Chương 109: Chapter 42: The Dance of Progress

The following weeks slipped by with the peaceful and deceptive naturalness of water flowing over smooth stones, concealing the powerful and dangerous current running beneath the surface. After the night that had occurred, a new, more solid routine established itself in Selena's life. It was a carefully choreographed dance between mundane study and arcane practice, between the camaraderie and the solitude of her destiny.

It was an autumn afternoon, leaves were falling on the streets of Kaelburg, and the four youths were sitting around a table; the atmosphere was bustling, faces were cheerful, and the low singing of a bard made everything warmer. —I ran into Yarra the other day —Selena mentioned. The three of the looked at her; Maya, in particular, turned her neck to the side, undoubtedly trying to guess what was to come. —Corin won the poetry contest, did any of you know?

Zorn looked at her with bewilderment and shook his head; however, Ren nodded along with Maya. —Zorn doesn't know him —Ren added quickly, providing context for his friend. Maya sighed, but it was long and heavy. —I know, I came in third —She shook her head slowly and added— I should have won. My poem about Micolic was perfect, about how our roots, like mycelium, anchor people's lives to the earth, how decomposition gives way to the creation of something better.

Ren covered his mouth for a second, stifling the laughter that was beginning to rise within him, but Zorn could not and let it out entirely; the healer could only blush. —Maya, you cannot expect to win with Micolic, you know as well as everyone that it is not the majority faith —Ren then placed his hand on his friend's shoulder. Maya, however, puffed out her cheeks a little, just enough for the others to notice. —It's not my fault that Aelthra is the dominant faith, my verses were just as good as Corin's.

It was Zorn, however, who settled the argument, his tone bringing calm to everything. —Maya, you rhymed Micolic with colic, and colic with choleric, you cannot expect more. Laughter erupted from deep within everyone, the music accompanied the light and jovial afternoon, and the youths drank. It was one of the many outings that had become frequent, escapes to modest taverns in Kaelburg where the aroma of greasy food and cheap beer were a balm for constantly tense nerves.

Selena, however, maintained a subtle distance. She rejected invitations to dance with a polite but firm smile, restrained herself with drink, and observed more than she participated. It was as if a part of her, the one that yearned for normalcy, peered through the window of those evenings but refused to cross the threshold, fearful of staining the fragile joy of her friends with her shadow. In the afternoons, she often immersed herself in the study of medicine.

Sometimes she met Hassan and Ralish in the library or in some quiet corner of the campus. —The humors cannot keep clouding the lights of true medicine! —the Sandstrohm said firmly. Selena, nodding alongside Ralish, could only guide subtly. —That is why we need a method, something that leads us to the correct solutions always, we must create it between the three of us. Only then did the son of the silk bourgeois add.

—We must not forget to be pragmatic, making practical applications so that there is never any doubt about what is new. The discussions were intense, full of the fire of intellectual discovery. With Hassan, in particular, she had found a kindred spirit, a mind that yearned to unravel the truth with the same rigor as her own. Together, they dissected established dogmas, searching for cracks in the theory of the humors, slowly building, word by word, the foundations of a more critical thought.

Ralish, more well-read but equally brilliant, acted as a bridge, translating their fervor into practical applications. On other days, the effort was purely physical. In the training courtyard, under the impassive gaze of a now-recovered Fjora, though her chest had been marked by a new, pale scar, Selena faced her with her short scimitar. They knocked her down, hit her, made her trip. But she was no longer the clumsy, frustrated novice.

Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more. Selena lay on the floor exhausted once more, holding her aching arms where the Norsewoman had struck her. But Fjora, precise and brief, added upon seeing her face. —Your foot is too far back. They resumed; the Khelganor warrior bypassed her with ease, and when she was on the floor again, she added. —Loose wrist on the block, do not look me in the eyes, look at the sword.

They were millimetric corrections, imparted with that sweet voice that always contrasted with the reality of the impact. Little by little, Selena's movements gained economy, anticipation. The weapon was beginning to feel less like a foreign piece of iron and more like a rebellious extension, but an extension at last of her arm. The nights, often, were dedicated to conversing with Samira in Sahric.

