Myraden kicked through the remains of the bone wraith, making sure it wouldn’t spring back up and attack her.

  The Hand had destroyed it with ease, and with just Reign. Pirin already had Reign, and the Unbound had to have a touch of it, too. She was falling behind, and she couldn’t have that. “Hand,” she whispered. “Can you teach me to use Reign consistently?”

  “Have you used it before?”

  “Once. To defeat Khara. It wasn’t stable or steady like Pirin’s. He…used a Reign gem to help him manifest his. But I haven’t used mine again.”

  “If you’re willing to learn, then I will teach you.”

  “I am willing. Does it break a veil?”

  “Using a veil is the best way to practice your Reign, especially as an advanced wizard,” he said. “It won’t let you use any other techniques.” He tapped the hilt of his sword, dirty fingernails clacking against metal. “I suppose there’s no better time to practice, but keep your senses out for Lord Two.”

  “I will,” she assured him.

  “When you use Reign,” the Hand explained, “you’re using your will to push directly against the Eane. Anyone can do it, though wizards are better attuned to it, as they’re used to using willpower to manipulate Essence, used to the formations and the push and pull of the Eane. But now, you must bypass your Essence. A spear stabs. The world knows it, and it has its purpose. You must know that.”

  “I have done more than just stab with Lejavüdkue. And it is not just a spear.”

  The Hand snorted. “Precisely. It’s a family heirloom. Your father wielded it, correct?”

  “Correct. But that was not what I meant. I can transform it into a rope-dart, or slash and spin with it like a glaive.”

  “But you still think of it as a spear, and a spear is still best suited for stabbing. Only this time, you aren’t stabbing a physical target. You’re piercing the world, slicing through air itself, and striking a target with absolute perfection.”

  She shut her eyes, then tugged her spear out from her void pendant. She ran her hand down the pale blue fabric of the haft, then flicked the spearhead. “This has been in the Leursyn family for centuries.”

  “That makes it the perfect weapon to form Reign with.” The Hand drew his own sword again and slashed the cellar wall. A normal sword would’ve bounced off the cobblestones, but the Hand’s blade, despite only being steel, slashed through. It left a cold gash, a black yawning void with glass-smooth edges.

  “Now you,” he said. “Stab a hole in the wall. Don’t just think about doing, know you can do it. Manifest your Reign into reality, demonstrate the peak of your ability with a spear, and pierce stone.”

  There was no safety net. Myraden couldn’t manifest Essence along the haft and spearhead, otherwise she’d give them away—but that meant her spearhead was just plain steel, ripe for shattering, bending, and breaking.

  If she didn’t pierce the wall, she’d damage a family heirloom.

  Not allowing herself time to think about it, she lashed out, stabbing at the wall with a well-practiced technique.

  But she stopped herself before she struck, pulling back and removing strength from the blow. The spear’s tip tapped against the grout between two cobblestones, harmlessly shaving off a layer of dust and char, but nothing more.

  The Hand said, “Is that truly all you can muster?”

  “No. I could pierce that wall without Reign if I just had my techniques, if I just had the ability to strengthen my spear and keep it safe.”

  “But you don’t. Try again.”

  She tried twice more to the same effect.

  “I cannot do it. By all I know, plain steel shouldn’t cut through stone. I wish there…was just a magic solution. It never works easily for me. It never…goes well. It always feels like I am working twice as hard as everyone else, and yet I have little to show for it.”

  Kythen bleated and plodded over, then nudged her. Myraden, I sense frustration. But remember, the exact same thing happened when you were simply learning to speak with me. You couldn’t do it, until finally, you let your guard down, let yourself go, and just allowed yourself to believe in what didn’t seem possible.

  “You want a solution to a magical problem, yet somehow, you refuse to acknowledge the impossible achievements Essence and magic makes possible?” The Hand shook his head. “No, Myraden. Reign is the most natural of all forms of magic.” He turned his sword over, pressing its tip against the floor. “Do you know what the Eane is?”

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  “Currents of Ichor flow in enormous channels beneath the surface, creating a field of arcane power that spreads up to the surface. Wizards are those attuned to draw it in—”

  “Yes, says the textbooks your tutors gave you when you were a low-level lady in ískan. But that’s only the basest, mechanical truth of it. That may be how it works, but that’s not what it is. Myraden, the Ichor flows through channels. It is the Essence of the world, and the world lives. The world draws in the Eane with its ichor, turns it into a field, a mesh over everything. But it doesn’t create the Eane.”

  “What does?”

