“No,” Khairu admonished. “Wrong again.”

  Lucian heaved a sigh of frustration. “I did exactly what you told me.”

  Khairu’s brown eyes narrowed. Three months after his acceptance into the Volsung Academy, the insufferable Talent still hated him. “Put the shockspear away, Lucian.”

  He hesitated only a moment before retracting the practice weapon and latching it to his belt. Emma watched from the periphery of the training yard, though she was trying not to make eye contact. Maybe she was afraid of catching secondhand embarrassment.

  “Let’s take a step back,” Khairu said. “What do you think went wrong?”

  That was easy. She was not letting him do things his way, as usual. He couldn’t say that, though. Not unless he wanted extra chores.

  When Lucian answered, his voice was properly meek. “I don’t know, Talent Khairu.”

  Khairu’s expression was stony, and she was all but throwing up her hands in exasperation. She took a moment to collect her thoughts.

  “Always remember your Focus,” she said. “Your Focus is the key to streaming all magic, always, all the time. Nothing more. Nothing less.” To emphasize her point, she extended her shockspear. Not a moment later, electricity sizzled along its length. Lucian stared, trying to fathom the inexplicable detail he was missing. It was as if she believed Lucian could learn to stream simply by watching her do it.

  When the electricity dissipated, Khairu’s eyes opened and her features relaxed. “Now, you try.”

  “You’re only showing me,” Lucian said. “How do you expect me to learn just from watching?”

  He had to keep his frustrations under control. Without calm, a mage was too distracted to hold his or her Focus. And without a firm grip on the Focus, streaming was impossible. At least, according to the teachings of the Transcends. Never mind the fact that the only time Lucian had streamed was during his fight with Dirk and on Volsung Orbital. During those two confrontations, nothing like a Focus had come into play.

  How long ago that seemed. In the three months since he thought he would have learned something more by now. Three months in the Volsung Academy, and all he had were some useless meditations to show for it.

  “You can learn,” Khairu said. “You’re just as stubborn as a mule. Do you not remember anything I taught you about your Focus?”

  Lucian did remember, but those instructions hadn’t done him any good. Diligently, he had practiced maintaining his Focus every day. Every hour, even. It was usually a mental image, such as a stone or tree, something simple a mage could recall in immaculate detail. That Focus became the gateway through which magic flowed, while magic itself stemmed from the incorporeal substance called “ether,” which collected in the Focus and could be streamed outward. Ether was what powered magic and was drawn naturally to mages through the “Ethereal Background,” which was said to permeate the entire universe.

  Such was in line with everything he’d learned from Emma and Vera aboard the Burung. Since arriving at the Academy, Lucian had learned something more. While ether naturally built up over time, a mage could also extract more as needed in a process called “overdrawing.” Overdrawing happened when a mage ran out of ether but needed to keep their streams going. Overdrawing granted the mage more ether, but it was also dangerous, advancing the process of fraying. As such, it was strictly forbidden at the Volsung Academy.

  Only the ether that had accumulated naturally in a mage’s Focus could be used for streaming. It was deemed safe enough, though of course, many mages said even that wasn’t safe. Here at the Academy, they taught the Path of Balance. A mage could only stream the ether that had naturally accrued, nothing more, while not letting it build up too much, which was also dangerous and could lead to Manifoldic Wreakings.

  These were all new concepts for Lucian, and even after three months, he didn’t understand. The Focus he had chosen was a stone he’d found on his first day that he carried around in his pocket. It was drab, gray, and could easily fit in the palm of his hand. He jokingly called it his "slate." During his copious hours of meditation, he would stare at it, memorizing every detail. After three months at the Volsung Academy, he could close his eyes and imagine the stone for hours. He’d learned every nook, cranny, and pockmark of his stone—all for the sake of learning to stream.

  Of all the things he had expected to learn at the Volsung Academy, memorizing a stone was at the bottom of the list.

  It was only once he’d gotten that down that the Talents allowed him to attempt streaming. If he didn’t learn to stream, and soon, he might suffer the same fate as Emma—Manifoldic poisoning. The buildup of ether would lead to sickness, seizures, and eventually death.

  Khairu was still staring at him. How long ago had she asked him about his Focus?

  “That’s what I don’t understand,” Lucian said. “The one time I did stream, I didn’t even use a Focus. I’ve tried your way, Khairu, but—”

  “—My way?” she challenged. “This is the Transcends’ way! The Transcends, who have agreed to train you against all reason and logic. There’s no place at this academy for those who spurn their teachings. You will learn nothing, Novice Lucian, until you place your faith in those wiser than yourself. Control your emotions. Streaming under duress is possible, yes. But it is dangerous. You are likely to overdraw, and overdrawing leads to fraying.”

