“What is a splinter? There are multiple schools of thought. Some believe the shroud that a person is born with is their ‘intended’ or ‘true’ shroud. That it is irreplaceable and unique. Others believe that no one splinter of a shroud is better than another, even the original. Scientifically, the second hypothesis has more merit, since the original shroud is essentially unidentifiable from any splinters that are created from it.

The process of breaking a shroud against another to form a new domain is a difficult process to study and define. The method and results appear almost completely random. Some shrouds can reliably form a splinter with anyone, while others might be completely incapable. The only point of relative consistency is that the splinter will be a domain in some way related to the two that formed it. More research is required.” Excerpt from ‘The Study of Shroud: A Scientific Inquiry’ by Mark Clesian.

They had to hurry to get to physical conditioning, which was another round of torture. More stamina regenerating infused water helped keep them on their feet, but Caeden felt like a well-used anvil, beaten into submission. They staggered to the cafeteria for dinner. The wide variety of good food helped raise their spirits, but it was obvious all three of them were dead tired.

“Lily, we don’t have to do any more invasion training tonight if you’re too tired.” Caeden offered, half-hoping she would agree. But that was a lazy impulse. He had a lot of work to do.

“I’m fine. Invasion doesn't require much physical effort. It's just mentally tiring.” She shook her head, then clapped her palms on her cheeks. “I’ll be fine for a few hours. It’s not even that late.”

Which was true. Their physical condition ended late in the afternoon, but it wouldn’t be nighttime for a couple more hours. Caeden was unwilling to let that time go to waste. “Great, let's go. Erik, did you want to come?”

“Nahh, I wanted to look in the library. Who knows what kinds of medical texts will be in there.” Erik smiled excitedly. It was so easy for Caeden to forget how seriously Erik took his chosen profession sometimes.

“Cool, have fun with that.”

Caeden and Lily left Erik behind in the cafeteria, eating popcorn again. Erik loved popcorn. In the elevator, they selected the option labeled ‘IP rooms’ now that Caeden knew what that meant. It was astounding how much he had learned in one day. With everything that had happened, this felt like the longest day in Caeden’s life. From physical conditioning to general education to modifier class to physical training again to aura and infusion class. Then there was the whole mess that had followed invasion practice. Caeden couldn't help but sigh. Hopefully, every day at the academy wasn’t this eventful. He wasn't sure how he would survive.

The IP rooms were interesting. They exited into an elevator lobby, just like the other floors. Directly in front of them was a hallway with open doors running up and down the sides. Each room was a blank, white-walled square. Caeden found them slightly disconcerting to look at. A sign in the elevator lobby stated any unoccupied room could be used for as long as a student wished until all rooms were in use. Then it imposed a two-hour limit with a waiting list. The academy obviously expected these rooms to be in high demand. Right now, though, they were the only ones here.

Caeden picked the first room after the lobby since they all looked the same. A swipe of his ID caused the door to close, and it was time to get to work.

“What were you hoping to work on?” Lily asked.

“I’m not sure, honestly,” Caeden rubbed his chin, “I need to work on dealing with a shroud like yours, obviously, but I have no idea what to do. My shroud automatically takes on a string-like shape. The fact that your shroud covers so much more area makes dealing with it difficult.”

“Right, we already knew that,” Lily nodded, “So your solution is to either work to expand the area your shroud covers or find a way to make the area disadvantage inconsequential.”

“Any suggestions? I think the first option isn’t going to work.” Caeden held up his mangled hand, manifesting a line of Sharp. He worked to make it wider, turning it into more of a ribbon. “Doing this much is already difficult, and I can feel the drain it puts on my shroud. I don’t think it's a sustainable option.”

“Ok, that leaves us with finding a way to invalidate the area advantage.” Lily sat down cross-legged on the floor. “Let’s focus on your shroud's advantages over mine and work from there.”

They spent the next half an hour going over both of their shrouds, comparing various aspects to determine who’s was better at what. They both agreed that the small sample size meant any strategies they came up with probably wouldn’t be universal, but Caeden was fine with just having a starting point. He figured, and Lily agreed, that most one-on-one fights with other shrouded would boil down to improvisation. Every shroud was just too different.

