"Seron is the god of wood," a voice explained while his statue appeared to Saia's sight. "He's the god who started the creation of the world and made the first humans, from which all the shilvé descend. He guided them as they established their society and gave them the rules and laws they had to abide to."

Saia stopped reading the string of viss inside the bottle, only focusing on the section she had reached. The statue stopped rotating onto itself and the explanation became a single vowel held by a voice with infinite breath. The god had a large face, pronounced cheekbones and a curved nose. His mouth was smiling, but his eyes were narrowed and filled with authority. He had a green plume tied around his wrist and was holding a small tree. Or better, he wasn't holding it: it was growing out of the tip of his fingers as if they were five thick roots.

Saia tried to enlarge her vision, but her powers had no effect on the world depicted in the story-bottle. She resumed reading, waiting for the rotation of the statue to bring the tree closer to her viewpoint. She stopped reading again once it was at eye level: there were small human-like figurines sculpted on top of it, depicted in the midst of various activities, like gathering herbs, sitting in a circle or looking up to a miniature bird perched on a branch.

The tree pivoted out of her sight as the rest of the statue slowly paraded in front of her. She was almost at the bottom of its long robe when she realized that she hadn't listened to the voice.

It was the third deity she'd studied that afternoon, so she decided to take a break. She left the darkness of the story-bottle and found herself immersed into another one, blue and colder. The sun was on the other side of the city, shining on the third, fourth and fifth levels. Even if the afternoon was mostly dark, at least in the last few days the warehouse's side had received light in the morning, so she could enjoy it while she went to the arena for training.

Serit always accompanied her every time, questioning her about the gods and myths she'd learnt as they walked.

"The gods are understanding," they loved to repeat every time she got something wrong. "The people are not."

She got up from her bed and put the story-bottle away. She hadn't yet got to the point dedicated to the goddess of viss and death, even if she'd read some legends about her. She strongly suspected she was the last one on the list, and that maybe Serit had chosen that bottle specifically because it followed that order. Or maybe all the ones that talked about gods did.

She noticed that the lantern at the center of the ceiling had dimmed some more. It had been fading since the first day she'd arrived, but she didn't know how to rekindle it. She expanded her domain enough to include it and felt viss moving around in the fog inside the glass hemisphere. Serit's lamps never faded, and it didn't look like they were doing anything special to keep them bright. Maybe it has something to do with the wind sprites they had mentioned during the match.

She left the room and walked up to the laboratory. Usually there were three kinds of sounds coming out of it: scraping and screeching of metal on metal, the soft scratching of graphite on paper, or the pensive silence that preceded them.

Saia took the quiet as an implicit permission to enter. She stepped inside and stood next to the door, waiting for Serit to finish writing. They were bent on the table, standing with a foot on a chair and an elbow on the knee, puffing with frustration every two words they wrote. The smaller tables had been all joined into one in the corner, most of the tools piled up on the floor. The creepy metal shell was open, showing fresh new lines.

Serit stood straight and stretched their back.

"Do you need something?"

Saia nodded to the lamp next to their notes.

"Can I have another one for my room? Mine is almost gone."

Serit stared at her with a tired frown, then their eyes shot wide.

"I didn't tell you how to feed it."

They ran past Saia. She walked behind them at a sustained pace, fearing that the fragile wooden floor wouldn't take kindly to her running.

"Feed it?"

"Yes," Serit voice came from behind a turn of the corridor. "Sprites need viss to survive."

She finally reached her room. Serit was standing just under the light, squinting at it despite the dimness, their eyes fatigued after a day's work.

"Look", they told Saia, then raised their arms above their head and put an index finger against the tip of the metal pole that jotted out from the center of the half-sphere.

Nothing seemed to happen to her normal vision, so Saia stepped closer until she didn't need to expand her domain to perceive the flow of viss from Serit's finger to the rod.

"This is for feeding them," they explained. "Every lamp has something similar for giving energy to the sprite. Not only lamps, actually, they can be used to power a lot of things, but you have to feed them regularly."

