MIRRI

  "I think I got it!" Viran exclaimed.

  He was just in time, now that Dovin was needed elsewhere, and wouldn't be teaching afternoon martials for the Arrivals.

  Mirri made sure her sigh of relief was quiet. She had left a few extra hours for him to practice, but they had disappeared alongside the chill in the air a few hours after the sun had crested the Fang.

  The sudden shift in timeline for the lesson had come after unrest in the barracks that apparently stemmed from, of all things, tales of Mirri's 'heroics' rescuing the poor, helpless humans. She had her suspicions about where they had originated, but the damage had already been done, whether it was the Waster fanning the flames in an attempt to curry favor or not.

  Those tales had intermixed with the uncertainty surrounding the death of the Venatrix, general worry about the state of the Highlands now that Spring had arrived to clear the passes, and more that a little residual anger at the Bessos knights for sticking solely to the letter of the Accords yesterday, all roiling together into a perfect storm of unrest.

  In a word, half the garrison was under the impression that Calen and Emma were helpless, or worse, cuckoo eggs planted by Saah sent to pose as Arrivals and help usurp control of the Highlands from the inside by preying on the Warden's trusting nature and the Seraph's command.

  They had no explanation for *how* Saah would have known this year's Arrivals would be human, but Mirri had spent the last year learning the painful lesson that logic had no place where rumors were concerned.

  The other half, likely influenced by Emma's performance yesterday and rallied by brief glimpses of Calen's utterly ridiculous channels along with the seating arrangements in the mess hall this morning, was utterly certain the humans were Mercy-sent to bear the Venatrix's torch.

  The two groups were not getting along, so Dovin had decided to resume his regular duties for the afternoon so that he would be on hand to prevent a full-out brawl when things eventually came to blows.

  Mirri had faith he would be able to keep the disagreements inside a dueling circle, but what remained to be seen was whether the two humans currently trotting across the sands towards her would live up to either set of expectations.

  Emma seemed firmly set on a particular outcome, judging by the massive slab of Seraph Steel she had slung over her back by a rope across her chest.

  "Ohhhh, I get it now." Viran startled Mirri out of her contemplations by reminding her he had spoken.

  "You already said that." She told him.

  "That was about magic. Now I mean..." Viran squirmed a bit, to Mirri's continued befuddlement. "You and Auntie don't have those, humans do."

  Realization dawned late as Mirri glanced back at the Arrivals, and brought more confusion with it.

  "You grew up with the Houndmistress visiting twice a season, you can't possibly have been that dense." Mirri hissed under her breath.

  The druid's title rasped over her tongue like a curse despite her best efforts, but her cousin didn't notice, seemingly happy to chatter about his 'other Auntie' despite the danger she posed to him now.

  "She never took her furs off," Viran paused, and a premonition of danger ran up Mirri's tail just in time as he continued. "Well, except that one time, but my eyes got covered and I had to go inside, because she took off *all* of—"

  "Tell me later." Mirri interrupted before either of their very important guests could overhear a juvenile Immortal that outweighed both of them combined give his opinions on human nudity.

  Viran thankfully shrugged and turned back to the lake, kneeling to toss another handful of silt over his 'demonstration' in the water as the Arrivals... arrived.

  Mirri spent the last few moments before her charges needed her attention mentally bracing herself for what was to come. Calen in particular looked to be in an already foul mood, which boded ill for the news she had for him.

  "Your mom says it's time for magic lessons?" The girl, at least, made it easy for Mirri to start.

  "Yes," Mirri confirmed, forcing some confidence into her spine. She was an officer now, she could handle this. Had to handle this, because it was the closest she would ever get to penance for yesterday's mistakes. "The basics of mana and channel specialization, with some adjustments for your particular situations. Take a seat, this will take some time."

  She turned to begin sketching out the lesson in the flattened sands behind her with the butt of her spear, but was interrupted by a question.

  "So we're... not learning to fight with weapons?" Calen asked, still standing as his sister neatly folded her legs underneath her skirts in an odd manner. "Or are we still doing that later tonight?"

