Elucidate

Reading through some of the first words I’d written in Starspeak was oddly embarrassing and encouraging. The first records I’d given the Coalition weren’t even cogent, much less informative. But over the months I’d grasped the language more, and my reports reflected that.

The first time Tasser had given me one to fill out, I’d thought it had been a Starspeak quiz of some kind. I hadn’t understood the questions, so my responses didn’t even remotely answer the questions. Furthermore, it hadn’t struck me that the questions were being modified with each iteration of the report until I was halfway through filling out the fifth version.

Today’s would be the nineteenth version. Details had been added, small clarifications made, and errors corrected. The small variations in each debrief were telling. Tweaked questions and new lines of inquiry began to reveal some of the mindset of the writer. Whoever at Coalition HQ was making these was far less interested in any of my Adept reports, or even psionics, than details about my abduction.

Which made sense, but the truth was I didn’t really know things like ‘what was the duration of the star-skip the ship the abductee was aboard underwent?’

‘Has Raho Tasser attempted to coerce your thinking in any way, or otherwise attempted to influence your perception of the collective Casti?’ That was a question that I’d stopped answering after a while, but they always altered, seemingly in hopes I’d throw Tasser under the bus. I hadn’t realized the first few times I’d simply answered ‘no,' but they kept altering the question with subtle phrasing that made it progressively harder to answer no.

Tasser hadn’t given a strong reaction to it, but I could tell it was something of a sore spot for both him and some other Casti. He would tell me more when he was ready.

My personal favorite question was ‘please list or recreate any signage, iconography, or labels that were present aboard the vessel that abducted you.’ It was blatantly simultaneously trying to help but also woefully inconsiderate of what I’d actually been subjected to.

I’d left it blank last time because I hadn’t had a good answer. But this time it occurred to me I didn’t recall seeing any text or label at all, not even in any alien languages I didn’t understand. That felt significant enough to mention now that I thought about it. Seems like there should have been at least some stray text.

But my heart wasn’t really in it today. I wanted to hear more about Korbanok.

Serral took my revised report and handed it off to be broadcast to Admiral Laranta’s tiny space-pod.

It would be a few more minutes before Nai, Tasser, and Nemuleki were finished updating their reports. I was badly concealing my anticipation. But the Coalition’s mission to Korbanok was of course classified, so this was the first time I was getting to hear the details.

It felt eerily like an eighth-grade social studies lecture because Ase Serral broke out a projector machine in one of the spare rooms next to the security office.

“I’m going to catch you up to speed on the Korbanok mission before we properly brief you on what exactly is happening now, alright?”

“Yes,” I said, wasting no words.

He nodded, pressing a button on the projector. An image of a round little planetoid flicked to life on the wall. It’s surface was crisscrossed with metal lines and clumps of structures.

“Roughly fourteen months ago Coalition leadership scheduled an attack on the largest military installation in the system, Korbanok Station. The Korbanok satellite hosts an estimated four thousand Red Sails enemy combatants. Only a fraction of that are actually trained for void combat—most of them are intended to be deployed to terrestrial locations as needed. It’s one of the largest training centers for the Assembly’s forces. Their fleets don’t often coordinate—there’s only one other system with more than one fleet present—but training facilities are one way they stay prepared to cooperate in case the need arises.”

He clicked the projector again several times as he spoke. Each new picture showing either shots of Vorak dressed in military gear, or some bird’s eye view of a section of Korbanok. Some of them had labels I could read now. ‘Third Hangar Complex,’ ‘Troop Barracks,’ ‘Administrative Annex.’

“Initially, the plan was to proceed almost a month later than it wound up being, but the timetable was accelerated. Deep-void watcher positions saw the entire station locked down and their normal defensive measures plunged into chaos. All traffic was halted, even supply shipments were suspended for several days. It was too much of an opportunity to not take advantage of. Strategists determined that the ideal moment to attack would be immediately after the lockdown lifted.”