The light was slowly becoming brighter. Saia wasn't sure about it, but it looked like the fog was also moving faster.

"You're telling me a lot of things about these wind sprites, but I still don't get what they are."

"They're... Best I can describe them, they're impressions left behind by a dying animal. They're essentially made of wind filled with viss."

Saia focused on the creature living inside the lantern.

"You're keeping an animal in such a small space?"

"They're not strictly animals. They don't feel pain or tiredness, they technically don't even feel hunger, even if they have the instinct to absorb viss when they don't have much left. Check their imprint if you don't believe me."

Saia did. The sprite's viss was completely golden, without specks of different colors. Compared to a person's, it seemed devoid of any kind of emotion or even sensation.

"I've seen a lot of snakes die," Saia said, leaving out the fact that she'd been the one killing them. "They never became wind sprites."

Serit retracted their hand from the metal rod. The lantern was even brighter than the day Saia had arrived at the warehouse.

"Sorry, I should have been more clear: it's specifically death by drowning. And even then, it's rare for a wind sprite to be formed."

"Why drowning?"

"Because when a creature drowns, it eventually comes a moment when they release all the air in their lungs to breathe in water. This release is violent enough to tear a huge quantity of viss from the body. If there's enough viss and the air doesn't disperse too much while resurfacing, the viss will model the air around it in the general shape of an animal based on the data it contains."

"Like shilvé?”

The glance Serit shot her was half-confused and half-offended.

"I mean," she clarified. "You said that shilvé reform thanks to the data contained in their viss. Is it the same principle or something else entirely?"

"Same principle, but it's not specific of us or wind sprites. The viss of every creature contains the necessary data to reshape it, and its natural movement inside the body helps the healing process. That's why maintaining a good flow of viss in your body is always important."

"So if a human drowned…” Saia began, thinking about the consequences of what she'd just learnt.

Serit tensed up, as if sensing what she was about to say.

“…What would they become? A wind spirit?" she concluded.

"Wipe that thought out of your mind." They walked out the door. "Come, I'll show you some more uses for sprites."

Saia followed them along the corridor.

"Why?" she asked.

"Because it can be useful to know."

"No, why shouldn't I say that wind spirits come from drowned humans?"

Serit stopped and turned.

"It's the ultimate offense to compare wind spirits to sprites, and even worse to suggest they descend from something they consider as lowly as humans. If we'll meet wind spirits, you have to promise me you won't mention that again. Not even to other shilvé, actually. Just keep the thought to yourself."

They resumed walking toward the end of the corridor and past the laboratory's door.

"But it's the truth, right?" Saia asked.

They didn't give her any kind of acknowledgement. Instead, they opened the kitchen door.

"The more viss we use the closer we get to our next rain-voyage, so nobody uses too many sprites sunless they have enough money to buy them and enough servants to keep them alive."

They approached the big box of wood next to the shelves and counters. Saia had seen Serit take food from there multiple times, but the inside was completely dark, not a single lamp or sprite illuminating the area.

Serit didn't open it, knocking a bit on the wood instead.

"Come closer and get a look."

Saia put her hands against the side of the box and examined the inside. The wood wasn't as compact as it looked like: small tunnels passed through it in every direction, curving into waves, loops and spirals.

"It's a pattern," she said, then something else caught her attention: a stream of luminous fog full of viss. It was gone in an instant, running further along the tunnel.

Saia expanded her domain to contain the entire box. The sprite moved fast all around the pattern, taking but a few instants to reach the same point again.

She retracted from the box.

"What is it?"

Serit smiled and opened it: there were shelves inside, filled with fruits, vegetables, meat, bottles of water and jars with sauces.

"Put your hand inside."

Saia did. She waited some seconds, but nothing happened. Serit made some back and forth with their eyes between her face and her hand, their expression becoming more and more confused.

"You're not feeling anything?"

"No?" Saia retracted her hand. "Why? What am I supposed to feel?"

