouldn't have been easy. In life, at least as much as she was allowed to think about at the moment, she had always struggled to focus. Her life had two and a half decades of split attention spans scattered across too many projects. That idea came with unexpected certainty, though she couldn't name a project or remember a birthday. Fragments.

More than she'd had in the recovery room, but still nothing she could follow back to a whole life. Mana—what they called it, like the video game term—felt more like focus than anything else. Narrowing in on a want or a need allowed Karina to summon fire on her fingertips. The spells lived in the moments of clarity that had been so brief on Earth, but now— She didn't know why, but her focus now felt like a calm stream. She could step into it whenever she wanted.

At first, summoning fire had required a deep breath and closed eyes. After enough attempts, she could look toward Alyssia and back without losing the flame. Starting it was becoming easy. Making it do anything useful was another matter. She pointed at a shattered stump and tried to send the flame toward it. It stretched beyond her fingertip, thinned, and went out. Karina tried again. The stump remained untouched.

The third time around, Karina closed her eyes and tried to summon that deep focus that had first taken to manifest fire. She spun the feeling on the tip of her index finger, coiling the heat around itself before… Before it flared out into nothing in the air before her, fading well before the stump.

"Dammit." Alyssia stepped up to Karina's side.

"Hero, you're losing control before the fire reaches it. Try something closer."

"I shot a lance of fire across the room before," Karina said.

"Yes, and neither of us knows how. Start with what you can do now. You just aren't going to get it far enough to—""Then I'll make it happen." Just when Karina trained her hand on the stump, Alyssia rested her hand on her wrist, forcing it downward and Karina back to calm.

"Hero, this is a matter of how Fates work," she said.

"It's not a question of whether you have the will, but whether your ability is prepared for what you're trying to do." Karina stared at the stump.

"Meaning?" Alyssia lifted Karina's hand back up to the simple position she'd used to summon fire.

"Each action you perform proves your ability to the Fate. In this case, your Pyrokinesis," she said.

"But the system recognizes novel mastery more than attempts." Karina didn't bother asking for more clarification, it was obvious she needed it.

"Trying and failing the same thing over and over doesn't get rewarded," she said.

"Trying something slightly harder. Slightly more impressive than anything you did before, that's what make progress."

"The words—The system said that I gained experience for killing the Karash. Is that the same thing?"

"Experience," Alyssia began as she let go of Karina's hand.

"Is what you get for fighting. It contributes to your overall level, but someone could have a high level and almost no progression in their paths." You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

"Really?"

"It would be hard, but they could." Karina nodded.

"Okay, well, if it wants it to be slightly harder," she said as she stepped up closer to the stump.

"Then—""Exactly," Alyssia said. Once again, Karina closed her eyes and focused on the heat she could summon in her hand. Flames danced in her palm, and she wove them toward her fingertips, where she spun them together with a quick, practiced flick, like spinning a pen. She snapped her fingers to fire off the shot. As she opened her eyes, the bark of the stump whistled as the fire latched onto it, sticking to the surface much faster than any natural flame. [Fate Progressed! Basic Pyrokinesis - Level 1: 2/10] [Fate Progressed! Firestealer - 1/200] 2 of 10 made pyrokinesis feel achievable, but 1 of 200, 0. 5%? Between that and the fact that Firestealer wasn't as directly descriptive as any of the others made it feel immediately impossible.

"Great, that worked, right?" Alyssia asked.

"Mhm," Karina said, but she didn't continue down the line of questioning with Alyssia, instead, she stared at the flame nibbling on the log's bark. The fire left blackened streaks in its wake, the same way it had on her skin. More importantly, she could still feel the fire as if it were her skin, or at least attached to her. There was a connection.

Before Alyssia could advise her about what might offer more experience, Karina yanked on that thread, and the fire snapped back to her hand, splashing against her palm before weaving itself around her wrists and raining sparks. The flames were gone as soon as they settled. [Fate Progressed! Basic Pyrokinesis - Level 1: 4/10] [Fate Progressed! Firestealer - 2/200]"Pyrokinesis: control fire," Alyssia said.

"I guess that would mean more than just shooting it. I've seen other elemental control methods but most of the fire I've seen was just based in spellcasting." Karina snapped her finger and the fire was back, dancing yellow in her palm and digging black ruts in her lines within.

"It's as easy as that. Do the action and you—""Easy as that?" Alyssia asked.

"Must be when you're a hero and you're practicing your basic abilities as an adult instead of as—" Alyssia cleared her throat.