“Knowing what we do now, it is exceedingly likely that this lockdown was due to your ship’s arrival, Caleb. Void-ready Coalition troops landed on Korbanok to the number of more than six hundred. You’re cleared to see the peripheral goals, but there were dozens of missions occurring concurrently. Those objectives, while undoubtedly crippling to the Red Sails, were predominantly cover for a targeted assault on four different computer terminals across the station.”

Serral slid me a stack of documents, some of which were redacted very much like dossiers were in Earth spy films. Each sheet was lined with mission goals, floor plans, and technical data related to what the Coalition might have been doing on Korbanok.

Compromise freight elevator shafts. Burn biolab contents. Install surveillance devices in air circulation.

It was a laundry list of military pranks and sabotages that would have been hilarious to hear about if they hadn’t been bought with lives. It was a little chilling to look at a report like this and think about some poor Casti being shot while they destroyed all the equipment in a Vorak office.

“You might be young, Caleb, but I think even you have some grasp of how powerful information can be in warfare.”

“I think so. What was so important on those computers?” I asked.

“All sorts of authorization and clearance codes for starters. Dossiers and strategic reports as well, but right now we don’t have much at all. The critical element here is that the Red Sails have no idea we took these computer drives: they were cloned on site and replaced.” Serral admitted. “But we didn’t get all four, which was a prerequisite of completely decrypting the data. One of the teams didn’t seem to make it off Korbanok.”

“Didn’t ‘seem’ to?” I asked.

“The team extracting it was ambushed by a powerful Adept. As far as we knew, there were no survivors. Until recently that is.”

“Ah, this is the new part?” I asked.

“This is the new part,” the Ase said, “but we’ll wait for the other three to finish their reports before continuing.” A tiny bit of disdain creeping into his voice. This was a military operation we were talking about. Some special effort to avoid being glib was probably wise.

Tasser finished first, sitting down without a word ready to pay attention.

Nemuleki was next followed by Nai only a minute later.

“I’ve briefed Caleb on the relevant details of Korbanok, so you’re all caught up,” Serral said, “and since you three are the most familiar with him and we are doing our best to go so far beyond due diligence as to be unimpeachable in making the risks of this decision clear, this intel is being shared with you first.”

He clicked the slide projector and a grainy image of a massive cylinder appeared, embedded into a mottled dark green rock. Judging by the roads leading up to it, it was a massive building. Like someone had made a round version of the Pentagon and sunk it halfway into a mountain.

“Four months ago, another Coalition base on the surface received a short series of attempts at contact that could be traced back to Cordani province. We first received three anonymous phone calls on consecutive days, but they were discontinued when the base attempted to respond. And that was all we heard until last week. This was delivered in a sealed medical package to the base.”

Serral clicked the button and a typed note appeared on the projector.

only for resistance eyes,

i have seen firsthand that a coalition adept was in hiding stuck within the cordani green complex they perished but the object of their mission was hidden inside the complex for safekeeping I am in need of assistance please come.

Starspeak didn’t capitalize letters the same way English did, but it did have minutely altered forms of some letter pairings. Those altered forms were absent in the note. The sum effect was like a child writing in blocky letters to eliminate any traits of their handwriting.

Additionally, there were an odd series of lines and blocks, not unlike a long, flat QR code beneath the note’s text.

I gave Serral an incredibly dry glance.

“I’m a civilian reading in a second language, and even I think this looks like a trap,” I told him.

“You’d think so,” the Ase agreed. “But the sealed medical package the note came in was authenticated, and the Organic Authority would never authenticate a message they knew to be a covert attack. Additionally, the message had a personalized data tag that only a certain Coalition Adept would know.”

“As in one specific Adept?”

Serral nodded, “We might be fighting a war with them, but the Assembly does have some diplomatic ties to the Coalition. Prisoner exchanges aren’t uncommon, and the remains of fallen soldiers are almost always returned—especially Farnata remains.”

“Farnata remains, and therefore Adept remains,” Tasser realized.

