Melyss didn't seem the least bit interested in the new apprentices’ reactions. She reached out, picked up her crystal ball with the casual ease of someone grabbing a candy, and balanced it on the tip of her index finger, letting the object slowly rotate in the air.
“Meditation allows you to focus your mind, sense the Aether Motes surrounding you, and draw them into your body to merge with your own Aether,” she explained, acting as if she hadn't just ripped off a piece of her own face. “It is the most stable method of increasing your magical reserves.”
Inside the spinning crystal, white electric discharges flared occasionally. They formed thin, branching patterns that vanished before Elara could get a good look at them.
“It also helps stabilize your mental state. If one day you feel yourself starting to lose control, you might be able to use it to preserve whatever is left of your sanity.”
A small smile touched the mentor’s lips, as if she had remembered something amusing.
“Though without removing the root cause, you’ll eventually go insane anyway.”
Elara shifted her gaze from the instructor's face to her own crystal ball, noting that at least this time, the explanation included both the benefit and the limitation right from the start. However, she didn't know what “losing control” actually meant, or how early she could notice the symptoms before her own judgment became completely unreliable.
It would be nice not to find out only after I start peeling off my skin and thinking everything is perfectly fine…
Melyss set the sphere down and ordered the new apprentices to browse the diagrams in their textbooks. They were to pick the one that seemed easiest to look at, or at least caused the least dizziness. Then, they were to observe it through the crystal, focusing all their attention on the image and allowing their surroundings to gradually fade into the background.
Elara began turning the pages, but almost every illustration brought on an uncomfortable pressure behind her eyes. One made her nauseous, another caused the image to split into overlapping layers for a moment. Eventually, she went back to the page she had managed to look at the longest.
It depicted figures arranged in a circle.
At the very top stood an ordinary adult woman, drawn in a simple, almost static pose. The figure to her left looked almost identical, but with slightly bent knees and hands raised a fraction higher. The next one had its arms spreading out to the sides, while the heels began to lift off the ground.
Elara leaned over the book, trying to understand the sequence, which resembled frames of an animation. Each figure differed from the last so subtly that a single change felt like a natural stage of the same continuous movement. She followed the circle, tracking the position of the limbs and the tilt of the torso.
Only when she reached the bottom of the ring did her gaze stop.
The inverted figure no longer resembled a woman. It was a creature with sprawling appendages - a shape that brought an octopus to mind.
Elara frowned and moved her eyes back a few drawings, looking for the point where the shift happened. When comparing two adjacent figures, everything still seemed almost exactly the same. Yet, the image at the top clearly depicted a human, while the one at the bottom left no doubt she was looking at something entirely different.
Where did the arms go? I was watching them the whole time… There has to be a drawing where they stop looking like arms.
She began tracing the rest of the circle, moving counter-clockwise and trying to memorize every minute difference. Occasionally, she thought she had finally spotted the crucial change, but a single glance at the neighboring figure was enough to make it seem natural again.
When she reached the top, she was looking at the exact same woman she had started with.
A sudden, stabbing pain pierced her eyes. She shoved the book away, but the image didn't vanish immediately, leaving a tangled chain of silhouettes burned into the back of her eyelids. She pressed her hands to her face, lost her balance, and tipped backward before she managed to remember she was supposed to be using the crystal ball.
Someone's hands caught her under the arms, stopping her back from hitting the floor.
Laughter echoed nearby. Elara, her eyes instantly welling with tears, tried to sit up straight again.
“Thanks,” she mumbled, certain it was Kelira who had caught her.
“There is nothing funny about this,” Melyss’s voice sounded from right above her. “She lost her balance because she viewed the entire diagram. Most of you look away the second you feel dizzy.”
The laughter died down. Elara carefully lowered her hands, squinting at the blurry silhouette of the mentor. The instructor was studying her with a faint smile, but when she glanced down at the open page of the textbook, her expression shifted for a fraction of a second.
Elara couldn't see clearly enough to guess the meaning behind that reaction, and Melyss regained her composure almost instantly.
“Courage is helpful when exploring new things, but it’s best paired with moderation,” she said. “Your mental strength is decent. Now try doing as instructed - through the sphere.”
“Thank you, Mentor,” Elara replied, reaching for the crystal she had set aside, making sure not to drop it.
Melyss stayed by her side, using the attempt to show the other apprentices how to position the sphere and focus their attention on the chosen image. Elara listened closely. She had absolutely no desire to test how much pain she could inflict on herself by ignoring the most important part of the instructions a second time.
This time, viewing the diagram through the crystal didn't trigger immediate vertigo. The lines remained sharp. The individual figures began to detach themselves from the paper, gradually drifting into a space she could no longer connect to the book lying in front of her.
Melyss's voice grew distant, as if she were speaking from the far end of a long corridor, though Elara still heard and understood her directions perfectly. The pressure of the cushion beneath her body faded away, the rustling of pages ceased, and the brightness of the room dimmed before something entirely new took its place.
The space filled with tiny, colorful lights.
Some hovered almost motionless, while others drifted sluggishly. Their colors seemed more vivid than anything she had seen before sinking into this strange state of focus. Elara found the nearest mote and, following Melyss's instructions, tried to pull it toward herself without moving a muscle or changing her posture.
