The two women just looked at me with a lost expression.

The shock was enough that Gehne’s rage had almost completely subsided, and even Valeri’s exhaustion seemed to leave her expression while she stared on in bewilderment.

Well, I guess if anything was going to knock someone’s pants off, it was going to be told that they’ve involuntarily been admitted to training in an art of movement that lead to shifting. They might not understand what the Sharah was, or what kind of shifting it actually enacted, but both of the women knew well enough that I was capable of quite a few things—and I was offering to teach them.

“The Sharah,” I began, pacing back and forth in front of the two women with a mock officiality, “is an art of movement created by the Sharah’hin people of Orisis. Unfortunately, I don’t know much of the history of it, but I do know that they place a massive importance on it and the correct way for someone to learn and perform it.”

“Uh,” Valeri stammered out intelligently, “is that going to be an issue? Wouldn’t there be some sort of… procedure for this?” Her question turned out the be markedly more intelligent than I was honestly expecting. Valeri would be one to know about tradition and procedure, I suppose, with all that political training she had no doubt received in her youth.

“Of course there is!” I exclaimed happily, spreading my unoccupied arm wide with a grin emblazoned across my face, “But I wouldn’t care about it either way. I am a blasphemer to the Sharah’hin, so that boat has already sailed.”

Both of the girls looked towards each other anxiously, then back to me with wide eyes.

There was a reason why the religious presence in Crossroads was low, and it wasn’t just from a general apathy to the concept or it being viewed as something deeply personal. It was more than just that, it was an issue of conflict.

See, when a community like Crossroads appears, with being a veritable melting pot for a handful of races and cultures, where most of its inhabitants hadn’t been born there, you get lots of tension. Lots and lots of tension.

Religion wasn’t just taboo because people didn’t care for the Gods, like Gehne had seemed to believe long ago. Maybe she had believed so because that was true for herself. But instead, it was a cautionary tactic to reduce the likelihood of a religiously fuelled rift to appear. Crossroads already had a race rift, and a wealth rift. Adding a religious motivator to the mix would be absolutely disastrous on so many levels it was almost terrifying.

Hence why I hadn’t just walked around and sang to the high heavens that I was an icon of the Hearth Court, though that was a stupid idea all on its own. I hadn’t tried to make contact with any enclave of Hearth devotees for that reason as well. My interests, at least in this case, needed to be entirely secular otherwise a great majority would simply see this entire ploy as nothing more than an invasion of a Hearth cult—if such a thing existed.

So that was why they looked at me with such worry, even if they didn’t know the exact reason themselves. They were worried about the backlash even learning the art would bring upon themselves and, possibly, wherever they settled in future.

“What?” I said, my tone holding a derisive mockery, “That’s all that it takes to scare you off?”

Gehne’s slitted nostrils flared with indignance, lending a vaguely dragon-like impression to her face, “Scare us? You are telling us that we’ll make an enemy of a group of people who can do something close to what you can!”

“I have to agree, Maximilian. We can’t just make random enemies without knowing who they are.” Valeri joined in, both women seeming to find a comradery between themselves to rally against the injustice that I posed. Though I just laughed, long and hard, the tone deliberately offensive to their ears.

“I love that you think you can gain any power at all without making any enemies.” I cocked an eyebrow, giving them a toothy grin, dialling up the villainy, “You want power? It has to come from somewhere. Someone’s time, someone’s money, someone’s technique, someone’s life.”

I looked heavily from woman to woman, my eyes connecting with their own with a precise confidence, something that likely came off as arrogance. They sent back their own glares, but they were weak in comparison to the tidal wave that I represented. They couldn’t exactly fight something they so badly wanted to embrace, after all.

“Sure, you’re going to royally piss off a group of really old, likely extraordinarily powerful race of people on Orisis by learning this from me. Maybe one day, you might actually get the honour of meeting one of the race that we’re stealing from for our own benefit, but unless you’re interested in finding a way to jump to Orisis, then I think we’re pretty safe.” I looked between the two as their expressions of indignance crumbled into just your run-of-the-mill unease. Unease with a side of a blood feud of sorts.

