Ranvir felt pretty good once he finished with weapon class. Instead of relieved, however, Ranvir felt heavy black weights of worry lower onto him. Usually, he would be more worn down at the end of the day, but the current training method of using a technique or other manipulation exercise seemed to have an inbuilt limiter.

If he used his powers too much, then he wouldn’t be able to really attempt anything for a while, and he would get thrown out of the required state. He could re-enter that state, but using even a crumb of power would throw him right back out, so there was nothing to do but wait.

This he’d originally found soothing as kept him from pushing himself too far, but now he was also seeing that it kept him from reaching his limit, too. So he was more than a little distracted that evening, as his friends played chess and bantered. He knew they noticed, but they didn’t seem to put too much weight on it. He was often quiet and withdrawn, so his behavior wasn’t all that different from normal.

He actually kind of liked it that way. It lightened the burden a measure to know they wouldn’t push him for answers.

Sitting down with Kirs the next day, Ranvir brought up his worry. He was fiddling with the finger length obsidian he’d picked up yesterday, as he prepared himself. The black worry dragged on his shoulders. He grit his teeth and spoke up.

“I don’t think continuing with the regular exercises is going to be useful.” He was ready for Kirs’ refusals and rebuttals. When she shot it down, he would be ready with strong reasoning. He didn’t even need her that much, she only helped him organize notes, research in the library. She had a wide array of knowledge of other tethered, built from years of working in the biggest libraries in the country.

But he didn’t need her. He told himself.

“Why not?”

“Maybe you’re right, I-“ Ranvir stopped mid-word. “Uh… It’s not pushing me as hard as the stretching exercise.”

Kirs tapped her chin in thought. “Why are you feeling that it’s not pushing you enough?”

Ranvir tapped the stone against his palm, thinking over how to explain. “If I’m doing push-ups, then I have a certain set I can manage, but that’s not actually the limit of my strength. I might not be able to manage anymore push-ups with straight legs, but kneeling I can push out more still. Manipulating space requires a certain amount of power to even attempt. If I don’t have that strength, then I just outright fail. With the tether-stretch, I can push myself to my limit. As I tire, so does the effort required to strain my tether lessen.”

Kirs listened attentively before writing something down on the tablet. “If it’s not pushing you hard enough, then it’s definitely worth considering if you should continue with this long term. However, for the rest of the week… I feel it’s better to stick with the plan, even if it’s not training as hard as you’re used to, then it’s still learning about your power.”

Ranvir felt off kilter. All the red, orange, and yellow battle energy that had brewed into a storm within him wasn’t given the exit he’d planned for. Now it was just running about inside himself, causing all sorts of confusion. Anxiously, the energy sought a release, any release. He fought as he spoke. “I want to return to my tether stretching, obviously. But if it has to wait, then I’ve been thinking about low-impact exercises. Like after classes, or during dinners.”

“Low-impact?”

“A small exercise that I can manage stably, without breaking from the pressure.”

“Can you even do that?” Kirs said challengingly, staring at him. “Maintain an exercise for an extended period?”

Ranvir bit his lip. He didn’t know. He also couldn’t say that to her.

“I’m experimenting with a few ideas. But I can’t know until I’ve tried….” He replied, quickly.

“Uh huh.” Kirs grunted skeptically. Her eyes lingered on him for many long, uncomfortable moments. “That sounds like it might work. I’ll grant you the low-impact exercise, but keep to the manipulation training. But you can only do the low-impact exercise if you find one that works and also maintain it for the next week.”

“Okay.” Ranvir agreed, nodding.

“Now, I was looking into some of the tether exercises and found a few interesting tidbits.” She flipped through her notebook, landing on a page with a two dozen different citations. “These are all from church records of priests, journals from ceremonies performed by masters, and other church related rituals.”

“Okay?” Ranvir wondered where she was going with this.

“These all have something in common.” Kirs continued, wiggling a hand like a serpent. “Their tether reacted to something. Each of these accounts state that their tether started writhing and moving without their prompting during the ritual. It didn’t actually disturb their ability to perform the ritual anymore than it was simply off putting.”

“That’s interesting. Do you know why it happened?” Ranvir leaned closer, but he didn’t know her notation system and it largely looked like an incomprehensible jumble of words and numbers.

“Not yet, but I’ll figure it out.” Kirs replied.

There was a quiet moment as both thought about what it could mean. Maybe there was something in churches that made the tether writhe. Though from what Ranvir knew, ceremonies for the discovery of new tethered, which she also mentioned rarely went on at actual churches.

“Should we do the measuring?” Ranvir asked. Kirs nodded, and they got to it. Ranvir’s growth today was smaller than it had been between their last measurements, increasing by less than 0.2 centimeters in biggest and even less than that in smallest.

It didn’t deter him, though, because he knew he’d be more exhausted when he hadn’t had a rest day. He’d still been improving, which was the important bit. After that, he fell into tether-space, barely grazing his chest. He was this close to actually doing it without the assistance. He didn’t know what that meant, since he’d seen second-year students, first stage students, that hadn’t done it without help.

Master Floki, despite Ranvir’s many doubts about his teaching lessons, had called it a crutch. Maybe, since he’d always been trying to do it without touching, he was now closer than those that no longer needed the crutch, but still used it.

Something to consider for later. He thought, embracing the pressure and palming the obsidian. He was less exhausted, so he needed to train more.

The next day, Ranvir had only developed a slight stagger after ice, otherwise his legs worked fine. Which meant he made excellent time making it to weapons for a change.