  "Magic is a weapon all it's own, and right now the most you can do is get yourself killed with it," Mirri skipped the part where that was her fault. They would get to it soon enough. "I'm correcting that *before* you feel confident taking risks with a real blade in hand. Now see if you can manage to sit with your weapon first."

  The reprimand earned her a scowl, but he at least obeyed this time, conveniently demonstrating that he had no idea how to handle the sword in his belt before folding his legs in a similar manner to his sister.

  "Pull that sash if it gets breezy," Mirri instructed both of them. "Now, mana permeates everything in a field called aether. You, me, the sand, the air, and the water all hold different amounts of it. Without being primed by intent, it is unaligned power with no will of its own, which will only express itself as energy under very rare circumstances."

  She paused, but no questions were forthcoming. Emma had straightened her own spine the moment Mirri had mentioned Calen getting himself killed with magic, while her brother was busy investigating the flight sash sewn into his skirts instead of listening.

  "Pay attention," Mirri snapped. "This is about the rest of your life."

  "I am," Calen at least bothered to look up from his distraction. "Mana everywhere, substances hold different amounts, intent primes it to do stuff. How do runes work if they're just arrangements of stuff? Does the rune have ontological meaning that you influence with your intent to make fire versus heat? Are your channels just little runic inscriptions on your veins that filter power for you?"

  Mirri blinked away her surprise at the barrage of questions, and adjusted her expectations. Some of that even sounded halfway correct. Perhaps even more than halfway.

  "I'll be answering those soon, but the answers take knowledge you don't have yet to understand," Mirri mentally scrambled to adjust her lesson plan. They were uneducated about *magic*, not literal children. "Save your questions until the end so we don't skip anything important. Tuck it up through your belt."

  Calen nodded and stowed the trailing edge of his flight sash properly at his waist, before continuing to fiddle with it.

  Mirri suppressed a sigh and continued.

  "The aether concentration in different materia is referred to as their 'saturation.' Static materia, such as stone, water, sand, precious metals, and the air, have limited but differing capacities for storing aether before it begins to bleed back into other surrounding materia," Mirri belatedly traced a circle in the sand with her spear. "Sapients and Sentients, which means people and animals, also have these limits, but their intake is influenced by intent and past capacity, and they will not naturally bleed it if they become oversaturated. Viran?"

  Her cousin nodded silently, and lazily dumped a globe of water over her creation.

  Just as planned, the Arrivals were now at rapt attention, leaning forward to examine the liquid as it sank into the darkening mud.

  "The presence of a thinking mind in a body containing aether primes it with passive intent, converting the aether to usable mana." Mirri traced a line through the center of the circle, breaking up the thin layer of mud that had formed to reveal some of the dry sand underneath. "Everything wants to live, and just as you breathe without thought while asleep, your body will utilize the energy from unaligned mana where appropriate. Closing wounds, absorbing damaging force, and reinforcing your physicality are the most common expressions in untrained individuals."

  She pointed to Calen, Emma, and Viran in turn as she listed the Primary Utilizations.

  "These are passive investments, which prime the mana in your body to be ready for use, and prevent you from accessing it for more complex spellwork. Their usage is instinctive to all living things, and can be modified through active intent. Viran, more."

  She could have done this part of the job with a bucket, but it served as a nice warm-up to get the Arrivals accustomed to his presence being helpful, and allowed her to check whether they were following along.

  They both had their right palms stretched in the air and facing her, seemingly to flag her attention.

  "You have questions about what I've said so far?" Mirri confirmed, pointing to Emma first when she was met with two nods.

  "Those things aren't mutually exclusive, right?" Emma took her palm down. "I've... absorbed force, and had my nose heal after it broke. Is that part of what's wrong with my hands, or what you're describing here?"

  Mirri nodded, trying not to wince at the way Emma described the utter miracle hiding behind her palms as 'wrong' in any way.

  "Your channels would be separate from the effects you've described, and we'll discuss those soon," She said, instead of getting into it in front of Viran. Privacy was still important. "The same discrete unit of power cannot be primed for multiple passive uses, but yes, you can invest in each of the three Primary Utilizations to varying extents," She paused. "Please do not do that until you understand the rest of the possibilities, and their tradeoffs. Calen?"

