Ranvir threw the obsidian stone away, muttering curses underneath his breath. Of course, he immediately regretted it. He’d been keeping that stone since he’d first managed to squeeze it into a pocket-space. Now it was just another black glossy stone amongst thousands.

“Whatever.” He said into his hands as he rubbed his face, before sitting back down. He’d outgrown the stone quite some time ago. He’d taken to carrying a king and queen chess piece and put them together into a space. They were both a little larger than the pinkie sized stone and notably wider.

He tried to submerge himself into tether-space again, but he couldn’t manage the right strength to shunt the pressure without closing the space also. He let out a long breath, running a hand through his hair. It was the first time in a long time that his hair was kept this neatly cut for any extended period of time. But with the academy having a barber on site and the mandatory haircuts there wasn’t a lot of reason to not just get it over with.

He stood up again and started pacing around the field. It had been a couple days since he’d started trying to develop the exercises that Esmund would need to recover his withering threads, but Ranvir was running into obstacle after obstacle. He’d found a few different ways to twist his tether to train it.

One he felt like gave it more flexibility, he wasn’t sure if that was a good thing, but he’d noted it down anyway. Then one that loosened one of the threads of his tether, allowing him to pick them apart.

He thought there might something worth looking into with that one. But the problem wasn’t the exercises. The problem was what caused the symptoms. Ranvir and Kirs had interviewed Esmund until he could choke on all the notes they’d written down. But that didn’t change the core fact that Ranvir once more lacked information.

So he’d gone to Svenar. He said the Triplet Goddess gives tethered their extra tethers as they advance. Ranvir doubted that. Or at least that she did it personally. He didn’t think his bond was that tight with the Goddess if he was being honest. He believed, but She largely stayed out of his day to day life, at least until now.

If it did come from the Goddess, then it was a case of improperly seeded threads and Ranvir wasn’t quite sure how to fix that. If he strengthened them they would still die, since whatever made the thread ‘alive’ didn’t rely on strength to the best of his knowledge.

So he’d gone to others. Ayvir had shrugged his shoulders and told him that he didn’t know and those were questions too great for him. No scholars at the library had been willing to give him a straight answer, and the few librarians who had he deemed to be wildly off the mark.

There was no way they just turned up out of thin air. No matter how miraculous it seemed. At this point, he was starting to think he might need to advance himself before he could figure it out, though by then it would be too late for Esmund’s withering threads. Sansir- and Grev’s too most likely.

Ranvir let out a long breath, feeling the frustration once more rising in him like an orange tide. It seemed to vibrate with an almost purring sensation as he kicked rocks.

The moment weapons class was called off, Ranvir waved to his friends picked up the basket he’d prepared and hiked into the woods towards the rime oak. He’d taken the time to work out some frustration with the spear, which the class had moved to sparring with.

He wasn’t a master with the spear, or probably even that good. What he did have was three months of training against the closest thing to experts of his age. That made him heads and shoulders better than most of the students practicing with the weapons, currently.

That had allowed him both to practice his space sensing ability, which he was now certain was tied to his other senses. When he caught a motion with both his eyes and ears he could almost predict where it would land. Though predicting that far ahead often took enough focus that he’d been struck before he finished.

It was another tool in his arsenal worth developing though. Especially after he’d been turned blind. A cold shiver ran through him, echoed by red haze, shimmering with orange lights inside him.

Arriving at the rime oak, he spread out the blanket that lay at the top of the basket. This far away from other people he would have free reign to focus and concentrate. He’d have loved to get one of the training spaces underneath the buildings, but they were literally reserved two weeks ahead of time.

After preparing the cloth where he would kneel. He pulled off his clothes until he was just in his undershorts. He shivered in the cold air intensified by the tree. Taking in a shivering breath, he began washing himself in the freezing water. At first, the process zapped his energy and turned his focus entirely on his body, however, as he continued Ranvir was able to shunt out the freezing ice blue sensation that sent his skin shivering into goosebumps.

As he isolated and removed that feeling, parts of him turned further inwards. By the end of the bath he’d stopped shaking and barely reacted to cool water touching his skin, or the wind that tore at the heat of his body. Then he wiped himself down and put on his pristine white robes, before kneeling on the blanket he’d folded into a square.

He pulled out four square blocks of stone that Kirs had gotten from somewhere, and placed them around himself. Taking great care to place first one, directly in front of him. Then the next directly opposite that one. The two on his sides equidistant from both. Then he pulled out the bag of obsidian and poured the black glass into a circle behind the square stones.

He took out four knives placing them on the circle facing him, between the four stones. Being careful that each pointed as close to the exact center of the circle as he could get it. He draped the fine cloth over the obsidian, over the handle of a knife.

Putting a candle on the stone in front of him, he lit it carefully. Taking long moments to fill his nostrils with its scent of lavender and smoke. Then he pulled out another and lit it from the candle, placing it on the stone to his right. and finally closed the circle as he repeated the pattern twice more.

