There was a smattering of cheers as we set off from the center of far Reach the following morning.

It wasn’t exactly the smoothest of flights as we made our way toward our training area. Sania in particular bobbed up and down as she alternated between meridians, and I sort of kept pace with her. Even so, when I looked over at her, she was grinning so wide I thought her face would split.

“Morale, huh?” Sure you didn’t just want to show off in front of your mother?”

“And Grigor, Feen and Kuhn,” she shouted back. The grin never leaving her face. “They might be Woltar, but they can’t fly!” She said with a whoop and somehow put on a small burst of speed.

I caught her easily, grinning myself with the thrill of what we’d achieved. When we landed back in our clearing, we each received a notification, with Sania reaching flight Level 3 and I hit level four from our consistent flight here. There was still a long way to go to match the flight of others I’d seen, but it was a start.

“More flight training today?” I asked.

Sania shook her head. “No, I’m satisfied with what we’ve learned. We can continue practicing flight when we travel. Now we should practice attacking. I will learn everything you know as quickly as possible. I feel like I am slowing you down.”

“Oh, God no. The opposite if anything. Being able to think and talk things through with you is making me far more competent. So much so, I’d actually say I can fly today. I’m also inspired and fucking amazed at how quickly you're picking this up. Remember, no one is supposed to be even able to use Neuma in its raw form like this. Not intuitively, at least. Being trained by Hakan seems to be a deal breaker from what I can tell.”

“I think you're forgetting. I’ve been a student of you and Natom. That has to count for something. Though honestly, I think it’s the soul bond. Since we created the Soul Mate bond, I feel like I have far more control of my Neuma, if that makes any sense? It’s as if I’m getting clarity from you.”

“I wonder how much we can actually do with the Soul Mate bond, if that is the case. But just like everything else, we’ll have to work it out along the way ourselves.”

“And we will, but first, I want to learn how to coat my claws like you do your fist. It may give me something similar to the Woltar’s Claws of Rending Salvation.”

“Have I ever told you how competitive you are, Sania.”

“No,” she said in a low throaty growl, “But I told you how ambitious I was, and my ambitions extend to you. So teach me quickly so we can learn other things.”

I felt a warm tingling sensation at her words. “Absolutely. And I know exactly want I want to try next. It’s in a similar vein.”

“What?” she asked hungrily.

“I want to shoot balls of Neuma.”

She took on a feral expression, her eyes flaring alive with eagerness. “I’ve changed my mind. We start with that!”

“I feel like they might be a similar thing, so let’s train you, and while you practice, I’ll work on what would be needed. It can’t be that hard, right? I mean it seems nearly everyone who can use power can shoot a friggin Neuma ball of some kind.”

Once Sania was set away attempting to coat her hand with power, I focused on pooling Neuma in my hand. It did as I wanted with relative ease, immediately forming into a small ball. Excitement got the better of me and I tried to throw it at a rocky outcropping a few feet away. The ball remained where it was, attached to my hand.

By the time Sania had finally coated her hand in Neuma, demonstrated by punching my rocky target and splintering portion of the rock away, I still hadn’t managed to get the ball to leave my hand.

I talked her through how I’d achieved the ball, and we spent the entire day trying to throw it, project it, shoot it out on a Neuma tendril. Nothing worked as I’d imagined it would work and as our first attempt at something completely new, it felt like a complete and utter failure.

That night in our bedroom we barely spoke as we both spent our time focusing on our own little balls of Neuma. I didn’t know if I would have continued after the failures of the day, to continue pushing myself so hard. Even with the threat of impending Natom. But again, Sania’s determination, kept me focused. As the tiredness began to overwhelm me, it brought an air of deliriousness with it, which altered how I was viewing the problem.

Why could I see the energy when Natom produced one? Or Elsbeth’s Flames of Devotion? Or Grimstrom’s? I was tempted to find the dwarf and ask, but opted to wait until the morning and instead discussed it with Sania.

“Do you think they somehow make the tip of their Neuma tendrils into a visible ball before pushing it out with Neuma?” Sania, startled from her concentration as I spoke. Once she’d processed my words, she rubbed at her temples tiredly.

“It can’t be a tendril, though, can it? The balls I’ve seen fly as if disconnected. We need to work out how to make it visible and how to disconnect it. ”

I nodded thoughtfully. “Perhaps they’re one and the same thing. Whatever is done to make the power visible is what disconnects it. I’m going to give a couple of tempts purely to making it visible, then I’m done. I can barely keep my eyes open.”

“Me too,” she agreed. Then, with a tired but cheeky smile, added. “I’ll race you.”

Despite being shattered, my own competitive side blossomed up.

“You’re on,” I grinned back. Delving into a meditative state.

I let the Neuma flood my hand as usual, forming a ball, which I held in place. From my recollection, when making a fireball, the paladins seemed to always spend a second or sometimes a hell of a lot longer letting them build in power, which I assumed meant they were feeding them. I’d already made a massive ball of Nuema that remained invisible and connected to me. That wasn’t the answer.

Building another ball, to about the size of a baseball. I took a moment to focus on it remaining that size. While simultaneously trying to push more energy into the orb.

