After a few minutes, the pain in her chest was gone, and the two tiny flas kept burning.
"I think I did it." The Hekate kept her eyes closed and her hands clenched, needing sheer willpower to redirect the little world energy her wings absorbed to the two single feathers. "I can feel the flow now."
"You’d better stop." Lith said when the bright violet of her Ethereal Aegis turned to a deeper hue. "The life force in your Origin Flas is becoming diluted, and you lasted long enough."
"Okay." Tista gasped in relief, feeling a huge burden lifting from her chest. "Gods, this is hard."
"Indeed, but you did make great progress for a single lesson." Lith nodded.
"Thanks, lil bro." Tista panted, feeling weirdly out of breath. "Thanks to you too, Morok. Your suggestion was spot on. I’m so happy that I could kiss you."
Those words earned her not one but three glares.
"It’s just an expression." She raised her hands in apology to both Quylla and Bodya. "I have no desire or intention to kiss him."
"You better." Morok grunted. "It was all fine and dandy when people groped Lith, but after Jiera, I got enough kisses from random won to last a lifeti."
"Please, don’t you ntion that in my presence ever again." Quylla grunted even harder, shifting the focus of her ire to the people of Zelex.
"I’m sorry for keeping you guys from your training, but I couldn’t have done it without your help." Tista said, eager to move on to a less controversial subject.
"You didn’t keep from my training." Morok turned around, showing her that now he had a red streak and several blue sparks on his wings. "I kept practicing the whole ti."
"Sa." Lith held his breath, and the black feathers of his second set of wings burst with fire of six different colors. "I already knew how to draw in the world energy from my wings and my feathers naturally release Cursed Flas.
"I followed Garrik’s and Ryla’s advice and learned how to sense the different elents in the world energy. I can neither split it nor channel it to my eyes, but it’s still progress."
"Let get this straight." Tista crossed her arms in annoyance. "Morok learned how to absorb the world energy and sense two elents. You can now sense all elents, and I am the only one who can barely feel the world energy with her wings?"
"We have different degrees of talent and starting points." Lith shrugged.
"I can believe that. For Morok, though." Tista snorted. "Dread Flas taught you how to absorb the world energy months ago, and your feathers split it on their own. I call this cheating."
"Seconded." Morok raised his hand.
"I call it experience." Lith snorted back. "I was Awakened back when you two had yet to learn fake magic. I didn’t learn Dread Flas out of luck, but because I risked my life and my body triggered them to save so many tis that I learned how to conjure them on my own."
"Fair enough." Morok and Tista conceded the point. "Let’s go back to training."
"No. Now you rest." Ryla stopped them. "I don’t know how it works for a Tiamat or a Hekate, but learning how to split the world energy is a dangerous process for us Fomors. Even if you don’t see it, every failed attempt damages your feathers and bodies.
"If you don’t take care of yourselves, the absorption process will get harder and your condition will worsen quickly."
"Now that you point that out, I do feel quite tired." Tista had yet to stop panting. "I’ve only consud one spark of life force, but after redirecting the flow of world energy for so long, my wings ache as if I have produced Origin Flas this whole ti."
"Sa here." Lith nodded. "My stamina is drained from fueling the Cursed Flas, but I can fix it with Invigoration."
"I’d rather you not use your breathing techniques." Ryla shook her head. "I want your bodies to learn their lesson and beco your guide. If you remove the strain, you’ll only learn with your heads. On top of that, Lith, please stop with the Cursed Flas.
"They are useless in conjuring the powers of your eyes, and I’m afraid that if you rely on them too much, you’ll learn quickly, but only things that matter only to a Tiamat, not an evolved human. As I see it, you’re behind Morok."
"I’m afraid you are right." Lith replied after mulling over her words. "Thanks for the advice, Ryla."
"Please, I’m already a poor teacher for being unable to guide you in the absorption process." The Fomor bowed to Lith and Tista in apology. "Sharing with you the knowledge of my ancestors is the least I can do."
***
While the evolved human concluded their first lesson with a mature wing asuring contest, Elina spent her morning playing with the babies in a sunny patch of grass in the Mansion’s park.
’If just five years ago soone had told that my life would have beco like this, I would have laughed in their face and called them crazy.’ She thought as she looked at her guests sitting in different areas of the park.
In the west corner, the evolved humans were arguing over where to stop asuring Morok’s wings. Unlike Lith’s and Tista’s feathered wings, the Tyrant’s didn’t end so much as they faded away, and their light, albeit dim, reached the ground.
In the east corner, Kamila and Selia practiced magic together. Due to their weak mana cores, their routine started with a warm-up with chore magic, and then they repeated the sa spells while raising the mana they carried up to tier three.
At that point, the training switched focus to precision and control. They used water and earth to create detailed figurines of each other, accurate down to the clothes they wore and the expressions they made.
With air and fire, instead, Kamila and Selia drew ters-long straight lines in the ground, starting over the mont the depth or width of the furrow beca irregular.
Due to her orange core, Selia tired faster and used Accumulation until she recovered her strength. During that ti, Kamila practiced dinsional magic alone. She had learned her lesson from the previous pregnancy, and instead of rushing forward, she stuck to the basics.
Kamila repeated each learning exercise that led to opening a Warp Steps multiple tis, taking notes of every trick she learned and struggle she encountered. Thanks to Raldarak’s support, she could have learned how to Blink, but she refused to.
’I’m not going to end up like last ti.’ Kamila thought while repeating the Pilfer spell until she learned how to alter the mana flow of the water, air, and earth elents according to the distance between the entry and exit points.
’All gloomy and depressed because I mistook Elysia’s power and talent for my own. I’ll use Raldarak’s affinities only as a crutch while I learn the upper tiers of magic, but I’ll never exceed what my mana core can do by itself ever again.’
In the north corner, Syrah, Urhen, and Br’ey recounted the battle against Ruugat to Rena and told her about the reward they had received from Vladion.
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