Chapter 04: An Introduction to the Spellrange

“Do you know who used to drill me on aura checks? My grandmother. If this is how Xifo’Buchi teaches, she must be a zyuga older than she looks.”

Kayin stayed quiet as she focused on the overturned ash bowl before her, still as an iron sculpture. Sweat began to bead on Ty’s forehead under the stagnant late summer sun. It wasno wonder Hayuwasi hosted so few villages, let alone a proper city.

“It just makes me want to sit out entirely. Why waste time on this assignment--a whole three hours to cast away like this? It’s like attending a spar, but being asked not to fight, only watch.”

“It’s not unheard of.” Kayin’s response trickled like cold water. “Learning requires thoughtful observation, reflection, and understanding--”

“Yes, I remember what Xifo’Buchi said.” Ty shook her head. Through a gap in the broad green leaves of the Canopy Stacks, she watched Solomon wrestle and laugh with several other students, their ceremonial bowls and tubs cast aside. While dozens of sayamaks practiced their auramancy on the wet grass, Solomon’s squad brazenly ignored the xifoclast’s instruction.

“Then she should worry about observing Solomon,” Ty continued. “Although… does she just not care?”

She spat. “Typical-- nobody ever holds Solomon accountable. I should just join them, instead of waiting out my demise here.”

“You should do what suits you.”

Ty swiveled back to Kayin, who studied a swarm of tinderflies around her finger. She looked exactly as she had during Convocation, her hair worn in a simple braid, white streaking across the lower half. Her brows were angled, framing her sharp features to an accusatory point.

“It’s not that I want to leave.” Ty shifted to find a comfortable seating position. “I just need a break first. It terrifies me that you enjoy this--”

“Oh!” Ty interrupted herself. “You and Alex, both. So that’s why she insisted you and I work together. Always with her paws in my beehive.”

Ty peeked at Solomon again, rocking forward. “You know, if I had it my way, I could have made an ambassadorship, or studied at a mound. But Alex, Jhigili, and Onawa all decided to come to Sudalijhe’Yi, of course. I blame the Crown Regent for spending all day with us at the Federation Festival. He played them all like Ko stones-- Alex fell for the Afthian honors and that fancy badge. Jhigili had to see ‘the realm’s grandest arboretum’. And Onawa was the easiest, of course. I can’t hold that against her.”

“But to forsake me here! She didn’t even tell me she’d changed her mind about Spellranging.”

It was no wonder Onawa had avoided her all night at Convocation.

“So what do you think?” Kayin asked.

“Think of what? Why Onawa’s not here?”

“My technique.”

“Oh. Oh….” Ty gathered her thoughts. “Aiya, of course. Sorry.”

“That’s okay. Will you help?” Kayin’s words were stilted, but that might have been just how she spoke.

“Ah…. okay.” Ty had already agreed, after all. What else was she to do, sit here in silence?

Ty dipped a finger into her pot and smeared the red paste inside her ash bowl. She let a group of tinderflies swarm the bait, waved a few away, and trapped the rest under a well-fitted lid.

Kayin closed her eyes and hummed a sequence of notes, clear and delicate like a glass mellhorn, so soft that it was overpowered at times by Solomon’s laughter from across the stacks. The mystic swept her slender fingers, first across the lid, and then away, pulling at an invisible string tied to the bowl.

“Six.”

Ty uncovered the bowl to reveal six flies, happily devouring the paste. Kayin nodded as the most subtle tightening of her lips betrayed her satisfaction.

“Wonderful. Your turn.”

Ty grimaced. “That’s okay.”

“No? Why not? You suggested we use tinderflies for the aura check, did you not?”

“Well, yes, but…” Ty scrambled for her words. “It’s-- well-- it’s just not worth it. I told you, this kind of trifling work is beneath us.”

“It only takes a moment,” Kayin said. “And I’d like to practice taking notes.”

“Taking notes? Don’t you still have to write the field report from last week?”

“I’ve finished that. This is different. I need to refine my alchemical notation. The shorthand still eludes me.”

“. . .Okay.” There was no room for argument with Kayin. “Okay.”

Kayin waited.

Ty groaned. “Fine. Let’s try.”

