Five days later, Ranvir was finally confident enough in his Wings exercise to attempt teaching it to Grevor and Sansir. That way he was completely unprepared for the next problem he ran into.

The field was illuminated by a few bright-torches they’d ‘borrowed’ from one of the halls in the dorm. Ranvir’d been surprised to find they weren’t welded to the metal. Even more so, when Grevor just took them down from the sconces and left with them. Moving bright-torches seemed wrong, somehow. Ranvir thought it was the steady light suddenly being moved that caused the dysphoria.

He could only vaguely make out the bronze square in the center of the torch. The glyphs within which a light tethered poured power to sustain the light. Ranvir was excited for the classes when they would bring up the creation of those items. Like the inserts in the uniforms anchoring pocket-spaces, and the bright-torches. He’d heard of cold rooms used to store food, too.

He shook his head, returning his attention to the two tethered he’d been teaching. Grevor pushed himself to his feet shakily, before stumbling over to Ranvir. He caught the blond tethered’s arm, supporting him as his own limbs clearly struggle to do so.

“That is a trippy exercise.” Grev grunted, gaining his feet and straightening. They both turned to Sansir who was still deep in the exercise. “Does he seem, I don’t want to use the word fine, but fine?”

“He’s better than you.” Ranvir replied, smirking at his friend. “Though, to be honest, he’s also better than me.”

“Maybe, it’s because he doesn’t need to change the flow of energy in his tether?”

Ranvir turned to the blond tethered, “There’s a way to find out, isn’t there?” Already embracing the pressure, Ranvir pushed more energy through his tether. He’d briefly run into an issue with Sansir, where he didn’t feel the pressure Grevor and Ranvir had, but willing more energy through seemed to have stifled that issue.

Sure enough, pressure quickly built within his tether as more energy ramped through him. It wasn’t doing anything, simply moving into him, through his tether, and out of him again. Idly, Ranvir wondered how much energy he could push through himself, before cutting off that line of thought. He could well imagine pumping too much water into a waterskin.

Relieving his tether, he let the energy follow the natural course. He knew altering the flows within the tether changed the way disposition of the energy’s natural effect. Instead, of leaving him and pushing the area of his influence slightly wider, it circled through him.

It settled into his body. Not a lot. Just a tiny bit deeper, more closely tying his body and power together. He tapered the energy and the excess fled alongside the odd sensation. He shook himself from head to toe, feeling a tingling sensation run through him, just below his skin.

“How’d it go?” Grev asked.

“It worked.” Ranvir said, feeling oddly numb. “I just invented the Body exercise.”

“Well, don’t take all the credit.” Grev shoved his shoulder with one hand. “I certainly pushed you in the right direction.”

Ranvir grinned back at him, before turning his attention to Sansir again. The ice tethered was still sitting, a quiet hum escaping from his lips. He wasn’t practicing rituals, but he’d found it helped him concentrate throughout most everything he did, which Ranvir thought was interesting.

“Do you think we should be training toward Body instead?” Ranvir asked.

He felt as much as he saw Grev shrug out the corner of his eye. “We are, aren’t we? Just because you’ve found an efficient exercise doesn’t mean we aren’t still training towards the goal.”

“I guess that makes sense.”

“Think of it like this. Are you ready to pick your Concept?”

Ranvir looked at Grevor, who was staring back at him with a quirked eyebrow. “I don’t even know what’s possible with my power. There’s only been a handful before me who’s gotten far enough to pick a Concept.”

“So that’s a no.”

Ranvir scrunched his nose, before sighing. “I guess it is.”

“So should you stop your training, wait until you’ve found a Concept?”

“No. I should probably work towards the advancements that do not require a Concept.” Ranvir agreed, reluctantly.

“Approaching it logically, it all makes sense.” Grev smiled, digging an angular elbow into Ranvir’s side. “The real question is: attuning a technique.”

Ranvir scrunched his face together. “I’m definitely not ready. I have a dozen questions I want answers to. I have twice that in different techniques I want to try. And I’m still not sure what the limitations are for attuning. It needs to be an easily performable technique, but how easily?”

