“By Nysea’s blessed bollocks,” Kasos growled, pacing the available space of the library, swiping his hands over his long hair repeatedly. “Imbecilic, child-like—infantile—rampant, idiotic, foolish, stone-head.”

Ranvir squinted the sunset light as he fought through his receding headache to pay attention to the old man. He gently slid his tether-sense towards Frija, who was playing with Ione on the first floor somewhere. Her baby’s native presence was much firmer than what he’d remembered from before traveling to Korfyi.

“Apisaon’s shiny asshole. Are you even listening?” Kasos’ bright red face appeared before Ranvir in an instant, motes of smoke and water mana rising from him.

Ranvir hesitated as he fought back his lesser urges. He lost. By an avalanche, “You’re just calling me stupid. I got that much pretty early on. I don’t need a half-flare rant to understand how you feel…” Don’t do it. “Because I’m actually not stupid.”

Kasos ran his tongue over his teeth before straightening and making a dismissive motion, “Could’ve fooled me.”

“Really? What part?” Ranvir asked. “Sure, I was a little impatient, but I succeeded. Maybe I could’ve stood to wait another month, but I am obviously fine even so. The headache’s already passing and my sense—my soul-sight—still remains.”

“Ranvir, you’re not playing games this time. It’s for real,” Kasos pinched face insisted on Ranvir’s ignorance. “I don’t know what people your age where you’re from, but you’re a grownup now.”

“My age? My fellow students? Back home? At the Academy of War? I don’t know what…” he paused, searching for the right word, “Teenagers in Korfyi do, but back home? We train for war. We don’t have time for games, we live or die by our training and I’ve taken risks much worse than allowing a connection to Amanaris to get by.”

“You mean adult,” Kasos said with a dismissive wave. “You can’t even speak the language properly.”

“I don’t know what’s gotten your tongue frozen to the ground, but you don’t know me. You may have agreed to help me survive my injuries, but you’re not my teacher and you’re not my parents. You’re just some guy with an over inflated ego. And I really meant teenager,” Ranvir slung his boots onto the library table as he stared down at Kasos, who’d stopped to glare at him in return. “Now piss off, you’re making my head hurt worse than Amanaris.”

Kasos looked away and took one deep breath, then another, “I will return in an hour’s time and we will talk again. Civilly.”

Ranvir snapped up one book from the table and ignored the old man until he left the room. When the door closed, he tried to get down from the table, but a sudden weakness to his right leg and he had to struggle it down before he managed to sit properly.

His head throbbed hard enough to make his sight double and send dizzy spells through him. The biggest limiting factor of his soul, and the reason for his recovery taking so long, was its ability to restore the energy he lost through the leak. Though he’d felt filled up before he’d adapted to Amanaris, he’d compressed a lot of it. Instead of revealing a lake a hundred meters deep, he’d discovered a puddle.

Not to mention the effort had further cracked his Fundament, though not so much that it leaked more than it made. Already, the hole was all patched up, and he was becoming recover once more, but it had, and was, taken a toll on him.

“Are you feeling better?” Kasos asked, “I’m sorry about what I said before. I was afraid and took it out on you. I’m sorry.”

Ranvir looked up from where he’d been staring at the floor. The room was dark except for the lamp Kasos carried. Blinking, he looked around to find the library had gone dark and night had fallen outside.

“I—“ Ranvir frowned. “It got more heated than it should.”

“Can I sit?”

“Sure.”

Kasos put the lamp down on the table and pulled out a chair. The lamp was similar to a bright-torch, except carried in a container that could block or direct the light. The Korfyi variant also appeared to have a function for adjusting the glow from no light all the way to full-bright.

“You’re right in that I don’t know you,” Kasos said with a nod. “I didn’t know your home country’s at war. I spoke with Ione and I hadn’t even realized you weren’t older than twenty yet.”

Ranvir nodded and rubbed his hands together. “I—“ he didn’t know what to say, so he trailed off.

“Can you at least tell me why you decided to connect with Amanaris now? And while you were alone?”

