Chapter 61: Smaller Problems

The following day, their fourth one in Olbav and Daimir’s little house, Miro began to worry that they were overstaying their welcome, though completely unprompted, the perfectly lovely elderly couple assured without them that they could take as long as they needed. By late morning, Miro thought that it wouldn’t be much longer, since to everyone’s surprise Hima walked out of the house on her own accord, squinting as she pulled her hood over her head.

“Hima, you sure you should be up?” Miro asked.

“You said I’m still your teacher,” Hima said seriously, though whatever anger she had towards him the day before seemed to be gone, “Then let me teach.”

Seeing no sense in arguing further, Miro agreed and followed Hima to an open field. “I think you’ll find this session will go a little different from before,” Miro said, wearing a smile he could not contain, thinking back on the incinerated tapestries back in Akaseeya’s temple. Hima slowed her pace, eyeing the terrain.

“Looking forward to it,” Hima said in a bored tone, lifting up her hand and bringing up three round ice targets from the ground, which Miro was pleased to note had appeared a bit further away than they normally did.

Even as he brought the fire to his hands, he could not shake the apprehension of again seeing the debuff message as soon as he used his power. Hima must have sensed his hesitation because although she did not take her eyes off the targets she still said, “You’ll be fine. It’s all over now.”

Miro took a deep breath, and then used three fireballs to obliterate the targets, each projectile landing squarely in the middle of the circle of ice. Seeing the results, Miro allowed himself to grin widely and when he turned to Hima, he found that she also had a faint smile on her face, which she promptly erased when she saw him looking at her.

“I guess I was right,” Miro said, “Lessons should be a breeze from now on.”

“Ah, it’s too bad I still have a lot to teach you,” Hima said. If Miro wasn’t so drunk on the new-found freedom of his powers, maybe he would have paid the proper attention to Hima rubbing her thumb against her index and middle fingers, and then would have also heard sooner the whistling sound overhead. When he did hear it, he looked up and found a barrel-sized block of ice careening towards him. With no time to summon a fireball, and not enough wits to jump out of the way, it would have brained him had Hima at the last moment not turned it into a dump of snow.

Melting snow sent rivulets of water down the back of his shirt as Hima stood there regarding him, and Miro could have sworn that the strain he saw on her face was her trying to suppress laughter. “I’m sensing a lesson here,” Miro said, beginning to shake the snow off.

“Shh, don’t strain your 2 Intellect points,” Hima said, putting up a finger. “Here’s the lesson that you really need to learn here. There’s a fire mage back at the Akademiya of the Magi, about a year older than you. Shortly before I left, he was celebrating his quarter century – reaching level 25.”

“Impressive,” Miro said, scooping snow out from the collar of his shirt, and feeling more than a little self-conscious about his lowly level 8, which until recently seemed like an accomplishment that was impossible to achieve.

“Hardly. He could; however, without exaggeration, turn you into a pile of ash before you even saw him.” The lack of intonation in Hima’s voice left Miro with no doubt that she was telling the truth. “I am happy for you, truly,” Hima said, her voice softening. “I know it must not have been easy curing yourself from your debuff. But the worst thing you can do right now is just wallow in the new comfort you have with your abilities because there’s still much work to do. Your magus powers are clear now, so we need to train not just your fireballs but everything – lightning bolts, identify and incinerate – you can’t lose sight of any of your three skill trees.” Miro nodded solemnly – of course not considering any of this until Hima brought it up. “The main restraint you have right now is your mana supply and you’re the one who wants to muck around with Charisma.” Miro was about to open his mouth to utter a word of protest or apology, he wasn’t sure which one yet. “That’s fine, I’m not going back on what I said yesterday. You want to do things your own way? That’s fine. But that means you also have to do things my way, understand?”

“Yes,” Miro nodded.

“For example – you can now reach your max mana in five hours. Which means you will reach full capacity when you’re asleep, which means …”

“I’m going to be burning some midnight oil … or mana.”

“Exactly. I’ll arrange with Peteri to wake us up, and from now on we make sure we use up some of it before our full morning training session. Do you see what I mean now?”

“Absolutely, I’ll do whatever it takes.”

“Good, now let’s get you some practice with moving targets, unless you plan on charming your opponents into standing still for you?”

“I wouldn’t bet my life on it.”