  Khairu seemed on the verge of losing the self-control she preached. How could he take her seriously when she was about to fly off the handle herself?

  Emma stepped forward, her features placating. “We should take a break. We’ve gone over time anyway.”

  Khairu stared hard at Lucian a moment longer, and he responded in kind. The Talent was the first to relent, collapsing her spear and pocketing it. “Fine by me. We’ll try again tomorrow. And Novice Lucian . . . try to figure out what went wrong. Your progress is slow. It behooves you to listen, even if listening goes against your nature.”

  She just had to get her shot in. It took great effort to bite back the sharp-worded response that wanted to fly off his tongue. This week with Talent Khairu couldn’t be over fast enough.

  He collapsed his spear and stared darkly as Khairu retreated toward the Academy.

  Emma approached him, and he tried not to focus on the way the wind played with her hair or her face filled with concern and pity. Emma stood a safe distance away, so no impropriety could be noted. She was the only good thing about this place. Volsung’s yellow sun cast her eyes an almost amber hue. He noticed there were fewer freckles on her cheeks now. Her face had gone paler under this northern, alien sun. He tore his gaze away before he could remember old feelings they had agreed to bury.

  “How are you feeling?” she asked.

  He sighed. “I don’t know what I’m doing wrong. She keeps telling me to use my Focus as if that is supposed to infuse my spear with electricity. It doesn’t work like that. I don’t work like that.”

  Emma seemed to consider before responding. “Well, I haven’t been successful either. Progress doesn’t come overnight, Lucian. Your Focus is a dormant muscle. You need to train it before you can use it.”

  Was that not what he’d been doing for the past three months? Several new Novices had arrived since he and Emma had joined the Academy. Novices who were already streaming, albeit in paltry amounts. Lucian would have taken anything at this point that signaled forward progress.

  “It’s been three months,” he said. “If anything, coming here has slowed my progress. I streamed on board the liner. Here, I’ve streamed nothing at all.”

  “The point isn’t just streaming, Lucian,” Emma said. “It’s to build a lasting base for long-term success. If you don’t learn to sense your Focus, and through it your ether, you will overdraw. And if you do that . . .”

  She didn’t need to finish. The core of the Academy’s lessons was to never stream beyond your ether, to draw from the Manifold itself. In that way lay the fraying, along with the pain it unleashed and the slip from sanity that followed.

  The path of the mage was one of balance. Don’t stream too much or too little, and you would be okay. Probably.

  Talent Khairu had taught him to be aware of signs of overdrawing. Euphoria. The absence of pain. The unwillingness to let go of the stream, even as it burned you alive.

  This was why the Talents instructed that magic must be streamed in an emotionless state. It couldn’t feel good because if it did, it would lead to drawing more and more until one day, fraying resulted.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Plenty of mages had chosen that path: Xara Mallis, for one, and those who had followed her. The result had been billions of dead, worlds ruined, and fleets obliterated during the Mage War.

  Lucian hadn’t just learned about Focuses and magic during his time here, but also history, much of which had been omitted from school lessons on Earth. He learned about things Vera had only mentioned in passing, if at all. He sometimes wished she were here so that he could ask her opinion on things.

  Of course, that was impossible. He had chosen to come here. Vera, Transcend White’s twin sister, who was the most powerful mage in the Worlds . . .

  He still couldn’t believe she had offered to train him.

  The Transcends had sworn him and Emma to secrecy concerning her. There was so much more to it, but Lucian didn’t dare to ask. Besides not being his place, a Transcend hadn’t so much as spoken with him since his arrival, outside of the weekly lessons one of them gave to Novices. It was the Talents who did most of the teaching, while the Transcends’ instruction was reserved for Talents.

  He often wondered if he had known then what he knew now whether it would have changed his decision. Even he couldn’t answer that.

  How long had he and Emma been standing shoulder to shoulder along the cliff? She must have been lost in her own thoughts, too.

  “We should go,” Lucian said. “I’d like to get some lunch before the next lesson.”

  It was a moment before Emma responded. “You go on. I think I’ll keep practicing.”

  “You’re pushing yourself too hard, Emma.”

  “I need this, Lucian. If I can’t figure this out . . .”