Grev let out a snort of laughter. “About how I expected.”

“What about you?”

“Ayvir has a technique he calls Sun Sphere.” Grevor held his hand up. Light coalesced into a tiny sphere in his hand. It didn’t let out a lot of light, meaning he was probably containing most of it. Night had fallen, most of the light was provided by the bright-torches, which was produced by a light tethered. Probably a generator and more than likely stronger than Grevor. That meant he had to rely on natural light. Which, while there was some, was vanishingly little compared to day time.

As Grevor gathered the light, darkness encroached on his hand. During the day there would be too much light for even his greatest effort to have a visible effect.

“Ayvir didn’t attune Sun Sphere himself. He already had an attuned technique when he invented it, but he thinks I could possibly do it.”

“What is it?”

“It’s just gathering light onto light onto light. Continuously gathering more and more light into the Sun Sphere, until you reach a point where the light is so strong it actually burns before even touching anything.”

“That sounds pretty complicated.” Ranvir said.

Grevor smiled. “It’s stupidly difficult. But Ayvir thinks we can find a way around the issue.” He held one hand out, palm towards the ground, then placed his other on top of that one. He continued moving one hand atop the other. “Sun Sphere can essentially be broken down into three parts. Layering light, controlling the layers, and unleashing it without losing control.”

“That’s why you’re building towards Veil, then?” Ranvir asked. “For the control.” It was theorized that Wings gave more control than Piercer, but Piercer could reach some insane ranges.

“That’s mostly a theory.” Grev pointed out. “Nothing’s proven, yet.”

“But you still think it’s possible.”

“I am going for Veil, am I not?”

Ranvir chuckled. “So you’re going to try attuning one of the steps of the Sun Sphere? Probably the layering? Making it so you only have to control… But wouldn’t that still run into the issue of controlling the layers?”

Grevor lifted a finger. “Only if I can’t create the layers fast enough. Master Ayvir’s focused largely on raw power. Gathering enough light to destroy any enemy quickly. That’s effective but actually makes techniques like Sun Sphere more difficult for him, as he has to contain that destructive power.”

Ranvir winced, resisting the urge to touch his eyes. He was still sore in the morning, despite it being more than two months since he’d been healed. “I remember.”

Grev sucked in a breath through his teeth. “Yeah, sorry about that. You’d have probably walked away from such an intervention if it had been from a normal light tethered.”

Ranvir nodded, closing his eyes. When he let himself, he could feel a slight ache in his eyes when they were closed. Especially, the crying pupil. He imagined he could feel it actually running further into his eye sometimes, though he didn’t think that was actually possible. Master Stjarna had done a very good job, but his eyes would never quite be the same again.

“So you’re leaning more towards control, than power?” Ranvir asked, returning to the subject at hand.

“Well, I’m not going to be spending a lot of time at the army.” Grev said, carefully not looking at Sansir. “My dad’s already made a deal that I only spend two years with the army before I return to the Capital and start my job as a bodyguard. Raw power is nice when there’s an endless horde of enemies to kill. But when I’m fighting in a city with my brother two steps behind me, I’d prefer not to have to worry about accidentally melting buildings, let alone my family.”

“Makes sense.”

“Well, if you two are about ready. I think training’s over for tonight.” Sansir grunted getting to his feet. He looked a little unsteady on his feet, but nowhere near as debilitated as Ranvir had been when he’d first managed the exercise, or even Grevor had been earlier, even though he’d done it for far longer. I guess it really works with Wing tether-types. Ranvir thought idly. Good to know.

“Let’s go return the bright-torches, before anybody realizes we stole them.”

“Borrowed.” Grevor corrected, grabbing the torches and slipping his arm around Sansir’s waist.

As Ranvir turned to follow them, he saw Kirs stand with her arm around Esmund’s waist, though the height disparity was far less noticeable between the two. Esmund had a look on his face like he’d just been hit by a shovelful of realization, as his gaze followed Sansir and Grev.

Ranvir rubbed a hand over his face, following behind the couple. “Goddess protect me from powerful imbeciles.” He muttered just loud enough that he was sure Esmund overheard.