Ranvir trained with Kyriake for two weeks, intermittently going to folds to make sure he wouldn’t fall behind on the challenge. Even on that front, she proved a boon. With her in-depth knowledge of the local folds, she knew which ones were most likely to provide excess katapetra, or simply more potent ones, allowing him to advance faster.

As braced grew in strength, their primary limitation was katapetra and stability. The stronger a fold, the more potent the katapetra. You couldn’t absorb more than a single katapetra at a time, so if the fold didn’t produce one strong enough, you had wasted your time.

Stability was a much more nebulous and esoteric factor. No one knew for sure how or why this fell off, but it was a certainty that eventually braced, gained fewer levels within a Tier. Without at least five levels, you couldn’t advance to the next and without seventy levels in all the tiers, the next set was locked from you.

Kyriake made vague remarks to another issue but refused to elaborate. All Ranvir knew was that something else limited access to Arkrotas, the third and final set. He’d shaken the thought from his head back then and continued with his training.

With Kyriake’s experience, she’d shown him another great path forward. Ranvir’d raised his Ability Scores even faster than previously, though some of that surely came from having gained experience with Amanaris. Guided exercise, Kyriake had called it when they’d tried it the first time.

She’d extended her tether-sense and sat on his metaphorical shoulder, so to speak, as he’d performed all of his Abilities. His express consent somehow allowed her a much deeper insight into his practice, which allowed her to correct minor flaws, that he wouldn’t have caught on his own.

It reminded him most of all of weapon practice, back when he’d first joined the academy. The way they’d made him hold the hammer felt very awkward, but it wasn’t to make his grip feel comfortable, it was to make sure it didn’t fall out of his hands, or twist and snap his wrist.

Initially awkward, but in the long run held great reward. And Ranvir couldn’t really argue with the results.

Amanaris

***

Abilities:

Storm Locust: - Summon a swarm of elemental locusts to aid you.

Ability Score: 324

Sand Barrage - Blast out sand in a cone in front of you.

Ability Score: 269

Sandstorm Rage - Infuse your body with the rage of sand, increasing your Physique: Strength and Physique: Durability.

Ability Score: 299

Sand Strike - You send a condensed ball of swirling sand along your attack, increasing its effect.

Ability Score: 245

Ranvir grinned as he recognized the growth he’d made. Over the course of two weeks, he’d gone from having only two of the Abilities to raising them all to a level similar to where he’d been after two months of work.

Part of it was his more focused training schedule, but in large part it was Kyriake’s mentorship, even if she didn’t have the same element as him. But most of all was the effectiveness of his Abilities in actual combat. With stone, Ranvir always had to force himself to use it, especially Stone Spear, otherwise he’d much prefer simply using his enhancement and go in with the hammer, not so with sand.

Ranvir found his Abilities came much easier to him. He’d call it more natural, but Kyriake discouraged him from doing so, as it was the wrong attitude. Sand was simply a more forgiving and easier to use element. That’s why it felt natural. She also assured him that if he wanted to call himself a master of sand some day, it would take proportionally more work than stone.

Now, he was currently doing the only thing he’d never thought she’d suggest of him taking a break. That was to say, he wasn’t taking a break from his work, but a break from working on Amanaris. So now he was sitting at the orphanage, absentmindedly listening to Frija and Menace play with the other children as he went over the papers in front of him.

Kasos had sent him new puzzles from Cleseira, but Ranvir had not taken long to finish these, finally breaking through the fifteenfold barrier. Tracing the patterns within these puzzles, Ranvir realized he was running into new limits. One was the limit of space. The original ten puzzles that Kasos had sent didn’t take that much space, perhaps a quarter of a page. First-fold was slightly bigger but more condensed than the tenth. The second-fold, or twofold, puzzle had been bigger still.

Now, at fifteenfold, it was becoming a problem to unfold it all, not that it actually needed to be unfolded. He couldn’t solve the entire puzzle without ever opening the envelope, except that was like solving a puzzle purely by feel. The tenfold had been the first introduction of barriers, which took a calculation carried through tether-sense to break down.