It took tremendous strain on my mind, but ever so slowly I felt my Neuma begin to condense within the confines of the shape. It happened so excruciatingly slowly that it was hard to judge if I was achieving anything at all.

Sania’s sudden gasp distracted me, and I released my hold on the Neuma. To my surprise, the Neuma didn’t snap back into my core as it normally did. Holding its shape and position in my palm.

“Clive! You’re amazing! You did it!”

“You can see it?” I exclaimed.

“Yes, of course I can. It’s amazing.”

She moved closer and we both gazed at the small ball in my hand, marvelling at it. “How did you do it?” she practically whispered.

“More importantly, what the hell am I going to do with it now?” I felt a little flare of panic, as I held what was essentially a Neuma bomb in my hand in the middle of our bedroom. “We have no idea how powerful it will even be.”

“Can you reabsorb it?”

I focused on the ball to try her suggestion. But the energy had transformed with the condensing action. It wasn’t exactly my Neuma anymore, and it definitely wasn’t safe to reabsorb.

“I can’t.”

“Out the window then,” Sania said amused.

“We don’t know what it will do. It could be a massive explosion, and everyone will shit themselves.”

“Can you fly holding it?”

I tried to hover with my feet meridians and found that I could easily. Holding the ball required little in the way of focus.

“Yeah, I can. I’ll fly back up into the mountains and get rid of it.”

“Let’s go then,” she said jumping to her feet. “I want to see what it does, then make my own.”

“You’re relentless,” I chuckled. “Come on then.”

We headed out into the main hall, which was empty despite having a few wall torches that burned throughout the night. Walking over to the main window we shot out into the frigid night air together.

I was always used to seeing my own Neuma, but as we landed on the dark mountainside, it was strange to see the illumination the ball in my hand provided. Lighting up the surrounding area substantially. I looked to our slowly diminishing rocky training target and pushed the glowing ball away from me with a thought.

We both gasped in amazement as it shot from my hand with no fuss. Smashed into the rocks, it caused the five-foot high outcropping to explode completely.

“Shit! I didn’t expect it to be that powerful. I can’t believe I was just bloody flying around with that thing!” I said as a notification popped up.

Congratulations: You have discovered a new skill. Condensed Energy projectile Level 1.

Uncommon Skill Bonus. +100xp

“Fucking uncommon skill? What a joke. Who the hell else can shoot balls of pure Neuma other than Natom?” I ranted.

“My guess would be that it’s considered the same skill that all of the followers of all the gods use.” She replied. “Even though our path to it has been different.”

“Fair enough,” I grumbled.

“Now, what did you do? I need to at least try before we go back, Clive?”

“I brought the Neuma to the size you saw it, then forced more energy into it, while simultaneously forcing it to stay at that size. Condensing it as much as I could.”

While Sania tried, I gave it another go, with my dark Meridian this time. It came slightly easier this time as the ball of dark power formed. I hit the floor where the rockpile now was. It created a small crater, which was satisfying.

Sania managed to produce a ball shortly afterward. Though it was the same size as mine, it was a little weaker, producing only a shallow depression. I had no doubt that tomorrow would be a different story.

She whooped and cheered then stopped suddenly. Eyes glazed over. “Ah damn.”

“What’s up?”

“I just got Neuma Fatigue,” she said sheepishly.

I don’t know why I found it so funny, but I couldn’t fight the laughter. So midnight walk through the forest then?”

The days that followed consisted of us solidifying the knowledge and skills we had developed. Namely flying and Neuma balls.

We progressed well together and the area in which we could train in opened up dramatically with our increasing flight ability. We ended up in the Forsaken Land for most of our projectile training as it was full of rocky targets and almost devoid of life. It was nice to be able to see the horizon in all directions, too.

The only limit to how far we could travel was my range from Grigor, which was safely up to forty miles. Though I couldn’t contact him past further than ten miles.

After destroying a huge swath of the Forsaken land, we started using Neuma tendrils to move loose heavy rocks from damage we’d caused to build targets. It was a good form of practice, too.

Once we’d built one hundred of them, we practiced quick fire drills, blasting them to smithereens, as fast as we could. Over a number of days we became so fast that we ended up spending more time setting up the targets than we did destroying them, which became boring very fast.

Halfway through the second week, saw us both requiring something more engaging from the training. As we sat on a rebuilt mound of rocks, eating dried meat. Sania nodded to the North. “We should go with the scouts further into the forsaken land and even to Kalabri tomorrow and practice on live targets. There’s always a few Hycantha roaming around to kill and at least that way we’ll be levelling up as we train.”

“Sounds good to me,” I agreed finishing the last of our dinner. “Ready to get back to demolishing our piles?”

“Yeah, but I’m not rebuilding them again. Let’s practice some flying manoeuvres afterwards.”

“Sounds cool. Maybe we should push a little further south on our way back to Far Reach and see if we can spot any signs of Malatian forces yet. I’m surprised we haven’t heard anything from our scouts down there yet.”

“It could be that Natom didn’t tell them. It’ll also take a while for them to get ready and make their ways here.”

“All true,” I said, before launching myself into the air, firing at our targets. Sania soon joined me. Shouting in outrage. “Hey! No fair. Leave some for me.”