“Exactly, we have a rather accurate casualty report for Korbanok. There are only a handful of soldiers unaccounted for. One of those bodies belongs to the Adept who led the team retrieving the data drive we failed to acquire. He didn’t die on Korbanok, or his remains would have been returned to us.”

“So you think that this Adept made it to Cordani province? I have to agree with Caleb, that still seems dubious,” Nemuleki said.

“More than that, we know he infiltrated the Green Complex somehow, presumably to evade the Vorak search. And we know he was alive long enough to give his authentication to someone in the Complex. It might be that he was discovered and interrogated for his authentication. But this is the perfect amount of dubious,” Serral explained. “You’re right that this might be a trap, but if it is, then the Red Sails have tried to involve the Organic Authority in a way that’s public suicide. So no matter if this is genuine or not, we can’t afford not to in either case.”

“And if you’re sending some Coalition heat to this Green Complex, you might as well send me, too, to fulfil First Contact protocol,” I said. Laranta had thought it was a supremely risky idea, but also that the benefits likely outweighed those large risks. I was beginning to see why.

Serral nodded, “Even if the note is genuine, there will still be an enormous amount of risk involved. The Vorak will not stand idly by when they learn of your movement.”

“Laranta warned me,” I told him.

“Allow me to warn you again,” he said plainly. “If you become part of this, the Vorak will not treat you as a civilian. They might not even try to take you prisoner.”

“I think we’re well beyond that point, Ase,” I replied coolly.

Serral gave a negative click, “I mean… they’ve demanded through diplomatic channels that we surrender you. Laranta and I have rebuffed them citing you as a non-combatant and a refugee. If you go to this facility, with the informed aim of helping us, then the Vorak will kill you if presented the opportunity. Their official story is that they have no clue what you are or how your ship wound up here. They might not have been publicizing their official stance, but now that you’re in the open, they will. And they won’t hesitate to kill you if it seems like you’re helping us.”

“Am I?” I asked. “Helping you, I mean.”

“You would be in the company of a Coalition military team performing a military operation to secure and compromise enemy secrets,” Serral said.

“That…doesn’t necessarily mean I’m helping you,” I pointed out.

Tasser said, “They would say you knowingly participated in a military operation and thus implicitly made yourself fair game.”

I nodded in concession. “So in some ways, informing me about what you’re trying to do actually increases the risk to me?”

“That’s not…well…” Serral trailed off awkwardly.

“Yes,” Nai said frankly. “But only if the Vorak would treat you any better if you didn’t know what the Coalition was doing. And since we know they didn’t treat you very well back when you knew absolutely nothing…”

“They don’t care if I’m informed or not, so there’s no reason to keep me out of loop,” I surmised.

“You’re glossing over some of the finer intricacies of the Assembly’s fleet divisions, but broadly you are correct.”

“If that weren’t the case, would you inform me anyway?” I asked.

“Would you want to be informed if it put you in danger?” Serral asked.

“…I’m not sure,” I admitted.

“Neither am I,” the Ase said.

“So the goal is to retrieve the data drive?” I asked. “Seems pretty simple.”

“Mission parameters are these:” Serral said, “locate and retrieve the data drive hidden within the Green Complex. Concurrently, subject Caleb Hane, point of First Contact, to medical examination and confirm the risks or lack thereof of interplanetary travel. Ideally, keep both of these aims concealed from any opposing agents. Are these goals clear to this group?”

I nodded and the soldiers next to me said “Yes, Ase,” in stereo.

Serral nodded in satisfaction before continuing. “Given the likely timeframe of this operation, it’s inevitable that the mission will encounter enemy resistance: Adept resistance. So since we have…what did you call it Caleb? A [trump card]? We’re playing her.”

He glanced at Nai quietly taking in the briefing.

“Her current rank withstanding, Raho Nai will likely be commanding this mission, or more likely co-commanding, but that will be settled later. Caleb, if you’re going along your life will be in her hands more than anyone else’s. Is that going to be a problem?”