Ranvir bit his lip. “I- I wanted more power. I need more power if I’m going to return home. And for that I need to understand, which I can’t do if I can’t access your powers.”

Kasos nodded slowly, hesitating a moment. Ranvir suspected he was waiting to see if Ranvir would tell him why he’d done it alone, but they both knew the real reason. No matter what Ranvir would say.

“How did you know?” Ranvir asked. “How did you know what I did? You didn’t check me when you returned to Eriene. I would’ve felt that much, I’m sure of it. You came in sword drawn.”

Kasos licked his lips, “I gazed the lines and saw your actions as they rolled down towards me.”

Ranvir’s eyebrows shot up. “What? Gazed the lines?”

“Leylines, most of the ones in the know just call them the Lines,” Kasos explained. “You mentioned that your power system has the ability to control your environment. That’s because mana in the ambient nature will mimic and enhance what’s around it. With an application of power, you can influence that connection to control the actual material.”

Ranvir nodded, “And there are… lines in mana that tell you what happened?”

Kasos tilted his hand back and forth. “Mana is everywhere, an invisible mimicry of nature. Once you realize that, you can look for signs of it. You’ll start noticing elements relevant to your own power, then perhaps those adjacent, and finally, the unrelated ones. Once you can see the whole picture, you start to realize that there are constant fluctuations and changes in the ambient mana. A novice reader of the Lines might be able to track these fluctuations back to their origin, while an expert could tell you what caused them.”

“Fascinating,” Ranvir muttered, “And you did this to me?” he furrowed his brow, “But I didn’t work any mana, did I? Did Amanaris, then? Or…”

Kasos smiled, “Anima is the Second Order version of mana, and just as mana covers the world, so does anima.”

“But I can’t use anima,” Ranvir said. “I’m not strong enough. That’s what you told me.”

“Indeed,” Kasos replied, “But if Anima is just the amorphous ready to use and be channeled substance that creates a connection to all that is around it, wouldn’t anima that mimics… let’s say a person’s soul, react when that soul changes?”

Ranvir pursed his lips. “I… I guess, but that’s so convoluted.”

Kasos smiled. “That’s why it pays so well to be good at it.”

Ranvir rolled his eyes. “So you can read the Lines, and saw that I’d changed the composition of my spirit in the anima?”

“I did,” Kasos acknowledged, “And then I had about an hour on the potragos to sit and stew in my emotions, feeling upset that you’d go behind my back on something you knew… I’m sorry, it’s still getting to me.”

“Sure. And how do you read the Lines? Just look for the ambient mana?”

“It’s a start,” Kasos said, but held up a warning finger, “but you won’t get far on your own. Figuring out what exactly happened by gazing the lines is difficult, especially if you don’t have someone to teach you the basics.”

“Someone like you?”

Ranvir expected Kasos to play coy and bat around the topic for a while and force Ranvir to ask him to be his teacher.

“Obviously, otherwise I would be telling you to choke on Paios’ rod.”

Ranvir choked out a laugh.

“Now, why don’t you tell me what had you so excited to check out Amanaris?”

Ranvir sucked on his tongue before finally nodding. He parsed through his books until he came upon the census for Limclea. “I was reading up on the elements, trying to figure out which one I should pick.”

“Oh?” Kasos sounded cautious. “And what were you looking for?”

“Stone,” Ranvir replied, which caused the old man to sputter, but he rode on, “It’s the most common one and through by a brief search through the library, well studied and researched. There are other options as well. Water and air seem like good fits as well.”

Kasos cleared his throat. “Honestly, I’d figured a youth would look for a rare and powerful element.”

Ranvir emphatically shook his head. “Absolutely fucking not. I’ve done that before. Never again.”

“Never?”

“There are six elements available back home, each with a controller and creation variant,” Ranvir raised his finger. “The only other person with my powers died forty years ago. We had like two books with any actual value in them.”

“So you think a more well researched and understood element will be a smarter and easier to learn?”

“Yes.”

“You really aren’t stupid, are you?”