"Cold." Serit closed the box's door. "This is a refrigerator. Lower temperatures slow down the deterioration of food, allowing it to last longer."

Saia looked at her hands: she could feel the objects she picked up, but they all felt like they had the same warm temperature. She wanted to investigate that further, but the refrigerator seemed more interesting.

"So this is a pattern activated by a sprite?"

"Exactly. Sprites have a little bit of intelligence, so they can be trained to run in only one direction. These," They pointed at some brass buttons set in the wood of the box, "Are for feeding it. Only once a week for this little guy."

They affectionately knocked on the wood.

Saia thought about what she'd learnt about magic and patterns back at the mountain.

"I thought patterns needed a flux of viss to work."

"The sprite is the flux of viss. It has enough viss and it moves fast enough to activate the pattern."

"But…”

Saia could feel that something was missing to connect the explanation to what she already knew, but couldn't quite put her finger on what it was. Aili would have known which questions to ask. She focused on her shard for an instant, to make sure her viss was still bright.

"I don't understand," she admitted in the end. "I thought the viss had to be outside of a creature to work in this way, but I can't tell you why."

"Maybe you're referring to the concept of 'multiple movement'?"

"What is that?"

"If you take any creature, sprites included, and examine their viss, you'll find that it moves in a pattern specific to that creature."

Saia nodded.

"I knew that."

"What you might not know is that this general movement is composed of smaller and undetectable movements. Micro-portions of a creature's viss move in different ways depending on which material they are travelling through. For example, the viss that's flowing in your bones at this moment…”

They stopped, staring at Saia. She didn't need to examine them with her powers to feel their growing embarrassment.

"The viss flowing in my bones," they said. "Is following the general pattern of my body, and some extra turns and loops that make it easier, for example, for my bones to regrow if I break them. The crucial point is that these movements are small compared to the size of the more general pattern, so they don't influence it."

They knocked against the refrigerator's wood.

"This is why the movement internal to the sprite has no effect on the movement of the whole viss of the sprite inside the pattern. Or better, these two movements are happening at the same time and have separate effects: one produces the cold, the other keeps the sprite alive and running."

Saia nodded hesitantly. It was a lot to take in.

"If you made a pattern big enough," she said slowly, following the thought without knowing yet where it would bring her. "And made a group of people run through it, would that activate the pattern?"

"No, because they wouldn't be able to run fast enough for a long enough period of time. The viss has to maintain at least a certain speed across the pattern, only a bit slower than the one it has in your body or sphere. Only wind sprites can reach that speed, as far as I know."

"And spirits?" Saia added.

They didn't answer, instead stepping away from the refrigerator and toward the door that opened onto the corridor.

"In order to activate a pattern, you need enough viss going at a high enough speed, and a source of viss to replace what is consumed. Whether I feed a sprite or push energy onto a pattern directly, I'm the source of viss. The only difference is that by feeding a sprite I can do other things besides standing next to the refrigerator all day, and it would still stay cold."

Saia thought about the metal kernel they were creating inside the laboratory.

"Why don't you use one of your sprites for your experiment? Why did you have to kidnap me, or another sphere?"

She kept her voice calm, even if her viss was buzzing so much inside her statue that she couldn't believe Serit didn't perceive it too.

"I've tried. Believe me, I've tried so many times it's actually embarrassing."

They gestured for Saia to follow them and entered the corridor again, heading for the small warehouse where the empty story-bottles were stored. They took out a chest from under a broken crate and opened it with one of their keys. There was a wooden box inside, similar to the refrigerator, except for the fact that there wasn't a cavity for food inside, just solid wood. The small tunnels sprawled through it in complicated patterns, occupying all of the space at disposal.

"This is the closest I ever got. I never actually found the right pattern, but that was the least of my concerns. This thing had two huge problems."

They turned it around with a lot of effort: there were two leather straps on the back, as if it was supposed to be worn like a backpack.

"It required a lot of viss: one sprite would have died instantly, completely consumed, and it wouldn't have had any effect. A thousand sprites could maybe buy us an hour of use, which isn't enough to go all the way down to earth. And, most importantly, it couldn't actually transfer its power to a person."