“On the contrary,” I said. “I think we’ve settled the worst of our differences. She scares the [hell] out of me, but the Vorak fear her so much they gave her a special name. There’s no one more qualified to keep me out of fur-fish clutches.”

I gave Nai an affirming nod, though she didn’t visibly react one way or the other.

“Even if you feel secure with her protection, this would not be a day trip to a clothing factory. The Organic Authority will have a battery of tests, likely weeks long. It’s entirely possible the Vorak will encamp outside the facility and attack when you exit. It might be a fight on their grounds.”

Concern was, I thought, one of the most encouraging things about being amongst these aliens. There was very little about my situation that had not disturbed me the first time I’d been exposed to any one part of it. There were familiar aspects of life that disturbed me every bit as much as exotic ones. I’d found some aliens I got along with, and there were a few people on base who I knew feared or despised me.

But even Nai, who had been deep in the latter camp until very recently, had always been concerned for me. Even when she’d decked me through a wall, potentially maiming me, there hadn’t been any moment where she had to think about why it was a bad idea. The very moment she realized she’d done it, she’d regretted it. Every single alien around me, whatever they thought of me, had done something to keep me alive so far, thought about some way to reduce the threat to my life even only if incidentally to protect their own.

The prospect of the entire Vorak civilization bearing down on me had been paralyzing the first time I’d realized the scope of my enemy.

But my allies had some scope to them too.

“Ase, I appreciate the attention you have put and continue to place on my safety. I appreciate the warning. But I know this will be risky: it needs to be done if I don’t want to spend the rest of my life here. They came to my planet. They snatched me right off the ground. I know it's dangerous.”

“…Yes, I suppose you do. Perhaps even more than us in some ways.”

“I didn’t have a choice when I first got here, Ase,” I said, “but I do now, and I trust these people, danger or not.”

Serral gave a quiet nod.

“Then let’s get you off this planet. The mission leaves in four days. Each of you will be consulted for who else will build this team, I want three names from everyone except Caleb by the end of the day.”

·····

“You two were pretty quiet hearing all that,” I said.

We were outdoors taking advantage of the fact that none of the three of us had any regular duties on base, and being tapped to leave for a mission had further removed our little party from normal obligations. It was a pretty nice day considering the storm that had torn through just a few days earlier. There were still piles of snow taller than buildings, but they were mostly out of the way. Any of the ones that hadn’t been had fallen victim to Nai’s vorpal flame.

“Briefings are about listening, Caleb,” Tasser sagely shared. “Only when your lips are still will you truly hear.”

“That sounds like a [fortune cookie],” I mocked.

“I’m going to assume those are something tacky?” Tasser said.

“Only if ‘tacky’ means what I think it does.”

“Shut up,” Nai said. “You’re distracting.”

“Hey,” I defended, “I had to figure out some of this stuff fighting off Vorak assassins. I think a little background chatter is perfectly reasonable.”

“Assassins?” Nai said, “Isn’t that a little dramatic?”

“Yes, and rightly so as far as I’m concerned,” I retorted. “What about you? You just burst out laughing while your Admiral was talking to me, a dignitary.”

Nai rolled her eyes, or at least performed a Farnata facsimile of it. “Calling you a dignitary is like calling Tasser here an educator.”

“Oof, are you going to take that lying down?” I asked him.

“Am I what?” he responded incredulously.

“Huh, I really thought I had the translation on that idiom…”

“Shut up…” Nai complained. “I’m almost there.”

She wasn’t, though I was still figuring out exactly what part of my psionic senses were telling me so.

My Adept teacher was attempting to make her own psionic creation. Since neither I nor her wanted to risk adding any more mental machines to her mind so soon, we’d decided to focus more on the creative side.

I was doing my best to not jump or give any other indication of surprise whenever Nai showed up. It was ridiculous. I’d spent months around here unable to track Nai, and now that she had control of the mirror she was using it whenever she felt like it.

