As soon as they'd gotten far enough away, Rika burst out laughing.

"Huh?"

"He thought someone was stealing his food and stalking him. Badass mercenary with a killer sidekick, and he's scared to death of a twelve year old's pet cat!" Rika choked back her laughter.

Alden laughed too, more nervously than of any actual mirth. "So what do we do now?"

"Well, we've got a whole day ahead of us with not much to do. What's on your mind?"

Alden looked down at his hands. In the last day, they had become a conduit to so much more than he had ever imagined. He was excited simply thinking of the possibilities that had opened up for him. Visions danced through his mind of fire swirling around his fingertips, electricity crackling through his hands like Rika's, or sending everyday objects twirling around in space at will.

Rika saw where he was looking and grinned. "More magic, eh?"

Without too much difficulty, they found a wide enough space in the thick forest where they had room to move around more freely. Rika immediately set to reminding him of the basics. How to find that new part of his mind and take hold of it, and how to send it out into the flow of energy. She made it sound so simple, but for Alden it was a mind-twisting exercise that gave him a headache just to consider. Only when he was actually relaxed and connected, so to speak, did he find himself able to enact any sort of spell.

"Does it get easier?" he asked with stars dancing in his vision. Alden was sitting against a tree with a pounding headache after trying to set a single leaf on fire. He'd managed a tiny puff of smoke, but the leaf stubbornly refused to catch.

Rika shrugged. "For some people, yeah. But maybe you just aren't meant to do Elemental magic. It happens."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean you might be deficient." Alden winced. "What?" Rika didn't look like she understood what she'd just said.

"That word means something else… err, nevermind. Anyway. Is this like you and Creation magic?"

Rika paused. "How did you know?"

"I saw you react when Rachel announced it, and how you haven't been interested in the Scrap since then. You can't do that kind of magic, can you?"

"No," Rika sighed. "I mean, most people can't do much in it anyway. Creation takes a hell of a lot of energy to maintain. When I've seen someone else try though, they usually get some kind of result. Nothing useful, but it's still a result. For me it's like running my face into a brick wall. I could try as many times as I like, it's never going down, and the harder I try the more it fucks me up."

"So you think that might be me and Elemental magic?" Alden asked.

"Nah. You can at least get some results. You probably won't ever do as much as I can, but if you practice hard enough you should get something workable out of it." Rika gestured at him to stand. "Come on, keep at it."

Alden pulled himself to his feet and on they went. They continued for hours, stopping only to eat from a full meal Rika had packed away inside her bag. Alden found that if he switched between multiple types of magic, falling back to his own affinity every so often, he was more relaxed. Pushing and grabbing things mentally was comfortable to him. Trying to manipulate and create elements, or trying to strengthen his limbs, or even just attempting to change the color of a strand of hair—every other branch of magic left him winded and weak. Rika assured him it would eventually pass, but Alden didn't feel like he was making progress.

He was just reducing how much it hurt.

Still, every time he hurled a twig across the clearing in frustration he regained his enthusiasm. At the end of the day, it was still magic. Nothing could take that brilliant giddy realization away.

Without telling Rika, Alden began to experiment more with the magic. He wanted to be able to do more than just push random objects around, as it seemed like such a simple view of what was potentially an entire branch of magic. There had to be more to movement than just that. If this was his affinity, Alden was determined to make sure it wasn't a waste of a field.

His first experiments were on himself. Rika (and his own efforts) had made it quite clear that Mason's Law—whatever it might say—held true; Alden was no more able to affect Rika than he was the rotation of the planet itself. However, the limitation seemed not to apply to his own body. Alden thus turned the magic around. With a bit of focus and timing, he found he could fling his hand forward mentally, which created a curious sensation. He obviously wasn't propelling the limb forward himself, as the force was applied from outside his muscles, but it didn't feel as though he were being dragged forward either.

Rather, it felt as though the entire limb simply traversed space naturally. Alden still felt a pull as the region he wasn't affecting was dragged along for the ride, but he assumed he could mitigate that once he figured out how to balance out the effects. In his mind's eye, Alden could see himself hurling his entire body across massive gaps with ease, launched only through the efforts of his own mind.

The end of the day came swiftly. Alden hadn't realized how much time they'd spent out there, between light conversation whenever they took a break from endless practice at magic. Soon enough the sun was dipping low in the sky once more. As the dark crept in, Rika finally called a halt.

It wasn't a moment too soon for Alden. He'd staved off the exhaustion as long as he could—not wanting to seem weak or lazy in front of Rika—but his limbs were sore beyond his wildest imagination from his attempts to pull them free from their sockets. Alden wanted to impress her. Somewhere in the recesses of his mind, he entertained the fantasy that if he could reach her level, she'd be more interested in him. So far, Rika had barely asked anything personal of him. He felt like she was only keeping him around because of the strange coincidences she'd mentioned before.

