Chương 24: Chapter 23: The Missing Path

Elizabeth left the chandlery the previous night with the first workbench finally in place and Kellan's Lightning Needle reduced, at least on paper, to a question she could begin answering. The containment she had reproduced was only one part of it. Whatever kept the charge from turning back through the caster was still missing. Dain gave that problem a deadline the next morning. He waited until the class had finished three circuits of the eastern practice hall.

By then Elizabeth's breathing had settled enough for her to stand upright without pretending it was comfortable. Samuel Veyne and most of the combat-class students recovered faster, which she found irritating in a distant, unhelpful way.

"Written examinations begin six weeks from today," Dain said.

"They finish Thursday afternoon. Friday morning, you enter the western reserve." The last scraps of conversation disappeared.

"You'll spend two days in assigned teams. Navigation, camp security, material collection, threat assessment and sensible use of whatever your class gives you. Emergency beacons are for emergencies. Instructors will patrol the boundary, but you shouldn't expect one to appear because you made a stupid decision." A boy near the front raised his hand.

"What's in there?"

"Monsters." A few students smiled. Dain didn't.

"The academy controls the population. It does not teach the monsters manners." Someone else asked whether students had died in the reserve.

"Not in twelve years." Dain moved on before anyone could turn the number into comfort.

"I'm interested in whether your team functions with you in it. If three people spend the weekend compensating for you, I'll notice." Elizabeth thought of Structured Light. It could illuminate a camp, signal over distance and interfere with night vision. Those were useful things. None would stop a heavy monster once it was close enough to touch her. Dain paired her with Samuel for the next drill. Elizabeth watched his feet, caught the forward step and moved. His shoulder had already committed to something else.

Samuel took her balance and put her down hard enough to make her teeth click.

"You saw the feint," Dain said.

"Yes."

"You still followed it." Samuel offered a hand. Once she was standing, he tapped his own shoulder.

"Watch higher. My feet are late." The second attempt went better. She forced him to adjust once before he caught her again. By the end of the lesson, Elizabeth could list several habits in his stance and had used almost none of them quickly enough to matter. Six weeks would not turn her into a competent fighter. It could, however, be enough to give her one reliable attack. Lightning Needle stopped being a side project. Ruby noticed the change in Elizabeth's schedule two days later.

She found her in the library with a monster catalogue open beside three pages of notes and set a plate down on top of one of them. Elizabeth looked at the bread and cheese.

"You're covering my notes."

"You missed lunch."

"I was going to eat."

"When?" Elizabeth glanced towards the clock. Ruby sat opposite her.

"Exactly." She pulled the catalogue closer and read the heading.

"Western reserve?"

"Yes."

"That explains the monster book. It doesn't explain why you've been disappearing after lessons." Elizabeth took the bread.

"I'm working on another reconstruction." Ruby's expression changed.

"Combat?"

"Yes."

"How far?"

"Far enough to know I'm missing something important." Ruby looked down at Elizabeth's hands, then back at her face.

"Can I help?"

"Not with this stage."

"Because?"

"The failure is unpredictable." Ruby leaned back slowly. She didn't lecture her. That was more effective than a lecture would have been.

"If you get to the point where another pair of eyes would help, tell me."

"I will."

"Before you injure yourself." Elizabeth hesitated. Ruby narrowed her eyes.

"Before."

"All right." Ruby kept the catalogue and started working through the reserve list herself.

"Which of these relies heavily on sight?" They spent the next twenty minutes crossing out creatures for which bright light would do very little and marking the few that might react badly to it. Ruby had her own work waiting elsewhere and mentioned it twice without actually leaving. Elizabeth didn't tell her where the reconstruction was happening, or who was helping her perform it. Three nights later, she returned to the chandlery cellar.

The old scorch mark from her first containment attempt was still visible on the workbench. Kellan stood beside the chalk line while Elizabeth set out the indicators and checked the iron target. He picked up one of her diagrams.

"You're still starting from the hand."

"That's where the structure appears."

"To you." Elizabeth stopped adjusting the indicator. Kellan pressed two fingers against his ribs, below the arm, and traced them down towards his hip.

"I feel it here first. Then it goes up and down."

"The legs before the charge forms?"

"Usually."

"Show me." He gave her a tired look.

"Holding it costs more than firing it."

"I only need a few seconds." Kellan took his place and raised his hand. Elizabeth ignored the hand. Mana gathered around the channels near his ribs, subtle enough that she might have missed it if she hadn't known where to look. It thickened, divided, then travelled in two directions. One branch climbed through his shoulder and arm. The other dropped through his hips and legs, reaching the floor before the visible charge had fully formed. She moved a little closer.