This week they’d returned to dueling, except it was still across weapon groups. Though Ranvir doubted they’d seen the last of three versus all. Ranvir, Esmund, and Sansir kept their group. The dueling was great news to Ranvir because he got to keep practicing with his friends. It would’ve been perfect if not for just how badly they outmatched him. He had little to no chance of picking up a victory in any of their spars.

They switched every fight, so all three got a chance to fight each other. He liked to think he wasn’t as horrible as he’d been in the beginning, but he’d only been learning the hammer for a few weeks. He still had a long way to go compared to Sansir and Grev.

Returning from weapon, he ate a quick dinner then headed for the library, saying goodbye to his friends. Not that he necessarily wanted to read any of the books, but he certainly could use the time keepers, something only very few people were allowed to remove them from the building.

As for his experiments with training, he knew that tether-stretching took a lot of dedicated time and focus. Spinning the tether suffered from his complete inability to track the time he spent doing it. So he started by making miniature shrinks in space, but quickly found that after less than a handful of minutes, he was tiring and had to stop to keep the pressure and use of his ability.

He tried a few other smaller measures, but all of them quickly exhausted him and he had to pause. Finally, he just fell back on good old meditation. He spent some time looking at his tether, some time trying to just barely embrace the pressure. Then, after that, he spent some time embracing the pressure and reading one of Ragnhild’s books. Even simply holding the pressure got exhausting after a while.

In total, he spent almost three quarters of an hour before he had to revert to normal.

“It’s incredible.” Ranvir commented, as he rubbed his forehead, unable to stifle the second headache of the day. His first had been brief and had mostly passed before weapon class had even started. This one was probably going to be longer. At least an hour.

“What is?” Kirs asked, looking up from a ledger with a tired look. The time she was spending with Ranvir during ice was usually time she spent working at the library. Because of her helping him, she had to pick up that work later in the evening.

“That I can maintain this state for so long.” Ranvir stared at the bizarre timekeeper, an hourglass, Kirs had called it. Apparently, some master in Ankiria was one of few people who could produce them.

“It’s really not that surprising.” Kirs replied, returning to her ledger. “Meditation is the first exercise that any tethered learns and it’s the first one they outgrow. Usually, by the middle of the second trimester, most students are no longer strained by the effort, if not quite the ‘embracing the pressure’ part.”

“Really?” Ranvir asked.

“Yeah. In fact, anything you can do now, even if you’re straining, a first stage tethered could probably do easily.” Kirs let out a long sigh, a small smile on her face as she shut the book in front of her. “Finally done.”

“They can do anything? I thought only Discipline of Wings had that kind of control.”

“All of advancements increase control. Wings just seem like it, because Piercers tend toward simpler techniques, when all you’re working with is a line, everything looks like it needs to be blasted.”

Ranvir nodded. It made a sort of sense to him.

“Also advancing the stages is the only known way to grow more threads.” Kirs continued. “No other known way, other than spontaneous understanding, is known to grow your threads like that.”

“Is that why we’re supposed to ‘seek understanding’?” Ranvir asked.

Kirs frowned, tipping her hand back and forth. “It’s unclear in the books I’ve read, but I don’t think most understanding has that kind of effect. Most of the time it’s useful for slightly faster growth, but won’t actually split your threads.”

Ranvir bit his lip, but didn’t comment. The headache had gone into full swing, sitting like a evil, throbbing pressure right above his ears. Angry red pain spreading across his skull.

“I think I’m going to call it a day, for now.” Ranvir said, getting up slowly. He made an extra careful effort to keep his legs locked out and strong.

“Night, night, tethered.” Kirs called.

Ranvir nodded at her as he carefully walked his way out of the building. Doing his best to keep his strain subtle, as he bounced from locked-leg to locked leg, afraid a single bend would send him falling. Luckily, there were no stairs from the administration building and to the first year dorms. Unluckily, there were huge stairs from the first year dorms, to his common room.

Spitting curses, Ranvir dragged a walk that usually took no more than five minutes into a fifteen minute drag-on brawl. There weren’t tears in his eyes when he opened the door to the shared bedroom, but that was only because he’d wiped them off before entering the lounge.

Ranvir kept to the new schedule he’d set for the rest of ice, determined to make the most of this time of certainty. He’d spend a few minutes discussing technique with Sansir but spent the vast majority shrinking space. At first, the lack of exhaustion was nice, but by the end of the week, he was getting more and more frustrated. It took longer to reach the end of his training and it was worrying at his nerves that he was ‘losing’ time.

After dinner, he headed to the library. He could tell his friends were saddened that he wasn’t spending as much time with them, but he made sure to tell them it would only last for the rest of the week, until the end of this first half of the trimester. He would have to attend Grev’s training plans. Whatever they were, after all.

Refining the low-impact exercises, Ranvir felt was paramount to his progression. Any student could push themselves to their limits for an hour or two each day. The constant strain he thought wasn’t something most other people were aware of. He needed to use that, for all it was worth.

He spent much of his time at the library, trying to feel the pressure without embracing it. It was an incredibly tough balancing act to manage, but whenever he got it right, he felt a little closer to understanding the sensation of space. It was one of the cleanest senses, better even than when he tried to sense space at night. Which he went out to try on the third day.

He wasn’t as helpful as he’d hoped. There was still light at night, though a lot less than during the day. There was still sound and wind moving about that disturbed his senses. He was suspecting there was a different trick to sensing space, or maybe he just wasn’t strong enough, yet.

If there was a trick, he sensed he would find it in that middle stage between embracing the pressure and tether-space. Even if the trick was simply becoming more receptive and tuned towards the feeling.