147 - Cloudy Sky
“Rock. All. Mine.”
Alexandra watched as Speck lurked around the room, collecting every stone and pebble in its path within the darkness.
“Are you sure this was a good idea?” she asked.
Leander shrugged. “My best student is practicing its new ability. I see nothing wrong with that.” He turned to her. “You, on the other hand, are not listening to my teachings.”
Alexandra shifted her eyes, putting on a fake smile. They'd been at it for hours, and she'd yet to see much progress.
“I'm doing my best.”
“Then your best isn't good enough. What sort of heroine are you?”
Alexandra's shoulders sagged.
“You can do better,” Leander said, patting her shoulder with his phantom hand. “You just need to focus.”
She looked in Speck's direction. The elemental was moving its source left and right, having so much fun with rocks.
She shook her head and looked at the ancient hero. “Okay, I'll try.”
“Good.” Leander nodded. “Then let's restart. Honestly, seeing what you did to those poor lizards, I shouldn't have expected you to get the seal right in the first place.” He paused. “I'll give you something useful to practice. You have the Light skill, right?”
“I do,” Alexandra said, pointing at the dim orb floating behind her.
“Perfect. Turn it off.”
She did as Leander instructed and dispelled her skill. The room fell into darkness, to Speck's greatest delight.
“Speck,” Leander called. “May I have one rock?”
“Rock. Mine.”
“We'll return it to you when we're done.”
Alexandra frowned. “How are you even communicating with it? I have my contract, but you…”
“It's not a good sign that it took you this long to realize.”
“Just answer.”
“I was a hero, one of the most powerful individuals in this world. It would be embarrassing if I couldn't communicate with a Silver elemental.”
Alexandra opened her mouth.
“Rock. Lend. Must. Return.” Speck, who had just finished its internal deliberation, handed one of its most prized items to Leander.
“Thank you, Speck.” Leander placed the rock on the Kesh's coffin. “Alexandra, your job is to use Light to illuminate this rock. Only this rock. I don't want to see any stray light or heat.”
“That's not how my skill works,” she said.
Leander chuckled. “It's almost as if I'm trying to have you learn something new.”
Alexandra grimaced. Fair enough.
Under the senses she shared with Speck, she could feel the shape of the rock in the darkness. It was rough, about the size of her fist, and somewhat shaped like a pyramid.
She closed her eyes and called the Light skill back into being. A white burst that swallowed the coffin, the walls, and Leander's face. Speck flinched and threw a shadow over the rocks it was about to collect.
“Bright. Bad. Rock. Hurt.”
“Sorry. Sorry.” Alexandra turned off the skill and the room went black again.
“Rock. Fine.” Speck's voice was flat with suspicion. It counted its stones audibly, one by one.
"Again," Leander said.
She breathed out, found the shape of the pyramid rock through Speck's borrowed senses, and tried to pour the light along its edges only. She wasn't sure how she was supposed to do that. Light was an orb, and as such, it emitted light in every direction. Sure enough, her attempt washed the room in light for a second before she shut it down.
“Bright,” Speck said, already turning its back.
“That wasn't even close to the rock,” Leander said.
“I know that.”
“I'm simply making sure you're aware.”
Alexandra pressed her palms against her eyes for a moment, looking for inspiration. She put them down and tried again. This time she aimed for restraint. The orb was barely a spark, summoned near where she judged the rock to be. The orb blinked into existence on top of the rock, then it flickered and died immediately.
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“No,” Leander said.
“It's better than blinding everyone.”
“It's not better. I'm not asking you to reduce the intensity of your light. I'm asking you to focus it on the rock.”
“Light. Careful. Rock. Sleeping.”
Alexandra exhaled. “Rocks don't sleep, Speck.”
“Rock. Sleeping.”
She tried again, narrowing her focus through intent, and the light answered by doubling in size and heat, close enough that she felt it prickle against her own forearm before she cut it off.
“Warm,” Speck said, aggrieved, patting the rock as if checking for burns.
Alexandra rubbed her wrist. "This is impossible."
“It's a skill you've used a hundred times,” Leander said. “You've simply never had to understand it.”
“Helpful.”
“You're welcome.” The ghost smiled in the dark.
She sat back on her heels and let the failure settle instead of chasing it away. The skill wasn't the issue. She was.
You've simply never had to understand it.
When she summoned Light, she always let the system do the shaping, pouring mana into the orb and letting it bloom outward on its own. She'd never once told it where to stop, only adjusting the amount of mana she spent.