Being totally unable to track her was far less stressful than sensing her disappear every now and then only to sometimes reappear on radar some time later. It was only a matter of time before she decloaked near enough to me to shock me, even if just by coincidence.

“You’re not close,” I told her. In my head, the words had been…well not quite sympathetic, but at least not unkind. Maybe it was the air mask altering the sound of my voice that ambiguated my tone.

For whatever reason, she still shot me a dark glance.

“You’re not,” I said resolutely. “I’m still figuring out the finer details, but when I make something solid, I can feel a ‘vibe’ around me, maybe it’s part of tactile cascading, but making a new psionic piece from scratch gives off [kinda] the same buzz. You’re not giving off any buzz.”

She nodded slowly, saying nothing while she tried to concentrate more on producing one of my abstract creations.

In the wake of really looking into Nai’s mind, I’d had some new inspirations on how to further refine some of the psionic constructs I used. Especially the ones geared toward perception of all kinds. Most of the effort was put toward making some new tools, each one with a slightly different purpose than anything else I already had. Filters to compensate for oppressively strong signals like the ones Nai radiated, amplifiers to better perceive minds that weren’t teeming with Adept energy. But I was also making modifications to the existing pieces. Every day I was unravelling a tiny piece of the greater construct, trying to figure out what it was for. In the process I was learning a lot about how to integrate the new simple tools I’d made with the mind-bogglingly complex original creation.

It was hard to give Nai feedback yet, but her own psionic efforts were promising. She could modify the sheet I’d put in her head as a test, but so far, she’d yet to be able to make anything new.

Me on the other hand...

“Alright you’ve had thirty minutes now,” I told Nai. “My turn.”

Nai gave a frustrated grunt and looked for something to kick toward the nearest pile of snow. The concrete lot around Demon’s Pit was pretty well plowed, so there weren’t even any chunks of snow on which for her to take out the sting of failure.

“You want to fight,” she stated.

“I want to be able to fight,” I corrected. “That feels like an important distinction.”

“Well, we’re not giving you a gun. Ase Serral wouldn’t approve,” Tasser said.

Nai and I both gave him a glance. Usually I was the only one who abbreviated his name like that.

“Isn’t that a bit pointless?” I asked. “I can make a bomb with my mind.”

“Yeah, like twice…” Nai muttered.

“Hey, I can make almost nine flashbangs in a day.” I had even tested it. I’d had very good reason to recently.

“They’re helpful,” she conceded, “and even if it’s inconsistent, that pressure bomb already puts you in the upper half of Adepts combat-wise.”

The surprise of that showed on my face, but Tasser quickly deflated me.

“Don’t…let that mislead you,” he said. “Most Adepts never hone combat creations. There are more stable and lucrative prospects for most Adepts than the military.”

“I need to be able to defend myself,” I said. “Or at least be able to learn on my own if you can’t teach me.”

“Well a gun isn’t what you need,” Nai insisted. “You’re Adept, that’s all the weapon you need to carry. Not to mention carrying a gun makes you more of a visible threat and target, even if you’re also Adept.”

“Do you know his aptitudes?” Tasser asked her.

“I think so, but I can’t be sure.”

“What are aptitudes?” I asked.

“Broad categories to measure Adept capabilities with. Knowing your aptitudes is the first step to knowing your own strengths and weaknesses. And those do tend to come up in fights.”

“Just a little bit, [yeah],” I agreed.

“There’s three comprehensive aptitudes that can be further subdivided for more specific applications and qualities, but we’ll stick to just the three for now,” Nai said. “They are: magnitude, range, and intricacy—sometimes also called precision.”

“Two and three seem fairly self-explanatory, but what exactly does ‘magnitude’ mean?” I asked.

“How much mass an Adept can bring forth, and how energetic that mass can be realized,” Tasser clarified. “High magnitude Adepts bring forth lots of material or very energetic materials.”