  She didn’t need to finish. She already suffered from wreaking, the first sign that ether had built up to dangerous levels. She, more than anyone, needed to learn to stream.

  “I’m sorry,” Lucian said. “I’m being an ass.”

  “Well, they say self-awareness is half the battle.”

  “All right. You’re the ass now.”

  She giggled. “I can live with that. I mean, I feel the same way you do. I just manage to whine a lot less.”

  “Easy for you to say. All the Talents love you.”

  “Maybe it’s because I listen. You should try it sometime.”

  “Are you allergic to being on my side every once in a while?”

  “Being on your side doesn’t automatically mean agreeing with you about everything. Sometimes, a good friend is the one willing to slap you in the face when you’re not acting very clever.”

  “It’s that bad, then?”

  Emma nodded sagely. “Yep. That last bout was pretty painful to watch.”

  Lucian sighed. It wasn’t just the training. It was this cold, blasted world. It was this academy. It was the Talents ordering them about on endless, pointless chores. And to top it all off, they often lacked food, proper sleep, and ample solitude to practice on their own. It was as if the instruction was designed to make them fail. There was little room for friendship here. Even this small conversation between him and Emma was the first they’d had in weeks.

  “If you need some time to train on your own, I understand,” he said. “I’ll leave you to it.”

  He turned to go, but hadn’t made it a couple of steps before she called after him.

  “Lucian? Get back here!”

  He turned to face her. Her expression was one of amusement but also firmness.

  “I mean this in the nicest possible way. Please, please, be more open to things. I know you don’t like Khairu, but you’re not going to get far unless you can keep your mouth shut. Lay down your pride and learn. If anything is holding you back, it’s that.”

  She was staring at him hard, her joking manner gone and replaced by a no-nonsense expression.

  “So, you’re buying into all this stuff?”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Yes. If I try to do this my way, my life is at stake. As Novices, we’re expected to submit to the will of the Transcends. And that means following the teachings of the Talents. That means doing chores. That means following the rules.” She watched him closely. “I know you like to do things your way, but you can’t do that here. The stakes are too high. You get what I’m saying?”

  Emma and her rules. Why did she always have to lap up everything the Talents said without question? They were fallible, too. Rules didn’t give salvation. One’s own will and agency did.

  Or was that Vera speaking? Why were her ideas so firmly rooted in his mind months later?

  “Whatever Khairu’s trying to teach, it isn’t working,” Lucian said. “I streamed without even trying back on the ship and Volsung-O. But down here on the surface, everything is different.”

  “It’s not,” Emma said. “Streaming without a Focus is the exact opposite of what they’re trying to teach us. That’s how you fray. What you did on the Burung was done in ignorance, and it could have killed someone. It might have even killed you. You’re using that incident as the standard to measure everything against. But that was a mistake that should have never happened in the first place. You need to learn to stream properly. And you can never do that if you’re stubborn.”

  Lucian knew she was right. That didn’t mean he had to admit it, though. “All this talk about magic and ether confuses me, too. I’m not even sure of the difference.”

  “You really don’t listen in lessons, do you? It’s like magma and lava. Lava doesn’t become lava until it surfaces. And ether doesn’t become magic until it’s streamed and manifested into one of the Seven Aspects.”

  “Who told you that? Because now it makes perfect sense.”

  “Transcend Yellow said it in the lesson last week,” she said.

  Lucian had probably been half asleep.

  “All this to say,” she said, “you’re not the only one who is struggling. And there are people with bigger problems than you.”

  Lucian heaved a sigh. “I know.”

  “Of course I’m right. Do you know what I think your problem is? You keep thinking about what would have happened if you’d gone with Vera.”

  Lucian was struck silent. How had she known that?

  “You need to let go of the past, Lucian. It’s holding you back. The what-ifs. The conflicting information. It’s all holding you back. You’ve got to get Vera out of your head. Her way would have ended up killing you, anyway.” She took his hand, a move that surprised him since they were not far from the Academy entrance. Her expression softened. “You’re here now. Nothing is going to change that. If you don’t give up, you can make steady progress toward the goal day by day. You have to trust the process, even if it looks like you’re going sideways.”

  Why did she always have to make so much sense? “I’ve always been skeptical of things, I guess. It seems that skepticism is holding me back right now.”

  “You can’t let anything stand in the way of your training. You must leave everything at the door, including preconceived notions. You chose the Academy, right? So why are you wondering how things might have been?”

  Lucian made himself nod, even if the movement didn’t seem natural. “I don’t know. It feels like I am going sideways. It’s cold here. I hate the long nights. And this tiny island makes me feel like a rat in a cage . . .”