With the circle closed, he was ready to begin. Ranvir closed his eyes inhaling slowly and letting breath almost drift back out rather than exhaling. It took time before he was ready. But he slowly sunk further and further away from his surroundings. Until a sudden awareness started to bloom inside him.

Just acknowledging it made it twitch. At the thought his tether-space opened and the tether twitched again.

The first phase had been completed.

He observed the slow moving threads spinning around themselves, as his mind settled further into tether-space. An awareness started to form and he felt the material surrounding him. It wasn’t the same as when he used his power, this was different less refined and even more instinctual.

Ranvir brought the tether to a stop with a single thought. Then honing his focus in, a single thread seemed to split into half a dozen. From that half a dozen, Ranvir peeled away a single string separating it entirely from the thread as a whole. The space rebelled, but it was too far under his control to do more than tremble.

With the thread finally extracted, Ranvir let it settle against the wall of his tether-space where it instinctively connected. He sat with it for a minute, an hour, two, before it started twisting alongside the rest of the threads.

Then he pulled out of tether-space and returned to his own body.

“Fuck.” His voice shook as he spoke, his body nearly convulsing it was shivering so hard. “I’m freezing.”

Ranvir’s tiny tether thread was withering. After the ‘ritual’ he’d been too exhausted for further experimentation and had just headed home. He’d kept a close eye on it through the day, though, while embracing the pressure and it had slowly started falling off.

He, of course, couldn’t be sure this was the same issue that was plaguing Esmund’s threads, but it was a possibility, though his were much larger now and seemed to endure for longer.

Finally, tether class arrived and Ranvir could finally working on closer examination. He picked a field that didn’t look to be used and sat down and started regulating his breathing. Once tension was bleeding out of his body, he slowly levered open tether-space and let it swirl around him.

He sat with the tether for a while, employing some of the techniques that he’d learned from performing the rituals. It didn’t enhance his senses to the same degree but helped in shutting out interfering thoughts and sensations. Finally, he approached the string and examined it.

His tether had finished its loop, though it still hadn’t reached the opposite wall, it was getting close. The string was the same length but significantly thinner than his normal threads. He noted first that he could still detect the divot where he’d pulled the string from the original thread. Mentally, he noted looking into fixing that after he was done.

Then he moved onto the string. While it was as long as his threads, it lacked their structure and instead hung limply from the wall slumping down. Bits of the end was starting to flake off at visible speed and it wasn’t spinning with the others.

Levering his will, he forced the string to start twisting with the threads, like it was actually a miniature thread on its own. The withered bits at the end of the string started falling off and breaking apart, causing Ranvir to pull away.

Power, then. With a thought, he searched out the power that ran through his other threads, the force he wielded to affect the world. Diverting a small bit away from one of his threads, he pulled it to the string. He realized as he drew the power over that flickers were already intermittently firing into the string.

Feeding the power into it, purple light started appearing within it. Watching closely, he saw the purple energy break through the surface on one spot, riping a hole in the string. Before he was able to cut off the power, it had nearly severed a third of its length off.

Ranvir took in one deep breath after another. Thinking over the problem. It didn’t get enough power, but if he diverted power it would take too much and break down. He went back to the string’s origin, the original thread, and started examining it more closely, seeing the individual strings appear within it.

How were they getting power? How did they avoid burning out? They were all the same as his string was, they were just gathered together.

Frowning, he returned to the burnt out, smoking, withering, and torn string. He would need to move it to attempt this, but it might work. Bits cracked and the burnt third fell off dropping to the bottom of tether-space and disappearing. But he got it moving. He didn’t plaster it to the original thread it came from but one of the others, watching with bated breath.

Slowly, over long minutes, the power that intermittently flickered through the string equalized. Less power came through, but it was a steady trickle.

The string required constant oversight, otherwise it would fall away from from the rest of his tether and lose the support. Even so, he could feel the energy drip feeding into it and strengthening weaknesses and correcting flaws that had developed during its degradation. More importantly, he thought he could definitely employ the exercise on a larger scale for the rest of his tether.

Ranvir fell out of tether-space as he let out a whoop of cheer and jumped to his feet. He didn’t even feel the weight of the power he’d spent, the energy expenditures having been so small.

That evening, Ranvir showed it to Esmund.

“It works.” Es said with a slow smile.

Ranvir closed his eyes letting out a breath of relief, then got to his feet.

“That’s good.” Ranvir let a tired smile creep onto his face. “Really good. It’s probably going to take at least a few weeks before we can truly determine the effectiveness of the exercise. Hopefully, this will eventually make them able to become self supporting like the rest of the tether.” He grunted, pushing himself onto his feet.

“Where are you going?” Es asked.

“To sleep. I’m going to sleep.” Ranvir replied. Inside he felt the blue and gold joy whooping with excitement, even as sluggish gray slunk through it all. He’d been banging his head against this issue for two weeks. First when they’d discovered the text referring to withered threads and then when Esmund actually experienced them. Now he’d finally figured it out.