“And sometimes both,” Nai added. “Like me.”

“Energetic mass and lots of it,” I said. “That sure sounds like your Vorpal Fire.”

“You’re still calling it that?” she frowned.

“Of course,” I said. “I keep liking it more and more.”

Nai pinched her nose stressfully, “Just…tell him levels.”

“Aptitudes statistically fall into three levels,” Tasser said, not quite hiding the friendly smile. “Every Adept is at least level 1 in all three aptitudes, and there are virtually no Adepts who do not have at least one aptitude stuck in the L1. Even Nai.”

“Magnitude, range, and intricacy, and every Adept sucks with at least one of them?” I asked.

“Less than one in a million Adepts can achieve L2 in all three categories. Not one in a million people,” he clarified, “one in a million Adepts. And of those statistical rarities, not a single one of them crosses into the L3 range.”

I nodded, adding notes to my journal pages on Adept theory and powers. I was getting better at recording details in the journal without interrupting my focus on conversations.

“I’m almost positive your stuck category is magnitude,” Nai said. “You won’t be able to create very much mass.”

“How do you know?”

“Your fatigue when you manage those pressure blasts. It would be easier for you if you were capable of more magnitude. Even though there’s no chemistry, it still takes a lot of energy to materialize that thing because of how much tension they’re created under. That kind of energetic creation pushes you right up to your mass limit.”

“But it’s only a few grams of actual mass,” I said. “Why does creating that little material eat up so much of my mass limit?”

“Because it’s energetic mass,” Nai said. “Even if the material itself is chemically inert, you’re still creating it such that it immediately undergoes change to release the tension. What we call a ‘mass limit’ is an abbreviation of a longer phrase ‘mass-energy ratio limit’.”

“The more energetic the mass I try to create…”

“...the less of it you actually can,” Nai finished.

I could make a few kilograms of helium, but probably not much cesium metal.

“So if I’m stuck in L1 for magnitude, what are the odds my range and intricacy are better?”

“Statistically, not very,” Tasser said. “More than half of all Adepts don’t grow out of L1. But from what I’ve seen you do…”

“You’re almost certainly L2 in precision,” Nai said. “There’s a lot of range to each level, so it’s hard to say whether you’re higher or lower inside that L2 bracket.”

“He could be L2 in range too, he can make that flashbang from several meters,” Tasser remarked.

“He might get there,” Nai agreed, “but he’s not past the threshold yet.”

“What are the actual criteria for measuring these aptitudes?” I asked.

“Magnitude and intricacy have some very complicated math to them, but there’s some standardized simple materials you can learn to create and test with. Range is the easiest to measure, it’s just how far away from yourself you can materialize anything.”

“So you already mentioned Nai is L3 in magnitude, but that means one of her other aptitudes is stuck in L1 right?”

“Guess which,” Tasser said.

“Precision.” I said. It seemed the obvious choice.

They both nodded.

“I’m L3 in magnitude, L2 in range, and L1 in precision,” Nai said.

“If you have an L3 aptitude, does that always mean one of the others will be L2? Or are there some Adepts with L3 in one, and L1 in the other two?” I asked.

“Some L3s don’t have an L2 category, I couldn’t say exactly what portion of them though. Data is thin. Less than five percent of Adepts can break into the L3 bracket,” Nai said.

“You said ‘some L3s,’ like it was a noun,” I noted.

“Adepts are colloquially referred to by their strongest rating,” Tasser shared. “Nai here gets called an L3 because she has an aptitude that reaches that high. An L1 is someone with all three aptitudes stuck low. They constitute more than half of all Adepts and they are all still dangerous enough to kill you.”

Nai nodded, “The practical usage of this knowledge is so you can begin to learn what you can or can’t expect from a given Adept.”

“It’s not going to be only Adepts trying to fight me,” I pointed out.

“True, but you already have a massive advantage over them. Any Adept does. Even armed Vorak are going to hesitate to fight any Adept when they could just call for their own Adept reinforcements,” Nai said.

