Ranvir paced in a circle with Esmund, both of them wielding spears. While he didn’t see Es’ gaze turn to his shoulder, he felt his tether-sense reach out in preparation, combined with a twitch in the movement of the warp’s Dagger.

Ranvir dodged to the side, just as a flicker of rainbow colored energy danced right where his shoulder had been. Dodging the attacks of a warp generator was more art than science however and he already sported half a dozen gracing cuts.

It had taken Esmund quite a while, but he perfected his skin-deep cuts to the point that he could finally utilize them without fear in training. Worryingly enough, the only thing it had taken for him to master it was to force him into sparring matches. His friend was talented if not always the most driven student.

Using the attack as a distraction, Es moved in with an overhead swing of his spear, wielding it more like a club. An excellent tethered, maybe not the best soldier, Ranvir thought. There were a few ways he could go about this, but the one he usually went to was hardening the space, though, he would prefer to have a larger arsenal of skills.

Grabbing the space in a line following the arc of the spear, from just above Ranvir’s head all the way to the ground, he shrunk the space. Not a lot, just enough that the spear would pass right by and slam into the ground instead.

Esmund brained Ranvir.

Ranvir blinked to lying on the snow, Esmund hovering above him alongside the healer set aside for their spar, “I think we caught it before it could fully become a concussion,” the healer said, clapping Ranvir on the shoulder, “Though, I’ll still need you to sit with me for a little while.

“Thank the Goddess,” Es mumbled as he helped Ranvir to his feet. Ranvir blinked a few times, looking around.

“What happened?”

“I don’t know what you were trying to do, but it didn’t work,” the healer said gently leading Ranvir away.

“I hit you pretty hard,” Esmund said, miming his overhead blow, “Right on the noggin’.”

A headache was starting to develop as Ranvir struggled along, “I should’ve dodged that, I think. Or at least circumvented it.”

“Better luck next time.”

Ranvir shook his head.

Ranvir stood with Kirs during After Period, on his request she’d brought her trusty ruler. It was lightly drifting with snow, though, if it kept up at this rate there wasn’t going to be any snow on the ground in a month or so. Only half the sky was crowded by clouds, beyond them Ranvir could see the empty sky. One of the moons were hovering halfway hidden behind them. He was never any good at telling them apart unfortunately, he only knew Kurri as that was the moon out during the day.

Kirs was currently shoving the ruler into a space that seemed to compress it, making appear only a third as long as it should be, “It measures a meter,” she confirmed.

“Then, shouldn’t Esmund’s attack have missed?” Ranvir asked.

Kirs pursed her lips then tilted the ruler slightly off the line of shrunken space. It twisted oddly as part of it suddenly elongated to its full meter length. She tilted it back, then reaching around the space, she gently pressed a hand against the ruler. Space blurred oddly around her finger, but she clearly had her arms a meter apart, despite the ruler looking only a third of that.

Ranvir blinked trying to comprehend what he was seeing, but his eyes refused to make proper sense of it, rather to his tether-sense it worked brilliantly. Despite him compressing it, that space was still a meter long.

“I think I get now, maybe…” Ranvir said idly brushing the Frija’s head as she babbled something looking with fascination at the blurred reality before them. With Esmund’s help he’d rigged her up in a harness so he could carry her around. He could in theory do it on his own, though in practice it was much easier to with a helping hand or two.

“If you take a carpet, crumple it, and throw it in the corner, it might not look like it can cover most of the room. But you have an identical carpet, this one, however, has been stretched until it fills the entire room. Both of these carpets are the same amount of ‘carpet’, even though they are going to be perceived differently. A meter of space is a meter of space, regardless of how long or short I make it look. I cannot add material so I cannot create more length, similarly I cannot remove material…”

Kirs grunted, “I guess that kind of makes sense. Maybe that’s why generators can make that technique work? I assume that’s where you read about it.”

