The next morning, Lucian decided to use one of Emma’s extra sim pills. It was probably the most effective way to distract himself.

  He looked at the pill in his hand for a long time before downing it. He closed his eyes, and when he reopened them, he was loaded into a new reality.

  He stood in South Shoal. He wasn’t sure how he found himself here rather than in the default lobby, but all the same, he walked around the city as evening fell. The air was warm and muggy, a sultry sauna that was a welcome change from the warm, dry air of the ship.

  Lucian wandered toward the Lincoln Mall. The massive megamall floated above the shallows of South Shoal, a massive complex supported by antigrav masonry. Countless shops, apartments, restaurants, clubs, and bars filled dozens of floors. In simulation, it appeared as it would have in real life, bursting with a plethora of humanity.

  Back home, Lucian did everything he could to avoid going here. But tonight, he liked the idea of losing himself in the crowd. There was comfort in being anonymous and unnoticed.

  Lucian was riding up the escalator when he caught sight of a familiar figure. Vera stood watching him in her dark gray robe, her cowl thrown overhead. Her long white hair fell unfettered, and her dark eyes stared intensely. How had she gotten in here? He didn’t know anything about closing servers, but something told him that such a thing would be no barrier to her.

  Her form stole away, losing itself among the crowd.

  He ran, catching up to her at a balcony with a commanding view of the dark Atlantic. Vera stood before the panorama of the ocean, filled with dozens of shimmering islands. The artificially constructed Miami Archipelago brimmed with high towers and multicolored lights. Skycars shot between the islands and the mainland, while twice as many boats plied the waters below.

  Once Lucian stood a few meters behind her, she turned, her face visible in the lights of the mall. Every shadow and crevice on her expression seemed to hide secrets.

  “How did you get in here?” Lucian asked. He hoped his voice didn’t sound too accusatory.

  Vera faced the ocean once again. “I’m not here. I don’t enter these simulations. I’m projecting myself Psionically. It’s time we began our next lesson.” She nodded toward the railing. “Stand here. I sense your trepidation. I assure you, you have nothing to fear from me.”

  There was nothing to do but go closer. Lucian didn’t like that she could read his thoughts so well.

  Once he was standing by her side, she continued. “Have you thought about our conversation from last time? Have you come to terms with your identity? Have you discovered any new truths?”

  Lucian shook his head at all three questions. "Nothing is clear right now.”

  He didn’t want to go into details. Not that it would matter anyway if she could read his mind. Instead, he stared out at the water as he thought about what to say.

  “You can’t find truth without conflict,” Vera said. “Conflict must test you, vet you, assail you. Whatever remains is truth.”

  “Is there a point to any of this?”

  “Young man, this is the point. A mage’s path is the path of truth. Never forget that. From truth, all magic and power flow. It’s up to you to decide what your truth is.”

  “Which is all to say,” Lucian went on, “you can’t tell me what is right and what is wrong. I have to figure it out for myself.”

  “That is so. You struggle with the choice even now. The path of the mage, a true mage, is to spring headlong into conflict. No easy thing, that. Our egos thrive on faltering towers of white lies. We must be brave enough to let the storm test those lies, to let the storm shatter us until nothing is left but who we truly are. We must be brave enough to rebuild anew, as need demands.”

  Lucian remained silent.

  “We mages have a grave misfortune,” Vera went on. “If we want to live a long life, the Manifold forces us to live our truths without compromise. We must always face ourselves, our failings, our flaws, and temper them as we would any blade. That is what gives us strength.”

  “How do I discover my truth, then?” Lucian asked. “Everything just feels confusing.”

  All he could think about as he said that was Emma. Was it his truth to pursue her or to focus on his training?

  “That’s simple,” Vera said. “You must bleed for the truth.”

  Lucian didn’t like the sound of that. “I’m curious. Why do you care about this? Why are you teaching me?”

