By the time Ranvir finished the run, the bet had already been determined. Despite winning the chess games, Sansir somehow came last in all the physical trials. Well, second-to-last since Ranvir was still technically a participant.

Ranvir, himself, couldn’t believe that Esmund had managed to beat the physically superior tethered, but suspected Sansir of ulterior motives. Probably similar to his own, in that he didn’t care where he finished since he would still get his turn. And the others likely wouldn’t be that strict and could, therefore, still get some training in.

Esmund’s competitiveness wasn’t worth much when faced with the sheer dominance Grevor held in the physical fields. Combined with Grev being clearly better in chess, led him to take first place.

At the end of physical Ranvir was dizzy with exhaustion, and sweating like he’d been held over a fire. Still, he found a secret kernel of bright blue and yellow happiness. With so much time before he had to come up with a training scheme, he should be able to work something good out. He hoped.

Placement:

Participant:

Reward:

First Place

Grevor Starstone

10 Days

Second Place

Esmund

10 Days

Third Place

Sansir

10 Days

Fourth Place

Ranvir

10 Days

The days passed quickly until Ranvir found himself on the last day of obsidian, with little to show for it. He was honestly startled by the realization when the others mention the day off coming soon.

He talked with Grevor about the Fimbul Oak family’s letter, and his answer boiled down to whether Ranvir wanted to stay at the academy or leave. He still hadn’t dared open it at that point, a little bit afraid that what he’d find inside would sway him.

“Throw it away.” Grev said. “Give it to me and I’ll get Ayvir to light it on fire.”

Ranvir had and he’d never seen the letter since, but he’d be damned if his fingers hadn’t been itching for days afterward.

Without the rigorous schedule laid down by a teacher, he’d found himself wasting time and drifting. He’d done a lot of reading on Ragnhild’s work, devouring nearly every book she’d written, though he’d been careful not to miss weapon class again. As for training, he’d spent some time with his tether, but he still floundered.

Now that he was no longer sitting with a group of students training, he could easily spend an extra half hour lost in his thoughts before he realized he’d recovered from his last exercise. Even fifteen minutes was way too long.

After realizing he’d needed to make some notes, he’d borrowed some tablets from administration. With his notes written on the boards, he went over them again and again. Half were little more than idle scribbles rubbed into near incomprehension. Another part was random notes that seemed to have no meaning at all, and the final part were notes he could understand but didn’t lead anywhere.

Looking around the library, he saw a few older students sitting at nearby tables, reading books and discussing quietly. From what he could gather, they were all within the same element. There seemed to be a lot more freedom for the fifth years than the rest of the classes. He’d seen precious few times where a large group of fifth years were out together, going through training.

Now he found at least two distinct groups sitting in the library, discussing notes from previous masters among themselves. Maybe they were allowed the freedom, because they needed to manage their own future growth?

That wasn’t an important question, he had to remind himself. It was thoughts like that which could drive him onto a tangent for long minutes. He needed to avoid those. He needed someone to hold him accountable.

His gaze traveled further throughout the room, landing on the large desk at the library’s main entrance. Ranvir narrowed his eyes to slits.

Desperate times, call for desperate measures, he thought.

Approaching slowly—giving himself plenty of time to reconsider—Ranvir stopped in front of the desk, laying his chalked up tablets down. Kirs looked up at the sound of the slates tapping against each other.

“Ranvir.” She greeted him.

“Kirs.” He returned. They’d been cordial over the last few days. She’d been delighted when he continued to pick up more of Ragnhild’s books, even refraining from gloating.

“I need help.” He paused for a moment, then forced himself to continue. “Again.”

“With?”

Instead of answering, he spread the chalked up stones in front of her. She shot one long glance down at the tablets. A shiver ran through her and she curled her lip in disgust.

“Turns out, taking notes isn’t easy.” Ranvir said, in way of explanation.

“You make it look like it’s a high art.”

Ranvir let out a long sigh. “Yeah.”

“So you just need help learning to take better notes?” She asked. The look she gave him reminded him of that time they’d seen a wounded bird on the road towards the academy and Taggir had mercy killed it.

“Maybe more. I’m trying to work out a training schedule.”

Kirs cocked her head. “Because of the bet?”

“You know about the bet?” Ranvir blinked, a shiver of cold blue trepidation ran down his spine.

“Everyone in administration does. I’m sure all the Masters do, too.”

Ranvir shut his eyes in resignation. “It’s about the bet.”

“I’ll help you take much better notes.” She looked at him expectantly.

“But?”

“Only on one condition!” She continued looking at him.

Ranvir rolled his eyes. “This condition would be?”

“I get to be a part of this research!”

“Yes, absolutely.” Ranvir agreed readily.

Kirs paused for a moment, then narrowed her eyes in suspicion. “That’s what you came here for.”

“Yeah.” Ranvir nodded. “Can we begin now?”

She sighed, but waved for him to come over to her side of the desk. “Yes.” He smiled as he made his way around the long desk, stopping next to her. “What have you got so far?” She asked, looking over his notes.