They let go of the object. It produced a dull thud when it fell back onto the wooden bottom of the chest that contained it.

"What your monks did is impressive to say the least. Being able to have a pattern here," they pointed at Saia. "And the effect over there," they pointed at the floor, but she guessed they actually meant the mountain. "Is something neither humans nor shilvé have achieved yet. That we know of, at least."

"So… You want to use whathever they did? And the viss in my sphere?"

"Exactly. I don't know what is possible yet, so I'll start with trying to tie your sphere to a person, either by targetting an object they wear or their body directly. We'll see."

They closed the chest and walked up to the door. Saia followed them along the corridor, determined to squeeze as much information as possible before they resumed their work.

"What about the sprites in the temple and arena? What are they doing?"

"They provide illumination and atmosphere. They're also a way to display power and wealth without coating everything in rare metals as humans do."

"What are tanhata?"

Serit stopped with a hand on the door of their laboratory.

"That is a change of topic."

"Sorry, I just heard them mentioned a couple of times and I couldn't find an explanation about what they are."

Serit gave an impatient look to the door, then sighed.

"They call themselves something different, tanhata is the term used by humans and shilvé. If I remember right, tan means ‘person' and hata ‘statue'. Best I can describe them, they're living materials."

"Materials?"

"Yes. Imagine a statue entirely made of topaz, but moving of their own volition. Or made of wood, or cloth."

Saia smiled.

"It's not that difficult to imagine."

"Sorry, I keep forgetting."

"How were they created?"

"I don't know the details, but a group of other tanhata inject some of their viss into the materials they've gathered until they come alive, following some sort of ritual."

"Do they have spheres?"

"No. I think the similarities between gods and tanhata stop at the 'moving statue' analogy."

"But there was a book…” Saia hesitated, wondering if revealing that could be a mistake, then decided she wasn't saying anything too specific. "A book back at the mountain said that spheres are similar to tanhata."

Serit's gaze became more intense.

"They are?"

"But the statue isn't actually part of our body. Are there tanhata made of glass?"

"I don't know, there aren't many of them around and they all live on the fourth level. But knowing this gave me some ideas."

They were gripping the door handle as if it cost them a lot of self-control not to open it and run to their notes. They were more impatient than before, now that Saia had told them that gods and tanhata were connected.

"I'm going to train for a bit," she said.

Serit nodded.

"I'll join you later. There's a lot of stuff I need to do."

They entered the laboratory and closed the door. Saia went back to the kitchen, then proceeded down the stairs, through the hall of the main entrance and into the warehouse.

She and Serit had moved all the boxes and crates as much as possible out of the way, piled up along the walls. A line divided the room in half, and two circles were drawn at the center of each portion. A series of multi-colored balls was lined at the edge of the field, even if she usually only used the gray one to practice. She ignored it, proceeding instead toward the crates.

She'd broken one by mistake, the previous day, and found it was all filled with logs of wood. She took out one of them from the middle, hidden under all the others. It was covered in slashes, some superficial, some deep enough it was pure luck it hadn't broken in half. She balanced it on top of the crate and slashed at it with a gust of wind. While she did that, she paid attention to the pattern her viss shaped in her domain. She wanted to be more in control of her powers, more precise. More lethal, if necessary, even if she didn't plan to use that against people as much as any weapon they could point at her.

She practiced for one hour, then decided it was time to start training for the match. She hid the log, then took the gray ball and started running back and forth between the two circles, imagining various players coming at her as they did in training. She tried to move as accurately as possible, based on the story-bottles of past matches she'd read and analyzed with Serit. Her body always reacted the same way: no sweat, fatigue or pain. She had to look back at her memories to find how her arms were supposed to ache if she carried a boat for too long, or her knees protest against the rock floor of the cave as she waited for a sea snake to emerge.

She stopped at the center of the warehouse, overwhelmed by thoughts of home. She felt the desire to go back every second of the day, but only when she was alone she was forced to face the fact that she had no idea how to do that. It was a second exile.