"Does the lower route change with the ground?" Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

"Yes."

"How?"

"Dry timber is bad. Wet stone's easier. Metal nearby can pull the shot."

"Rain?"

"Depends what I'm standing on, what I'm wearing, what's around me. Army instructors mostly taught us which combinations got people hurt." Elizabeth replaced the iron target with damp leather. The route through his legs strengthened.

"Release." The Needle cracked across the cellar. The field indicator moved before the discharge struck. She reset it, then placed a metal clamp to the left of the target. Kellan shifted his feet before she asked him to cast again.

"That'll pull."

"How much?"

"Enough."

"Leave it." The second discharge bent visibly towards the clamp before correcting into the target. Elizabeth stared at the indicator rather than writing immediately. The skill was doing more before release than her model allowed for. Kellan's body was preparing a second route through the legs while something in the space ahead of him was already responding to conductors near the target. She ran two more trials. On the last one, Kellan moved a conductor himself and told her where to place the indicator.

The result was clearer. Elizabeth crossed out half a page of notes. Kellan drank from the water flask.

"Bad news?"

"No. I know more precisely where I was wrong."

"Of course you're happy about that." She was already looking at the cleared firing lane. Containment worked. A weak electrical conversion worked. She could extend a narrow mana structure towards a target. The missing interaction between those pieces no longer felt impossibly large. Kellan saw where her attention had gone and set the flask down.

"You're testing it now."

"Yes." He swore quietly and moved the copper frame away from the bench before she could ask.

"Farther," he said when she stopped him.

"It's outside the intended path."

"That didn't help the table last time." Elizabeth let him move it. When the area was clear, Kellan stayed beside her.

"If the path starts drifting, kill it. Don't try to pull it back." Elizabeth formed the travelling lattice beside her index finger. A small blue-violet charge gathered inside. She extended a thin path towards the iron plate. Half a metre came easily. Near a metre, the resistance changed. The structure began to tremble, as though the room were tugging at it from several directions at once. Elizabeth reinforced it. The charge leaned sideways.

"Stop," Kellan said. She could see the correction. She made it before she had time to reconsider. The forward structure tore apart. White-violet light snapped into the metal edge of the bench. A second jolt went backwards through Elizabeth's hand before the lattice fully collapsed. Her fingers clenched so hard her nails bit into her palm. Pain ran to her elbow in one violent line and her shoulder jerked with it. The room shifted under her feet. Kellan caught her before she hit the bench.

"Don't touch anything."

"I'm not trying to." Elizabeth looked down at her fist and told it to open. Nothing happened. For a few seconds, fear arrived before analysis. Her hand felt distant, present only as pressure and a spreading numbness under the skin.

"Kellan."

"I've got you. Sit." He pulled the stool over with his foot and kept hold of her wrist until she was down. Then he pressed a knuckle against the inside of her forearm and moved gradually towards the hand, asking what she could feel.

"Yes."

"Here?"

"Less."

"Fingers?"

"Barely." He checked her pulse, watched her breathing, then went to the pump for a cloth. By the time he came back, her thumb had begun to move. The other fingers followed in uneven little jerks. Only then did some of the tension leave his face.

"You're done for tonight."

"Yes." Kellan paused while wrapping the cloth around her hand.

"That easy?"

"My hand isn't reliable. Another attempt would tell me nothing useful." He tied the cloth and sat back. Elizabeth looked past him at the new scorch mark beside the old one. Process Mapping had retained the failure. The containment had survived. So had the charge. The route through the air had failed, and once it did, the electricity took whatever alternative the room offered. Metal. The bench. Her own body. Her gaze dropped to Kellan's boots on the stone floor.

The route through his legs was not an extra precaution attached to Lightning Needle. It belonged to the same mechanism that guided the discharge away from him. Kellan followed her eyes.

"What?"

"I've been trying to push lightning towards the target."

"And now?" Elizabeth flexed her fingers again. The numbness was fading into pins and needles.

"I think the skill changes which path the charge prefers." Kellan looked towards the iron plate.

"And if it doesn't?" Elizabeth glanced at the black mark on the bench.

"It finds one on its own." Kellan looked back at her and caught the shift in her expression before she could hide it.

"Whatever you've just thought of can wait until tomorrow." Elizabeth considered arguing, then looked at the cloth around her hand.

"All right."