Willem closed his eyes, trying to shut out the noises around him as he reached for the mahji inside of himself. It was like trying to grasp silk, like trying to close a grip around water. Yet he tried to remember that feeling when he had been channeling the mahji, that empty peace inside of him. He tried to remember that slow heartbeat, that gentle pulse of the world around him. With a slow breath in, he tried once more to grasp the mahji inside of him, and this time he caught it.

A sudden surge of nervousness rode on the wave of accomplishment that filled him, yet he forced himself to remain calm. The unsettling emotion threatened to knock off balance the desperate sense of stability that he had worked so hard to achieve. Fighting it back, he pulled the ribbons of mahji up through his limbs. It was a delicate, careful process, but he managed to feel their pulsing warmth gathered in his fingertips. Now for the hard part, he thought to himself.

With a careful nudge, he pushed the mahji out of his fingers and into the air around him. Willem shaped the ribbons, feeling them curl around each other in an instinctive motion. Then he pushed them out towards the ground, stirring the air around him. The wind picked up pace, stirring from a gentle breeze into something more resembling a gale. Faster and faster, he pushed the mahji, and its strength in turn further incited the air.

The air above his open, outstretched palm continued to spin ever faster, and he could feel the weight of the pebble that he held there grow lighter. From a rock to a feather to nothing at all, it became more and more weightless as the winds spun even faster, until finally he dared to open his eyes. He saw the rock floating on a cushion of air, the winds crackling with purple magic. His muscles were tight, not even daring to breathe as he tried to hold it there with willpower. Yet the wave of exhaustion and pride that built up inside of him could not be dampened, and finally he felt the thin stream of mahji inside of him become interrupted.

The ribbon became cut, the magic inside of him abruptly slipping out of his grasp once more like sand. The air immediately stopped its motion, the pebble plummeting into his palm in an instant. Willem fell back onto the ground, breathing hard and his heart racing with exertion. His throat bobbed as he gasped for air, his mouth dry and his skin slick with sweat. Even though he had been calm during the channeling, he always ended up exhausted at the end.

Yet even through his desperate gasps for breath, he could still hear the sounds of feet walking towards him, rustling the grass. He turned his head, surprised to see one of the human soldiers nervously approaching. The man seemed rather young, his face still boyish and his arms too thin. Yet that thought was immediately met with another—I’m even younger than him, Willem realized abruptly. He could not fight the sudden smile that snuck onto his face, and it seemed to startle the legionary.

“Yes?” Willem grunted out as he sat up, his body groaning in protest. He ignored his whining muscles, throwing the crow-cursed pebble off into the distance with mild frustration.

‘A-are you the channeler?” the boy stammered out, only to blush furiously as he realized what he had just asked. He had seen Willem practicing with the pebble, had seen the purple mahji trickling from his claws. What was he if not a channeler?

The soldier extended his right arm, which he had been cradling gently all this time. Willem noticed with shock that the limb was broken, bent at an odd angle and swollen in the middle of his forearm. The soldier’s forehead was slick with sweat from the pain, and his cheeks were flush with blood.

“We were working on the c-catapults, an’ one of the ropes snapped.“ he explained nervously. “Sent a block of wood flying at my head, and I caught it with my arm instead.” He gave a hoarse little laugh at that, before swallowing hard. “I had—I’d heard that channelers can heal people, with magic. I was hoping… “

Willem paused for a moment before shaking his head. “I’m not Me’jai.” he explained to the crestfallen soldier. “None of us here are Me’jai. But I can still help.” He got up with a grunt of effort, making his way over to the soldier and holding the broken limb gently with his claws. The break seemed clean enough, a smooth fracture, and it would be relatively simple to set. Growing up on the streets in Mea Vatal, dealing with broken limbs was one of the first things he learned. Too many nights running in the dark alleyways, only to slip and catch a bar to the shin.

Pushing the nostalgic memory aside, he closed his eyes once more and tried to reach into the pit of his stomach. He could feel the mahji churning inside of him, still unsettled from his previous exercise, and he reached for one of the strands. At the same time as he tried to grasp the mahji, he felt outwards with his mind. He reached out towards the other consciousnesses near him, feeling the soldier’s mind right next to him. He felt the swirl of emotions, like so many colored threads that clung together, intertwined. He saw the fear, saw the anger, saw the sadness, saw the curiosity. And he saw the pain—that pulsing, throbbing vein that punched through the soldier’s thoughts like a spear.

Willem reached out towards the pain, his own consciousness gently nudging aside the other threads to isolate that one sensation. With his mahji in his limbs, he sent it out of his fingers and into the legionary, those purple ribbons sinking into the man’s flesh like so many worms. Willem guided them, steered them through muscle and bone as they made their way through the soldier’s body. Up through the chest, around the heart, the magic burrowed. Up past the neck, through the throat, and Willem struggled not to lose control of the mahji in the other man’s body. The soldier was nervous, confused, and his own fidgeting threatened to tear the magic out of Willem’s grasp as well.

Willem fought it all, concentrated and pushed with his will through all the distractions. Higher still, and the mahji finally found its way into the soldier’s mind. Willem allowed himself to relax ever slightly as he bound those ribbons around that feeling of pain. The magic sunk into the emotion, sunk into the thought, and slowly is pulsing abated. The thread of pain shrank, loosened, fell away from the center as if became subdued by mahji, and Willem heard the legionary’s audible sigh of relief.

Opening his eyes, Willem felt for the break in the limb. The soldier was numbed to the pain by magic, unable to feel even as Willem pressed on the arm and reset the bones. Then, tearing a length of cloth from the man’s shirt, he tightly bound the limb in the hopes of keeping it from moving. Only then did he allow the magic to slip out of his grasp, falling back with a gasp as the exhaustion fell over him once again.

The soldier looked at him in amazement, gently prodding his own arm as if the limb were some alien creature. The dulling of sensation would last for hours until the mahji was used up, but it was a mere anaesthetic—it did not prevent further damage, it merely numbed the man to it.

“Don’t touch that limb, or break it any further.” Willem gasped out as the soldier started in surprise. “Let it heal naturally. It’ll hurt like hell in a day, but it’ll be fine if you don’t move it.”

“T-thank you.” the man stammered out, offering a quick salute with the wrong hand. His eyes were filled with a mixture of fear and gratitude, the emotions conflicting as he turned to leave. Strange, Willem thought as he saw the man’s disappearing figure. He reminds me of someone. It took the demon a moment before he finally remembered who.

It’s me, he realized with a smile. He’s me when I first found my magic, confused and scared and amazed. How far had he truly come from that nervous child, from that scared street rat begging on the corner? How long ago had he worn that leper’s mask, too hungry to be afraid of the future? But now he was no longer hungry, and now he was afraid. Eyeing his own shadow with a hint of suspicion, he fell down onto the grass with exhaustion.

Am I really any different? The thought came unbidden. I’m still just fighting to live. I’m still just a weak child. Yet the answer came as well. I’m not just fighting for myself. And I’m no longer as weak as I used to be.

Picking up a pebble, frustration and tiredness gave way to determination. Now to make this stupid thing float.