She sat down and deactivated her vision, leaving only the other senses aware of her surroundings. When visiting the representatives despite not being allowed to speak, she had thought that being near Serit was the only way she could avoid being deactivated, since there was no other need for her to go with them. But they didn't know that Héshe would have made her play with the Doves in the arena, where Serit couldn't follow her. Yet, she hadn't been deactivated, not even during the subsequent training sessions.

Despite that, Serit still escorted her to the arena and back every day, staying on the seats to scribble on their notes. She hadn't forgotten about what they'd told her the first day about having enemies that might attack them and wanting her around for that reason. Regardless of whether these enemies actually existed, maybe Serit was truly afraid for their safety and that was why they wanted to stay close to her as much as possible. But that didn't explain how the guards could know if she decided to break free and use her powers against the city. There had to be a system in place to observe her, it didn't make sense for them to keep her awake if they weren't sure they could stop her.

She thought about the monks and their binoculars. They could be using something similar, or even the same technology. But that would allow her to easily escape at night, provided she was careful enough to avoid the streetlights. There were other pitfalls, like her being able to control Serit like a puppet if she wanted, the way Vizena had done to her in the temple.

She could only think of two explanations: they weren't observing her, but had other means of finding out whether she was out of their control. Or they were observing her, but Serit was able to communicate with them quickly enough not to deactivate her in a specific circumstance. Or both.

She had an idea to find out the answer, but she needed to wait for the dark if she wanted to test it properly.

She stood and resumed her training, trying not to think about her plan too much.

Two hours later, she heard the door of the staircase open and Serit descend toward the warehouse.

"I've made the calculations," they announced, stepping inside. "You can expand your domain a total of six times for about thirty seconds each. Anything beyond that is a too big expense of viss and we'd better off waiting out for representative Izha's return."

Saia nodded and threw them the ball. Serit took it without hesitation. They were fairly athletic, which meant that staying in a warehouse all day wasn't exactly what they were doing before Saia's arrival to Iriméze. Still, she was forced to slow down and throw with less strength, which was good practice for when she needed to play with her teammates.

She kept part of her focus on the small window to the outside the whole time, until it finally was dark enough for her test to begin. She expanded her domain to include the secondary entrance and unhooked the wooden bar that kept it close. She waited until she could stand close enough to it, then threw the ball in Serit's general direction with so much force it bounced against the wall, hit the door, and with a bit of help on her part, slipped outside.

"Sorry," she yelled. "I was distracted."

She ran out as she spoke, drowning Serit's protests with her voice. She expanded her domain to see where the lights were and stepped to the side of the door to avoid them. The ball touched the wall of a house to the right, and she realized how narrow the streets were. It didn't seem possible for someone to see her even if it wasn't that dark outside, unless they were standing on the higher levels of the city, at just the right angle. She jogged up to the wall, then her viss trembled. She heard the distant impact of her body collapsing before losing consciousness.

She awakened in the same spot, face on the compact soil of the street.

"I told you to never do that," Serit said, squatting beside her with the ball under their arm and the portable lantern in the other, the light drawing worried shadows on their face. "Always warn me before you go out."

Saia ignored them, analyzing the situation: it had been at most a couple of minutes since they had deactivated her. The real question was why she had been reawakened: was it something Serit had done, or had the guards seen them standing next to her and decided it was safe to reactivate her? The last option didn't make sense if she considered the arena, or the fact it was so dark.

So Serit had a way to instantly communicate with the guards, and they had a way to know she was away from them, even if she didn't know what it was. It was good to have at least that partial confirmation.

She stood and patted down her clothes, extending her domain to examine Serit in search of objects with patterns or hidden wind sprites. She found none.

"Come on, let's go inside," Serit said, eyeing the few passersby who were stopping to observe the scene.

Saia let them lead her back to the warehouse and close the door. She looked at the dozens of crates stacked on top of one another. She'd have to examine the whole warehouse more closely in the days before the match.