What Hima could not know, or rather, what Miro chose to make sure Hima did not know, was that he understood his situation better than she could have even imagined. With the debuff gone, so was the protective bubble of magic that Miro’s mother had cast over him at the cost of her life. There would no longer be any loose nails or conveniently broken chains or falling store signs to protect him. Only thing between him and death were his friends and his powers, and his friends might not always be there.

Hima raised her hand and conjured in mid-air something that essentially looked like a massive snowflake, two feet in diameter, and which eventually solidified into a thick circle of ice that she sent flying across the field at about the speed of a person doing a light run.

“Let’s try your fireball first,” Hima said, and after taking a brief moment to aim, Miro sent a fireball shooting in what he swore was the direction of the target, even though it sailed wide.

“Ah, doesn’t that bring back fond memories of our earlier relationship?” Miro asked.

“Haha,” Hima said quickly and dryly, “It’s all about practice.”

“Okay I don’t mean to be a downer or anything but there was a good reason why the village boys generally didn’t include me in their games. Let’s just say I’m about as coordinated as a baby goat in the dark. And they let me know that, in no lesser terms.”

Hima stared at him for a while, her face frozen into an impatient frown. “I’m sorry are you quite finished with the dramatics yet?”

“Like, right now … or in general?” Miro asked and Hima rolled her eyes.

“Do you know what ‘Dexterity’ means?” she asked.

“Agility?” he offered uncertainly.

“Right, sure; if you’re explaining it to someone who’s never had to use magic before.” Miro pursed his lips and nodded slowly. “It describes the connection between you and the physical world. If you’re thinking of just your body, then it allows you to move with a sensitivity to your surroundings, it gives you balance and agility and the flexibility to do what you envision yourself doing. So it goes for your magic. It creates a connection between your powers and the physical world that goes beyond the constraints of what you consider ‘coordination’ or ‘aiming’ – mastery of this means these concepts cease to have any meaning when it comes to your magic. Do you understand?”

“Absolutely not.” Miro shook his head. “All I’m hearing is that Dexterity is another stat I can’t just ignore.”

“There’s nothing you can ignore, Miro. It’s all important to varying degrees.”

“Great, great,” Miro repeated, no longer looking at Hima but staring off into the distance. “Can’t ignore Dexterity. Can’t ignore Vitality because I’ll die. Can’t ignore Strength because I’ll die. Can’t ignore Intellect because I will be a moron and this will inevitably cause me to die, but not before I’m super annoying about it and therefore no one would miss me. I need to be constantly training, leveling up, getting all my powers levelled up and somehow not neglecting to put skill points into any of my skills and working on limited mana, waking up multiple times a night in order not to waste a single precious second. How am I supposed to do all that?” The freedom he thought he would have with his released debuff was an illusion and he felt more trapped than ever and found himself struggling for air.

“I can tell you how to start,” Hima said curtly, “Stop trying to solve the whole problem all at once. Break them up into smaller problems you can solve, and then you can worry about the large problems.”

Inadvertently, Miro’s gaze drifted to the field through which the black stream flowed from the Deep Scar Mountains. “Right, larger problems,” he muttered.

“Exactly,” Hima said coldly after following his gaze. In the pause that followed, Miro thought he could hear the whispers of the black thing on the wind, but knew, or rather hoped, that it was actually too far to affect him. “And so, let’s move onto smaller problems.”

Without allowing him any further moments to indulge in overthinking, Hima summoned another drifting disk.

“Remember, you’re not aiming, you’re not anticipating,” the icewinder instructed. “You are creating an unbreakable connection between the power that’s inside you, and the object you want it to interact with. Now shoot.”

Miro slowly brought up his hand.

“Don’t think, shoot,” she hissed.

Miro fired off a fireball and missed.

“Again.”

Another miss, closer this time.

“Again,” she repeated, and so on, without letting him recover, without letting him have a moment to overthink his next move until his mana was depleted without hitting a single target.

“Good,” Hima said as she waved her hand to dissolve the target and then headed in the direction of the farmhouse.

“How was that ‘good’?”

“You can’t see it yet, Miro,” she said, her stride slowing as she went, “Trust someone who can see.” If anything, it was nice to see Hima return to her usual form.

As the two of them approached, they saw Nydra and Peteri standing by the house, taking a short break from that morning’s work.

“We ride tomorrow”, Hima told Nydra as she walked by; in a tone that left no room for argument.