Fifteenfold had five of them that Ranvir had to hold in his mind as he broke them down, one by one. It had been a strain on his mind as much as his spirit, which was the next issue he was running into. When he’d finally reached the end of the fifteenfold, his spirit had been strained just trying to maintain the reach his tether-sense required.

Ranvir was pretty sure Kasos was still training his spirit, even if the master couldn’t visit him every day. In that moment, the young man was infinitely grateful for coming to Korfyi. He’d gone from a place where he’d known as much as the masters that surrounded him, to finally learning from people who understood more and could see further into the horizon than he could. It was a refreshing breath of air. Ranvir didn’t know that he’d felt since he was a child, secure knowing that his mom and dad would protect him and keep him safe.

So now he sat with the testaments he bought from the museum on the planet of Lesta during his visit with Frija. The Laws of Stratos, they were called. An attempt at explaining the core tenets of their power system.

He’d initially tried to get Ione to translate it for him, but she’d told him she’d retired. The translation orb was a onetime thing. The old woman had then directed him to a translator that she trusted who would charge him a fair price. That fair price was still a lot of keys and it had taken Ranvir a lot of work to pay for it, but finally he’d gotten the papers back and he was ready to look.

He had two papers. One was a modern translation of the testament and the other a transcription of the original, now both were translated into Fiyan. Licking his lips, Ranvir read over.

The modern testament skimped on the details compared to the older one. It also took a lot of liberties, it seemed, with what the first one said. Ranvir was surprised to find that the original was very laconic in its writing. There was very little reference to religion or politics. It seemed to be a simple treatise on Stratos’ view. In contrast, the modern testament was nearly twice as long and had heavy inferences with religion in particular.

Ranvir wasn’t necessarily surprised that this had come up, though he was disappointed with the museum for passing it off as a proper translation. Focusing more on the older version, he started reading it in-depth.

Some of it was way straightforward, like the fourth point: ‘Two years and two days of bonding, to develop power and strength in both partners.’ It then explained the limit was made to stop kids, as it was mostly children from bonding too closely with the animals. With a clear boundary, the children better understood that there was a finite limit to this bond.

‘1. They are not pets, but animals. Understand the difference.’ As Ranvir read over this first statement, he found his mind wandering over the two inhabitants of his soul. Loce the fancily named locust. The storm locust always had at least one of its forms outside of his body, currently sitting on the windowsill watching the children playing outside. Latresekt, which Ranvir was more and more convinced, had an agenda in squirreling itself away inside him. Especially since it wouldn’t tell him and had gotten six different kinds of pissed after he’d bonded the elemental.

‘2. Compatibility over power.’ This one, Ranvir would’ve doubted before coming to Korfyi and especially before training under Kyriake. He’d struggled for so long with having compatibility in spades. He’d been most compatible with space manipulation, which was uniquely unhelpful. No teachers and very little help. Ranvir’d been lost from the get go.

Now, after feeling the difference between stone and sand, even then the difference between sand working under its own various iterations. Compatibility was key. It made him access so much more of his power.

‘3. Material Connection.’ This was the second-most esoteric of the original testaments laws. It made some vague affectations towards feeding your pet the right food and raising it in the right area for the type of creature you wanted, but it never explained the reasoning, leaving the reader to fill in.

Eating food aligned with the animal’s mana-types strengthened it, except Ranvir’d never once eaten anything aligned with space mana, nor did he think he’d ever seen anyone eat anything aligned with obsidian. Not even on Korfyi were braced eating according to mana-types. He’d have to ask Kyriake about it, but he suspected there was something more to this law than met the eye.

He’d already gone over the fourth law and quickly skipped that one.

‘5. Remember the Cycle. Prey becomes predator, becomes food, becomes prey.’ The most esoteric of the laws, Ranvir felt. It was also the shortest of the laws. On the surface, it was pretty simple. The prey was eaten and became part of the predator, which would eventually die and become food for the prey. Except that wasn’t at all relevant to mana, at least not obviously so.

Ranvir suspected this law held within it the revelation that allowed Stratos to take create an empire. Though he hadn’t remained there for long, the people of Lesta revered the king or emperor, or whatever he’d been as almost a religious figure, and he had a good feeling this statement was at the heart of that.

“Prey become predator,” Ranvir muttered, scanning over the rest of the laws again.