In a single night, the port city of Lissea got covered with half a meter of snow.

A surprise to many of the local inhabitants, it was a sight only the oldest of them still remembered, and throughout the inns and taverns of the city, these fonts of old stories retold these tales. Once upon a time when Lissea was covered under so much snow that they had to make tunnels to move out of their own houses… Once upon a time, not even the roofs of the tallest buildings were visible under the fallen snow…

Some, on the other hand, told their stories with more…truth in them, yet those proved too dry and boring, people rarely sticking around to listen.

Tercius and Penelope ended up spending the whole morning listening to one such tall tale be performed by one sweet old granny, her tiny frame bundled in furs and placed in a rocking chair near the fire, in the common room of the inn they used for their stay.

Time flew by, the granny's crowd of listeners grew in number, the room filled up to the brim, and those late to claim a spot inside had to listen all the way from the doorway.

"And then?" Penelope asked, her fingers tightly gripping her woolen shirt in anticipation. "What did he do next?"

The old toothless woman laughed in a naughty way, her laugh coming out in short bursts of air, a small pause after each one. "You know." her playful eyes glanced at the crowd, while her thin eyebrows wiggled in delight.

The crowd started hooting and hollering, some even going as far as making lewd noises. A few shouts with a general meaning of "No better way to keep warm." Even Tercius had a large smile on his face, knowing exactly what the man did.

Protest of one small 12-year-old girl went ignored in the noise. "But I don’t know. Tell me. Tercius do you know? Will you tell me? Please?"

***

"Let's go out a bit," Penelope said, looking straight at him.

Feeling extremely comfortable in his large blanket, he hesitated. "How about we wait for a day or two to pass?"

The appeal of snow ended for him when he realized how hard it was to get dry and warm in this day and age. Changing clothes proved challenging when every fire was swamped with wet clothes, and air-drying clothes took days.

"Tercius please, I don't want to go alone," she said.

Tercius just looked at her pitiful expression, then placed the book he was reading aside, and left the comfy spot he claimed. A feline cry of protest was heard from the blanket, and the blanket started moving on its own. Amber popped her head out and looked at Tercius with judgment in her reptile eyes, while he deflected with a nod Penelope’s way.

Exhaling he put on his thicker clothes. "Alright then, but you owe me one."

"Yes." she shrieked, jumping up and down. "Mother told me I would only get the permission to go out if I manage to convince you to come with me."

"She did?" Tercius said, suddenly annoyed at the older woman. But that did not last long. As soon as the first snowball hit him in on the back, he retaliated, and the rest was history.

After the snow stopped falling somewhere around early morning, it did not start once more, and the people of the fine city of Lissea took the opportunity to clear a bit of snow and make pathways for easier access to other areas.

Tercius and Penelope helped by making large snowballs that they were barely able to roll. Starting small they rolled layer after layer of snow on that little ball until its height eclipsed even them.

Some of the local children saw what they were doing, and joined them, clearing the whole street of almost all snow within half an hour. Here and there large cylinders of snow occupied free spaces, and a few observant personas noted that the children did more when they played than most adults did in the whole morning of shoveling.

Fingers, cheeks, and nose positively freezing cold, Tercius and Penelope went back into the inn. Tired, yet still smiling, they changed into the last set of clothes they had, as Seliana took their wet ones to set them to dry.

"That was fun," Penelope said, her eyes barely staying open.

"I guess it was."

***

Over the next few days, the snow would periodically fall and then stop. The ship with Seliana’s and Penelope’s possessions arrived and Seliana had to rent a warehouse to store it all. Ever since the things arrived she fussed over them being stolen, even after his uncle assured her such a thing would not happen. Lux knew a guy who knew a guy that would make sure such a thing did not happen.

Tercius would try at every opportunity to conjure the manifestation of Energy Manipulation, and even after a few days very little changed. Every time he tried it, he would last a little bit longer, but with each increase in time, came the increase in pain.

After a few tries, Tercius would make a pause, then read a book, play with Amber, talk to his uncle or Penelope or Seliana. And then he would throw himself right back at it.

A week after Tercius and the others arrived at the city, in the session that was the last before bed, right as he neared his limit of the self-imposed daily tries, the wisps came over for a visit. The same as the previous time, they behaved erratically, but this time he did not attempt to make them stop.

Conjuring his effigy of Shield Mastery, he observed the wisps enter and exit and he rushed to make an attempt to interact with this skill.