Now, collapsed under a tree like a puppet with its strings cut, Alden felt his face heating up as Rika towered over him. He started to look away, but she offered a hand to him.

"No, it's okay—"

Rika laughed. "Relax, Alzack. You're not the first person to be completely wiped out by a day of spellcasting. Come on, let's get you somewhere more comfortable."

Alden hesitated, but reached up and grasped her offered hand firmly. Despite his best efforts, he still recoiled briefly at the surge of electricity that rolled through him at their contact. Rika was prepared and didn't let go, pulling him to his feet.

A moment later he collapsed again. His legs were like jelly, refusing to support a single ounce.

"Jesus, how dead are you?" Rika grumbled. Without warning, she hoisted him up, flinging her bag around her back to hold him more securely. Alden felt the tickle of lightning across his entire body, but Rika seemed to be suppressing it more to keep him comfortable. "Let this be a lesson: don't fucking do magic on your own."

"Thanks," Alden breathed, feeling winded between the exhaustion and the vague excitement of being so close to her.

"Don't mention it." Rika set off. Alden was surprised at how well she managed to carry him while still pounding her way through the forest undergrowth. It wasn't as thick as it had been near Viper's camp, but even so, she made steady progress despite the added weight.

"Are you doing anything to be able to hold me up?" Alden guessed.

"What? Oh, no. I'm allergic to that kind of magic, remember?" Rika grunted, and the effort she was putting in to maintain her balance over the moss and roots was plain on her face. "This is compliments of my workout routine and your skinny ass."

"Oh, right," Alden said. "What do you mean by allergic?"

"I mean I can't do any Self magic, and if someone else is using it nearby I get the sniffles."

"I thought you couldn't do Creation magic."

"I'm lucky enough to lose two branches of magic, not just the one," Rika answered with a hint of bitterness. Meanwhile, a faint light from inside her bag accompanied the clear buzz of a vibrating phone. "Can you reach that for me? Looks like we just got bars again."

Alden awkwardly reached around her side and plucked her phone out from her bag. To his surprise, it wasn't locked. He thumbed through to find a long string of unread messages.

"Rachel's been texting you all day. Something about an emergency meeting, then asking you to call her and where you are a half-dozen times," Alden reported.

Rika snorted. "And now she needs my help. Fuck her."

"What happened between you two?" Alden asked. Rika glanced at him in surprise before continuing on their trek.

"I'll let you chalk that one up to exhaustion, but just know that there's a lot of dirty history between me and that entire group," Rika said, eyes narrowed on the path. She flicked a finger near Alden's head and sent a small burst of flame out in front of them to light up a particularly thick patch ahead. "Rachel and I were best friends, then I did some awful things to some of her supposed followers and she was forced to choose between her precious Council and her ambitions, or her best friend."

"And she chose them."

"Yup," she grunted.

"But you said you saved them, didn't you?"

"Because I'm not a dick, and when push came to shove they're still people I care about," Rika said, stepping easily over a trickling stream across the rock bed. They were at the edge of the forest now. "Before I went home to B.C., there was a fight. A group of people who didn't like the Council system or how we were running things. Rachel sucks at magic, and the others at the time hadn't really figured out how to fight. I was the only one who'd focused on combat, so I had to bail them out." Rika spat on the dirt, her eyes flashing with anger. "Bitch still told me to leave the country after that. They threatened to get the police involved since I was here illegally."

"Are you still?" Alden asked.

"Nah. Legal temp visa now. They can't hold that one over me anymore. Still can't hold a job or property or shit, but I am now allowed to step on the fucking streets without worrying about being booted back to Boring Country."

"Still," Alden said, glancing at the phone again. "Maybe it's something important."

"Or maybe she got herself in way over her head as usual and needs me to bail her out," Rika sighed. "It's late and I'm tired. Rachel can wait 'til tomorrow. She'd have called if it were that dire."

"I guess so," Alden said, dropping the phone back into her bag.

"You good to walk yet?" Rika asked. Alden frowned before remembering to hide it, and Rika—damn her—caught the expression. "All right, I get it."

"No, it's oka—"

"We're almost there anyway. I wouldn't want to ruin your last few moments of happiness." Rika adjusted her grip, and her skin made contact with Alden's, sending a further jolt of electricity coursing through his veins. It had slowly shifted from unsettling to invigorating with every touch. Whatever he might have tried to intimate, Alden certainly didn't feel like leaving her arms. For the moment, he felt like the luckiest teenager in the world.

His eyes slid closed while the world thumped away with the rhythm of Rika's footfalls on the pavement. It was only when the sunrise began peeking through the curtains in the bare bedroom of the empty apartment that Alden realized he'd actually fallen asleep.