Ranvir nodded, “They do it by generating excess space in front of them, compressing what already there as a side-effect. Though, honestly it just seemed to make sense in my head as well,” he waved his hand through the shrunken space, slightly surprised at the twist it put in his body.

“What was that?” Kirs asked, she clearly caught the movement as well. She moved her hand through the shrunken space, it blurred slightly from the impact of her native presence, but Ranvir maintained its strength. She moved it through a couple times before backing off, “Can you compress it more?”

Ranvir nodded squeezing it down to a fifth of its original length. Kirs swung her hand and visibly had to pull back as it gained more power, “Huh.”

Ranvir swung his own hand through the space, feeling the pull as it passed through. The faster he moved the harder it jerked, “It’s like it’s pulling me through.”

Kirs swung from the opposite direction to the same result, “I don’t think that’s it, Ranvir.”

Frija flailed her arms in the air and giggled, causing Ranvir to smile and grab her arms to help her. They played for a few moments as Kirs considered, “Here’s my instant theory, my hand is moving faster because it’s crossing a meter in much shorter time than it should.”

She pulled out a piece of paper and charcoal from her bag and drew a line. She tracked the line with a finger moving slowly across the page, “This is the distance of space our hands cross,” she folded the paper so most of the line disappeared into the fold. “Despite most of the distance seemingly disappearing we still cross all the folded space—“ she tracked her finger across the paper again, though, she didn’t go into the fold instead crossing over it, “but we do it this fast, instead of at the speed it takes to cross the entire line. The reason it’s pulling us along is because we’re accelerating.”

“We’re crossing a meter’s worth of space, in the time it takes to cross a fifth of a meter,” Ranvir said.

“Yes! And I have the perfect test.”

“This is not the perfect test.”

“Just climb up,” Sansir said squinting at the pillar of ice he’d made. “It’s plenty sturdy.”

Ranvir gave him a sidelong glance, “You couldn’t have made it with steps?”

“You’re young and strong, give Frija to Esmund and scamper on up.”

Ranvir sighed but did as suggested, much to Sansir—and Grevor’s—delight. Crawling up the two-meter tall pillar of snow and ice was surprisingly, not that hard. Ranvir hadn’t had the chance to pit his training against much of anything that he had any frame of reference for, but it turned out that climbing ice might be easier than trees. Or he’d grown stronger, whichever you wanted to pick.

“Alright,” Ranvir said straightening as he balanced, letting his Veil unfold, it spread out rubbing against Sansir and Grevor’s Veil, as well as meeting the hard stone of Dovar’s Flesh, and spear of Esmund’s Dagger. Then he squeezed together as much of his five meter range as he could into as small an array as possible. “Shrunken space here, untouched space there.”

Holding out both hands, Ranvir watched as the others grabbed snowballs Sansir’d generated earlier. First, they all threw them into the, air as straight as they could manage, in the untouched zone.

“That’s not bad,” Esmund congratulated Dovar’s throw, “That’s actually pretty high.

“Over here now!” Grev said launching a snowball into the shrunken field. They all watched as it visibly took on speed and immediately veered off course.

“That’s definitely faster, it works,” Ranvir said, “Now, let me down.”

“Not yet!” Es cried desperately, even though Ranvir hadn’t moved at all. They all took turns launching them snowballs into the sky. They went a fair bit higher, veered well off course, and with completely unmeasurable results.

“Wonder why they do that?” Dovar asked frowning as his throw disappeared into the night. Ranvir grinned watching it go before he scampered down the pillar while everyone’s attention were on the wayward snowball.

“Could be many things,” Kirs said. “The most obvious two options to me seem either the sudden acceleration somehow throw them off course, or the layer of compressed space isn’t equally thick everywhere all through out.”

“Likely, it’s a mixture of both,” Ranvir said accepting Frija back. “Though, it definitely wasn’t equally compressed all over. I was just squeezing as hard as I could manage.”