“Okay.” Valeri said, first to break the silence and playing into my hand, “Alright… so we’ll be learning this Sharah? The weird dance you do, right?” Gehne whipped her highly mobile head around to the woman, shooting her a scandalized look, before Valeri just rolled her eyes at the woman.

“Weird dance?” I said with mock mortification, “I’ll have you know there is thousands of years of history behind this ‘weird dance’!”

“Is there really?” Gehne said flatly, regaining a healthy amount of her anger from earlier.

“No idea. Maybe.” I shrugged nonchalantly, “But what I do know is that it’s a little more than a weird dance. It’s an entire lifestyle, story, language, and journey, all told in movement.”

It was then that the mood took a change towards the serious. All it took was one step for me to make the concept suddenly real for the two women, standing by the wayside. I removed my hammer from the equation, pulling it easily back within me and relieving my body from the immense strain from even holding the thing.

It was just one step that I took before I transported all three of us to a new world altogether.

I began the sequence of movements that I had once so desperately tried to imitate alongside Mayer’s own performance of what was a never-ending, ever-evolving pattern of movement.

Not once would this pattern repeat in it’s entirely; the minutia of each movement was simply to complex to ever need to repeat. Long ago, I would have had no choice, as not only was my teacher not truly proficient enough to perform it to even the pattern’s base potential, but I wasn’t exactly the brightest star either.

Even I, as I stepped forward into that first movement, understood that I was not enough. Not truly. It was humbling, to take that first step on the path that the Sharah lays before me, one that I had almost forgot existed.

The next step came, and then the one after that as well. Along with the wind, the earth, each muscle in my body breathed and soared, synchronised to their invisible thrums of power. It wasn’t borrowing from those powers, simply following the lines that they draw through the world itself—with bursts of power from other, lesser forces that only yet again added another factor to the Sharah’s infinite fractal of movement.

The Sharah was not just a technique of movement, nor a method of shifting, nor a pseudo religion either. It was an approach and a mirror to life, at its basest form; being both the path, and the steps that walk it, all at once. Each step was simply a reaction to the forces that underly it all, something that sat as the intermedium between the Divinity that lorded over those aspects of the world, and the ether that allowed for those to pull on that power, a trade between mortal and Divine made in power and faith.

I performed the steps, each coming as easily the last, as if the world itself was supplying me with my movements rather than pulling on them from the instinct that I’d built over a thousand, possibly thousands of hours of focused training.

I didn’t even have to know what the two girls were doing, where my total lack of further communication would suffice for their standing orders.

As far as I was aware, this was the way that the Sharah was taught to the Sharah’hin, and how Mayer had haphazardly taught it to me. The only reason I had ever bothered to abridge the Sharah was because Mayer hadn’t been able to train me literally twenty-four hours a day.

The two girls, however, could never hope to pull off something so ludicrous. Though just by being here Valeri was likely going to end up spending about one and a half days awake. She was Blessed though, so she’ll survive. I probably wouldn’t make Gehne do the same thing.

After that, I really didn’t check exactly how long I was spending on the esoteric movements, enjoying the rare look that I could get at the underlying principles that the Sharah worked from. I have no idea how someone found out that you could do this, but it was undeniable. I also have no idea what any of it really meant, past an instinctual understanding and a vague intellectual one.

The whole ‘forces of the world’ thing was a little over my head at the moment, even though it was rapturous to behold the way that they moved and interacted. What did make more sense was how the Sharah related to that.

Long story short, the natural movements of the Sharah were just movements that allowed me to follow with the flow of those forces. The ‘language’ and ‘sentences’ of the Sharah that I used were derivatives of that. They were little flourishes that I could add to the movements I already walked, calling on the remnants of energy that the shifting tectonic plates of power created.

It was its own friction, and it was what allowed me to so easily manipulate kinetic energy with the Sharah. I didn’t understand it, and I’m not sure that I ever would, really. It was a little far out of my ballpark, and just because I was using it, didn’t mean I necessarily needed to understand it to get the most out of it.

I started to wind down my movements, however, despite the subtle amounts I was learning from performing the Sharah in what I believe was the intended way. I can see why the Sharah’hin might take offense to someone abridging it from that, but the abridging gave power, even if you had to push back against and possibly leave the intended path for a moment at a time.