“It’s going to boil down to speed.” Lily nodded. They were both looking at manifestations of their shrouds side by side. Caeden with a little ball of red lines constantly rotating around each other, and Lily with a head-sized cloud of grey shot through with blue and white. “Your shroud is already predisposed to motion. Mine likes to remain static if it can. All you have to do is abuse the speed advantage.”

“Yeah, I see what you’re getting at,” Caeden nodded along. The both of them ended up sitting, tired after the long day, and sore from all the exercise. “Want to give it a try? I’m pretty much back to full.”

“Yes, I think this will work. Then we need to come up with a way for me to counter it, for when I’m going up against a shroud like yours.” Lily smirked.

“That’s fair.” Caeden levered himself to his feet, walking ten or so feet away. “Are you going to sit?”

“I don’t see why not. It doesn’t change how I use my shroud.”

Caeden shrugged, “Ok.”

Caeden once again created his hexagon formation, six dots formed in front of him, just waiting to move. Lily made a cloud as she had done before, though this one was even larger, covering a six-foot by six-foot cubic space. Her shroud occupied nearly all the area between them.

“Oh, that’s just rude.” Caeden couldn’t help but smile. She certainly wasn’t going easy on him. The second her shroud started moving towards him, Caeden shot out two of his dots, turning them into lines that rapidly curved around the fog bank making its way toward him. As he was doing this, Caeden realized that the added depth Lily had given her manifestation meant he couldn’t see her on the other side. He was forced to use his aura sense to try and feel her location, which turned out to be pretty easy.

Using aura sense, Caeden directed his two lines to converge on Lily. Just as they had discussed, his shroud’s speed was so much higher than hers that the lines would reach her before her fog bank had traveled even half the few feet it would take to get to him. In response, Lily added two more manifestations around her to block his own. Instead of trying to go through them, Caeden just redirected his attack to go around once more. The red streaks turned on a dime, darting around the newly created obstacles. They were inches away from Lily.

“Ok, that works.” Lily dropped her shroud, letting it fade away. “Now, what am I supposed to do against that? Your speed is so much higher than mine. Now that you’re applying it like this, I wasn’t expecting how hard it would be to respond.”

“Actually, I had a thought about that. Why don’t you just completely surround yourself in Fog? It should be easy, considering how much area you just covered.” Caeden gestured to the space in between them.

“That should work perfectly.” Lily smiled. “Now, how are you going to beat that? It’s such a straightforward solution to a fast attack.”

“It all comes down to penetrating power.” Caeden sighed. “Ultimately, I need to be able to push my shroud through yours. I’m just not sure how to do it.”

“I was thinking,” Lily said after a moment, “Something I saw Erik do that might work for you as well.”

“Sure.”

“He would weave together multiple strands of his shroud to increase its power. It seemed effective.” Lily shrugged.

“It’s worth a shot.” Caeden did as she said, forming three shroud lines and weaving them together. The second he pressed them against each other, they reflected with the scraping sound of a knife running along another blade.

“Well, I suppose your shrouds are just fundamentally different.” Lily frowned. “I was hoping that would work.”

“Actually…” Caeden tried again, but this time he forced the edges to remain in contact, creating a loud grinding noise as the edges rubbed against each other constantly. Caeden could feel the edges grinding away at each other. He was gaining shroud from this; as the edges of his strands ate away at each other and were restored, it was generating more sharpness than it cost. This was much more efficient and easier to use than forcing two edges together. By having three intertwined, they all bounce off one another into each other. It was much easier for him to hold than the other configuration.

“Ok, give me a minute. I think I’m on to something.” Caeden looked at Lily, who waved him off. She actually laid down on the training room floor, shifting around in her robe to get comfortable.

“I’ll be fine. Go ahead.”

Caeden shrugged. He focused back on his strands, adding more to the formation, modifying the thickness of the strands and some of the subtleties of their shape, trying to maximize the contact between the edges while minimizing the amount of effort he had to put into maintaining the formation. He ended up widening the strands just a bit, not enough to make them difficult to maintain, while also curving them slightly. He added and subtracted strands until he landed on six as the easiest to maintain.

“Yup, I think I got it.” Caeden admired his handiwork. He walked over to Lily’s prone form and showed her what he had made.

“Looks like a rose,” Lily commented.

Caeden took a second look. “Wow, it really does.” The curvature and width of the strand now resembled rose petals. The way he had arranged them so they glanced off each other looked exactly like the center of a rose. “Well, it works, and I’m not changing it.”

“What’s it supposed to do?”