"Your progress is impressive, Hero. It's clearly natural for you."

"I preferred the first answer," Karina said as she allowed the fire to run rampant over her hand. Even though it was under her control, Karina still knew this fire didn't make sense. The flames still carried their terrifying heat as they ran across her skin. From what she felt, her skin should have been blistering, and she should have been screaming in pain, but—somehow the fire—her fire—refused to hurt her the way that all fires should.

She might have considered it a kind fire if she hadn't seen what it had done to the Karash. Now that she understood the method, Karina took a step further away from the log and focused the scattered flames into her fingertips. They leapt across her skin when she called them, moving like they were joyful to follow her. She could master this. She would master this and she lost herself in that process.

So much so, that she only registered how much time had passed once the sun was beginning to set and the growing shadows pressed her and Alyssia's silhouettes together in the water of the small stream that ran along the side of the training yard. For all that focus, it had been shockingly easy to be distant. Karina shook the fire off of her hands and looked up to Alyssia. She wasn't sure when she had stopped staring intently, but now she was simply watching.

She was there with the same distant gaze a security guard used when nothing ever happened, stock still and waiting for the time to pass. [Basic Pyrokinesis - Level 1: 9/10] [Firestealer - 5/200] Nine. Karina sent another flame to the stump and called it back. Nothing changed. She tried from a step farther away. The flame broke apart before reaching the wood.

"You've stopped looking at the fire," Alyssia said.

"I'm one away."

"And watching the number won't move it." Karina dismissed the next flame before it had properly formed. She wanted to argue, but she'd been watching the space where the notification should appear.

"We can be done if it's been too long," Karina said. That was enough to snap Alyssia back into reality. She blinked once before speaking.

"Hardly, Hero, take as much time as you need."

"Nobody else seems to be out here."

"You are the only hero here at the moment, and the local guards don't require as much training," she said.

"It's obviously going to take longer for you to master your powers but—""But?"

"As I mentioned, most take much longer to get to this stage." She reached out for Karina's hand and took it into hers. A cool glow washed over Karina's fingertips.

"Even if we were out here all night, you would be ahead of most new arrivals and I would have a reason to be proud."

"You would have?"

"I'm your aide while you settle in," she said as she let Karina's fingers rest in her palm.

"Dashun assigned me to you. Usually I'm considered too important to the summonings themselves to guide a new Hero."

"Sorry, I suppose."

"It's a job I missed," she clarified.

"Though I never performed the duty out here. There is a different cadence to our work—""On the other side of the barrier?" Karina suggested, avoiding the need to hear it again.

"Exactly," she said, releasing Karina's hand.

"Here, we summon several heroes and give them a much shorter introduction, usually from someone already accustomed to this world—""Cascad?"

"Yes," Alyssia said.

"But everything needs to happen so quickly. The longer we stay and the more heroes we summon, the harder the demons press the keep. Eventually—""Until that barrier over there breaks?" Alyssia raised her eyebrows at the bleak blasphemy.

"Until we are forced to retreat. Then they will eventually leave this place and—""Why wouldn't they destroy the summoning circle?" Karina asked. For what felt like the thousandth time, Alyssia's tone changed, the usual bubbles popping to give way to practiced explanations.

"The demons are unable to stay within the Cathedral for long, and destroying the summoning circle would require rituals they do not have." At least that explanation made sense. The shadows that came with the crash had burned in the sunlight of the cathedral. In a place with demons and actual gods, a church would have had a lot of power.

"Either way, it is not something you need to worry about," Alyssia added.

"Cascad will be here soon for your introduction to the world, and as of tomorrow morning we will have called more heroes. You won't be alone in the keep any longer."

"Alone?" Karina asked while pointedly looking at her.

"A lone hero," Alyssia adjusted.

"While we had originally planned to summon after you, the incident with the Karash delayed that. So you will need to rest for the evening."

"Back in the room?" Karina suggested, if only because she knew it was coming and it felt better coming from her mouth than Alyssia's.

"Yes, back in the room. You should recover your strength before meeting with all of the other guards. Summoning can be a harrowing process." Karina followed her toward the door. Nine out of ten. She could ask Cascad what she was missing whenever he arrived. Firestealer was harder. She still hadn't decided how to ask about that without repeating the words about stealing from the heavens. Alyssia had mentioned archives. There might be something she could read without explaining why she wanted it.

Nothing was certain here yet, but mysteries felt better with fire in her palms.