  Emma rolled her eyes. “I get it. You’re just venting, right?”

  “I guess.”

  “Okay, I’ll make you a deal.” She held up her index finger. “You get one vent session per week, no more than ten minutes. And then we get back to learning to stream without killing ourselves. Deal?”

  He couldn’t help but laugh. “Sounds fair.”

  They lapsed into silence. The cool breeze whipped their brown novice robes, along with the heavier brown cloaks worn over those. Both drew up their hoods to keep warm. Everything they had brought, the Transcends had confiscated. Lucian knew what the Transcends were trying to do: remove every aspect of their old lives and replace it with the new.

  They stood at the precipice of the southern cliff, near the only tree on this plateau. The flame tree and its red, stringy foliage looked out of place up here. Indeed, flame trees were not supposed to grow this far north. And yet, here it stood, its white trunk thick, its roots deep, and its boughs spread wide. Maybe in time, Lucian could learn to be as rooted as that tree, able to weather any storm thrown his way. But that day seemed far away, indeed.

  The vast Ocean of Storms extended far into the distance. That horizon seemed too near, still. Lucian wasn’t sure his Earther eyes would ever get used to it.

  Emma closed her own eyes, the wind gently tugging at her hair. Her composure seemed the opposite of his, one of acceptance and openness. It was hard not to be a bit resentful of that.

  For whatever reason, he remembered something Vera had told him. The Transcends didn’t want an individual. They wanted a vessel to mold. Isolated out here, that would be an easy thing to do. Already, he had changed. How long had it been since he’d thought of his mother? Little news reached the island, the only source being the occasional supply boat out of Karendas. For all he knew, the Swarmer fleet was glassing Earth, and he would have no way of knowing.

  He had escaped Earth, but now he found himself in another kind of prison. Then again, the whole universe could be a prison if he thought of it that way.

  He wanted his slate back. He wanted to talk to his mother. He wanted to eat something other than the plain, if nutritious, food the Novices were responsible for preparing. He had grown weary of the regular fasting, sometimes for as long as a full Volsung day. He was sick of the mandatory meditations and the incessant training. He had never wanted this, and despite some mental progress, he was still having trouble accepting that this was his new reality.

  Emma was right that complaining didn’t help. For some reason, he didn’t want to let go of his past. Maybe he needed to do that. Maybe he needed to be molded into an obedient little mage, following the rules to a tee. It seemed to work for Emma, so why not him?

  Lucian couldn’t help but wonder what Vera’s teaching would have been like. Different from this, surely. Conversations with her had been back and forth. Debates, even. When he disagreed with her, she fought for her position, as he did for his. He respected that. He usually lost those debates, but he learned more that way.

  Here, there were no debates. You did as the Talents ordered, and if you didn’t, well, then you were simply wrong. There was little in the way of reason or justification.

  He could see why the Transcends had been hesitant to take him on. Even he was self-aware enough to know his opinions were holding him back.

  He was here for one reason, and one reason only: Transcend White’s mysterious rivalry with her twin sister. That alone meant he should have been working a lot harder to change his attitude, but Lucian just couldn’t bring himself to do it.

  Lucian became aware of Emma’s gaze. Lucian wondered how much of his inner thoughts had been written on his face.

  “You’re not alone,” she said.

  As he looked at her, he couldn’t help but wonder. It was hard, but he had to give voice to his thoughts. If he couldn’t tell her, then who?

  “How much of us will be left by the time they’re through?”

  Emma was quiet for a long time. Lucian watched her until at last she responded.

  “I don’t know. This is our reality now, and we must embrace it. Willing or not.”

  “Are you willing?”

  She seemed annoyed by the question, from the way her eyebrows lowered. “I have to be. Sometimes, actions come first, and the heart second.”

  He didn’t like that answer. “I’ll try, Emma. I’ll . . . do what they say. What’s the harm, other than my pride? It’s not like I have a choice.”

  “We always have a choice.”

  “We’re stuck here,” Lucian said. “Where’s the choice in that?”

  “The choice is in how we choose to view our circumstances. Wouldn’t Vera have told you the same thing?”

  Again, she was right. But it would take time for him to process.

  “You are right about one thing, though,” she said.

  “What’s that?”

  She smiled. “It’s far past time we ate lunch.”

  They went back inside the Academy, swallowed by its massive entrance. The sunlight was hidden behind a layer of gray clouds as the cold breeze blew harder from the north.