“It’s supposed to provide penetrating power while also slowly restoring my shroud reserves. Two problems with one solution. Want to try it out?” Caeden grinned down at her.

She smiled right back, “Absolutely, I want to see what your flower power can do.”

“Ha ha, very funny. Put up your shroud.” Caden rolled his eyes and walked back to his starting position. Once again, Lily put up an entire wall of Fog in between them. Caeden started the strands of his new formations spinning against each other. It created a soft whining noise, like a kettle about to boil. As it went faster and faster, that whining grew. “Well, that’s annoying.”

When Lily started to move her shroud, Caeden fired the rose-shaped bundle shroud off like a bullet, shooting directly into the center of Lily’s manifestation. Immediately, it chewed through the grey energy, ripping the white and blue accented shroud apart and digging deeper in. Caeden almost laughed. He hadn’t expected it to be this effective. It was passing through Lily's shroud like it wasn’t even there.

Caeden could feel his construct reach the center of the fog bank when something strange happened. It felt like a spark jumped from his shroud to hers, then it tore away in an instant. When that strange sensation vanished, it took every bit of shroud in the room with it. All the manifestations, Caeden’s and Lily’s, disappeared.

“Woah.” Caeden stumbled., It felt like the place where Sharp resided inside him was jerked on by an outside force. “Did you feel that?”

“Yes.” Lily looked just as confused as he felt. “I have no idea what that was.”

“Want to try again?” Caeden felt excited. This was something new. It hadn’t hurt or felt uncomfortable, just different.

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea.” Lily hedged.

“Maybe on a smaller scale? That interaction had a large amount of shroud invested in it by the both of us.” Caeden suggested.

Lily thought about it for a moment before giving a cautious nod. “Ok, I guess it’s worth a try.”

“Great!” Caeden walked over and sat down next to Lily as she manifested a small patch of Fog. Caeden wound up another of his rose constructs but didn’t start spinning it.

“You need to come up with a name for that.” Lily said, gesturing toward the manifestation, “Most shrouded name their techniques.”

Caeden shrugged. “I don’t care. It's not like it matters what it's called.”

Lily stared at it for a moment, a thoughtful look on her face. ‘How about thorn? It looks like a rose, and it's sharp, so thorn.”

“Works for me. Probably better than anything I could come up with anyway.” Caeden moved his newly named thorn over toward her cloud. “I figure I’ll put the thorn in your shroud and start rotating it, and we’ll just keep speeding it up until there’s a reaction.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

So Caeden did just that. He set his construct spinning in the heart of Lily’s head-sized cloud of Fog. Because of the low speed, the thorn didn’t immediately rip it apart. Instead, it started wrapping Lily’s shroud around and through itself. As the speed increased, the entire mass of shroud started shifting and moving with his construct’s motion.

At some point, that sensation, that spark from earlier, came back. This time, it slowly built up instead of appearing all at once. Looking at Lily’s face, he knew she could feel it too. The spark built up ever higher, the sensation growing past the point that it had been at before. A pulling, tugging force attached itself to Sharp in the depths of Caeden’s chest. It felt like his entire shroud was trying to excite his body.

“I don’t know if this was a good idea-” Lily started to speak when there was a sudden snapping sensation, and Caeden felt all the tension instantly bleed out of that connection. He dropped the thorn, waiting for Lily’s cloud to disappear as well.

It didn’t, though. Instead, the colors of that cloud began to shift, the changes emerging from the very core of it. The texture, density, every aspect of Lily’s shroud began to change. The sky blue streak grew, overcoming the grey and white to take up the majority of the shroud, even as the wispy gaseous quality of her shroud shifted, condensing down into a solid ball. Caeden had never seen a shroud yet that looked so solid.

Her shroud now had a shiny, reflective quality to it. Completely different from its dull appearance before. There were striations of grey and white in the primarily blue sphere, and that blue had a sense of depth to it, like he was looking partly through the shroud without seeing the other side.

“I…I think you just splintered my shroud, Caeden.” Lily whispered.

“What is it?” Caeden whispered, in awe of what he was seeing.

The sphere folded in on itself, compressing down until it inverted, blooming into a flower with broad petals spread out wide, rendered in the exact same material and color as her shroud. A sliver of shroud floated above the center of the flower, a little craggy, rock-like thing.

“Ice. My splinter is Ice.”