Esmund swayed on his seat in the common room. It was mostly empty with a few exceptions and their group, including Kirs. His entire body was tingling with pins and needles. His head throbbed in silent painful pendulum swings. Abating only to swing back strong then fade again, but never quite disappearing.

Still he couldn’t stop the grin on his mouth as he basked in his new strength. He wasn’t even touching tether-space and he could feel the power radiating from it. Not that he wanted to enter it at the moment. Just the brief exposure it had taken when Kirs and Ranvir needed notes for experimentation had been both unnerving and exhausting. His spirit was wrung dry.

For the first time in quite a while, had he run into his spirit being weaker than his power, that hadn’t happened since he first started training with Master Svenar. That wasn’t to say that he never suffered from over-expression, but that he’d always been able to force more power out of his tether. He didn’t think he could even approach embracing the pressure at the moment.

At first, his threads had just grown in size, closer to rope than thread. Then more had come until he could barely keep count of them. None of the threads were holding their form either. Instead of the usually pretty rigid frame that had developed, it was just limp rope hanging from the walls of his tether-space. It reminded him more of a hammock than any tether-type he knew of.

He lifted his mug with a shaky hand and carefully sipped on some of the water inside. It took discernible effort for him to control his movements, as he could feel the weakness permeating him.

“Did you see any dead or withered threads?” Kirs asked him. He shook his head slowly.

“I don’t know.” He told her honestly. “It’s kind of a mess right now.”

“That’s okay.” She rubbed his back, sending a pleasant warmth through him, even as his skin reacted to her touch, seeming to intensify the prickling sensation. “We’ll check in again tomorrow.”

Esmund nodded in her direction. He had enough experience with over-expression to avoid sudden or large movements, so he kept it small.

Esmund moved his pawn, glaring at Ranvir as he moved immediately. He couldn’t see through what his friend was doing, yet. Not that he was likely to before it was too late. He wasn’t as good at these mind games as the others. Though, if he was being honest, he didn’t really want to be.

It was fun, but it was entertaining in the way hanging out with friends always was. They could’ve done it over a game of chess, hanging out at the rime oak, sparring against each other while Ranvir tried to convince them to train more, or they could’ve done while actually training. It didn’t matter much to Esmund.

They were taking a break from experimenting with his tether to play the game of chess after classes. Master Svenar had agreed to give them a week to experiment before resuming his training which had been moved to take up that spot, since weapon class was mandatory now.

He’d actually been all to happy to surrender the spot after experiencing how ‘fast’ Esmund’s advancement was. It hadn’t felt fast to Esmund, but just under two hours was apparently bordering on incredible. He hadn’t known what to think of it until he found out Dovar’s had taken more than four hours.

He’d been surprised to find that he needn’t to bother with counting the threads in his tether-space after he’d regained his strength. He instinctively knew there twenty-seven threads, each as thick around as a trap rope, used for snares and catching small animals. Mostly. There were seven that didn’t share the healthy strength of the normal threads. Five of these were markedly thinner and Esmund could feel something wrong with them, but not quite what. The remaining two were mere ghosts of normals threads, thin wisps dragged behind the rest of the tether. He could feel them worsening by the hour. Just since that morning they’d gotten noticeably worse.

Esmund had worriedly gone to Master Svenar to talk about it. Svenar had told him that he would expect to at least lose the seven threads, but he might lose more that were seemingly healthy, but had underlying problems.

That was the issue Ranvir had been trying to recreate. A damaged or weakened tether. Ranvir seemed to have developed an internal sensitivity as strong as his outwardly one. Supposedly, he was beginning to be able tell if an exercise did anything, without practicing it for weeks.

“It’s like…” Ranvir paused searching for a metaphor. “You know how Master Vigo knows which muscles to train so you can better throw a spear?”

Esmund nodded. Normally in chess, he would try to undermine Ranvir’s predictions of his moves by attempting to understand what Ranvir was thinking about what Esmund was thinking. That way Es’ thinking could out maneuver Ranvir’s thinking of Esmund’s thinking of Ranvir’s thinking. Right? Didn’t matter, this time he was just going to not think about it. Take the first move he saw.