The melodious language of the desert now flowed more naturally from her lips, and in return, Samira, the captive scholar, began to open up. Not about her personal past, but about the world of knowledge she treasured. It was thus that Selena learned, in fragments interwoven with nostalgia, the true magnitude of the knowledge that existed beyond the borders of Erabergh. Samira spoke of the Great Library of Al'Miraj, the intellectual lighthouse of Sandstrohm, where she had worked before her captivity.

—It is not a building like this —Samira would say, her voice softening with the memory, her fingers tracing imaginary shapes in the air. Selena listened to her with the attention a child pays to their parents' tales. —In the middle of the desert, under an implacable sun that heats the sand until it burns, Al'Miraj rises like a fortress of adobe and red sandstone. But its greatness is not in plain sight. It is beneath the sand.

With eyes that shone with a distant fire, she described vast, cool tunnels excavated over generations into the hard subsoil rock, where the temperature was constant and the dry, still air preserved parchments for millennia.

There, under the protection of the earth itself, were kept treatises on astronomy that mapped constellations with names already forgotten, chronicles of kingdoms whose names the wind had carried away, and ancestral medicine studies, treatises on philosophy that challenged the dogmas of the north.

The visible tower, she explained, was not for the defense of the documents, those were safe underground, but an observatory to study the stars and a lookout post against sandstorms, as well as the infrequent incursions of V'ra-shir riders. —King Aretas Volgthar of the Great Kingdom of Erabergh built his archive in the year 2857 to consolidate his power —Samira murmured, with a hint of academic superiority in her chin. Selena sketched a smile upon seeing her, listening to her intently once more.

—In Al'Miraj, knowledge is treasured to understand the world. To survive the desert, one must understand it. To understand something, one must immerse oneself, complement it with what is known, and create a marvelous new form out of all the parts one finds; it is like a beautiful desert flower, rare and undeniably beautiful, my lady. The image of that underground library in the heart of the desert, a secret world of wisdom protected by sand and heat, resonated with her own search for hidden truths.

It was a reminder that secrets and power were not only hidden in the damp depths of Kaelburg, but also beneath the inclement sun of other lands, guarded by other traditions, waiting to be discovered by those who knew how to look beyond the obvious. Her classes with Valerian, in contrast, were a roller coaster of exasperation and tangible progress. The master remained a jester, with his exaggerated flourishes and layered jokes.

But something had changed since the night of the abduction and the restoration of her hand. An undercurrent of respect, rough and unspoken, filtered into their interactions. Valerian no longer treated her just as the bloody girl; she was "his crimson," an irritating but valuable possession. Selena advanced, despite the master's unorthodox classes. She learned to understand what she had clumsily imitated that day, to feel torn life and sew it with silent verbs.

Bounces were scarce; she learned to measure the cost before acting. Healing a superficial wound cost her minutes of her life; a fracture, hours. Flesh and blood responded to her will with a terrifying obedience; it was the value of understanding the essence of life, of studying it every day, of inhabiting it in every moment. But the mind… the mind was a different territory. Trying to heal mental pain, anguish, fear, was like trying to grasp smoke with one's hands.

The power slipped away from her or, worse, became distorted, leaving an even greater sense of emptiness. It was a frontier she still could not cross.

She learned the price of each transgression, carved into her own essence: two hours of her future for a controlled flame of green fire; an hour and a half to create a puddle of clear water; up to three hours to make that water freeze, depending on the surface; evaporating it carried a similar cost, as if stealing heat or cold from the world demanded the exact same coin. The jester repeated his maxim in every class. —Understand with the perception of the void, replicate with the power to order.

In applied arcane arts, Valerian guided her down a different path: not pure replication, but the manipulation of what already existed. She learned to shape the air, to make it heavy and difficult to breathe by extracting part of its oxygen with a whisper; to kick up dirt and dust to create a blinding screen; to heat the metal of an enemy's sword until it became untouchable, a weapon that turned against its bearer.

They were spells of control, of subtle alteration, requiring a deep understanding of the properties of the world she wished to twist. Finally, she had struck the dance of progress, gathering the threads of everything she had invested time in learning over a long duration. Eight long months of pain, fear, anger, cold, loss, affection, warmth, and companionship had all emerged as a crucible at last to show the true form of learning that her curiosity had forcefully demanded of her.

Everything had sedimented: Valerian's jests, Isolde's severity, Anselmo's patience, the laughter with Maya, the conversations in Sahric with Samira, Fjora's silent pride. And in that sediment, bittersweet and dense, understanding finally bloomed.