The light obediently drifted toward her forehead, crossed a boundary she hadn't noticed before, and merged with something that felt like a delicate bubble suspended inside her mind.
Elara felt a rush of joy so intense she nearly lost her focus.
It worked… I can actually do this.
She carefully shifted her attention to the next mote, trying to repeat the action before she forgot how she had done it. She was too absorbed in the new experience to notice Melyss frowning slightly beside her.
The mentor watched her for a moment longer, then walked away to weave between the other apprentices, encouraging them to try.
Not everyone found it so easy. Some were still searching for a diagram they could stomach, while others constantly looked away from the sphere or shifted their positions, distracted by headaches and the sounds in the room.
“Do not put down your crystals,” Melyss reminded them, heading back to the front. “They help filter out dangerous influences and maintain the stability of your meditation. Until you reach the second rank, I strongly advise against attempting this without them.”
She repeated the most important tips, but didn't pay as much direct attention to anyone else as she had to Elara. A few apprentices cast resentful glances at the motionless girl, evidently struggling to reconcile the cheating rumors they had heard with the fact that she had been the first to successfully follow the instructions.
The class ended, but Elara remained submerged in meditation, completely oblivious to the rustling of packed books and the sounds of footsteps. Kelira gathered her things and was just about to tap her shoulder when Melyss stopped her with a sharp gesture.
“You may go. I still need a word with her.”
Kelira looked at the mentor, then at her motionless neighbor, and finally back at the woman's face. She stared so openly and suspiciously that Melyss's smile gradually faded.
Before the instructor could comment on the glare, the girl grabbed her satchel and marched quickly toward the exit, making sure to shut the door behind her.
Meanwhile, Melyss walked up to Elara and snapped her fingers.
Tiny sparks jumped to the girl's forehead. The short jolt yanked her out of her meditation so violently she instantly snapped her eyes open and clutched the crystal tighter. For a moment, all she saw were the mentor's legs standing in front of her. Then she raised her head and scanned the empty hall.
“I apologize, Mentor… I’m leaving right now,” she said hastily, setting the crystal down and scrambling to gather her materials.
“I intended to discuss elemental perception in the upcoming classes,” Melyss began.
Elara froze with her hand hovering over her textbook.
“It is tied to the properties of the mind and does not manifest identically in every person. Just as you differ in appearance, you differ in your sensitivity to specific Aether Motes.”
The girl slowly straightened her back, trying to focus on the explanation, though part of her mind still lingered on the memory of the colorful lights.
“Imagine a sheet of parchment that possesses the properties of red, yellow, and green,” Melyss continued. “You throw red, yellow, green, and blue stones onto it. Which color will you see most clearly?”
Elara frowned.
“Is the parchment divided into three colors?”
“Not divided, nor painted in stripes. It possesses all three properties simultaneously.”
For a moment, Elara tried to visualize something that completely defied the logic of a normal piece of paper, but eventually, she stopped worrying about what it looked like and focused on the analogy.
“In that case, blue would stand out the most against the background,” she answered cautiously. “I would notice the blue stone first.”
Melyss nodded.
“In this analogy, your body is the parchment. Its properties determine which motes you perceive clearly, and which fade into the background. The most easily noticeable color indicates the element to which you are most sensitive. Your mental strength itself also dictates how many motes you are capable of perceiving overall.”
Elara committed the sentences to memory, waiting for the part that would explain why the mentor had chosen to tell her this right now. Instead, Melyss turned around, scooped up the creature resting by the wall, and headed for the door.
“Mentor…” the girl started, but the woman was already walking out, clearly considering the conversation finished.
Elara remained on her cushion with the book resting against her knees and the crystal ball - whose smooth surface now looked like nothing more than an ordinary piece of glass.
Why did she tell me that privately?
Did she see me doing something wrong?
She packed her supplies slower than usual, her thoughts drifting back to the meditation. Slipping into that state of focus had proven surprisingly easy. She had pulled the first mote without much trouble, then moved on to the next ones, too thrilled by her success to really analyze their colors.
She stood up and headed for the exit, trying to recreate the image that had filled her mind just moments ago. The lights had different colors. Some were clearer than others, but during the exercise, she had simply brushed it off as a quirk of this new way of seeing.
Only when she rested her hand on the door handle did she remember the black segment of the painted circle.
Darkness.
Sylvara had identified it as her strongest affinity, and based on that, Elara had checked Caldra's name - exactly as Vespara had instructed her beforehand.
Yet, among the lights she had seen during her meditation, she hadn't noticed many motes corresponding to Darkness.
She kept her hand on the handle, feeling her earlier satisfaction melt away into a cold, knotting tension.
My strongest perception… isn't Darkness at all.
For a moment, she stared at the closed door, then lowered her gaze to her pale right hand. Just this morning, the trial result, the choice of mentor, and Vespara’s instruction had all fit together in an unnervingly neat package. But it only took one meditation session for a glaring discrepancy to appear - one she had absolutely no way of explaining.
So what exactly did they measure during that trial - and why did Vespara already know exactly who I should end up with?