Ty watched Kayin prepare her bowl, counting as best as she could the many flies that flew in. At least ten. She closed her eyes, visualizing each of the glowing insects against the pepper paste, straining to hear their buzzing through the wooden lid. Ty waved her hands, reaching with her aura to feel for resistance, for something familiar that might ground her in the vast aether--

A gust blew past the pair of students. Nothing.

“I don’t know.”

“What?” Kayin asked. “Not even a guess?”

“. . .Eight?”

Kayin stared at Ty as she released her sated captives. “Five, Ty. Is something the matter?”

“Aiya! Why practice auramancy? Our ancestors invented sensors and foci for a reason. What am I, expected to perform all my magic barehanded like a dancing faerie? Give me an alometer and a tuning fork and I’ll ace this test a hundred times in a row!”

“Oh.” Kayin began to write in her notebook.

“I suppose you were born knowing every cordance by heart, then?” Ty asked, more aggressively than she’d intended.

“No, but I’ve been studying them for years. Haven’t you?”

“Of course I have! How do you think I passed my Initiation? It wasn’t by hunting down a phoenix, to be sure. Look, I’m as strong a shaper as any in our class-- but auramancy escapes me, and that’s how it’s always been.”

“It sounds like you just need to study and practice.”

“Do I? When I could be honing my arkinesis? I can see and feel the wind and fire with my senses, right? All I need to do is manipulate it! And if worse comes to worst, I can use a sensor.”

Kayin grimaced. “I wouldn’t expect much here. Sudalijhe’Yi doesn’t have a fraction of the equipment that we had at the egiell. I’ve seen not one alometer.”

“You know, the Crown Regent told me Ijhe’Yi was at the forefront of the spellranging frontier.”

“Well, I wouldn’t disagree,” Kayin said, to Ty’s annoyance. “Much of this is familiar. The masters back home always work barehanded, and Xifo’Buchi echoes the wisdom of Ahraqimasu in her aurashaping philosophy and orbital orientation.

“And I’m still surprised by the quality of the spellfuel I’ve seen recently. Not even our master alchemists could replicate some of the tonics they brew here.”

She paused, obviously surprised to see Ty still paying attention.

“But I’ll admit, I’m used to practicing with at least a dozen others at a time. It doesn’t feel right to do this alone.”

“That’s actually a great point,” Ty said. “Why should I waste time learning auramancy when others have already done it? Pair an auramancer with a renasci and we have no weaknesses. Onawa’s never complained.” That was a lie.

Kayin responded only with a tired smile. Ty sighed.

“So, Ty, do you want to learn?”

“Ah, why bother? Xifo’Buchi isn’t watching us, so it doesn’t matter.”

“Perhaps not right now, but you’ll have to learn for the final trial, won’t you?”

Ty let the question hang in the air as she searched for Solomon’s cohort through the trees. Her gaze settled on Buchi, who raised an eyebrow back.

“Agh! She watches me still as Solomon wanders off?!”

“Hm,” Kayin said. “Well, he knows basic auramancy.”

Ty squinted at Kayin, but the Ibasi mystic’s eyes stayed on her notes. Was she as oblivious as she seemed?

Ty ignored the sting on her cheeks. “He has the natural advantage of age. A few years can make a world of difference. We used to think Jhigili was mute, but since the last cyclim he’s been a chattermouse. Just give me some time.”

Kayin pursed her lips. “I think I’m--” She hesitated, then rerouted. “Hm. Okay, why don’t we start with your breath?”

“My breath?” Ty didn’t hide her bewilderment.

“You’re a forgetender, aren’t you? You should ground your magic in your lungs, on the sensation of air flowing through. We used to practice in underground sauna rooms to help center ourselves, and our elders learned with smoke before--”

“Yes,” Ty cut in. “I’m a forgetender.”

“So you start with the air.”

“With the air? No, I start with the fire, and feed it air to make it grow. I’m a fire shaper.”

Kayin’s frown tightened. “So how do you shape it?”

“With my aura.”

“To do what?”

“To shape the fire.”

“But how?”

“. . . Magic. Chi? Essence? What do you want me to say?”

“What I mean is-- how does your aura actually interact with the fire? Combustion is an active reaction-- you can’t control it directly, only what you feed into it. So what does it really mean to shape fire? Nothing. You don’t actually resonate with the fire-- you resonate with the air, so that’s what you feel and shape with your aura, and the fire merely follows.

She sighed in frustration. “This is another reason we don’t divide our renasci into the natural elements under Ahraqimasu. We ground our practice in reality.”