  “Nothing. The Eane is the Great Way, the universal law, the base of all existence. The one true Path, which all must comprehend to a greater extent if they are to advance to Wildflame.”

  “But I can…stab it?”

  “You can push against it, severing it or bending it. You break the mesh, allowing yourself to cut anything defined by it.” He tilted his head toward the crack in the wall where the bone wraith had emerged earlier. “Now, try again.”

  “I—”

  Another wraith slithered out from the crack in the wall, this time, taking the shape of a small, shifting wolf. It had a strong form; it was near the peak of Flare. A strong wraith, no doubt attracted to the scent of a living being. Again, its form was enamel-white, with shards of bone sticking up along its back like a lizard’s spine. Old sprite ribs made up its body, and rotten marrow gave its body and face definition.

  It opened its mouth, revealing a maw of whirling, upside-down sprite teeth—no fangs, but it’d tear flesh apart nonetheless.

  And she couldn’t use any techniques.

  “I will not help you,” said the Hand. “Use your Reign.” He backed away and slipped into the shadows on the opposite side of the room, hiding from the wraith and making himself less intimidating. It’d target Myraden first.

  Myraden and Kythen stepped back into the center of the cellar, and the wraith prowled toward her. It was almost her height when it held its head up, and it took up a quarter of the room’s length from its head to tail.

  It lunged at her, and she leaned to the side, then swatted back with a normal blow from her spear. Without fueling her enhanced body, nothing happened. The blow glanced off and slid to the side. It was tougher and stronger than she was—at the moment, she was just a regular, normal sprite.

  But then again, so was the Hand. He’d have dealt with this foe with ease.

  Myraden, Kythen said. I can try to help you, but I won’t accomplish much without cycling and giving us away.

  Reign. Reign.

  She had to pierce the wraith’s form. It was a part of the Eane, held together by an invisible mesh. She could stab that mesh.

  She unleashed a set of jabs, but each accomplished nothing—except severing a few stray chunks of whirling bone. The wolf snapped and snarled, biting at her and trying to rip her head from her shoulders, but she ducked away. Her combat training didn’t just disappear with her Essence.

  She drove the wolf back with her swipes, but still nothing pierced through. Not enough to deal lasting damage.

  Use what you know about spears, Kythen asserted. You saw your father use it. What did he do?

  He didn’t have Reign.

  No, but he was working toward it.

  He always started a fight with a jab. He had instructed her to do so as well if she could. It’d put her mind in the right place, he said, get her ready to use the spear as intended, execute her patterns, and recall her training.

  Just keep stabbing.

  She lunged and stabbed, once, then twice, then thrice. The wraith slashed her shoulder, and a shard of bone scraped her thigh, but she ignored it. She could patch them up later, heal with her enhanced body, and it wouldn’t matter.

  But she wasn’t getting anywhere. Frustration built and mounted. She was going to fail, and she’d never have Reign controllably. Pirin would advance well ahead of her, or worse, he’d die and leave her all alone. She wouldn’t be able to help.

  No.

  She’d pierce her home’s enemies. Her new home—Sirdia.

  She lunged and shouted, then pressed the spear forward with as much force as she could muster. It pierced through the wraith’s chest, then through its spine, and pinned it to the wall. Halfway through the thrust, her spear slid in with ease, no longer pushing bone chunks aside but slicing them. Slicing the form and aura that held the wraith together.

  The beast collapsed and crumbled into a pile of bones and dust—all because of a single destructive jab.

  When the bones fell away, she let go of her spear, but it stayed in place. The head sank a foot into the stone of the wall, having penetrated straight into its form.

  “And there you go,” said the Hand. “Lock onto that feeling, and keep practicing that. Do you still sense Lord Two?”

  Myraden hadn’t been paying attention as she fought, but now, she couldn’t sense anything. Not even a tingle at the base of her skull alerting her to a potential foe.

  “He is gone. I do not—” Myraden cut herself off. “No. Two forms, drawing near.”

  She ripped her spear out of the wall, then whirled it toward the doorway to the cellar—up the set of stairs, silhouetted in the fading light of the day.

  Two sprites crept into view, holding crude spears and wearing tattered, ash-smeared rags. Survivors, scavengers, something. Of course, the Dominion’s purge couldn’t have been completely perfect.

  They muttered to each other, speaking íshkaben. Finally, one said louder, “Who are you, who killed the Gorgoren?” That, too, they spoke in íshkaben.

  Myraden lifted her spear, then took a cautious step toward them. They must have seen her kill the wraiths.

  “I am Myraden Leurysn,” she said. “And this is my Familiar, Kythen. Back there is my teacher. Who are you?”