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  She braced for another barrage, but to her pleasant surprise, he handed her an easy inquiry.

  "Did you point at us when you said those things because they're what each of us did?"

  "Yes," Mirri confirmed. "Yesterday, you regrew a section of your spine in minutes, your sister avoided being shorn in half by a warlord, and Viran was barely larger than I am now two seasons ago."

  "Needed it." Her cousin grunted behind her.

  "I know," Mirri soothed him, setting aside their differing definitions of 'need' for the moment. "You're just a prime example of choosing to use mana to build strength rapidly."

  Emma was the one she should have been worrying about.

  "What do you mean, regrew his spine!?" She had her brother bent over double, running a finger down his back.

  "I'm fine now! Ow, Em, stop, you're interrupting magic lessons." Calen complained pathetically, his face barely a finger's length from the sand.

  How Emma thought bending her brother that aggressively would help if his spine were still injured was beyond Mirri, but there were more pressing issues with the display.

  Like the curious gaze of a lookout atop the Spire's signal platform turning their way, no longer even pretending the collection of Young Immortals was less interesting than daytime watch duty.

  "Let him go, he's fine," Mirri ordered as firmly as she could. Gods, was it too much to ask for her first command to be a disciplined one? "I have one and a half more lessons before you two understand enough of the basics to describe how your investments... differ from the norm. Viran, more water."

  Freed from his sister's grasp, Calen pointed at the now-muddy circle Mirri had traced on the ground.

  "So that's a metaphor for saturation, and the circle is us. Or like, a person. What's the next step up?" he asked, clearly grasping some of what she was saying.

  "Half-step," Mirri corrected him gently. "Sensory enhancements such as manasight, farsight, darkvision, and the carrying of meaning across language barriers were once thought to be second-order effects of mana usage, only accessible to sapients, but as monstrous mutation became more common, some of those ideas were disproven. Their usage is linked to intelligence, not a sense of self."

  Two sets of stubby pinkish fingers shot into the air.

  "What do you mean, monsters became more common?" Calen didn't even wait for her to acknowledge either of them, and Emma's hand dropped as well as he spoke. "Is that what's going on, your world is in trouble from—"

  "The mana on Avarea is stable now, and monster populations are actually on the decrease," Mirri cut him off. "The shift is ancient history, and not part of today's lesson. Do you have any questions about mana-enhanced senses?"

  Neither of them did, so Mirri returned to her diagram in the mud. She refreshed the line that split the circle in two, and carved another from the center to an edge, creating a slice of mud that took about one part in eight of the circle.

  "These enhancements are many people's first bridge into intentionally modifying their distribution of power, and are only possible after an individual reaches a certain density." The soaked sand held its shape this time, saturated enough to cling together and allow Mirri to draw out her meaning on the ground.

  "Some level of manasight is common in most of the population, and the augmentations don't often take a large portion of mana, but they come with some level of risk," Mirri paused. "Most people refrain from permanent investment, opting for temporary surges of power only when they need it, to retain access to the Primary Utilizations."

  "Regeneration, Resistance, Strength." Emma was gazing at the back of her brother's head as she accurately recited the Primaries, clearly already grasping some of Mirri's meaning.

  "Precisely," Mirri confirmed, locking her eyes on Calen, whose own eyes had just widened significantly. "Surging mana anywhere prevents it from mitigating force until the power is released. A permanent channel locks the power into a readied state, and activating the channel pulls power from the surrounding flesh and bone as well."

  She put as much gravitas as possible in her tone, which made it all the more jarring when Calen threw his head back and cackled.

  "So my head isn't going to randomly explode, it's just locked into baseline human durability?" He asked in between breathy chuckles.

  "*Manaless* durability," Mirri stressed, trying not to grind her teeth. She had missed something, flubbed her explanation. Even Emma had let out a sigh of what seemed to be relief, sitting back. "Every tool of death on this planet is crafted under the assumption that you have access to the Primary Utilizations until your mana pool is depleted. The seat of your consciousness does not. You are *incredibly* vulnerable by Avarean standards."