Appearing on a giant field of green, he took a moment to gather his bearings. All around him wisps buzzed and zigzagged, like a giant flock of birds, at times obscuring his view, then revealing what they hid, when they flew away. The green under him was a dark and metallic sort, and looking around he spotted the edges of the gray fog. As he oriented himself, he moved towards the center of the shield, his feet echoing on the metallic surface. Right where the middle of the shield was, he found the emblem of Amber staring right back at him.

Tercius stood there for a moment, observing the details he managed to create when one wisp appeared right in front of him. It just stood there, the only one in the multitude that was keeping itself in one place.

"Flu?" he asked uncertainly. There was no answer, of course.

Extending his hand he caught the chain and ripped a part of it off, the Energy rushing everywhere, both into the skill and into him. The price in pain he gladly paid. This pain he felt when he touched the chains and the one that appeared every time he tried to conjure Energy Manipulation were similar. He made a note of that.

But first, let's try to see if everything is back to the way it was. he thought, and then returned back to the black void, where wisps kept zipping about.

The black void was just the manifestation of his skill Meditation when he used it, much like his improved running posture and speed was a manifestation of the skill Running. Or the ease with which he could do mental math, and spot patterns in equations was a manifestation of his skill Mathematics. His skill Stone Shaping manifested as an ability to mold stone with his bare hands.

But these "effigies" that he conjured inside of his manifestation of the skill Meditation, allowed Tercius to go to what he thought was the inner working of the skill. If the active Meditation was a planet, then when he entered the "effigy" of the skill, he went deep underground, right to the core, or quite near it.

That was his current theory.

Of course, for him to even be able to enter under the crust of the planet he had to have a way in.

The wisps provided this way into those inner workings. Flu, the wisp that stayed inside the core of Meditation, provided the mooring point for him to be able to enter at his leisure.

Without him or the wisps, Tercius alone had no way to enter. For now. he added mentally. Rome was not built in a day.

Still feeling a bit emotional, and as he felt the effects from his skill try to cool him down to a neutral point, he theatrically proclaimed to the beings that infested his inner self. Begone, I need to try something. But then, feeling as if that could be easily interpreted wrongly, in a panic added. Feel free to visit soon, I am just busy right now.

As the effects of the Meditation calmed both his excitement and panic, he observed the wisps as they drift away, far out of what he was capable of observing. Then there was only he and the effigy of Shield Mastery left.

Before he began he had one question for himself: Did I just pull a dick move to these beings who helped me?

The answer his rational mind came up with was a resounding "Yes".

I should do something nice for them, in way of an apology. he though. But enough dallying let's get to it.

Reaching out to the effigy, he went through the instant pathway that connected the manifestation of Meditation to the inner core of Shield Mastery.

Inside, on the whole shield of metallic green, there was only the one wisp, that he knew as Flu, a giant emblem of Amber staring straight up with her vertical slit pupils and finally Tercius himself.

Exhaling, a burden dropped off his shoulders, as he now had a firm confirmation of what he theorized. It was one thing to be sure of something and quite another to know it. He knew that a small possibility existed that he would lose his source of Energy, but he felt the risk of new information was worth it.

Another factor weighed heavily on his mind. Tercius was going to the prime Academy for magical arts on four continents. It would be foolish of him to think that he was the only one to discover the Energy. The height of hubris. The low of intelligence. Just plain stupid.

Even in Nurium, he had decided to not have any Energy in him during the day, at least until he had some way to hide it from his skill Energy Sight. He would only use it when alone and far removed from anyone, spending what he acquired as soon as possible. In Tripatis, after the information his uncle provided, he decided that before he made any interactions with the mages he should try to solve his problem. He had some more time before he went to the Library and started this hunt for clues, that mages left about the city.

He knew that he should focus on his skill problem, yet he also knew that in less than three weeks he would be left alone, the final family member going his own way.

***

"Now you bring the sword down," Lux said and then demonstrated what he wanted for Tercius to do. "Now you try."

Slowly swinging his sword, in the same way his uncle just did, he tried to focus on the feeling, to get his muscles accustomed to the way they needed to move. Ten slow ones, then ten where he increased the speed a bit.

"If you don’t have a shield, like now, you need to be aware of it. You would not believe how much time it takes for someone who was trained in shield use to accustom to fighting without it. A slashed shield arm, or in some rare cases downright cut off, is more common than you might think. They raise their hand, but the shield is simply not there." Lux explained. "So you need to be aware not just consciously, but at an instinctive level. Train, then train some more."