“I’ve got a few techniques that I’m working on, but I don’t know which is better. I’ve been trying to figure which one to attune.”

“Are you close to reaching your first stage?” Ranvir shook his head. “Then why bother? You’re not ready, yet. What have you got in terms of development?”

Ranvir paused. “I’ve got most of the first half of the loop finished. So I’m like halfway to my first stage.”

“That’s… not useful. We need something concrete, easy to reference, to compare.” Kirs explained. She quickly shifted through a few pages in her notebook, stopping on a blank one. At the top, she wrote the date. “How does your tether feel?”

“Fine, it’s a little tired, but not exhausted.” Ranvir replied, watching curiously as she wrote his reply.

“Let’s start with the smallest area you can manipulate.” She pulled out a measuring stick from a drawer underneath the desk. It was a lot more incremental than the ones he’d seen his in the village. It also appeared to be measuring in something else than inches and feet.

“Right now?” He asked.

She simply nodded, looking at him expectantly. “When else?”

He pressed against his chest, not wanting to fumble the dive into tether-space. Quickly embracing the pressure, he reopened his eyes. He considered how to best tell how much space he was changing. If he was stretching an inch of space into two, was he manipulating two inches or one? What about shrinking?

Realizing those were too difficult to get a clean measure, he instead decided to try something new. Not full on changing the space, just enough to be seen. Disturbing the space a little should be a relatively simple effect, and easy to measure.

Spreading the fingers on one hand, he imagined a tiny space in the middle of his palm changing ever so slightly. The space wobbled, his tether barely reacting, before it stabilized itself. Frowning, he imagined a slightly larger area. He continued with the process until he had a stable space he could hold easily.

“Ready?” Kirs asked. She was staring at him as he held his hand steady. Ranvir nodded quickly, eyes locked on the space before him. Holding up the measuring stick, she quickly measure it from both ends. Flipping the stick to make sure she got the right number. “5,2 centimeters.” She murmured, writing in her notebook.

“Now the biggest you can manage.”

Ranvir cocked his head. “I’m not sure I can hold anything big for more than a short while.”

“That’s a good point, actually.” Kirs agreed. She returned to her drawer, digging through it for something else. Ranvir had stopped manipulating and lowered his hand, though he was still in the embracing the pressure. “We gotta see how long you can hold the small manipulation.”

Ranvir frowned. What was she going to use this for? He repeated the feat, adjusting the space out of alignment. She turned the item she’d retrieved over on the table, sand sliding down into the newly made bottom chamber. It appeared to be made of two bulbs of impossibly refined glass, somehow fused together and filled with sand. If Ranvir wasn’t concentrating too tightly, he would’ve been staring in astonishment. He’d never seen glass work that delicate before.

The space collapsed, leaving Ranvir feeling a little exhausted, but not really worn down, like a long session of working on his handwriting back home but with fewer hand cramps. “Next we need your biggest manipulation for as long as you can hold it.”

Ranvir nodded. “I just need a little while.” He let go of the power. His bones felt soft, but still working.

“5,2 centimeters for fifty-eight seconds and 9,1 centimeters for thirty-one seconds.” Ranvir read aloud from Kirs’ notes. “Is that good?” He looked to his partner-in-research, but she simply shrugged her shoulders.

“What we do next is try out some training regiments. Your usual training regiment, is comprised of…”

Ranvir blinked, a brief flash of surprise that she seemed so certain what to do. “Uhh… Usually, I do at least twenty to thirty minutes of tether meditation, then I stretch my tether using…” How to phrase this, he could call it tether-space creations, maybe forgings, manifestations? “I try to hold it for as long as possible, keeping it on the edge of the space breaking down, teetering towards too little pressure-”

“I’m going to need you to explain that.” Kirs interjected. “How do you do it?”

A slight pink flush filled Ranvir’s cheeks. “I imagine a pair of hands, holding tweezers, grabbing the tether and pulling it tight.”

Kirs frowned. She didn’t comment instead, she just wrote it down. “Does it do anything?”

“It feels similar to manipulation.”

Kirs finished writing, then started tickling herself on the chin with the feathery end of her quill.

“Here’s what I suggest we do… Since we don’t have a lot of time, we’re going to do it in week long segments. Beginning next week, you’re going to start a regimen similar to a normal class. Keep the thirty minutes of meditation. If you go any shorter or longer, then write it down or tell me. Then instead of your… exercise, you’re going to work on manipulation. At the end, a week from now, we’re going to measure you again.

“The week after that, we’re going to return to your normal routine. Again, if you have any deviations, note them, or tell me. Then we’re going to test you again. Ideally, we would let it run a little longer, but we’re short on time. So this should do. In the meantime, I will work on some research into tether exercises.”

Ranvir nodded eagerly. “Yes, ma’am.” He didn’t even notice the slip until he saw her reaction. Her ear splitting grin was a lot more impossible to miss than a simple ‘ma’am’.