I didn’t actually slow my movements, or the complexity of them at all, but I was winding down nonetheless. It reminded me of the days, long ago, when I’d so fervently tried to catch up to Mayer in his performance of the Sharah, a performance that I’d even once believed was perfect.

Now, I knew better, as the subtle language whispered softly of the inevitable end to my movement. Not all could hear the language of movement, Mayer couldn’t for one, and if Mayer wasn’t really capable of it, then it was probably pretty rare that you could. However, I had a feeling that the two women would be able to hear it, if only slightly.

It was maybe another hour before my foot finally planted itself on the earth for the last time, softly breaking the other world that I’d sent myself and my students to. I just let myself breathe for a moment afterwards, though I definitely didn’t need the recovery, but I felt as if it warranted a moment of reflective silence.

The moment passed and I looked up and around me, quickly finding the two women standing adjacent to me and breathing heavily, their bodies weak and brittle from the hours and hours of training. It was late afternoon at least, now, and both of the women were as broken by the physical strain of it as they could be.

But in them, I saw that spark. It was the same little feeling that I’d once felt when I had realised that the Sharah was more, and that learning it would be nothing but extremely beneficial. I grinned softly, letting the abrasive façade from earlier slip away in favour of my most genuine emotions.

“How was that?” I asked, and both Valeri and Gehne’s heads tilted up dramatically to meet my eyes, their mouths dropping agape ever so slightly. They stood in silence, unable to find what they wanted to say, thought that silence broke after I began to brush myself off from the small amounts of dirt that had been kicked up and clung the leg of my pants.

“I—” Valeri began, though stopping herself mid word and grimacing, “I don’t know, sir? I saw things; when you were moving… but I don’t understand it at all.” She said, her tone proper and put together, referencing me in the most official way she could manage with the rapture I’d delt her. At least it wasn’t the strange, anxious speech that she’d tried to reference me in at the beginning of the day.

“Is that what shifting is like?” Gehne almost whispered, echoing the same sentiment as her sister-in-training.

“No, not really.” I said easily, “That was a special occasion, a specific pattern that allows us to follow the Sharah’s path of least resistance. It is both easy and immensely difficult.” I looked down to the dirt at their feel, searching the worn patch of bare dirt where I could see their every movement like a faded letter written in the handwriting of a very young child.

“You both did better than I expected,” I intoned warmly, giving them a smile that more than just reached my eyes, “soon you will be able to learn to shift like I can, to some extent. With dedication that you showed by staying here and continuing training despite your tiredness, I’m sure that you will be able to reach my level in only a decade, maybe less.”

They grimaced at the time period I gave them. It was the brutal reality of it, and it ripped them from the sense of empowerment and improvement that the Sharah gave you, whispering in your ear the power that you could possess for practicing only a moment more.

But not everyone could be like me. Or Rethi, for that matter, who would definitely be able to shift using the Sharah if he wanted to train himself to do so. But Rethi had his blade, and only used the Sharah’s movements to bolster his own ability, rather than dedicate himself to it the way I had. These two women didn’t have any other choices, they were stuck with the Sharah as the shifting and combat technique that they had access to.

Valeri may have access to earth shifting, if I remember correctly from our talk so long ago, but her shifting wouldn’t have been good enough to pull off the feat that she had earlier today. Lifting my hammer was an almost impossible task, and even though she was a Blessed of Might, it was still beyond impressive.

But it had really been her Goddess who had done all the work, and she knew it. Her Goddess was just waiting for Valeri to call upon her power in truth, and when she had, she made sure that she made herself known. Something that I can see mirrored in Rethi’s connection with Hindle and, possibly, the God of the Sun who had once forged it from their power.

Though Rethi’s connection was far more… worrying than Valeri’s own.

I looked back to the two women after my praise, both of them too tired to do much else than nod at my light praise. “Both of you, rest. We will continue tomorrow night, as the sky gets dark. It will not be as involved as today. Until then…” I looked upwards towards the sky in thought, trying to decide what to do, before coming to somewhat of a conclusion, “I need to go have a chat with someone.”

And finally, with a warm smile that I knew confused the both of them from my very hateable persona earlier, I started to leave. “Rest well, both of you. And prepare yourself for the road you’ll need to travel henceforth.”