“I’m trying to get a better sense of what the difference between each level is for each aptitude,” I said. “Especially for precision, what does an L3 look like?”

“[Trapper],” Tasser said without hesitating.

Nai only looked confused. “Who?”

“The second Adept we fought,” I said. “The one whose truck we stole at that mountain facility.”

Nai nodded, “I wasn’t cogent for most of that, but I remember seeing some of those discs. Tasser is right. Those things could deploy themselves: they were auto-locomotive and both mechanically and chemically complex. They were L3 for sure, probably new to it too.”

“What do you mean?”

“There’s two ways to find yourself at a high level, you either worked to improve yourself and practice the underlying principles supporting the category, or your Adeptry first activated at that level,”

“You think [Trapper] had only recently activated his powers?” I asked.

“They would have killed us all if they’d known what they were doing,” Tasser said gravely. “They were inexperienced, maybe even resorting to a new creation they weren't familiar enough with.”

“Which are you then, Nai? Were you an L3 from the start? Or did you work up to it?” I asked.

“A bit of both,” she said. “I activated in the 2-1-1 bracket. But I could make my ‘vorpal fire’ from the start. It was the first thing I ever materialized.”

“Magnitude 2, range 1, and precision 1?” I asked.

She nodded. “It’s the standard reference form. You’re either 1-1-1 or 1-1-2 right now, hard to say without proper testing. If you want to improve, we need to get more aggressive about making you a plan.”

“Well, I defer to your expertise. What’s going to keep me alive?” I asked.

“Magnitude,” Nai answered. “You can only make a kilogram or two right now. That’s low, even inside the L1 bracket, and it’s going to severely limit your options. Even if you’re stuck in L1 for mass, you still want to try and push yourself toward the top of the bracket. There is no situation where having more mass to work with will hurt you.”

“It doesn’t seem like a coincidence that you’re L1 in precision and don’t seem to be able to make new psionics, whereas I…”

She nodded, “It’s not lost on me, but it’s too soon to make assumptions right now. It could just as easily be a human thing rather than an aptitude thing.”

“Does me being human matter?” I asked.

“Almost certainly. We’ve only ever had Vorak and Farnata Adepts to compare before, but even with just the two sample groups there’s noticeably different trends between the things Farnata Adepts create and Vorak ones.”

She waved her hand dismissively to cut off my next question, “I’ll find some reading for you, but we leave in a few days so we’re on the clock. Get practicing.”

“Anything in particular I should make?”

“Not really. Just keep the material short-lived, and push your mass limit as much and as quickly as you can. Over and over again if you can help it. If you think something is wrong, say something immediately. Adepts are dangerous even to themselves, so while I say push at your limit, be wary too.”

I immediately tried to make one of the kinetic explosions I’d caught Chief with, and to my delight, I managed to create a halfway decent one on the third try. By the fifth, it felt like I was going to keel over on the concrete.

Nai let me take a short rest, but not ten minutes later she had me resume. I pushed for two hours straight trying to keep creating mass and I quickly realized why Nai had said to keep the material short-lived.

It wasn’t just to minimize the chance of it sticking around long enough to harm us unexpectedly, it was also to force me to create material over and over. Once I’d made the material, it wasn’t very difficult by comparison to keep it around.

I couldn’t hold it forever, but having to rematerialize repeatedly was hellish work.

Progress was quick though. She forced me to put in at least two hours, twice a day, every day until the day the mission to Cordani province was slated to leave.

Put under an intense pace, though, and rapid progress was almost inevitable.

I went to bed feeling like my blood was on fire. When I woke up my joints were strongly insisting I simply curl up and die.

But when the day arrived, I could make a quarterstaff out of thin air, and still materialize another five kilograms for other purposes. Nai thought being limited to just under seven kilograms was a critical weakness, but in just a few days I’d more than doubled how much I could materialize.

And most importantly, I could consistently make one of my kinetic explosions on the first try.