She summoned the orb again, and instead of releasing it, she held on.
Threads. Pale lines running from her chest into the orb's surface, each one a leash, each one a lifeline. She pulled at the ones facing away from the rock, forcing the light back into itself on that side.
The orb dimmed unevenly, one edge sagging inward. It fought her the whole way, springing back the moment her attention wandered, and she understood that she was still doing this wrong. She was wrestling the light instead of speaking its language.
"Better," Leander said.
She kept pulling, thread by thread, and her mind slipped away, away from the room, away from Speck's muttering, and into the nature of the thing itself.
Solar mana wasn't a substance. It wasn't water. She couldn't direct its flow. It wasn't clay. She couldn't mold its shape.
It was sun.
Her skill only remembered the sun, called down a sliver of that first fire and let it burn. The sun did not choose where to shine. It simply was, everywhere at once, and anything standing beneath it received the whole of it or nothing.
She wasn't supposed to fight that nature. She was supposed to stand between it and the ground, the way the sky already did.
Clouds didn't destroy sunlight. They didn't fight it thread by thread. They simply existed in its path, stopping most of it from going through.
Her hands stilled.
She let go of the threads she'd been straining to hold and instead pictured a single shape: a cloud drifting into place around the rock, thick on every side but one. She wasn't the one making the shadow. She only had to decide where the cloud stood, and let the sun do what it had always done.
But how? The orb was all solar mana.
She frowned. Solar mana carried the properties of the sun. Yet, it was still mana. She pulled more threads from her core and stitched a cover around the orb. Solar mana by itself didn't emit light. It was just mana.
Every thread she wrapped around the orb caught the light trying to escape through it, and instead of letting that light pass on through and scatter into the room, they sent it back inward, toward the orb.
By the time she closed the last gap but one, the orb behind her woven shell was no longer the soft floating lamp she was used to. It was blazing far past what she'd have called comfortable, all of it straining toward the single seam she'd left open.
Through that seam, the light found the rock.
“Rock,” Speck said, drifting closer despite itself. “Rock. Pain.”
“Don't worry, Speck,” Leander said. “Rocks don't fear light.”
“Don't?” Speck asked. “Rock. Strong.”
Alexandra wasn't listening, her thoughts focused on her task. She'd done it. Almost.
Her light was shining on the rock, but not quite only on the rock. The hole she'd punctured in the veil covering her light was rough, imprecise. Some rays strayed onto the coffin. Some parts of the rocks were covered in darkness.
She pulled a thread and knitted around the hole, sharpening it. One pull here, and the light closed. One pull there, and the light shone on previously unlit areas.
When she felt like she'd done her best, Alexandra relaxed.
“Rock. Hurt.”
“I told you rocks can't feel—” Leander started. “Oh.”
Alexandra squinted, trying to look past the blinding spot of light that the rock had turned into.
Leander coughed. “You might want to turn it off. It's melting.”
Alexandra undid her threads and let her skill dissipate, leaving the surface of the rock hot to the point it was starting to turn into magma.
“No. Rock. You. Monster.”
Alexandra winced. “I'm sorry, Speck. I'll find another one for you.”
“Not. Same.” The elemental sulked.
“Rock aside, you did good,” Leander said. “That was one of the solutions I was trying to guide you toward.”
“One of? There are more?”
Leander scoffed. “Did you think the conceptual truth of the sun was so simple you could master it in a day? Anyway, you took your first step. You should rest before we continue.”
“I can keep going,” Alexandra said, feeling the exhaustion set in as she spoke. She hadn't slept since setting off from Balrum, and it was catching up to her now. “Okay, maybe not.”
She sat on the ground and took out her journal to check on her progress.
Solar Affinity 1 -> 2
Light 9 -> 10
Light has evolved into Rays of the Sun.
“Oh.”
“What?” Leander asked.
“My skill evolved. I wasn't expecting that.”
Leander hovered above her. “It tends to go hand in hand with conceptual truth revelations. Is it good?”
Alexandra checked the new skill description.
Rays Of The Sun – Uncommon:
Contain solar mana within a woven shell, releasing it only where you choose.
Each level increases your control over the shell's shape and the number of openings you can maintain.
“It seems like it's just formalizing what I just achieved.”
Leander nodded. “Good. That's what you want from skill evolutions.”
Alexandra took a second look at her new skill, already seeing a few ways she could make use of it. If it could burn through a rock…
She chuckled. Just you wait, damn stone elemental.