  "Okay. So I'm... baseline human from the skull on in," Calen seemed to fight another chuckle. "Is that it? What about Em's hands? Or mine, now that we're not about to melt in the rain? Is that the other half of the circle you've drawn us?"

  Mirri tried not to let her frustration show. It was their power, to do with what they wished. Education was her purpose here, not browbeating.

  "Secondary Specialization is the remaining slice, covering the active bias of your channels towards specific energy outputs into arrays," She resigned herself to finishing the lesson, even if it hadn't sunk in. "The full half is what a mostly-balanced, educated mana user will split between the Primaries, the small slice is what they would put to Sensories."

  "And we messed that up. A lot." Emma's voice was glum.

  "You made decisions without knowledge, and they are permanent, but you're going to learn what they were, and why they matter," Mirri agreed. "Viran, the real demonstration. You two, get close enough to see."

  The Arrivals hesitated, and Viran looked up. Mirri quashed her doubts and leaned on her spear. Making them protest out loud, if this was going to be a problem.

  It was the riskiest order she had given so far, but to her relief, curiosity won out. If the Arrivals had refused, specifically Emma, then they would have had to drastically adjust their course of action, preferably before the rumors burning through the barracks had time to set.

  As it was, Calen claimed the space directly next to Viran, and Emma crowded in on her brother's other arm. Close enough that prodding further would make the test obvious, so Mirri let her be.

  "Calen was correct earlier, when he presumed veins carried power. The iron in your blood is your body's primary means of equalizing the density of your mana, rapidly exchanging power with nearby flesh as it flows through you," Mirri nodded at Viran, who scooped up a handful of silt to toss over the surface of the water. "Contact with the appropriate rune, while holding your intent to the matching conceptual power, will allow you to convert mana efficiently to usable power as it arrives, but there is a tradeoff."

  The tendrils of mana Viran had woven through the lake became visible as the cloud of silt settled, revealing the water he was holding steady within the lake. With no currents swirling through the reservoir to knock them astray, the particulates hung suspended atop the knobbly 'branches' that he had even—

  Dear gods, Viran had recreated his *actual* channels for the Arrivals to study, so that they would have an accurate view of things.

  "I can only get the dirt to settle on top." Viran 'whispered' up to Mirri, using his free hand to toss more silt over the lattice.

  "It's fine, they can pretend. They're not real channels anyway." Mirri lied, hoping he would get the hint.

  "They're copies of his," Calen frowned, dashing Mirri's hopes. "I think. Yeah see that little hook shape right—"

  Calen was pointing to something Mirri had last seen four years ago, a specific artifact of some of Viran's early attempts that she *knew* for a fact was exactly where the Arrival was pointing, on the third finger away from her cousin's thumb.

  "You can see that through his durability?" She mostly kept the panic out of her voice.

  Gods, no wonder he had been so jumpy and distrustful. Calen would have seen every surge of mana through Mirri's forearms whenever he fumbled with that brass firing plate, sabotaging any feelings of safety.

  "Yeah. It takes some modulation back and forth, his are almost as shady as Em's. Is this another 'not supposed to' thing?" Calen sounded almost giddy at the idea his manasight was overdeveloped. Mirri couldn't blame him, he had skipped several years of monotonous practical exercises by rushing to develop the sense while his first taste of power was still settling in. "Oh, wait, I get it. Higher Primary investment raises the general concentration of active power, and makes it harder to see the Secondary investments like channels."

  Mirri mentally reshuffled her lesson plan after a brief debate about tossing it on the pyre entirely. That information *was* supposed to be on the agenda for three days from now.

  "What's the tradeoff?" Emma, blessed Emma, brought them back on track with a quavering question.

  "Viran, show them the whole thing," Mirri seized the opportunity. "The tradeoff is that most people who form channels will do so in moderation, to allow unfiltered power into the limb. Half of any given patch of flesh is considered the intelligent limit, even for mages."

  Viran raised the web of water out of the lake, revealing the previously hidden branches he had allowed silt to pass through, representing veins with unbiased channels. The edifice dripped a bit, but thankfully, he retained the grasp to hold the silt on the sections that had been covered, keeping the example of healthy, well-balanced channels visible for the Arrivals.

