"When do we start?"
A large smile blood on the woman's face as she nodded, clearly pleased.
"Now."
The smile vanished as abruptly as it had appeared, her expression cooling into sothing distant and severe.
"Listen carefully. From this mont on, you will address only as Arbiter. You will finish every sentence with the suffix Arbiter, and you will respond to my every order the sa way… Arbiter. Am I understood?"
Atticus blinked, montarily taken aback by the sudden shift in tone, and a quiet doubt flickered through him as he wondered if this had truly been the right choice.
Still, he listened, nodding slowly.
"Yes… Arbiter."
"Good. Get up."
He listened, pushing himself to his feet.
"Was it really the elents you used earlier?"
The white haired woman raised an eyebrow and regarded him in silence long enough for the weight of it to press down on him. Atticus sighed.
"…Arbiter."
A small, approving smile appeared at her lips before she nodded.
"Indeed."
"I've always believed that the peak of elental control was becoming the elental molecules themselves," Atticus said. "Becoming one with the elents, is becoming one with the universe. Is there so higher mastery than that?"
The look she gave him was one of pure disgust.
"Whoever put that nonsense in your head should be bound and flogged for all eternity for being that stupid!"
'I don't have to tell Grandpa Magnus… right?'
"You've been blessed with the power to control the elents," she continued sharply. "So why, in the holy stars' na, would you beco them when you can rule them?"
"But I do control them."
"No." She shook her head. "You ask for help, and they respond. That is not control. In true control, you are the master, and the molecules are yours to command. In your presence, they should bow. They should co to you. They should worship you and wait for your word. That is control."
As if noticing the confusion tightening across his expression, she gave a brief nod and raised her arm.
"The elents make up the entire universe. Earth forms planets, continents, and foundations. Fire drives change and energy, shaping stars and fueling transformation. Wind governs motion and balance, carrying force, pressure, and breath across all things. Water sustains flow and continuity, binding life, erosion, and renewal. Every elent has a purpose." "Fire."
Fire blood above her palm, swirling obediently.
"Water."
"Earth."
"Air."
"Space…"
In the next instant, nurous elents, even those like wood and other lesser aspects Atticus had never truly thought of as elents, spiraled around her, their lights filling the space and reflecting in his widened eyes.
"I've watched you fight," she said calmly. "And what you call control is rudintary at best. You're not mastering the elents, you're tarnishing their na and wasting their potential. Why do little, when you could do so much more?"
She closed her fist.
The elents vanished, plunging the space into utter darkness.
"Erase the darkness."
Atticus squinted and raised an arm as an overwhelming brilliance swallowed his vision.
"Erase the light."
The piercing radiance vanished just as suddenly, and when Atticus slowly opened his eyes, he froze.
The strange woman was gone, and with her, the earlier outline of the wall, gone as well. Atticus lifted his arms and looked down at himself, only to find a patch of nothingness where his body should have been. This wasn't darkness. His shadow elent would have let him see even in the deepest cave.
He knew his eyes were wide open, but there was nothing for them to grasp, nothing for his vision to anchor itself to, and the absence itself pressed in on him in a way that made his instincts recoil.
He clenched his fist in silence.
'She took away light and darkness.'
Was such a thing even possible?
Her calm voice echoed through the emptiness a mont later.
"Return."
The world ignited back into his vision, and his gaze snapped forward, landing on the woman standing exactly where she had been before, her heavy, endless white eyes fixed on him without the slightest flicker.
"A being who can control the elents can control the universe."
The words struck deep, resonating through Atticus like a low, reverberating bass, and sothing beneath his skin stirred in response. A shiver ran through him a mont later, enough to make his body tense.
He didn't know how to interpret it. Was it Solvath? His will? The life weapon?
He shook his head. The reaction had co the mont she spoke, narrowing the source to a single possibility.
'My bloodline.'
Atticus frowned. In all the years since awakening it, this was the first ti his bloodline had reacted so violently. Still… her words had forced him to confront sothing vital.
His bloodline allowed him to control elental molecules in the atmosphere by attuning to them, fire molecules to create fire, light molecules to create light, and so on.
For years, he had brought those elents forth first, then wielded them in battle. That path wasn't wrong. Manipulating the elents, then becoming one with them, was the thod he had been taught, the only one he had ever known.
But now he could see the flaw in it.
He remained rooted in place for what felt like a long ti. The strange woman seed to have anticipated this reaction, and at so point had quietly left him there, now lounging in the corner of the room, wearing sunglasses and holding a tanning sheet as she relaxed on a luxurious beach chair she sculpted from the earth. A miniature sun hovered just above her, bathing her in warmth as she enjoyed every mont of her solitude.
Atticus barely paid her any attention. His mind was still struggling to process everything he had just found out.
Earlier, she had erased light and shadow from the entire space, a feat he would never have even considered possible before. In their earlier fight, she had also halted motion itself and made the earth explode, all through simple, effortless commands.
Atticus had thought it insane that the elents could achieve such feats, and yet he now understood just how utterly wrong he had been.
He rembered the elental molecules acting erratically in the brief mont before glow and shadow vanished, the way they had surged and shifted as though responding to sothing far greater than simple manipulation. She had used the elents, yes, but in a manner that was absolute in its simplicity, one his past self had never even known to look for.
'She commanded the elental molecules.'
Her words, erase the light, erase the darkness, hadn't been spoken into empty space. They had been directed at the elental molecules themselves, and they had moved without hesitation to obey her will.
It was a level of mastery he had never thought possible. Even now, he still had to attune his emotions to the appropriate elental molecules before exerting control. Years of practice and talent had made the process nearly instantaneous, but it was still a process, still sothing that required alignnt and intent. He wasn't at the level of issuing automated commands so absolute that the molecules obeyed without question.
Atticus stilled his thoughts.
'Then why…'
This strange woman was clearly connected to him in so way. Though she refused to give him direct answers, she had left behind clues through her words and actions. More importantly, everything she did made it clear that she was trying to help him.
And if he truly lacked the potential to reach such mastery, she wouldn't be here correcting him at all.
'I have the power.'
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