  Vera gave a knowing smile, a smile that seemed to grasp things beyond his conception. She placed her hands on the railing, each gnarled and ancient. How old was she? He didn’t dare ask. At that moment, she seemed old enough to have lived in a time before Gates, before the colonial diasporas. Even with current longevity treatments, it was a stretch to say she was that old.

  “I admit, I’m not choosing to help you out of charity. I do nothing out of charity. I strongly believe that the Manifold has marked you, in a way I haven’t seen in many years. It’s something I felt the very day we met in the corridor. In exactly what way the Manifold has marked you . . . that has not been made plain. But in time, it will become evident. That’s why I’m testing you and asking so many questions. It’s why I wish to train you. My questions are meant to sharpen. And yes, questions are designed to cause confusion and make you doubt previously held beliefs. The mage’s path is one of growth.” She shrugged. “Of course, my intuition could be wrong. Or it could be everything. And until I discover that, I’m content with the current arrangement.”

  Stolen story; please report.

  Accepting he was a mage was hard enough, but this was almost too much. “Marked by the Manifold? What does that even mean, and how could you possibly know that?”

  “A lifetime of communing with the Manifold has taught me to trust my instincts. Instincts honed by trial and tribulation for decades. I sense the Manifold means you to play an important role, Lucian. And my senses rarely fail me.” She watched him with intelligent eyes. “What is it you want at this moment?”

  How did she expect him to answer such an impossible question? Right now, he wanted off this ship. He wanted not to be a mage. He wanted Emma. As it stood, he could have none of them.

  “I don’t know. I see several paths. None of them are likely.”

  Vera was quiet for a moment, seeming to consider. “Choice is the affliction of youth. Thousands of paths spread before you. You imagine your life following each one. Every decision seems to bear the weight of a lifetime upon it. How can anyone decide when another way might have been better?”

  She had crystallized his fears in a few sentences. “That’s my problem. I see the good and the bad of every decision. It makes it impossible to choose.”

  “Remember that truth reveals itself in adversity. Ponder the easiest road, and be suspicious of it. For nothing is ever as easy as it seems. Something easy in the beginning incurs interest later. Choices shape and change us. They define character. Discovering oneself is a lifetime of choices, and the older you become, the narrower the way gets. Until there is no choice but a single path leading you on to an inevitable goal: your truth. You are still young enough that that goal has yet to manifest itself. But you can’t discover yourself by sitting in a room and pondering questions. You must also act upon the world and let it react to your decisions, for good or for ill.”

  Lucian thought about her words for a moment. He had to admit that some of it made sense.

  Vera continued. “That is the trouble with the Volsung Academy. They teach their students not to make choices. How can their Novices ever learn if they are not allowed to make mistakes? The more courageous choice is to live your life, to make your mistakes, and to live with them as honestly as you can. You may not see it yet, Lucian, but magic is a gift. That gift must be nurtured in the soil of truth. But we must always be wary because the easiest person to deceive is ourselves.”

  There was a long silence as Lucian tried to make sense of her words. They were a jumble, not seeming to connect.

  “I’m deceiving myself, then. Why am I not surprised?”

  “We deceive ourselves every minute of every day,” Vera said. “The harm is minimal, so long as we correct it. The danger is when our lies become our truths, and we can no longer tell the difference. Such a shaky foundation is the path to fraying.”

  “So, a dishonest life is the cause of the fraying? If that’s true, then why are you the only mage in the galaxy who seems to know that? Everyone else seems to think it’s because of the toxicity of ether.”

  “Ether is the least of it. No one else will teach you what I know, except perhaps the most advanced masters of magic. You must hold a fundamental truth dear and use your magic in service to that. Those of us mages who have lived to old age have nurtured a deep-rooted truth over a lifetime. We have convinced ourselves, to our core, of who we are and what we want, and make no apologies for it. Of course, even that is not perfect, as no person can perfectly adhere to an ideal. The Manifold is the ultimate truth. But there is a paradox within the Manifold itself, for as the ultimate truth, it defines truth. And if we mages can manipulate the Manifold, it means we can manipulate the truth.” She gave an uncanny smile. “The greatest mystery is that there isn't just one truth, but many. Sometimes, truths even contradict, and those contradictions can exist at the same time until one truth is believed over the other. At the basest level of reality, where Light meets Shadow, things are and are not. Fervent belief is the fulcrum upon which mages define what is. That we call magic.”