  She checked on him, but he wasn't looking back at her, instead focusing intensely on the lattice in front of him. It was good practice as well, the ability to grasp at objects was one of the greatest utilities a water mage could bring to combat, the first step to applying force at range.

  All he had needed was a little push in the right direction.

  "So what do ours look like?" Calen interrupted the swell of pride that had overtaken Mirri's chest. "Seventy percent? Eighty? Why are your hands so full if half is a good idea?"

  The jab, unintentional or not, deflated her for a moment, and Mirri had to remind herself that Calen had copied her layout almost exactly outside of his fingers, he didn't have to be looking right now to know the ratio of investment.

  The way his gaze was turned might simply be a coincidence.

  "I have other factors affecting my channels," Mirri paused to check her tone while she pretended to peer at his hands. Calen wasn't Sutai, he couldn't know what he was prodding at. She just needed to move on. "You have close to eight parts in ten covered, mostly open near your palms. It's passable, but not ideal, and any bias but light would have been more useful for self defense."

  "And me? How bad is it?" Poor Emma had been denied her answer long enough, but there were a few sticking points with answering.

  Chief among them, she would need a specialist to even read her channels accurately. A trustworthy specialist, if Emma wanted to survive the year.

  "I don't know," Mirri admitted. "I can't see through your durability curve."

  "I can. Can I like, throw sand on that to show her?" Calen chimed in.

  Viran nodded, but Mirri stepped in the way before the human could toss any dirt, barely even surprised after yesterday's performance.

  "Wait. Are you comfortable sharing the status of your channels with Viran?" Mirri asked as bluntly as she could. "Your durability investment means you have more privacy than most, and it isn't information you should spread lightly."

  Emma nodded, clearly bracing for the worst.

  "It's fine. We're seeing his, right?" The human asked. "I need all the help I can get understanding this. Magic wasn't real on Earth, I don't have a point of reference."

  Mirri took a moment to fully resign herself to the idea that they were all going to share information on their channels before she stepped out of the way and nodded to Calen. This was arguably a greater commitment than Wardship, tying her and Viran to two complete strangers.

  Calen grabbed a fistful of sand, and cast it over the web of water Viran was still holding suspended over the lake, darkening the entire edifice. And then he went for another handful. And another. And—

  The lattice wobbled, clearly under strain.

  "Maybe we pretend it's all covered," Viran grunted. "I need more practice with this."

  "Yeah. It's... Em your hands are covered," Calen finished. "Like all the way, every major vein and all the little ones."

  "Capillary. They're called capillaries." Emma sounded just as shocked as Mirri was, but at least she could speak about her dire situation. "Is that why I can fix burns? There's just... enough power?"

  When Emma spilled her *other* secret, the web of water collapsed into the lake. It wasn't a crack in the lattice or a gentle unwinding, Viran had simply let the power go in shock.

  "You can heal through cauterization?" Viran turned and addressed the Arrivals directly for the first time, with a hopeful note in his voice.

  His eyes darted to Mirri, practically a blazing signal fire of what he was thinking.

  "Wait, is she not supposed to—" Calen started.

  "No." Mirri cut them both off forcefully, tucking her wings tightly against the cold breeze that had just washed over her.

  Viran turned, confusion in his eyes.

  "But she could fix your—"

  "No," Mirri hissed, winding her tail around her ankle before it could sweep the sands again. "She keeps that part silent for as long as she can, or she'll be treated as a danger, or worse, a prize. You two need to be able to defend yourselves before anyone else finds out."

  The speech bought her a precious one, two, three full seconds of somber silence by the lakeside before it backfired.

  "Right. We wouldn't want anyone but your mom to know what she can do. Someone might try to take advantage of her." Calen's tone brought Mirri's blood to boil in an instant.

  Specific heat capacity is a thermodynamic concept used to measure the energy required to change the temperature of a given type of mass by one unit of temperature. Because energy transfer is drastically affected by molecular structure, a material in different states of matter (solid, liquid, gas, plasma) will have differing specific heat capacities in each of those states.