“So Master Vigo has extensive knowledge of how the body works from simply working his own body. That’s, I think, what I am developing.” Ranvir concluded.

“You’re gaining spirit muscles?” Esmund asked, grinning widely.

Ranvir rolled his eyes and adjusted his bishop. “That too, but you know what I mean. An instinctive understanding of what kind of exercise affect the tether in certain ways.”

“So it should be easy?”

“None of this is easy or simple.” Ranvir replied deadpan. “Otherwise, we would already be done here. I don’t even know if there’s a reference to tether vitality or strengthening the threads of a tether in the library.”

Esmund nodded sagely and moved his queen into the middle of the board. Ranvir frowned a few moments more before turning his attention back to the board. His frown intensified.

“What’s going on?” Grev asked, as he approached them. Esmund sat up from where he’d been lying on the grass. Ranvir didn’t stir from tether-space. “I heard your laughter from the dorm.”

“I think everyone heard your laughter.” Sansir added. “Maybe even the capital.”

Esmund grinned widely. “What happened was that I beat. The. Living. Shit. Out. Of. Ranvir. In chess.”

“No you didn’t.” Ranvir opened his eyes glaring sullenly. “You barely won.”

“By dominating you across the board.” Esmund basked in the glory of the victory. “Up and down it.”

“You didn’t dominate. There was no domination.”

Esmund just laughed souring Ranvir’s expression further.

“I was distracted, okay?” Ranvir grumbled. He crossed his arms looking for all the world like a pouting child. The display pulling chuckles from the other two. “I’m working on some very delicate and difficult exercises, developing them from scratch using methods you don’t even understand, to fix symptoms I have no experience with! I’m a little distracted.”

“Distracted that you lost to me.” Esmund danced where he was sitting, shaking his head back and forth.

“What’s going on?” Kirs asked. “I heard you cheering.” She sat down next to Esmund, kissing him on the cheek.

Ranvir just groaned flopping over.

“I beat Ranvir in chess.” Esmund could taste all the flavor he added to that sentence. Then he continued dancing. Kirs let out a tingling laughter that made all kinds of good feeling boil in his stomach.

“He didn’t beat me.” Ranvir lied, to Esmund’s continued joy. “I was just distracted, he didn’t actually do anything.”

“That sounds like you lost, my friend.” Grev said, dropping down next to him. “What happened?”

Sansir was bent over the chess board, still standing like it had when Esmund won. Because that’s what he did. He was a winner.

“Looks like he ran into an accidental checkmate.” Sansir muttered. “Setting up a trap for Es.”

“Really?” Grev leaned over the board as well. Then snorted a laugh. “Ran into a checkmate? More like sprinted. What were you doing?”

Ranvir didn’t reply, simply groaning in such a comprehensive measure that they all knew how keenly he’d been defeated. By Esmund. Cause Esmund won.

“How did he win?” Kirs asked, leaning over the board. “I’m not that familiar with chess. I know some of the scholars play it, but I haven’t really seen the appeal.”

Esmund followed her movement. Not because he was curious, but he wanted to see her realize his stunning genius. Which he’d definitely applied in proper form to game. Yup.

“So see here?” Sansir pointed to Esmund’s queen that he’d moved into the middle of the board. “Due to the trap Ranvir was setting up over here, it was allowed a direct line to Ranvir’s king.” Kirs nodded along as the explanation deepened further into some mechanics of the game. “So essentially what it boils down to, is that Ranvir needs to remove the queen, but if he does it opens his king over here. Of course, Ranvir could respond with this…”

Es leaned back, his mind wandering as he watched his beautiful girlfriend as Sansir explained the game.

“That’s really clever.” Kirs said, leaning into him. “I knew you could do some impressive shit when you stop getting in your own way. Didn’t I tell you?” Esmund nodded, smiling and gave her a quick kiss.

Shortly later they packed up started heading back. Kirs didn’t have as early a start as them, but also had some late night duties that pulled her away. Ranvir was grumbling to Grev as they headed back to the dorm.

Esmund leaned over to Sansir, which consisted of stretching onto his toes due to the height difference. “I have question.”

“Yeah?”

“I could just take with the queen, right? No more to. I win. End of game?”

Sansir stared at him for a long moment, before bursting into laughter.