  Lucian’s mind was bending at this point. “So, what are you saying, exactly?”

  “One of the most important lessons: magic is belief. When we stream the Manifold, we do what should be impossible. We change reality by centering our Focus, the part of us that exists in both Shadow and Light. That is how we see things without eyes. How we move things without touching them. How we trick base matter into believing it’s something else. Create heat where there was only cold. Mages are stewards of the Manifold, the only beings able to manipulate the base laws of the universe with our beliefs, using the Seven Aspects of Magic. Those Aspects are Thermalism, Atomicism, Dynamism, Radiance, Binding, Psionics, and Gravitonics. Depending on how we set our Focus, the ether we gather can be streamed through one of these Seven. These Aspects are how magic manifests in our world, how we bend reality to our will.”

  “You mentioned the Focus in our last talk. The way you say it makes it sound like a proper name.”

  “Oh, it is. The Focus is the core of a mage’s power. But it avails nothing unless the mage is centered on his truth. You can stream, yes, but with every stream, the toxin collects in the body. Your body can only heal itself so much, and most of the damage is irreparable. That is why the foundation is so important to set before any advanced magic can be learned.”

  “What are these Aspects, exactly? You told me they are types of magic, but what does that mean?”

  Lucian remembered well the dream during his metaphysical exam, with that dark, creepy voice. It had said to find the Aspects, whatever that meant. But if the Aspects were something so esoteric, as Vera seemed to be saying, then how could he find them?

  “You are right that the Aspects are types of magic. Each Aspect manifests differently within the Shadow Realm, and each mage has a specialty, something they are particularly good at.”

  Lucian wondered what his specialty was. “My hands became wrapped in this purple light when I used magic against Dirk.”

  “Psionic Magic,” Vera said. “That is my gift. It deals with kinetic force and various manipulations of the mind, and even prophecy. It is probably among the most diverse of the Aspects, if not the most diverse.”

  “Does that mean Psionics is my gift, too?”

  “Perhaps. It is too early to tell. Of course, just because you are gifted with one Aspect does not preclude you from using the others. Believing you are only gifted in one Aspect is a limiting belief.”

  “And belief makes magic.”

  Vera nodded. “It should be said, all magic comes from the same place: the Manifold. And the Manifold manifests itself in our reality through ether. Ether serves as the bridge between the Light Realm and Shadow, Manifold and reality. All magic is the same until the mage decides how to use it. They use their Focus to stream ether through one of the Seven Aspects. That is enough for you to go on, at least for now. It will be many weeks yet before you stream your first drop if you are to train with me.”

  Many weeks? But they would be at Volsung in less time than that.

  Vera seemed to guess his thoughts—or if she was using Psionic Magic, to read them. “Yes. That is why I said you have a choice ahead of you. Choosing to train with me would necessarily mean forgoing the Volsung Academy.”

  Which would mean leaving Emma behind.

  “Suffice it to say,” Vera went on, “we have only scratched the surface of what is possible. It is time for our next lesson before we delve too deeply into magical theory. There is something you should know about the nature of the universe and our role in it.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Remember how I told you the Manifold can reflect many truths?” At Lucian’s nod, she continued. “During the Mage War, the Starsea Mages controlled the power of creation itself. As powerful as their magic was, they were capable of so much more. Only their beliefs limited them.”

  Lucian wondered why she was telling him, and in light of what Emma had suggested, it made him wary.

  Vera was quiet for a long moment. “With belief, the Starsea Mages shifted the galaxy. That was how we almost fulfilled our vision.”

  Lucian watched her, unbelieving of what she had just said.