“Aiya,” Ty interjected. “I’m not saying any of that was wrong, but let’s not abandon respect.”

Kayin’s eyes widened in horror. “Sorry. I’ve only been impressed by the Kyeri forgetenders I’ve met-- I don’t mean to imply otherwise.”

Ty scoffed at the obvious lie but let the mystic continue.

“What I mean to say is you’re feeling for the wrong thing. The fire itself flickers from moment to moment, which is impossible to grasp-- so you feel instead for the flow of the air around you, the changes in pressure and direction as the fire consumes and reacts. And through the air you can connect to everything else within your orbit, as long as you’re thoughtful as you resonate outwards.

“The first few times you truly open your mind, it can be excruciating to get your bearings, learning to differentiate between the infinite spectrum of variances in resonance around you. But one day you see past the individual auras and feel it all at once as a pattern, and it clicks into place, and you realize the whole world around you is contained within your aura, and as you probe the tinderflies and the swarm shifts, you can feel every individual nuance in the resonance between your aura and each of theirs.”

A silence hung in the air. Kayin looked expectant.

“Look, I’m grateful you’re trying to help, but I won’t master this in one day. I’ve avoided this for a halosep now.”

Ty squirmed as Kayin waited for more.

“Wouldn’t you rather be doing something else? Aren’t I a pain?” Ty asked, almost hopefully.

Kayin’s eyes widened in surprise. “Why?”

“Well.” Ty tried to find the words. “You’re like my oma, pulling me through another preservation ritual.”

“I see.” Kayin considered the point carefully. “No, I don’t mind. It’s a learning experience one way or another. What have I to be upset about?”

Ty scratched her head, dislodging flakes of red dye that sorely needed another washing.

“Okay, how about some spellfuel first?”

They stared at each other.

“The xifoclast won’t allow it for the trial,” Kayin said. “And the egiell masters would never have allowed such cavalier consumption of spellfuel. An imbalance of your essence could lead to madness, corruption, or even death. You should be judicious with your intake.”

Ty let the lecture blow over and past her.

“. . .But you won’t do this otherwise, will you?”

“No,” Ty said. She paused, then, to consider it properly. “Probably not today.”

“Hm.”

Ignoring Kayin’s glare, Ty uncorked her flask and swigged a mouthful of emberwater, closing her eyes as the warmth flowed down her throat, washed across her core, and poured out through each hand. The air opened itself to her, revealing the scents that danced along the breeze, the thinning of the sky, the advance of clouds from afar. Madness.

Laughing, the fire shaper crossed her legs and let out a deep breath. Maybe she could do this without a sensor after all.

Kayin held out an ivory amulet, a hefty turquoise crystal in its center tugging gently at Ty's aura.

"Is this your personal cast ward?" Ty asked. A mystic’s relics were not to be trifled with, as Ty had insisted herself countless times before.

"It is," Kayin said. "You should protect yourself."

Ty grabbed with two hands the impossibly light relic, perhaps the purest cast ward she'd ever handled.

“Let’s finish before it starts raining, and I’ll find us some dandelion tea to celebrate.” Ty felt drunk with optimism.

Kayin maintained her study of Ty’s face as several torturous seconds passed in silence. Her aura was tangible now, as soft and pure as her voice.

Ty hugged the mystic with reckless abandon, pulling her into her arms. She ignored the stiffness in Kayin's shoulders, only drawing back once she'd satisfied her nose of sky mint and shea butter.

"Thank you. And sorry, I'll try not to do that again."

Kayin's eyes betrayed her flustered shock.

"Are- are you ready to begin?"

"Yes. Let us sit together."

"Until the work is finished. . .?" Kayin said, uncertain, suddenly like a toddler learning the basics of the village.

Ty giggled, to Kayin's dismay, then nodded fervently.

"Until the work is finished," Ty agreed. She knew it wasn't true, but they were just words anyway. She would do her best to humor the Ibasi mystic, and in a fortnight they would join Solomon in romping through the thickets of Ijhe'Yi.

"Do you truly think me a windshaper? I really just deal with the fire side of arkinesis."

Kayin grimaced again but remained silent as her aura rippled lightly against Ty.

"Aiya, the air. I'll try my best."

Ty took another breath, this time teeming with pine needles and cherry wood smoke.

"Xifo'Buchi wins today."