Tercius nodded, seeing how that might be a problem. One of the last lessons his uncle wanted for him to learn about shields was how to fight without them. And it proved difficult. Over the years he always used it, and just like his uncle said, his hands moved by mere muscle memory.

"I would have liked a year or two more to properly instill these instincts into you, but alas..." his uncle said and shrugged his shoulders. "Now, once more from the top."

Tercius went through his paces, under the watchful eye of Lux, who at times would point out something that could be improved.

As his uncle did not want to teach him where something might interrupt them, and the hustle and bustle of the city life proved to be exactly that, Lux found someone willing to rent them the use of their cabin outside the city borders. The cabin was encircled on all sides with a mix of both evergreen and seasonal trees, with a small wooden fence providing some small measure of protection.

All around them a small layer of snow-covered every surface, but both men were bare-chested, all of the heat necessary provided by intense motion.

When they arrived at this mountain cabin, Tercius and Lux removed the snow from a portion of the area right next to the house. On that muddy area, they brought any stone from the surrounding area that Tercius located using his skill. At first, Penelope and Seliana were confused as to why those two would do such a thing. The confusion lasted for the whole morning of the first day, as both Lux and Tercius refused to answer any questions.

Finally, when Tercius was satisfied with the volume of stone available, he started molding it to fit his needs. Each stone was transformed in such a way that it had to have a thickness of at least 10 cm. Some of the natural stones had to be shrunk to gain that thickness, others lost in thickness and gained in width. Then one such stone was scratched over by Tercius, leaving behind a trail of fingernails.

Each stone was connected to another until Tercius make a platform of over 6 meters in diameter. And because of the grooves, his fingernails left on the stone, even when the platform got wet they still did not slide over it.

In such a way even when the snow fell over it, they would just clean it a bit, and continue with their lessons. Seliana thought them fools for doing such things in the cold winter days, yet both she and Penelope knew to sit for hours on the front porch and watch them practice.

When the practice of motions was over, a spar would usually follow.

"And you're dead," said Lux, holding the point of the sword right at the boy's heart. Although Tercius was good with a sword, Lux had an answer to all of his attacks and a speed that matched and at times surpassed that of his junior opponent. Every few such spars there would be a nick or a cut that Seliana had to use a potion to heal.

"I had hoped to at least best you one time before you go," Tercius said. "But every time I think I am close, you pull further away."

"I have over four decades of experience, and my skills and instincts are honed on a field of battle," Lux explained. "No amount of spars can make up for a lack of that. You can learn some things only when your life hangs on the edge of a weapon of someone else. Someone who means to take your life. In fact, let's turn this into a real lesson."

Tercius did not know what his uncle meant. He saw the man grab a dagger off his belt, immediately throwing it towards the woods. It flew off at a speed Tercius couldn’t follow, disappearing between the tree trunks.

"You can get out now, I know you are there," Lux said loudly.

Tercius brain processed what his uncle just said. His heart pumping in his chest, he used Mana Sight to observe in the direction where his uncle threw the dagger. There is nothing there. he thought. He only saw the small amount of Mana that the local plants and trees had. Not even a small critter. Probably escaped from all the noise we kept making.

"Uncle I don't see anything," Tercius said.

Lux snorted, then threw another dagger in a different direction. "I noticed you at the ship but didn't think much of it at the time. After all, you were going to Lissea. Then I noticed you near our inn two days later. Still, I thought that it might be a coincidence. Those can happen from time to time. But when I saw you the other day at the gate when we left the city, I was sure. As I said, you can come out, there is no way I will allow you to escape."

Tercius knew that his uncle was not prone to such behaviors, so he focused his sight once more. Nothing!

A sound of a shattered crystal rang out behind him and he saw his uncle had his sword in the front, small pieces of ice falling around him.

Tercius tightened his grip on the sword's handle. The silence in the wake of his uncle's speech allowed them to hear the cold howling winds that tore the air somewhere far above.

"And here I thought that I had an infamous mage killer fooled. How presumptuous of me." a baritone voice said.

Tercius swiveled his head towards the source and his Mana Sight did not see anything. Only when he stopped using his skill did the cloaked man appear. With the evergreen trees in the background, the black cloak stood there, so visible on white snow, that he would have to be blind to miss him. Yet somehow Tercius did.

But Lux did not.